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Comparing subduction ground-motion models to observations for Cascadia

June 7, 2024

We evaluate Cascadia subduction ground-motion models (GMMs), considered for the 2023 US National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM) update, by comparing observations to model predictions. The observations comprise regional recordings from intraslab earthquakes, including contributions from 2021 and 2022 events in southern Cascadia and global records from interface earthquakes. Since the 2018 NSHM update, new GMMs for Cascadia have been published by the Next Generation Attenuation (NGA)-Subduction Project that require independent evaluation. In the regional intraslab comparisons, we highlight a characteristic frequency dependence for Cascadia data, with short periods having lower ground motions and longer periods being comparable to other subduction zones. We evaluate differences in northern and southern Cascadia and find that the NGA-Subduction GMMs developed using southern Cascadia data perform better in this region than the model that did not consider these data. We compare ground-motion variability in Cascadia with the NGA-Subduction model predictions and find differences at short periods (T = 0.1 s) due to the use of global versus regional data in the development of these models. Moreover, the within-event component of aleatory variability from the GMMs overpredicts the standard deviation of Cascadia recordings at very short periods (T

Publication Year 2024
Title Comparing subduction ground-motion models to observations for Cascadia
DOI 10.1177/87552930241256673
Authors James Andrew Smith, Morgan P. Moschetti, Eric M. Thompson
Publication Type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Series Title Earthquake Spectra
Index ID 70265058
Record Source USGS Publications Warehouse
USGS Organization Geologic Hazards Science Center - Seismology / Geomagnetism
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