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Postfire sediment mobilization and its downstream implications across California, 1984 – 2021 Postfire sediment mobilization and its downstream implications across California, 1984 – 2021

Fire facilitates erosion through changes in vegetation and soil, with major postfire erosion commonly occurring even with moderate rainfall. As climate warms, the western United States (U.S.) is experiencing an intensifying fire regime and increasing frequency of extreme rain. We evaluated whether these hydroclimatic changes are evident in patterns of postfire erosion by modeling...
Authors
Helen Willemien Dow, Amy E. East, Joel B. Sankey, Jonathan A. Warrick, Jaime Kostelnik, Donald N. Lindsay, Jason W. Kean

Plan to coordinate post-earthquake investigations supported by the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) Plan to coordinate post-earthquake investigations supported by the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP)

Introduction This report presents a plan supported by the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) to coordinate domestic and international post-earthquake investigations (herein called “the Plan”). Post-earthquake scientific and engineering investigations are undertaken to capture critical information to understand the causes and impacts of the event, lessons from which can
Authors
Chris Poland, Jonathan D. Bray, Laurie Johnson, Sissy Nikolaou, Ellen Rathje, Brian Sherrod

Constraining mean landslide occurrence rates for non-temporal landslide inventories using high-resolution elevation data Constraining mean landslide occurrence rates for non-temporal landslide inventories using high-resolution elevation data

Constraining landslide occurrence rates can help to generate landslide hazard models that predict the spatial and temporal occurrence of landslides. However, most landslide inventories do not include any temporal data due to the difficulties of dating landslide deposits. Here we introduce a method for estimating the mean landslide occurrence rate of deep-seated rotational and...
Authors
Jacob Bryson Woodard, Sean Richard LaHusen, Benjamin B. Mirus, Katherine R. Barnhart

ShakeAlert® and schools: Incorporating earthquake early warning in school districts in Alaska, California, Oregon, and Washington ShakeAlert® and schools: Incorporating earthquake early warning in school districts in Alaska, California, Oregon, and Washington

The U.S. Geological Survey-managed ShakeAlert® earthquake early warning system is the first public alerting system in the United States to provide rapid mass notification when an earthquake is detected. Although public alert delivery via mobile phones began in California in 2019 followed by Oregon and Washington in 2021, little is known about what might drive widespread implementation in...
Authors
Rachel M. Adams, Holly Davies, Lori Peek, Meghan Mordy, Jennifer Tobin, Jolie Breeden, Sara K. McBride, Robert Michael deGroot

The impact of source time function complexity on stress drop estimates The impact of source time function complexity on stress drop estimates

Earthquake stress drop—a key parameter for describing the energetics of earthquake rupture—can be estimated in several different, but theoretically equivalent, ways. However, independent estimates for the same earthquakes sometimes differ significantly. We find that earthquake source complexity plays a significant role in why theoretically (for simple rupture models) equivalent methods...
Authors
James S. Neely, Sunyoung Park, Annemarie S. Baltay Sundstrom

On the uncertain intensity estimate of the 1859 Carrington storm On the uncertain intensity estimate of the 1859 Carrington storm

A study is made of the intensity of the Carrington magnetic storm of September 1859 as inferred from visual measurements of horizontal-component geomagnetic disturbance made at the Colaba observatory in India. Using data from modern observatories, a lognormal statistical model of storm intensity is developed, to characterize the maximum-negative value of the storm-time disturbance index...
Authors
Jeffrey J. Love, E. Joshua Rigler, H. Hayakawa, Kalevi Mursula

Uncertainty and spatial correlation in station measurements for mb magnitude estimation Uncertainty and spatial correlation in station measurements for mb magnitude estimation

The body‐wave magnitude (⁠⁠) is a long‐standing network‐averaged, amplitude‐based magnitude used to estimate the magnitude of seismic sources from teleseismic observations. The U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) relies on in its global real‐time earthquake monitoring mission. Although waveform modeling‐based moment magnitudes are the modern standard to
Authors
William L. Yeck, Adam T. Ringler, David R. Shelly, Paul S. Earle, Harley M. Benz, David C. Wilson

Status and performance of the ShakeAlert® earthquake early warning system: 2019-2023 Status and performance of the ShakeAlert® earthquake early warning system: 2019-2023

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)‐operated ShakeAlert® system is the United States West Coast earthquake early warning system (Given et al., 2018). In this study we detail ShakeAlert’s performance during some of the largest events seen by the system thus far. Statewide public alerting using ShakeAlert messages was authorized in California in October 2019. Over the next few years, public...
Authors
A.I. Lux, Deborah Smith, M. Böse, Jeffrey J. McGuire, Jessie K. Saunders, Minh Huynh, I. Stubailo, Jennifer R Andrews, G. Lotto, B. Crowell, S. Crane, R. M. Allen, Douglas D. Given, R. Hartog, T. Heaton, A. Husker, J. Marty, Leland O'Driscoll, Harold J. Tobin, Sara K. McBride, D. Toomey

Developing, testing, and communicating earthquake forecasts: Current practices and future directions Developing, testing, and communicating earthquake forecasts: Current practices and future directions

While deterministically predicting the time and location of earthquakes remains impossible, earthquake forecasting models can provide estimates of the probabilities of earthquakes occurring within some region over time. To enable informed decision-making of civil protection, governmental agencies, or the public, Operational Earthquake Forecasting (OEF) systems aim to provide...
Authors
Leila Mizrahi, Irina Dallo, Nicholas van der Elst, Annemarie Christophersen, Ilaria Spassiani, Maximillian J. Werner, Pablo Iturrieta, Jose Bayona, Iunio Iervolino, Max Schneider, Morgan T. Page, Jiancang Zhuang, Marcus Herrmann, Andrew J. Michael, Guiseppe Falcone, Warner Marzocchi, David A. Rhoades, Matthew Gerstenberger, Laura Gulia, Danijel Schorlemmer, Julia Becker, Marta Han, Lorena Kuratle, Michele Marti, Stefan Wiemer

Shallow faulting and folding beneath south‐central Seattle, Washington State, from land‐based high‐resolution seismic‐reflection imaging Shallow faulting and folding beneath south‐central Seattle, Washington State, from land‐based high‐resolution seismic‐reflection imaging

The geologic framework of the Seattle fault zone (SFZ) has been extensively studied, but the structure and fault strand locations in the central portion of the fault zone through the city of Seattle have remained controversial. Much of what is known about the SFZ has come from light detection and ranging (lidar)‐topographic surveys and paleoseismic investigations of fault scarps...
Authors
William J. Stephenson, Jack K. Odum, Thomas L. Pratt

A robust quantitative method to distinguish runoff-generated debris flows from floods A robust quantitative method to distinguish runoff-generated debris flows from floods

Debris flows and floods generated by rainfall runoff occur in rocky mountainous landscapes and burned steeplands. Flow type is commonly identified post-event through interpretation of depositional structures, but these may be poorly preserved or misinterpreted. Prior research indicates that discharge magnitude is commonly amplified in debris flows relative to floods due to volumetric...
Authors
David B. Cavagnaro, Scott W. McCoy, Jason W. Kean, Matthew A. Thomas, Donald N. Lindsay, Brian W. McArdell, Jacob Hirschberg
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