Publications

The Hayward fault, a major branch of the right-lateral San Andreas fault system, traverses the densely populated eastern San Francisco Bay region, California. We conducted a paleoseismic investigation to better understand the Hayward fault's past earthquake behavior. The site is near the south end of Tyson's Lagoon, a sag pond formed in a right step of the fault in Fremont. Because the...

No abstract available.

The Volcano Hazards Program of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is part of the Geologic Hazards Assessments subactivity as funded by Congressional appropriation. Investigations are carried out in the Geology and Hydrology Disciplines of the USGS and with cooperators at the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute...

Landslide inventory maps are generally prepared by interpreting the geomorphic expression of landsliding on aerial photos, topographic maps, or on the ground. Distinctive landslide geomorphology allows the recognition and mapping of landslides, although there are always landslides that have very subtle expression and are not identified. The difficulties of mapping landslides based on...

Blind field tests of the Field Integration Design and Operations (FIDO) prototype Mars rover were carried out 7-16 May 2000. A Core Operations Team (COT), sequestered at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory without knowledge of test site location, prepared command sequences and interpreted data acquired by the rover. Instrument sensors included a stereo panoramic camera, navigational and hazard...

Historic accretion of sediment on the Palos Verdes margin off Los Angeles County, CA, is dominated by two sources, effluent from Whites Point outfall and sediment eroded from the toe of Portuguese Bend landslide. In this paper, we document the recent history of sedimentation from these non-marine sources from 1937 until the late 1990s, and attempt to estimate the amount of material...

We infer the fine structure of a sub-Moho boundary layer (SMBL) at the top of the lithospheric mantle from high-resolution seismic observations of Peaceful Nuclear Explosions (PNE) on superlong-range profiles in Russia. Densely recorded seismograms permit recognition of previously unknown features of teleseismic propagation of the well known Pn and Sn phases, such as a band of incoherent

We present a new set of contour maps of the seismic structure of North America and the surrounding ocean basins. These maps include the crustal thickness, whole-crustal average P-wave and S-wave velocity, and seismic velocity of the uppermost mantle, that is, Pn and Sn. We found the following: (1) The average thickness of the crust under North America is 36.7 km (standard deviation [s.d...

As of the time of this writing, the San Francisco Bay region is home to about 6.8 million people, ranking fifth among population centers in the United States. Most of these people live on the coastal lands along San Francisco Bay, the Sacramento River delta, and the Pacific coast. The region straddles the tectonic boundary between the Pacific and North American Plates and is crossed by...

Central to the model of the evolution of the martian hydrosphere by Clifford and Parker [2001] is a permanent freezing of the planet at the end of the Noachian and recharge of the global groundwater system by basal melting of ice-rich polar deposits. Acquisition of MOLA data by Mars Global Surveyor provides a means of testing the model, since discharge of water onto the surface, after...

Post-earthquake field investigations of landslide occurrence have provided a basis for understanding, evaluating, and mapping the hazard and risk associated with earthquake-induced landslides. This paper traces the historical development of knowledge derived from these investigations. Before 1783, historical accounts of the occurrence of landslides in earthquake are typically so...

Before the August 1999 Izmit (Kocaeli), Turkey, earthquake, theoretical studies of earthquake ruptures and geological observations had provided estimates of how far an earthquake might jump to get to a neighboring fault. Both numerical simulations and geological observations suggested that 5 km might be the upper limit if there were no transfer faults. The Izmit earthquake appears to...