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Sarah Minson

Sarah Minson is a research geophysicist in the U.S. Geological Survey's Earthquake Science Center in Moffett Field, California.  She uses probabilistic inference to understand earthquakes and how uncertainty impacts our understanding of natural hazards.

Sarah’s research attempts to understand not only how faults slip, but also to understand what we can and cannot determine about earthquake ruptures and how these uncertainties affect our estimates of potential earthquake impacts.

She has also studied earthquake early warning to determine what kinds of warning are possible and what kind of accuracy can be achieved.

In addition to her research, Sarah participates in outreach activities to communicate her research results to the public, media, and stakeholders.  She was a 2020 IRIS/SSA distinguished lecturer and is the recipient of several honors including a 2014 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), which is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers.

Professional Experience

  • 2014 – Present     Research Geophysicist, U.S. Geological Survey

    2014                       Postdoctoral Fellow, California Institute of Technology

    2011 – 2013           Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellow, U.S. Geological Survey

Education and Certifications

  • 2010 Ph.D. in Geophysics, California Institute of Technology
           Thesis: “A Bayesian Approach to Earthquake Source Studies ”

  • 2005 M.S. in Geophysics, California Institute of Technology

  • 2003 B.A. in Geophysics with Highest Distinction in General Scholarship, University of California, Berkeley
           Honors Thesis: “Source Mechanisms of Volcanic Induced Seismicity”

Honors and Awards

  • 2021, 2021, 2019, 2016 U.S. Geological Survey STAR Award

  • 2020 U.S. Geological Survey Superior Service Award “In recognition of her outstanding contributions to the Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) systems of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).” 

  • 2020 IRIS/SSA Distinguished Lectureship 

  • 2018 – 2022  Kavli Fellow (National Academy of Sciences and The Kavli Foundation) 

  • 2014 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) 

  • 2011 – 2013 U.S. Geological Survey Mendenhall Fellowship 

  • 2009 Outstanding Student Paper Award – AGU Fall Meeting 

  • 2006 – 2009 NASA Earth System Science Fellowship 

  • 2003 – 2004 Gutenberg Fellowship, California Institute of Technology 

  • 2002 – 2003 Ramsden Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley 

  • 2003 Departmental Citation in Recognition of Distinguished Undergraduate Accomplishment, University of California, Berkeley 

  • 2003  Outstanding Woman Student Award, Association of Women Geoscientists 

  • 2002 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley 

Science and Products

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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.
By
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.
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Two panels showing California map and red line for rupture of fault

Earthquake Early Warning – Fine-Tuning for Best Alerts

Release Date: OCTOBER 8, 2019 The goal of an earthquake early warning (EEW) system is to provide an alert to people and automatic systems after an earthquake begins but before the shaking reaches their location. As the USGS and its partners are developing an EEW system, called ShakeAlert®, for the West Coast, the benefits, costs, capabilities, and limitations are being investigated. Two recent...
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program
link

Earthquake Early Warning – Fine-Tuning for Best Alerts

Release Date: OCTOBER 8, 2019 The goal of an earthquake early warning (EEW) system is to provide an alert to people and automatic systems after an earthquake begins but before the shaking reaches their location. As the USGS and its partners are developing an EEW system, called ShakeAlert®, for the West Coast, the benefits, costs, capabilities, and limitations are being investigated. Two recent...
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Filter Total Items: 29

What to expect when you are expecting earthquake early warning

We present a strategy for earthquake early warning (EEW) alerting that focuses on providing users with a target level of performance for their shaking level of interest (for example, ensuring that users receive warnings for at least 95 per cent of the occurrences of that shaking level). We explore the factors that can affect the accuracy of EEW shaking forecasts including site conditions (which ca
Authors
Sarah E. Minson, Elizabeth S. Cochran, Jessie Kate Saunders, Sara McBride, Stephen Wu, Annemarie S. Baltay, Kevin R. Milner
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center, Western Geographic Science Center

Real-time earthquake detection and alerting behavior of PLUM ground-motion-based early warning in the United States

We examine the real‐time earthquake detection and alerting behavior of the Propagation of Local Undamped Motion (PLUM) earthquake early warning (EEW) algorithm and compare PLUM’s performance with the real‐time performance of the current source‐characterization‐based ShakeAlert System. In the United States (U.S.), PLUM uses a two‐station approach to detect earthquakes. Once a detection is confirmed
Authors
Jessie Kate Saunders, Sarah E. Minson, Annemarie S. Baltay, Julian J Bunn, Elizabeth S. Cochran, Deborah L. Kilb, Colin T O'Rourke, Mitsuyuki Hoshiba, Yuki Kodera
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

Alert optimization of the PLUM earthquake early warning algorithm for the western United States

We determine an optimal alerting configuration for the propagation of local undamped motion (PLUM) earthquake early warning (EEW) algorithm for use by the U.S. ShakeAlert system covering California, Oregon, and Washington. All EEW systems should balance the primary goal of providing timely alerts for impactful or potentially damaging shaking while limiting alerts for shaking that is too low to be
Authors
Elizabeth S. Cochran, Jessie Kate Saunders, Sarah E. Minson, Julian Bunn, Annemarie S. Baltay, Debi Kilb, Colin T O'Rourke, Mitsuyuki Hoshiba, Yuki Kodera
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

