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Jeffrey Joseph McGuire

Jeff McGuire is a research geophysicist in the Earthquake Hazards Program.

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Chart on fiber optic seismology

Fiber Optic Seismology for Earthquake Hazards Research, Monitoring and Early Warning

A revolution is underway in seismology that transforms fiber-optic cables into arrays of thousands of seismic sensors. Compared to the traditional monitoring networks using inertial seismometers, the fiber-optic approach can increase the spatial data density by orders of magnitude and enable data processing methodologies that require a high-fidelity wavefield. The Working Group aims to advance the
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John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis
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Fiber Optic Seismology for Earthquake Hazards Research, Monitoring and Early Warning

A revolution is underway in seismology that transforms fiber-optic cables into arrays of thousands of seismic sensors. Compared to the traditional monitoring networks using inertial seismometers, the fiber-optic approach can increase the spatial data density by orders of magnitude and enable data processing methodologies that require a high-fidelity wavefield. The Working Group aims to advance the
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map of Alaska area with 2020-2021 earthquakes, showing circles for earthquake locations

External Grants - Overview

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) provides support for research that will assist in achieving the goals of the Earthquake Hazards Program. The goal is to mitigate earthquake losses that can occur in many parts of the nation by providing earth science data and assessments essential for land-use planning, engineering design, and emergency preparedness decisions.
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program
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External Grants - Overview

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) provides support for research that will assist in achieving the goals of the Earthquake Hazards Program. The goal is to mitigate earthquake losses that can occur in many parts of the nation by providing earth science data and assessments essential for land-use planning, engineering design, and emergency preparedness decisions.
Learn More
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vertical timeline with text bullets

What if the ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning System Had Been Operating During the M6.9 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake?

Release Date: OCTOBER 17, 2019 How will ShakeAlert® likely perform now on a large earthquake impacting a major urban area? How much warning will you get? To answer this, let’s do a thought experiment...
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center, Geologic Hazards Science Center
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What if the ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning System Had Been Operating During the M6.9 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake?

Release Date: OCTOBER 17, 2019 How will ShakeAlert® likely perform now on a large earthquake impacting a major urban area? How much warning will you get? To answer this, let’s do a thought experiment...
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Nodal Seismic Deployment at KCT and Lost Coast Headlands

Between October 12, 2019 and December 13, 2019, the U.S. Geological Survey deployed 30 nodal seismometers in Humboldt county CA for the purpose of recording seismicity in the subducting Gorda plate. 20 instruments were deployed at the McBride ranch, around NCSN station KCT, and 10 were deployed at the Bureau of Land Management's Lost Coast Headlands property. The nodes were replaced in mid-Novembe
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Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

Spring 2022 Arcata to Eureka, California, Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) experiment: Nodal Seismometer data

These data are from a 3-month long deployment of nodal seismometers that ran from May 18th, 2022 until September 1st, 2022 as part of a Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) experiment above the Gorda plate (McGuire, et al., 2022). The sensors were deployed at 44 locations along Old Arcata Rd between Arcata and Eureka California (Figure 1); these locations track the approximate location of the fiber
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Earthquake Hazards Program

Spring 2022 Arcata to Eureka California, Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) experiment

These data are from a 2-month long Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) Experiment in Arcata, CA, that was conducted jointly by the U.S. Geological Survey, Cal Poly Humboldt University, and OptaSense Inc. An OptaSense QuantX DAS interrogator was installed in the Arcata Police Station and connected to a fiber owned by Vero Communications that runs from Arcata to Eureka
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Earthquake Hazards Program

Input for assessing the impact of noisy data on earthquake magnitude estimates derived from peak ground displacement measured with real-time Global Navigation Satellite System data

This data release complements Murray et al. (2023) which presents a framework for incorporating earthquake magnitude estimates based on real-time Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data into the ShakeAlert® earthquake early warning system for the west coast of the United States. Murray et al. (2023) assess the impact of time-dependent noise in GNSS real-time position estimates on the reliab
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Earthquake Hazards Program

Data Release for Latency Testing of Wireless Emergency Alerts intended for the ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system for the West Coast of the United States of America

ShakeAlert, the earthquake early warning (EEW) system for the West Coast of the United States, attempts to provides crucial warnings before strong shaking occurs. However, because the alerts are triggered only when an earthquake is already in progress, and the alert latencies and delivery times are platform dependent, the time between these warnings and the arrival of shaking is variable. The Shak
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Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center
Filter Total Items: 23

Converted-wave reverse time migration imaging in subduction zone settings

We use a newly developed 2-D elastic reverse time migration (RTM) imaging algorithm based on the Helmholtz decomposition to test approaches for imaging the descending slab in subduction zone regions using local earthquake sources. Our elastic RTM method is designed to reconstruct incident and scattered wavefields at depth, isolate constituent P- and S-wave components via Helmholtz decomposition, a
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Leah Langer, Fred Pollitz, Jeffrey McGuire
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

Incorporation of real-time earthquake magnitudes estimated via peak ground displacement scaling in the ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning system

The United States earthquake early warning (EEW) system, ShakeAlert®, currently employs two algorithms based on seismic data alone to characterize the earthquake source, reporting the weighted average of their magnitude estimates. Nonsaturating magnitude estimates derived in real time from Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data using peak ground displacement (PGD) scaling relationships off
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Jessica R. Murray, Brendan W. Crowell, Mark Hunter Murray, Carl W Ulberg, Jeffrey McGuire, Mario Aranha, Mike Hagerty
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

