Publications

The detailed spatial variations of strain accumulation and creep on major faults in the northern San Francisco Bay Area (North Bay), which are important for seismic potential and evaluation of natural hazards, remain poorly understood. Here we combine interferometric synthetic aperture radar data from the ERS‐1/2 and Envisat satellites between 1992 and 2010 with continuous and campaign...

The 29 June 1925 Santa Barbara earthquake is among the largest 20th century earthquakes in southern California. The earthquake also predated the installation of strong motion and local monitoring instruments in southern California; some instrumental data are, however, available from long-period instruments at regional and teleseismic distances. The current catalog moment magnitude is MW...

The August 24, 2014, moment magnitude (Mw) 6.0 South Napa earthquake caused an estimated $400 million in structural damage to the City of Napa, California. In 2015, we acquired high-resolution P- and S-wave seismic data near three strong-motion recording stations in Napa and Solano Counties where high peak ground accelerations (PGAs) were recorded during the South Napa earthquake. In...

The August 24, 2014, moment magnitude (Mw) 6.0 South Napa earthquake caused an estimated $400 million in structural damage to the City of Napa, California. In 2015, we acquired high-resolution P- and S-wave seismic data near three strong-motion recording stations in Napa County where high peak ground accelerations (PGAs) were recorded during the South Napa earthquake. In this report, we...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), along with partner organizations, has developed an earthquake early warning (EEW) system called ShakeAlert for the highest risk areas of the United States: namely, California, Oregon, and Washington. The purpose of the system is to reduce the impact of earthquakes and save lives and property by providing alerts to institutional users and the public...

Quantitative interpretation of the tidal response of water levels measured in wells has long been made either with a model for perfectly confined aquifers or with a model for purely unconfined aquifers. However, many aquifers may be neither totally confined nor purely unconfined at the frequencies of tidal loading but behave somewhere between the two end‐members. Here we present a more...

The San Andreas Fault System is a 1300-km-long transform boundary that accommodates motion between the North American and Pacific Plates. New technologies and data reveal rich details about the present configuration of faults, distribution of strain and associated seismic hazard on this complex network of faults. This contribution provides a brief summary of the geologic history of the...

This paper extends and detides a Karachi tide-gauge record as an observational basis for assessing Indian Ocean tsunami risk. The extended marigram encompasses the time of the great 1945 Makran earthquake of early November 28, local time, and of the ensuing tsunami, which continued into November 29. The marigram was published previously as a 9-h excerpt that begins 1 h after the...

On March 22, 2018, the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) convened a workshop of engineers and seismologists to provide guidance on incorporating sedimentary basin response into the design of tall buildings in Seattle. This workshop provided recommendations that build on those from a March 2013 workshop (Chang and others, 2014)

Tectonic tremor can be used to constrain seismic‐wave attenuation for use in ground‐motion prediction equations (GMPEs) in regions where moderately sized earthquakes occur infrequently. Here we quantify seismic‐wave attenuation by inverting tremor ground motion amplitudes in different frequency bands of interest, to determine frequency dependence of and spatial variations in seismic‐wave

The digital elevation model documented here provides a tool for calibrating tsunami models to effects of the 1945 Makran tsunami that were observed in Karachi Harbour. The DEM bathymetry is derived from soundings made mainly during the first 8 years post-tsunami. While deficient in its portrayal of interior tidelands and upland topography, the DEM accurately represents the setting of a...

The devastating 2017 Puebla quake provides an opportunity to assess how citizens perceive and use the Mexico City earthquake early warning system.