Publications

The Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) is a community of researchers at institutions worldwide working to improve understanding of earthquakes and mitigate earthquake risk. One of SCEC's priority objectives is to “develop a geodetic network processing system that will detect anomalous strain transients.” Given the growing number of continuously recording geodetic networks...

This is a report of findings following research and a three-week field assessment (April 2009) of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) in response to nation-wide marine inundation by extreme tides (December 2007, September 2008, December 2008).3 The study was conducted at the request of the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the state and federal governments of FSM.

We investigated the frictional sliding behavior of simulated quartz-clay gouges under stress conditions relevant to seismogenic depths. Conventional triaxial compression tests were conducted at 40 MPa effective normal stress on saturated saw cut samples containing binary and ternary mixtures of quartz, montmorillonite, and illite. In all cases, frictional strengths of mixtures fall...

Deformation of sedimentary rocks is widespread within Valles Marineris, characterized by both plastic and brittle deformation identified in Candor, Melas, and Ius Chasmata. We identified four deformation styles using HiRISE and CTX images: kilometer-scale convolute folds, detached slabs, folded strata, and pull-apart structures. Convolute folds are detached rounded slabs of material with

The Northern Walker Lane comprises a complex network of active faults in northwestern Nevada and northeastern California bound on the west by the Sierra Nevada and on the east by the extensional Basin and Range Province. Because deformation is distributed across sets of discontinuous faults, it is particularly challenging to integrate geologic and geodetic data in the NWL to assess the...

The Gorda deformation zone, a 50,000 km2 area of diffuse shear and rotation offshore northernmost California, has been the site of 20 M ≥ 5.9 earthquakes on four different fault orientations since 1976, including four M ≥ 7 shocks. This is the highest rate of large earthquakes in the contiguous United States. We calculate that the source faults of six recent M ≥ 5.9 earthquakes had...

We have reexamined the postearthquake deformation of a 65 km long linear array of 11 geodetic monuments extending north–south across the rupture (reverse slip on a blind thrust dipping 40°S–20°W) associated with the 1994 Mw6.7 Northridge earthquake. That array was surveyed frequently in the interval from 4 to 2650 days after the earthquake. The velocity of each of the monuments over the...

We study how heterogeneous rupture propagation affects the coherence of shear and Rayleigh Mach wavefronts radiated by supershear earthquakes. We address this question using numerical simulations of ruptures on a planar, vertical strike-slip fault embedded in a three-dimensional, homogeneous, linear elastic half-space. Ruptures propagate spontaneously in accordance with a linear slip...

Probabilities of surface manifestations of liquefaction due to a repeat of the 1868 (M6.7-7.0) earthquake on the southern segment of the Hayward Fault were calculated for two areas along the margin of San Francisco Bay, California: greater Oakland and the northern Santa Clara Valley. Liquefaction is predicted to be more common in the greater Oakland area than in the northern Santa Clara...

Five certain impact craters and 44 additional nearly certain and probable ones have been identified on the 22% of Titan's surface imaged by Cassini's high-resolution radar through December 2007. The certain craters have morphologies similar to impact craters on rocky planets, as well as two with radar bright, jagged rims. The less certain craters often appear to be eroded versions of the...

I present and interpret new earthquake relocations and focal mechanisms for the California Central Coast. The relocations improve upon catalog locations by using 3D seismic velocity models to account for lateral variations in structure and by using relative arrival times from waveform cross-correlation and double-difference methods to image seismicity features more sharply. Focal...

The Cassini Titan Radar Mapper is providing an unprecedented view of Titan’s surface geology. Here we use Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image swaths (Ta–T30) obtained from October 2004 to December 2007 to infer the geologic processes that have shaped Titan’s surface. These SAR swaths cover about 20% of the surface, at a spatial resolution ranging from ∼350 m to ∼2 km. The SAR data are...