I direct the 24/7 Operations at the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC).
My primary responsibility is oversight of 24/7 earthquake monitoring. I guide the development and implementation of new policies and procedures used during earthquake response and catalog production. I also serve in the rotating role of NEIC event coordinator, overseeing the production of near-real-time products following earthquake disasters around the globe. NEIC earthquake response and my role are sumarized in The 24/7 Search for Killer Quakes.
Before joining the USGS in 2000, I graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a B.A. in geophysics and received a Ph.D. in geophysics from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. After receiving my Ph.D., I worked as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles. My research includes studies of the fine-scale structure of the deep Earth, characterization of Earth's seismic signals, and post-earthquake impact assessment. In my free time, I like to skateboard long distances.
Publicaions
Science and Products
Future Opportunities in Regional and Global Seismic Network Monitoring and Science
Crowd-Sourced Earthquake Detections Integrated into Seismic Processing
Operational Earthquake Forecasting – Implementing a Real-Time System for California
Characterization of Earthquake Damage and Effects Using Social Media Data
Understanding Fluid Injection Induced Seismicity
Rapid characterization of the February 2023 Kahramanmaraş, Turkey, earthquake sequence
Dense geophysical observations reveal a triggered, concurrent multi-fault rupture at the Mendocino Triple Junction
High‐precision characterization of seismicity from the 2022 Hunga Tonga‐Hunga Ha'apai volcanic eruption
A global catalog of calibrated earthquake locations
A big problem for small earthquakes: Benchmarking routine magnitudes and conversion relationships with coda-envelope-derived Mw in southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma
Seismic monitoring during crises at the NEIC in support of the ANSS
Over the past two decades, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) has overcome many operational challenges. These range from minor disruptions, such as power outages, to significant operational changes, including system reconfiguration to handle unique earthquake sequences and the need to handle distributed work during a pandemic. Our ability to overcome cr
Leveraging deep learning in global 24/7 real-time earthquake monitoring at the National Earthquake Information Center
National earthquake information center strategic plan, 2019–23
GLASS3: A standalone multi-scale seismic detection associator
2018 one‐year seismic hazard forecast for the central and eastern United States from induced and natural earthquakes
Limiting the effects of earthquakes on gravitational-wave interferometers
Source modeling of the 2015 Mw 7.8 Nepal (Gorkha) earthquake sequence: Implications for geodynamics and earthquake hazards
Science and Products
- Science
Future Opportunities in Regional and Global Seismic Network Monitoring and Science
The past decade has seen improvements in computational efficiency, seismic data coverage, and communication technology - driven by societal expectation for timely, accurate information. While aspects of earthquake research have taken advantage of this evolution, the adoption of improvements in earthquake monitoring has not been fully leveraged. In real-time monitoring, earthquakes are characterizeCrowd-Sourced Earthquake Detections Integrated into Seismic Processing
The goal of this project is to improve the USGS National Earthquake Information Center’s (NEIC) earthquake detection capabilities through direct integration of crowd-sourced earthquake detections with traditional, instrument-based seismic processing. During the past 6 years, the NEIC has run a crowd-sourced system, called Tweet Earthquake Dispatch (TED), which rapidly detects earthquakes worldwide...Operational Earthquake Forecasting – Implementing a Real-Time System for California
It is well know that every earthquake can spawn others (e.g., as aftershocks), and that such triggered events can be large and damaging, as recently demonstrated by L’Aquila, Italy and Christchurch, New Zealand earthquakes. In spite of being an explicit USGS strategic-action priority (http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2012/1088; page 32), the USGS currently lacks an automated system with which to forecast s...Characterization of Earthquake Damage and Effects Using Social Media Data
