Publications

The objective of the study is to assess when liquefaction is triggered in a suite of ground motions following simplified approaches and measure the remaining post-triggering energy content of those ground motions. For liquefaction-induced deformations, current simplified analysis procedures do not directly incorporate temporal effects and rely on peak transient intensity measurements...

Predicting the recurrence times of earthquakes and understanding the physical processes that immediately precede them are two outstanding problems in seismology. Although geodetic measurements record elastic strain accumulation, most faults have recurrence intervals longer than available measurements. Foreshocks provide the principal observations of processes before mainshocks, but...

Simulated ground motions have the potential to advance seismic hazard assessments and structural response analyses, particularly for conditions with limited recorded ground motions such as large magnitude earthquakes at short source-to-site distances. However, rigorous validation of simulated ground motions is needed for hazard analysts, practicing engineers, or regulatory bodies to be...

As part of the U.S. Geological Survey’s 2023 50‐State National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM), we make modest revisions and additions to the central and eastern U.S. (CEUS) fault‐based seismic source model that result in locally substantial hazard changes. The CEUS fault‐based source model was last updated as part of the 2014 NSHM and considered new information from the Seismic Source

Regional mapping of actively deforming landslides, including measurements of landslide velocity, is integral for hazard assessments in paraglacial environments. These inventories are also critical for describing the potential impacts that the warming effects of climate change have on slope instability in mountainous and cryospheric terrain. The objective of this study is to identify slow...

The Curl-Curl equation is the foundation of time-harmonic electromagnetic (EM) problems in geophysics. The efficiency of its solution is key to EM simulations, accounting for over 95% of the computation cost in geophysical inversions for magnetotelluric or controlled-source EM problems. However, most published EM inversion codes are still central processing unit (CPU)-based and cannot...

Executive Summary Macroseismic observations and analysis connect our collective seismological past with the present and the present to the future by facilitating hazard estimates and communicating the effects of ground shaking to a wide variety of audiences across the ages. Invaluable ground shaking and building damage information is gained through standardized, systematic approaches for...

Slope units are terrain partitions bounded by drainage and divide lines. In landslide modeling, including susceptibility modeling and event-specific modeling of landslide occurrence, slope units provide several advantages over gridded units, such as better capturing terrain geometry, improved incorporation of geospatial landslide-occurrence data in different formats (e.g., point and...

The foundation of earthquake monitoring is the ability to rapidly detect, locate, and estimate the size of seismic sources. Earthquake magnitudes are particularly difficult to rapidly characterize because magnitude types are only applicable to specific magnitude ranges, and location errors propagate to substantial magnitude errors. We developed a method for rapid estimation of single...

The U.S. Geological Survey is developing the National Crustal Model (NCM) for seismic hazard studies to facilitate modeling site, path, and source components of seismic hazard across the conterminous United States. The NCM is composed of a 1km grid of geophysical profiles, extending from the Earth’s surface into the upper mantle. It is constructed from a threedimensional (3D) geologic...

Shallow landslides are often triggered during rainfall events, which can increase subsurface soil water pressure and destabilize hillslopes. The likelihood of regional shallow landslide initiation is often assessed through a comparison of rainfall intensity and duration to pre-established thresholds. While informative for landslide warning, this exclusive focus on rainfall exceeding...

Murgänge können durch Erosion entlang ihres Fliessweges erheblich an Volumen und damit an Gefährdungspotenzial gewinnen. Diese Erosionsprozesse hängen erwiesenermassen mit den Sättigungsbedingungen des Sediments vor dem Ereignis zusammen. Solche hydrologische Einflussfaktoren werden bei der Murgangmodellierung bisher jedoch nicht explizit berücksichtigt. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird ein...