Applications of nonergodic site response models to ShakeAlert case studies in the Los Angeles area

In this study, we explore whether the Parker and Baltay (2022) site response models for the Los Angeles (LA) basin region can improve ground‐motion forecasts in the U.S. Geological Survey ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system (hereafter ShakeAlert). We implement the peak ground acceleration and peak ground velocity site response models of Parker and Baltay (2022) in ShakeAlert via the earthqu
Authors
Rongrong Lin, Grace Alexandra Parker, Jeffrey McGuire, Annemarie S. Baltay
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

Testing the ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system using synthesized earthquake sequences

We test the behavior of the United States (US) West Coast ShakeAlert earthquake early warning (EEW) system during temporally close earthquake pairs to understand current performance and limitations. We consider performance metrics based on source parameter and ground‐motion forecast accuracy, as well as on alerting timeliness. We generate ground‐motion times series for synthesized earthquake seque
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Maren Böse, Jennifer Andrews, Colin T O'Rourke, Deborah L. Kilb, Angela Lux, Julian Bunn, Jeffrey McGuire
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

Very low frequency earthquakes in between the seismogenic and tremor zones in Cascadia?

Megathrust earthquakes and their associated tsunamis cause some of the worst natural disasters. In addition to earthquakes, a wide range of slip behaviors are present at subduction zones, including slow earthquakes that span multiple orders of spatial and temporal scales. Understanding these events may shed light on the stress or strength conditions of the megathrust fault. Out of all types of slo
Authors
Wenyuan Fan, Andrew Barbour, Jeffrey McGuire, Yihe Huang, Guoqing Lin, Elizabeth S. Cochran, Ryo Okuwaki
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

Earthquake early warning for estimating floor shaking levels of tall buildings

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
Authors
S. Farid Ghahari, Annemarie S. Baltay, Mehmet Çelebi, Grace Alexandra Parker, Jeffrey McGuire, Ertugrul Taciroglu
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

Waveform signatures of earthquakes located close to the subducted Gorda Plate interface

Complex seismic velocity structure near the earthquake source can affect rupture dynamics and strongly modify the seismic waveforms recorded near the fault. Fault‐zone waves are commonly observed in continental crustal settings but are less clear in subduction zones due to the spatial separation between seismic stations and the plate boundary fault. We observed anomalously long duration S waves fr
Authors
Jianhua Gong, Jeffrey McGuire
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

Correlation of porosity variations and rheological transitions on the southern Cascadia megathrust

The unknown onshore extent of megathrust earthquake rupture in the Cascadia subduction zone represents a key uncertainty in earthquake hazard for the Pacific Northwest that is governed by the physical state and mechanical properties of the plate interface. The Cascadia plate interface is segmented into an interseismically locked zone located primarily offshore that is expected to rupture in large
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Hao Guo, Jeffrey McGuire, Haijiang Zhang
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

Expected warning times from the ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system for earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest

The ShakeAlert® earthquake early warning system has been live since October 2019 for the testing of public alerting to mobile devices in California and will soon begin testing this modality in Oregon and Washington. The Pacific Northwest presents new challenges and opportunities for ShakeAlert owing to the different types of earthquakes that occur in the Cascadia subduction zone. Many locations in
Authors
Jeffrey J. McGuire, Deborah E. Smith, Arthur D. Frankel, Erin A. Wirth, Sara K. McBride, Robert M. de Groot
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center, Wildland Fire Science

Commentary: The role of geodetic algorithms for earthquake early warning in Cascadia

The ShakeAlert earthquake early warning (EEW) system issues public alerts in California and will soon extend to Oregon and Washington. The Cascadia subduction zone presents significant new challenges and opportunities for EEW. Initial publications suggested that EEW algorithms based on Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data could provide improved warning for intraslab events and dramatical
Authors
Jeffrey McGuire, Sarah E. Minson, Jessica R. Murray, Benjamin A. Brooks
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

Constraints on the geometry of the subducted Gorda Plate with converted phases generated by local earthquakes

The largest slip in great megathrust earthquakes often occurs in the 10–30 km depth range, yet seismic imaging of the material properties in this region has proven difficult. We utilize a dense onshore-offshore passive seismic dataset from the southernmost Cascadia subduction zone where seismicity in the mantle of the subducted Gorda Plate produces S-to-P and P-to-S conversions generated within a
Authors
Jianhua Gong, Jeffrey McGuire
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

A long-term geothermal observatory across subseafloor gas hydrates, IODP Hole U1364A, Cascadia accretionary prism

We report 4 years of temperature profiles collected from May 2014 to May 2018 in Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Hole U1364A in the frontal accretionary prism of the Cascadia subduction zone. The temperature data extend to depths of nearly 300 m below seafloor (mbsf), spanning the gas hydrate stability zone at the location and a clear bottom-simulating reflector (BSR) at ∼230 mbsf. When the hole
Authors
K. Elizabeth Becker, E. E. Davis, M. Hessemann, J. A. Collins, Jeffrey McGuire
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center
What if the ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning System Had Been Operating During the M6.9 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake?

What if the ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning System Had Been Operating During the M6.9 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake?

How will ShakeAlert® likely perform now on a large earthquake impacting a major urban area? How much warning will you get? To answer this, let’s do a...

Read Article

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