Earthquake

Earthquake early warning, live in California, aims to send user alerts before ground shaking arrives at their location. Work directly with a USGS team in implementing a ground-motion based early warning algorithm, and develop novel station-specific adjustment factors to improve the accuracy of ground-shaking estimates, a critical step in sending the most useful user alerts.

Earthquakes, such as the 2011 M5.7 Prague, Oklahoma, and recent northern Texas M4 event, demonstrate the need for improved understanding of site amplification and seismic hazards in the central United States. The intern will be trained by USGS scientists to use the state-of-the-art site investigation methods at seismic station sites in California before applying the methods in Oklahoma and Texas.

The goal of this project is to contribute to our understanding of anelastic path attenuation in ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs) by searching for correlations between seismic attenuation models constrained by 3D geophysical observations and \ ground motion measurements at individual stations.

Augment existing near real-time earthquake-triggered landslide and liquefaction hazard models with products such as landslide dam likelihood, road network disturbances, and disruption to ports. Investigate methods for improving and/or rapidly updating models such as remote sensing data, historical fill maps, and social media and news reports.

Collaborate with developers of the state-of-the-art, open-source, community-code PyLith to add new features and use them to model complex earthquake or volcanic processes. This is your opportunity to expand your software development, numerical modeling, and geoscience skills while furthering your research and contributing to the broader community!