Paul Stanton Earle
I direct the 24/7 Operations at the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC).
Biography
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.
Science and Products
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...
Crowd-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...
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...
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...
Understanding 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...
National 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...
Hayes, Gavin P.; Earle, Paul S.; Benz, Harley M.; Wald, David J.; Yeck, William L.
GLASS3: 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...
Yeck, William L.; Patton, John; Johnson, Caryl E.; Kragness, David; Benz, Harley M.; Earle, Paul S.; Guy, Michelle; Ambruz, Nicholas (Contractor) 2018 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....
Petersen, Mark D.; Mueller, Charles; Moschetti, Morgan P.; Hoover, Susan M.; Rukstales, Kenneth S.; McNamara, Daniel E.; Williams, Robert A.; Shumway, Allison; Powers, Peter M.; Earle, Paul S.; Llenos, Andrea L.; Michael, Andrew J.; Rubinstein, Justin L.; Norbeck, Jack; Cochran, Elizabeth S. Limiting 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...
Coughlin, Michael; Earle, Paul S.; Harms, Jan; Biscans, Sebastien; Buchanan, Christopher; Coughlin, Eric; Donovan, Fred; Fee, Jeremy; Gabbard, Hunter; Guy, Michelle; Mukund, Nikhil; Perry, Matthew Source 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...
McNamara, Daniel E.; Yeck, William L.; Barnhart, William D.; Schulte-Pelkum, V.; Bergman, E.; Adhikari, L. B.; Dixit, Amod; Hough, S.E.; Benz, Harley M.; Earle, Paul S. Oklahoma experiences largest earthquake during ongoing regional wastewater injection hazard mitigation efforts
The 3 September 2016, Mw 5.8 Pawnee earthquake was the largest recorded earthquake in the state of Oklahoma. Seismic and geodetic observations of the Pawnee sequence, including precise hypocenter locations and moment tensor modeling, shows that the Pawnee earthquake occurred on a previously unknown left-lateral strike-slip basement fault that...
Yeck, William L.; Hayes, Gavin P.; McNamara, Daniel E.; Rubinstein, Justin L.; Barnhart, William D.; Earle, Paul S.; Benz, Harley M. Far-field pressurization likely caused one of the largest injection induced earthquakes by reactivating a large pre-existing basement fault structure
The Mw 5.1 Fairview, Oklahoma, earthquake on 13 February 2016 and its associated seismicity produced the largest moment release in the central and eastern United States since the 2011 Mw 5.7 Prague, Oklahoma, earthquake sequence and is one of the largest earthquakes potentially linked to wastewater injection. This energetic sequence has produced...
Yeck, William L.; Weingarten, Matthew; Benz, Harley M.; McNamara, Daniel E.; Bergman, E.; Herrmann, R.B; Rubinstein, Justin L.; Earle, Paul S. Efforts to monitor and characterize the recent increasing seismicity in central Oklahoma
The sharp increase in seismicity over a broad region of central Oklahoma has raised concerns regarding the source of the activity and its potential hazard to local communities and energy-industry infrastructure. Efforts to monitor and characterize the earthquake sequences in central Oklahoma are reviewed. Since early 2010, numerous organizations...
McNamara, Daniel E.; Rubinstein, Justin L.; Myers, Emma; Smoczyk, Gregory M.; Benz, Harley M.; Williams, Robert; Hayes, Gavin P.; Wilson, David C.; Herrmann, Robert B.; McMahon, Nicole D; Aster, R.C.; Bergman, E.; Holland, Austin; Earle, Paul S. 88 hours: The U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center response to the March 11, 2011 Mw 9.0 Tohoku earthquake
The M 9.0 11 March 2011 Tohoku, Japan, earthquake and associated tsunami near the east coast of the island of Honshu caused tens of thousands of deaths and potentially over one trillion dollars in damage, resulting in one of the worst natural disasters ever recorded. The U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center (USGS NEIC),...
Hayes, Gavin P.; Earle, Paul S.; Benz, Harley M.; Wald, David J.; Briggs, Richard W. The global short-period wavefield modelled with a Monte Carlo seismic phonon method
At high frequencies (∼1 Hz), much of the seismic energy arriving at teleseismic distances is not found in the main phases (e.g. P, PP, S, etc.) but is contained in the extended coda that follows these arrivals. This coda results from scattering off small-scale velocity and density perturbations within the crust and mantle and contains valuable...
Shearer, Peter M.; Earle, Paul S.