Images

Photo of 1995 landslide in La Conchita, California. A landslide is a movement of surface material down a slope. 

1906 earthquake damage to home on Howard and 17th Streets in San Francisco. Liquefaction, the phenomenon of saturated soils losing their stiffness and strength during shaking, caused structures to tilt and collapse.

Strong shaking during the 1868 Hayward Fault earthquake caused the second story of the Alameda County Courthouse in San Leandro to collapse (photo courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California). The inset photo shows the courthouse before the quake

Shake Table at dusk, lit by flourescent lights installed under the table in addition to a high-powered, hand-held flashlight.

An 8.5-minute exposure taken on a moonless night with a blue-gel'd flashlight to fill in the top of the shake table.

A 30-second exposure with the fluorescent lights underneath the table switched on for a split second.

D.V. Rogers in the "Bunker," the control center for the project. Real-time earthquakes are received via satellite internet.

Damage to a house in Louisa County, Virginia, after a magnitude 5.8 earthquake on August 23, 2011.

Damage to a village house.

Photo showing the kite that is suspending the camera over the San Andreas Fault.

Full view of the ground with the San Andreas fault running through the middle of the image. A 30 foot steam offset from the 1857 earthquake can be seen near the right edge of the image.

Artist D.V. Rogers stomps on one of the geophones surrounding the shake table to trigger it.

3-minute exposure of Parkfield Cafe (and shake table) entrance at night.

The Hotel Montana, shown here, is a portable seismometer site. USGS Seismologists Doug Given, Susan Hough, Mark Meremonte, and J. Zebulon Maharrey traveled to Haiti shortly after the magnitude-7 earthquake struck Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12, 2010 to install seismometers. Seismometers monitor the earth's movement and can detect and measure aftershocks.

Wendy McCausland of the USGS Volcano Disaster Assistance Program and Hani Zahran of the Saudi Geological Survey view the southern end of the surface fault rupture caused by a M5.4 earthquake in the Saudi Arabian desert on May 19, 2009.

The May 12, 2008, Great Sichuan Earthquake, also called the Wenchuan Earthquake, occurred at 14:28 local time, in Sichuan Province, China. The earthquake magnitudes were Mw = 7.9 (USGS), Ms = 8.0 (Chinese Earthquake Administration). The epicenter was 80 km west-northwest of Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province.

USGS geophysicist Anjana Shah stands next to a Cessna Grand Caravan airplane that took measurements over Virginia's Louisa, Goochland and Fluvanna counties. The data collected will help USGS scientists locate buried geologic features associated with the August 23, 2011 earthquake and its aftershocks. Surveys were conducted from 7/15- 7/25.

Damage to a house in Louisa County, Virginia, after a magnitude 5.8 earthquake on August 23, 2011.

Following the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake, the USGS has been helping with earthquake awareness and monitoring in the country, with continued support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Geologists examine cores on Sitkinak Island, Alaska.

Base camp, Sitkinak Island.