Publications

The Mw 6.4 Southwest Puerto Rico Earthquake of 7 January 2020 was accompanied by a robust fore‐ and aftershock sequence. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has issued regular aftershock forecasts for more than a year since the mainshock, available on a public webpage. Forecasts were accompanied by interpretive and informational material, published in English and Spanish. Informational products incl

We develop empirical estimates of site response at seismic stations in the Los Angeles area using recorded ground motions from 414 M 3–7.3 earthquakes in southern California. The data are from a combination of the Next Generation Attenuation‐West2 project, the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes, and about 10,000 newly processed records. We estimate site response using an iterative mixed‐effects residuals

Online social networks (OSNs) have become a powerful tool to study collective human responses to extreme events such as earthquakes. Most previous research concentrated on a single platform and utilized users’ behaviors on a single platform to study people’s general responses. In this study, we explore the characteristics of people’s behaviors on different OSNs and conduct a cross-platform analysi

Free-choice learning environments, such as museums, national parks, interpretive trails, and visitor centers, are trusted sources of information in their communities and support lifelong learning. Earthquake education in these spaces creates awareness of earthquake hazards and risk in areas where people live or visit and, in turn, may increase engagement in preparedness behavior. The ShakeAlert® E

This article investigates methods to improve earthquake early warning (EEW) predictions of shaking levels for residents of tall buildings. In the current U.S. Geological Survey ShakeAlert EEW system, regions far from an epicenter will not receive alerts due to low predicted ground‐shaking intensities. However, residents of tall buildings in those areas may still experience significant shaking due

The West Napa Fault has previously been mapped as extending ~45 kilometers (km) from northern Vallejo to southern Saint Helena, California, dominantly running along the western edge of Napa Valley. A zone of fault strands (some previously unmapped) along a ~15-km section of the fault ruptured during the 2014 magnitude 6.0 South Napa earthquake, illustrating the need for further investigation of th

Subduction zone earthquakes result in some of the most devastating natural hazards on Earth. Knowledge of where great (moment magnitude M ≥ 8) subduction zone earthquakes can occur and how they rupture is critical to constraining future seismic and tsunami hazards. Since the occurrence of well-instrumented great earthquakes, such as the 2004 M9.1 Sumatra–Andaman and 2011 M9.1 Tohoku earthquakes, t

We determine an optimal alerting configuration for the propagation of local undamped motion (PLUM) earthquake early warning (EEW) algorithm for use by the U.S. ShakeAlert system covering California, Oregon, and Washington. All EEW systems should balance the primary goal of providing timely alerts for impactful or potentially damaging shaking while limiting alerts for shaking that is too low to be

The 2004 magnitude (M) 9.1 Sumatra-Andaman Islands earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggered the deadliest tsunami ever, killing more than 230,000 people. In response, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) established three additional Intergovernmental Coordination Groups (ICGs) for the Tsunami and Other Coastal Hazards Early Warning System: for the Caribbea

No abstract available. 

Although the Greater Caucasus Mountains have played a central role in absorbing late Cenozoic convergence between the Arabian and Eurasian plates, the orogenic architecture and the ways in which it accommodates modern shortening remain debated. Here, we addressed this problem using geologic mapping along two transects across the southern half of the western Greater Caucasus to reveal a suite of re

The seismic potential of the Lesser Antilles megathrust remains poorly known, despite the potential hazard it poses to numerous island populations and its proximity to the Americas. As it has not produced any large earthquakes in the instrumental era, the megathrust is often assumed to be aseismic. However, historical records of great earthquakes in the 19th century and earlier, which were most li