Images

Stephen Hughes, Gabriel Colón, and Ednet López stand on hillslope next to completed landslide monitoring station at Añasco, Puerto Rico

Figure showing photos of minor and major postfire hydrologic response following storms in coastal California, from the study "Postfire hydrologic response along the Central California (USA) coast: insights for the emergency assessment of postfire debris-flow hazards".

Charlie Miles performing field work on the Alaskan Gyre at the Prince William Sound, Alaska

Pit dug for collection of geologic data and observations, such as geochronology samples to determine the age of faulted surfaces and documentation and dating of faulted recent sediments of the Puya Fault in northern New Mexico, 4/25/2023.

Although most economic loss is concentrated along the west coast, the distribution of relative earthquake risk, as measured by the Annualized Earthquake Loss Ratio (AELR), is spread throughout the country and it reinforces the fact that earthquakes are a national problem.

Map showing distribution of average annualized earthquake loss by region. The high concentration of loss in California and the West Coast is consistent with that region’s high seismic hazard, significant population, and building exposure. 

Landslides near the 2017 Thomas fire burn area that initiated during a series of atmospheric river events in December 2022 and January 2023.  

University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez students Estefania Vicens, Tania Figueroa, Anishka Ruiz, Cesar Rodriguez, and Kimberly Maisonet stand next to completed landslide monitoring station at Yauco, Puerto Rico, part of the Landslide Monitoring Network.

Estefania Vicens, Tania Figueroa, Kimberly Trahan, Victor Ortega stand next to completed Mayagüez monitoring station, part of the Puerto Rico Landslide Monitoring Network

Completed landslide monitoring station at Ponce, Puerto Rico among the palms. One of the sites in the Puerto Rico Landslide Monitoring Network.

Example of a landslide that initiated within the footprint of the 2019 Cave Fire during the 9 January 2023 rainstorm. The landslide source area is shown in the upper left of this image. The debris-flow runout path is shown in the center and lower right of this image.

The large HTHH volcanic explosion created fast low-frequency pressure waves that penetrated about 3.1 miles/5 kilometers into the shallow crust (shown in yellow). Wind and small explosions (shown in blue) create shorter pressure waves that only penetrate down about 328 feet/100 meters.

The waveforms of the ground motion recording and the pressure sensor recording from a station with both types of instruments (see second image above) match up, indicating that the pressure waves are causing the ground (crust) to deflect.

Debris-flow deposits downstream of the 2022 Pipeline Fire burn scar, north of Flagstaff, Arizona.

The June 28, 2022, Chaos Canyon debris slide with main features labeled. Horizontal distance from the middle of headscarp to the middle of toe is about 585 m. North is towards the right side of the photograph.

The USGS “Heil Ranch” site is located in the Arapahoe-Roosevelt National Forest in Colorado. The site consists of instrumentation monitoring the rainfall and soil moisture.

Photo of a Kinemetrics FBA-23 accelerograph. The device is black and square with rounded edges on a green background.

Cross-section of the Benioff zone resulting from a by the interaction of a downgoing oceanic crustal plate with a continental plate.

When seismologists think of an earthquake, this image of a seismogram is what comes to their minds.

Diagram of dipping slab with different focal depth events. The focal depth refers to the depth of an earthquake hypocenter.

The geologic time scale showing each eon, era, period, epoch, and their associated ages.