Publications

The 2017 M 8.2 Tehuantepec and M 7.1 Puebla‐Morelos earthquakes were deep inslab normal‐faulting events that caused significant damage to several central‐to‐southern regions of Mexico. Inslab earthquakes are an important component of seismicity and seismic hazard in Mexico. Ground‐motion prediction equations (GMPEs) are an integral part of seismic hazard assessment as well as risk and...

A collaborative research approach involving substantial end user and stakeholder engagement was applied to great effect to guide broad, integrated investigation of the science, policy, and management of blue carbon and carbon markets as drivers for coastal wetland management and restoration. Expanding awareness about blue carbon concepts among local, state, and federal agencies and the...

Alviso Slough area, South San Francisco Bay, California, is the site of an ongoing effort to restore former salt production ponds to intertidal habitat. As restoration proceeds and the levees surrounding the former salt production ponds are breached, the increase in tidal prism and associated sediment scour in the sloughs will remobilize legacy mercury deposits. A numerical model that is...

When heavy rainfall, such as that associated with tropical storms, falls on steep hillsides, shallow landslides are often one of the damaging consequences. To assess landslide potential from heavy rainfall, a strategy of combined numerical simulation and field monitoring of variably saturated hillslope conditions is developed. To test the combined method, hillslope hydrologic data from...

Hillslope asymmetry is often attributed to differential eco‐hydro‐geomorphic processes resulting from aspect‐related differences in insolation. At midlatitudes, polar facing hillslopes are steeper, wetter, have denser vegetation, and deeper soils than their equatorial facing counterparts. We propose that at regional scales, the magnitude in insolation‐driven hillslope asymmetry is...

Mechanical oscillations or vibrations on spacecraft, also called pointing jitter, cause geometric distortions and/or smear in high-resolution digital images acquired from orbit. Geometric distortion is especially a problem with pushbroom sensors, such as the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument on-board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Geometric...

The Mars Global Digital Dune Database (MGD3) is an online repository that has catalogued dune fields larger than 1 km2 located between latitudes 90° N. and 90° S. The work presented here expands upon previous MGD3 open-file reports, with a new emphasis upon characterizing dune fields through composition, stability, and thermal inertia. Included in this latest addition is a detailed...

We describe a methodology that has been developed at the U.S. Geological Survey for making earthquake catalogs for seismic hazard analysis and review the status of the catalogs for the conterminous United States. A new catalog is assembled from several pre‐existing catalogs. Uniform moment magnitudes and related parameters for estimating unbiased seismicity rates are calculated...

An earthquake early warning (EEW) system, ShakeAlert, is under development for the West Coast of the United States. This system currently uses the first few seconds of waveforms recorded by seismic instrumentation to rapidly characterize earthquake magnitude, location, and origin time; ShakeAlert recently added a seismic line source algorithm. For large to great earthquakes, magnitudes...

The purpose of this report is to provide a compilation of structural retrofits and replacements of older buildings and infrastructure in the San Francisco Bay Area that have either been completed since 1989 or that are in progress as of October 2018. For the purposes of this report, all or parts of nine Bay Area counties were included: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco...

Cryovolcanism, defined here as the extrusion of icy material from depth, may be an important planetary phenomenon in shaping the surfaces of many worlds in the outer Solar System and revealing their thermal histories1,2,3. However, the physics, chemistry and ubiquity of this geologic process remain poorly understood, especially in comparison to the better-studied silicate volcanism on...

Potential changing climate threats in the tropical and subtropical North Pacific Ocean were assessed, using coupled ocean-atmosphere and atmosphere-only general circulation models, to explore their response to projected increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Tropical cyclone occurrence, described by their frequency and intensity, near islands housing major U.S. defense installations was...