People in the locality of earthquakes are publishing anecdotal information about the shaking within seconds of their occurrences via social network technologies, such as Twitter. In contrast, depending on the size and location of the earthquake, scientific alerts can take between two to twenty minutes to publish. The goals of this project are to assess earthquake damage and effects information, asUnderstanding Fluid Injection Induced Seismicity
Fluid injection induced seismicity has been reported since the 1960s. There are currently more than 150,000 injection wells associated with oil and gas production in 34 states in the conterminous US. Pore pressure disturbance caused by injection is generally considered the culprit for injection induced seismicity, but, not all injection causes seismicity. It is not well understood what mechanical - Publications
Filter Total Items: 17
Rapid characterization of the February 2023 Kahramanmaraş, Turkey, earthquake sequence
The 6 February 2023 Mw 7.8 Pazarcık and subsequent Mw 7.5 Elbistan earthquakes generated strong ground shaking that resulted in catastrophic human and economic loss across south‐central Türkiye and northwest Syria. The rapid characterization of the earthquakes, including their location, size, fault geometries, and slip kinematics, is critical to estimate the impact of significant seismic events.AuthorsDara Elyse Goldberg, Tuncay Taymaz, Nadine G. Reitman, Alexandra Elise Hatem, Seda Yolsal-Çevikbilen, William D. Barnhart, Tahir Serkan Irmak, David J. Wald, Taylan Öcalan, William L. Yeck, Berkan Özkan, Jessica Ann Thompson Jobe, David R. Shelly, Eric M. Thompson, Christopher DuRoss, Paul S. Earle, Richard W. Briggs, Harley M. Benz, Ceyhun Erman, Ali Hasan Doğan, Cemali AltuntaşDense geophysical observations reveal a triggered, concurrent multi-fault rupture at the Mendocino Triple Junction
A central question of earthquake science is how far ruptures can jump from one fault to another, because cascading ruptures can increase the shaking of a seismic event. Earthquake science relies on earthquake catalogs and therefore how complex ruptures get documented and cataloged has important implications. Recent investments in geophysical instrumentation allow us to resolve increasingly complexAuthorsWilliam L. Yeck, David R. Shelly, Dara Elyse Goldberg, Kathryn Zerbe Materna, Paul S. EarleHigh‐precision characterization of seismicity from the 2022 Hunga Tonga‐Hunga Ha'apai volcanic eruption
The earthquake swarm accompanying the January 2022 Hunga Tonga‐Hunga Ha'apai (HTHH) volcanic eruption includes a large number of posteruptive moderate‐magnitude seismic events and presents a unique opportunity to use remote monitoring methods to characterize and compare seismic activity with other historical caldera‐forming eruptions. We compute improved epicentroid locations, magnitudes, and regiAuthorsJonas A. Kintner, William L. Yeck, Paul S. Earle, Stephanie Prejean, Jeremy PesicekA global catalog of calibrated earthquake locations
We produced a globally distributed catalog of earthquakes and nuclear explosions with calibrated hypocenters, referred to as the Global Catalog of Calibrated Earthquake Locations (GCCEL). This dataset currently contains 18,782 events in 289 clusters with >3.2 million arrival times observed at 19,258 stations. The term “calibrated” refers to the property that the hypocenters are minimally biased byAuthorsEric A. Bergman, Harley M. Benz, William L. Yeck, Ezgi Karasözen, E. Robert Engdahl, Abdolreza Ghods, Gavin P. Hayes, Paul S. EarleA big problem for small earthquakes: Benchmarking routine magnitudes and conversion relationships with coda-envelope-derived Mw in southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma
Earthquake magnitudes are widely relied upon measures of earthquake size. Although moment magnitude (MwMw) has become the established standard for moderate and large earthquakes, difficulty in reliably measuring seismic moments for small (generally Mw<4Mw<4) earthquakes has meant that magnitudes for these events remain plagued by a patchwork of inconsistent measurement scales. Because of this,AuthorsDavid R. Shelly, Kevin Mayeda, Justin Barno, Katherine M. Whidden, Morgan P. Moschetti, Andrea L. Llenos, Justin Rubinstein, William L. Yeck, Paul S. Earle, Rengin Gök, William R. WalterSeismic monitoring during crises at the NEIC in support of the ANSS
