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Earthquake Science Center

The Earthquake Science Center has been the flagship research center of the USGS in the western United States for more than 50 years. It is the largest USGS research center in the West and houses extensive laboratories, scientific infrastructure, and research facilities.

News

Ozette Lake: A natural seismograph along the northern Cascadia Subduction Zone (Video)

Ozette Lake: A natural seismograph along the northern Cascadia Subduction Zone (Video)

Earthquake swarms in California: What’s the difference between magmatic and tectonic? 

Earthquake swarms in California: What’s the difference between magmatic and tectonic? 

Even small lakes can tell big earthquake stories in the Yellowstone region

Even small lakes can tell big earthquake stories in the Yellowstone region

Publications

Velocity-independent dry friction on mica: A realization of ideal Amontons-Coulomb friction Velocity-independent dry friction on mica: A realization of ideal Amontons-Coulomb friction

The Amontons-Coulomb friction law assumes that the frictional force between materials is independent of sliding velocity. However, as Coulomb noted, this is a rough approximation, and a second-order dependence of friction on the logarithm of sliding velocity is incorporated in a commonly used ‘rate- and state-dependent’ friction representation. Here we conduct shear experiments on mica...
Authors
Hiroshi Sakuma, Diane E. Moore, David A. Lockner, Toshihiro Kogure

Site-specific amplifications in Northwestern Turkiye: A generic approach Site-specific amplifications in Northwestern Turkiye: A generic approach

In this study, we derive generic site amplification functions applicable to Northwestern Türkiye and follow guidance on site classifications established by the United States National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP). We employ the one-dimensional (1-D) equivalent linear ground response analysis method and focus on recordings from a select suite of free-field strong motion (SM...
Authors
Gamze Muratoglu, Aysegul Askan, Alan Yong

The digital archivist: Automating legacy macroseismic data processing using large language models The digital archivist: Automating legacy macroseismic data processing using large language models

Macroseismic data are a key resource to investigate shaking and damage from preinstrumental and early instrumental eras. However, data are often stored as inconsistently formatted reports describing observed shaking and damage, making manually parsing and interpreting accounts labor‐intensive. We introduce a novel workflow using Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro large language model (LLM) to...
Authors
Aarnav Agrawal, Susan E. Hough, Mostafa Mousavi, Margaret Hellweg, William Ellsworth, Clara Yoon, Salvador Blanco
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