The impact of 3D finite‐fault information on ground‐motion forecasting for earthquake early warning

We identify aspects of finite‐source parameterization that strongly affect the accuracy of estimated ground motion for earthquake early warning (EEW). EEW systems aim to alert users to impending shaking before it reaches them. The U.S. West Coast EEW system, ShakeAlert, currently uses two algorithms based on seismic data to characterize the earthquake’s location, magnitude, and origin time, treati
Authors
Jessica R. Murray, Eric M. Thompson, Annemarie S. Baltay, Sarah E. Minson
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center, Geologic Hazards Science Center

Imaging the next Cascadia earthquake: Optimal design for a seafloor GNSS- A network

The Cascadia subduction zone in the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America capable of producing magnitude ∼9 earthquakes, likely often accompanied by tsunamis. An outstanding question in this region is the degree and spatial extent of interseismic strain accumulation on the subduction megathrust. Seafloor geodetic methods combining GNSS and underwater acoustic ranging (GNSS-A) are capab
Authors
Eileen L. Evans, Sarah E. Minson, David Chadwell
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

A framework for evaluating earthquake early warning for an infrastructure network: An idealized case study of a northern California rail system

Earthquake early warning (EEW) systems provide a few to tens of seconds of warning before shaking hits a site. Despite the recent rapid developments of EEW systems around the world, the optimal alert response strategy and the practical benefit of using EEW are still open-ended questions, especially in areas where EEW systems are new or have not yet been deployed. Here, we use a case study of a rai
Authors
Sarah E. Minson, Elizabeth S. Cochran, Stephen Wu, Shunta Noda
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

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
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

Shaking is almost always a surprise: The earthquakes that produce significant ground motion

Although small earthquakes are expected to produce weak shaking, ground motion is highly variable and there are outlier earthquakes that generate more shaking than expected—sometimes significantly more. We explore datasets of M 0.5–8.3 earthquakes to determine the relative impact of frequent, smaller-magnitude earthquakes that rarely produce strong ground motion, to rare, large earthquakes that al
Authors
Sarah E. Minson, Annemarie S. Baltay, Elizabeth S. Cochran, Sara McBride, Kevin R. Milner
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

Kinematics of fault slip associated with the July 4-6 2019 Ridgecrest, Californai earthquakes sequence

The 2019 Ridgecrest, California, earthquake sequence produced observable crustal deformation over much of central and southern California, as well as surface rupture over several tens of kilometers. To obtain a detailed picture of the fault slip involved in the 4 July M 6.4 foreshock and 6 July M 7.1 mainshock, we combine strong‐motion seismic waveforms with crustal deformation observations to obt
Authors
Fred Pollitz, Jessica R. Murray, Jerry L. Svarc, Charles Wicks, Evelyn Roeloffs, Sarah E. Minson, Katherine Scharer, Katherine J. Kendrick, Kenneth W. Hudnut, Johanna Nevitt, Benjamin A. Brooks, David Mencin
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

Real-time performance of the PLUM earthquake early warning method during the 2019 M6.4 and M7.1 Ridgecrest, California, Earthquakes

We evaluate the timeliness and accuracy of ground‐motion‐based earthquake early warning (EEW) during the July 2019 M6.4 and 7.1 Ridgecrest earthquakes. In 2018, we began retrospective and internal real‐time testing of the propagation of local undamped motion (PLUM) method for earthquake warning in California, Oregon, and Washington, with the potential that PLUM might one day be included in the Sha
Authors
Sarah E. Minson, Jessie Kate Saunders, Julian Bunn, Elizabeth S. Cochran, Annemarie S. Baltay, Deborah L. Kilb, Mitsuyuki Hoshiba, Yuki Kodera
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

How often can Earthquake Early Warning systems alert sites with high intensity ground motion?

Although numerous Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) algorithms have been developed we still lack a detailed understanding of how often and under what circumstances useful ground motion alerts can be provided to end-users. Here we analyze the alerting performance of the PLUM, EPIC and FinDer algorithms by running them retrospectively on the seismic strong motion data of the 219 earthquakes in Japan si
Authors
M.-A. Meier, Y. Kodera, M. Bose, A. I. Chung, M. Hoshiba, Elizabeth S. Cochran, Sarah E. Minson, E. Hauksson, T. Heaton
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center

Coseismic slip and early afterslip of the M6.0 August 24, 2014 South Napa, California, earthquake

We employ strong motion seismograms and static offsets from the Global Positioning System, Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar, and other measurements in order to derive a coseismic slip and afterslip model of the M6.0 24 August 2014 South Napa earthquake. This earthquake ruptured an ∼13‐km‐long portion of the West Napa fault with predominantly right‐lateral strike slip. In the kinematic seis
Authors
Fred Pollitz, Jessica R. Murray, Sarah E. Minson, Charles W. Wicks, Jerry L. Svarc, Benjamin A. Brooks
By
Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center
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Earthquake Early Warning! New Study Examines Safety Potentials and Limits

In a newly published study, U.S. Geological Survey scientists and their partners calculate possible alert times that earthquake early warning systems...

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