Publications

Rapid characterization of the earthquake source and of its effects is a growing field of interest. Until recently, it still took several hours to determine the first-order attributes of a great earthquake (e.g. Mw≥ 7.5), even in a well-instrumented region. The main limiting factors were data saturation, the interference of different phases and the time duration and spatial extent of the...

The primary purpose of this report is to provide drafted field logs of exploratory trenches excavated across the Green Valley Fault in 2007 and 2009 that show evidence for four surface rupturing earthquakes in the past one thousand years. The site location and site detail are shown on sheet 1. The trench logs are shown on sheets 1, 2, and 3. We also provide radiocarbon laboratory dates...

We present a new automatic earthquake discrimination procedure to determine in near-real time the tectonic regime and seismotectonic domain of an earthquake, its most likely source type, and the corresponding ground-motion prediction equation (GMPE) class to be used in the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Global ShakeMap system. This method makes use of the Flinn–Engdahl regionalization...

We present the results of a new probabilistic seismic hazard assessment for Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. The Mariana island arc has formed in response to northwestward subduction of the Pacific plate beneath the Philippine Sea plate, and this process controls seismic activity in the region. Historical seismicity, the Mariana megathrust, and two crustal faults on Guam were...

We measured offsets on tectonically displaced geomorphic features along 80 km of the Clark strand of the San Jacinto fault (SJF) to estimate slip‐per‐event for the past several surface ruptures. We identify 168 offset features from which we make over 490 measurements using B4 light detection and ranging (LiDAR) imagery and field observations. Our results suggest that LiDAR technology is...

According to regulatory building codes in United States (for example, 2010 California Building Code), at least two horizontal ground-motion components are required for three-dimensional (3D) response history analysis (RHA) of buildings. For sites within 5 km of an active fault, these records should be rotated to fault-normal/fault-parallel (FN/FP) directions, and two RHA analyses should...

In collaboration with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the U.S. Geological Survey's National Strong Motion Project has recently installed sophisticated seismic monitoring systems to monitor the structural health of two hospital buildings at the Memphis VA Medical Center in Tennessee. The monitoring systems in the Bed Tower and Spinal Cord Injury buildings combine sensing...

Most strong‐motion data processing involves acausal low‐cut filtering, which requires the addition of sometimes lengthy zero pads to the data. These padded sections are commonly removed by organizations supplying data, but this can lead to incompatibilities in measures of ground motion derived in the usual way from the padded and the pad‐stripped data. One way around this is to use the...

The stochastic method of ground‐motion simulation is often used in combination with the random‐vibration theory to directly compute ground‐motion intensity measures, thereby bypassing the more computationally intensive time‐domain simulations. Key to the application of random‐vibration theory to simulate response spectra is determining the duration (Drms) used in computing the root‐mean...

Building codes in the U.S. require at least two horizontal ground motion components for three-dimensional (3D) response history analysis (RHA) of structures. For sites within 5 km of an active fault, these records should be rotated to fault-normal/fault-parallel (FN/FP) directions, and two RHA analyses should be performed separately (when FN and then FP are aligned with transverse...

Using Global Positioning System (GPS) data from sites near the 16 Oct. 1999 Hector Mine, California earthquake, Pulinets et al. (2007) identified anomalous changes in the ionospheric total electron content (TEC) starting one week prior to the earthquake. Pulinets (2007) suggested that precursory phenomena of this type could be useful for predicting earthquakes. On the other hand, and in...

Remote mapping and measurement of surface processes at high spatial resolution is among the frontiers in Earth surface process research. Remote measurements that allow meter-scale mapping of landforms and quantification of landscape change can revolutionize the study of landscape evolution on human timescales. At Mill Gulch in northern California, USA, an active earthflow was surveyed in...