Publications

Tilting of the ground due to loading by the variable atmosphere is known to corrupt very long period horizontal seismic records (below 10 mHz) even at the quietest stations. At BFO (Black Forest Observatory, SW-Germany), the opportunity arose to study these disturbances on a variety of simultaneously operated state-of-the-art broad-band sensors. A series of time windows with clear...

The Social Sciences Coordinating Committee (SSCC) is one of multiple Interagency Groups that support the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). USGCRP began as a Presidential initiative in 1989 and was mandated by Congress through the U.S. Global Change Research Act of 1990 “to assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural...

Landslides are common geohazards associated with natural drivers such as precipitation, land degradation, toe erosion by rivers and wave attack, and ground shaking. On the other hand, human alterations such as inundation by water impoundment or rapid drawdown may also destabilize the surrounding slopes. The Guobu slope is an ancient rockslide on the banks of the Laxiwa hydropower station...

The 2019 Mw 6.4 and 7.1 Ridgecrest, California, earthquake sequence (July 2019) ruptured consecutively a system of high‐angle strike‐slip cross faults (northeast‐ and northwest‐trending) within 34 hr. The complex rupture mechanism was illuminated by seismological and geodetic data, bringing forward the issue of the interdependency of the two fault systems both at depth and at the surface...

In the last 10 yr, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) revised its safety standards for site evaluations of nuclear installations in response to emerging fault displacement hazard evaluation practices developed in Member States. New amendments in the revised safety guidance (DS507) explicitly recommend fault displacement hazard assessment, including separate approaches for...

Earthquake magnitudes are widely relied upon measures of earthquake size. Although moment magnitude (⁠MwMw⁠) has become the established standard for moderate and large earthquakes, difficulty in reliably measuring seismic moments for small (generally MwMwMw⁠. To assess this problem, we apply coda envelope analysis to reliably determine moment magnitudes for a case study of small...

Improving our understanding of hazards posed by future large earthquakes on the Cascadia Subduction Zone requires advancements in the methods and sampling used to date and characterize past events.

One of the largest historical earthquakes in the U.S. Pacific Northwest occurred on December 15, 1872 near the south end of Lake Chelan. Lack of recognized surface deformation suggested that the earthquake occurred on a blind, perhaps deep, fault. New LiDAR data revealed a NW-side-up scarp along the north side of Spencer Canyon near Entiat, Washington. Landslides triggered during the...

We introduce a Bayesian framework for incorporating time-varying noisy reported data on damage and loss information to update near real-time loss estimates/alerts for the U.S. Geological Survey’s Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response (PAGER) system. Initial loss estimation by PAGER immediately following an earthquake includes several uncertainties. Historically, the PAGER...

Floods play a critical role in geomorphic change, but whether peak magnitude, duration, volume, or frequency determines the resulting magnitude of erosion and deposition is a question often proposed in geomorphic effectiveness studies. This study investigated that question using digital elevation model differencing to compare and contrast three hydrologically distinct epochs of...

Pila‘a reef on the north shore of Kaua‘i, Hawai‘i was subjected to a major flood event in 2001 that deposited extensive sediment on the reef flat, resulting in high coral mortality. To document potential recovery, this study replicated benthic and sediment surveys conducted immediately following the event and 15 years later. Coral cores were analyzed to determine coral growth rates and...

In recent years, earthquake felt reports contributed via online systems have provided increasingly valuable sources of data to characterize earthquakes and their effects. Contributed felt reports are accompanied by increases in website traffic, which are themselves potentially useful for the early detection of seismic events. In February 2017 the European‐Mediterranean Seismic Centre...