Over the past two decades, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) has overcome many operational challenges. These range from minor disruptions, such as power outages, to significant operational changes, including system reconfiguration to handle unique earthquake sequences and the need to handle distributed work during a pandemic. Our ability to overcome cr
AuthorsPaul S. Earle, Harley M. Benz, William L. Yeck, Gavin P. Hayes, Michelle Guy, John Patton, David Kragness, David B. Mason, Brian Shiro, Emily Wolin, John Bellini, Jana Pursley, Robert Lorne SandersLeveraging deep learning in global 24/7 real-time earthquake monitoring at the National Earthquake Information Center
Machine‐learning algorithms continue to show promise in their application to seismic processing. The U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) is exploring the adoption of these tools to aid in simultaneous local, regional, and global real‐time earthquake monitoring. As a first step, we describe a simple framework to incorporate deep‐learning tools into NEIC operations.AuthorsWilliam L. Yeck, John Patton, Zachary E. Ross, Gavin P. Hayes, Michelle Guy, Nicholas Ambruz, David R. Shelly, Harley M. Benz, Paul S. EarleNational earthquake information center strategic plan, 2019–23
Executive SummaryDamaging earthquakes occur regularly around the world; since the turn of the 20th century, hundreds of earthquakes have caused significant loss of life and (or) millions of dollars or more in economic losses. While most of these did not directly affect the United States and its Territories, by studying worldwide seismicity we can better understand how to mitigate the effects of eaAuthorsGavin P. Hayes, Paul S. Earle, Harley M. Benz, David J. Wald, William L. YeckGLASS3: A standalone multi-scale seismic detection associator
The automated global real-time association of phase picks into seismic sources comes with unique challenges when simultaneously monitoring at local, regional and global scales. High spatial variability in seismic station density, transitory seismic data availability, and time-varying noise characteristics of individual stations must be considered in the design of an associator that is fast and acAuthorsWilliam L. Yeck, John Patton, Caryl E. Johnson, David Kragness, Harley M. Benz, Paul S. Earle, Michelle Guy, Nicholas Ambruz2018 one‐year seismic hazard forecast for the central and eastern United States from induced and natural earthquakes
This article describes the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) 2018 one‐year probabilistic seismic hazard forecast for the central and eastern United States from induced and natural earthquakes. For consistency, the updated 2018 forecast is developed using the same probabilistic seismicity‐based methodology as applied in the two previous forecasts. Rates of earthquakes across the United States M≥3.0 greAuthorsMark D. Petersen, Charles Mueller, Morgan P. Moschetti, Susan M. Hoover, Kenneth S. Rukstales, Daniel E. McNamara, Robert A. Williams, Allison Shumway, Peter M. Powers, Paul S. Earle, Andrea L. Llenos, Andrew J. Michael, Justin L. Rubinstein, Jack Norbeck, Elizabeth S. CochranLimiting the effects of earthquakes on gravitational-wave interferometers
Ground-based gravitational wave interferometers such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) are susceptible to ground shaking from high-magnitude teleseismic events, which can interrupt their operation in science mode and significantly reduce their duty cycle. It can take several hours for a detector to stabilize enough to return to its nominal state for scientific obserAuthorsMichael Coughlin, Paul S. Earle, Jan Harms, Sebastien Biscans, Christopher Buchanan, Eric Coughlin, Fred Donovan, Jeremy Fee, Hunter Gabbard, Michelle Guy, Nikhil Mukund, Matthew PerrySource modeling of the 2015 Mw 7.8 Nepal (Gorkha) earthquake sequence: Implications for geodynamics and earthquake hazards
The Gorkha earthquake on April 25th, 2015 was a long anticipated, low-angle thrust-faulting event on the shallow décollement between the India and Eurasia plates. We present a detailed multiple-event hypocenter relocation analysis of the Mw 7.8 Gorkha Nepal earthquake sequence, constrained by local seismic stations, and a geodetic rupture model based on InSAR and GPS data. We integrate these obserAuthorsDaniel E. McNamara, William L. Yeck, William D. Barnhart, V. Schulte-Pelkum, E. Bergman, L. B. Adhikari, Amod Dixit, S. E. Hough, Harley M. Benz, Paul S. Earle