Publications

This paper summarizes the impact of the Loma Prieta earthquake on highway systems. City streets, urban freeways, county roads, state routes, and the national highway system were all affected. There was damage to bridges, roads, tunnels, and other highway structures. The most serious damage occurred in the cities of San Francisco and Oakland, 60 miles from the fault rupture. The cost to...

Average velocities for time intervals ranging from 1 to 15 years were measured by tracking ice-surface patterns on sequential Landsat and European Remote-sensing Satellite synthetic aperture radar images. Velocities ofThwaites Glacier range from 2.2 km a−1 above the grounding line to 3.4 km a−1 at the limit of measurements onThwaites Glacier ice tongue. The glacier increases in velocity...

No abstract available.

Professional Paper 1552 focuses on the response of buildings, lifelines, highway systems, and earth structures to the earthquake. Losses to these systems totaled approximated $5.9 billion. The earthquake displaced many residents from their homes and severely disrupted transportation systems. Some significant findings were: * Approximately 16,000 housing units were uninhabitable after the

The 1994 Northridge, California, earthquake is the first earthquake for which we have all of the data sets needed to conduct a rigorous regional analysis of seismic slope instability. These data sets include (1) a comprehensive inventory of triggered landslides, (2) about 200 strong-motion records of the mainshock, (3) 1:24,000-scale geologic mapping of the region, (4) extensive data on

The small rural town of La Honda, Calif., is an unincorporated region of San Mateo County situated in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the western part of the San Francisco peninsula. Much of the town is underlain by a previously recognized ancient landslide complex. The ancient slide complex covers about 1.0 to 1.25 km2, parts of which have been historically active. This report describes a...

No abstract available.

Tilt has been the nemesis of horizontal long period seismology since its inception. Modern horizontal long period seismometers with their long natural periods are incredibly sensitive to tilt. They can sense tilts smaller than 10-11 radians. To most readers, this is just a very very small number, so we will begin with an example, which should help to illustrate just how small 10-11...

The United States Geological Survey Flagstaff Field Center was founded by the late Eugene Shoemaker in 1963 as a research site for the new science of planetary geology. Flagstaffs clear air and high elevation made it a desirable location for telescope observations of the Moon and planets and nearby Meteor Crater was a superb training ground for the Apollo astronauts. There, and in the...

To the general public who had their televisions tuned to watch the World Series, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was a lifelines earthquake. It was the images seen around the world of the collapsed Cypress Street viaduct, with the frantic and heroic efforts to pull survivors from the structure that was billowing smoke; the collapsed section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and...

Profile development indices for soils developed in moraines and outwash near Twin Lakes and in outwash near Leadville support the correlation of moraines with subdued morphology and two high outwash terraces with the Bull Lake glaciation (ca. 130-160 ka) and the correlation of hummocky moraines and two low outwash terraces with the Pinedale glaciation (ca. 14-47 ka). Elsewhere in the...

A 1:62,500-scale black-and-white map identifying some 2,000 landslides of various types in Santa Cruz County, California, has been converted to a digital-map database that can be acquired from the U.S. Geological Survey over the Internet or on magnetic tape.