Publications

Landslides pose a serious and ongoing threat to both human lives and infrastructure worldwide; therefore, it is of interest to predict where and when landslides are likely to occur. Advances in machine learning techniques have spurred numerous studies aimed at estimating relative landslide propensity, but are limited to spatial (as opposed to temporal) prediction due to the sparsity of...

The U.S. Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plain (CP) sediments are kilometers-thick, low-velocity deposits underlain by high-velocity bedrock that create regional patterns of amplification and attenuation of ground motions. Capturing these effects is challenging because of the limited subsurface information available, particularly the shear wave velocity (VS) structure down to bedrock (or...

Estimating seismic hazard using 3D earthquake simulations of moderate‐to‐large magnitude events is becoming a reality. In this study, we further this endeavor by simulating seismic wavefields for five earthquakes in California, United States, and evaluating their pseudospectral acceleration at periods of 2, 5, and 10 s. We compare results from the recently developed U.S. Geological...

Earth’s microseism wavefield dominates seismic background levels at periods between approximately 4 and 20 s, and reflects periodic and secular variations in ocean swell energy. Ocean wave energy couples to the seismic wavefield via distinct primary microseism and secondary microseism (PM and SM) source mechanisms, which are excited by basal swell tractions and seafloor pressure...

As the largest low-relief basin in the western United States, the Great Salt Lake offers an opportunity to explore acoustic and sedimentary archives of earthquake ruptures in a shallow terminal basin. Here, we use subbottom compressed high intensity radiated pulse (Chirp) profiles and sedimentary cores to address questions related to how Great Salt Lake sediments respond to surface...

Understanding the spatial distribution of landslide prone-areas and what consequences they may have is important for risk management and land-use planning. In the United States, although landslides occur in every state, a comprehensive landslide risk assessment is still missing. Existing efforts, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s National Risk Index, rely on...

Laboratory testing of digitizers and seismometers helps ensure that prior to deployment the instrumentation can produce high quality data and is operating within specifications. In this work we detail the software package called: the Albuquerque Seismological Laboratory (ASL) Digitizer Test Suite. This Java software package provides several algorithms to verify various performance...

The ground failure resulting from an earthquake, at all scales, is ultimately controlled by the details of near-surface earthquake ground motions, the spatially distributed mechanical characteristics of surface materials and how the two interact. This chapter introduces the aspects of ground-motion seismology that are most relevant to the triggering of different types of ground failure...

Using solar wind and ground magnetometer data for solar cycles 23–25, extreme-value power-law models are developed that quantify relationships between near-Earth solar wind speed and Sun-to-Earth transit times of interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs). The models of near-Earth solar wind speed, conditional on ICME transit time, are (a) approximately stable for transit times as...

How much tectonic geodetic strain is accommodated as earthquakes? Can estimates of tectonic geodetic strain be used in probabilistic seismic hazard analyses? Understanding the balance of moment accumulation (i.e., geodetic moment) and accommodation (i.e., geologic and seismologic moment) is a necessary step toward leveraging corrected geodetic strain rates to quantify earthquake budgets...

Subduction zones are important drivers of Earth's geochemical evolution; the presence of water within the subduction system has substantial implications for geohazards, including the style of seismicity and the volume of magma generated at arc volcanoes. We utilize estimates of pore fluid distributions in the outer-rise region of the Central American margin imaged using controlled-source...

To disseminate accurate and useful warnings, earthquake early warning (EEW) systems must quickly determine the size and location of an earthquake to estimate expected shaking. Traditional seismic‐based algorithms tend to underestimate the true magnitudes of large earthquakes, a phenomenon known as magnitude saturation. This limitation motivated the recent inclusion of Global Navigation...