Sarah Minson
Biography
Education
2010 Ph.D. in Geophysics, California Institute of Technology
Thesis: “A Bayesian Approach to Earthquake Source Studies ”
Committee:
James Beck, Thomas Heaton (chair), Donald Helmberger,
Hiroo Kanamori, Nadia Lapusta, Mark Simons (advisor)
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 – Miyakejima, Japan, 2000”
Advisor: Douglas Dreger
Appointments
2014 – Present Research Geophysicist, U.S. Geological Survey
2014 Postdoctoral Fellow, California Institute of Technology
2011 – 2013 Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellow, U.S. Geological Survey
Awards
2021 U.S. Geological Survey STAR Award
2021 U.S. Geological Survey STAR Award
2020 IRIS/SSA Distinguished Lectureship
2019 U.S. Geological Survey STAR Award
2018 Kavli Fellow (National Academy of Sciences and The Kavli Foundation)
2016 U.S. Geological Survey STAR Award
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
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...
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...
McGuire, Jeffrey; Minson, Sarah E.; Murray, Jessica R.; Brooks, Benjamin A. 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...
Meier, M.-A.; Kodera, Y.; Bose, M.; Chung, A. I.; Hoshiba, M.; Cochran, Elizabeth S.; Minson, Sarah E.; Hauksson, E.; Heaton, T. 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...
Pollitz, Fred; Murray, Jessica R.; Minson, Sarah E.; Wicks, Charles W.; Svarc, Jerry L.; Brooks, Benjamin A. Event detection performance of the PLUM earthquake early warning algorithm in southern California
We test the Japanese ground‐motion‐based earthquake early warning (EEW) algorithm, propagation of local undamped motion (PLUM), in southern California with application to the U.S. ShakeAlert system. In late 2018, ShakeAlert began limited public alerting in Los Angeles to areas of expected modified Mercalli intensity (IMMI) 4.0+ for magnitude 5.0...
Cochran, Elizabeth S.; Bunn, Julian; Minson, Sarah E.; Baltay, Annemarie S.; Kilb, Deborah L.; Kodera, Y.; Hoshiba, Mitsuyuki Peak ground displacement saturates exactly when expected: Implications for earthquake early warning
The scaling of rupture properties with magnitude is of critical importance to earthquake early warning (EEW) systems that rely on source characterization using limited snapshots of waveform data. ShakeAlert, a prototype EEW system that is being developed for the western United States, provides real-time estimates of earthquake magnitude based on P...
Trugman, Daniel T.; Page, Morgan T.; Minson, Sarah E.; Cochran, Elizabeth S. The limits of earthquake early warning accuracy and best alerting strategy
We explore how accurate earthquake early warning (EEW) can be, given our limited ability to forecast expected shaking even if the earthquake source is known. Because of the strong variability of ground motion metrics, such as peak ground acceleration (PGA) and peak ground velocity (PGV), we find that correct alerts (i.e., alerts that accurately...
Minson, Sarah E.; Baltay, Annemarie S.; Cochran, Elizabeth S.; Hanks, Thomas C.; Page, Morgan T.; McBride, Sara; Milner, Kevin R.; Meier, Men-Andrin Development of a geodetic component for the U.S. West Coast Earthquake Early Warning System
An earthquake early warning (EEW) system, ShakeAlert, is under development for the West Coast of the United States. This system currently uses the first few seconds of waveforms recorded by seismic instrumentation to rapidly characterize earthquake magnitude, location, and origin time; ShakeAlert recently added a seismic line source algorithm. For...
Murray, Jessica R.; Crowell, Brendan W.; Grapenthin, R.; Hodgkinson, Kathleen; Langbein, John O.; Melbourne, Timothy; Melgar, Diego; Minson, Sarah E.; Schmidt, David A.
Research to improve ShakeAlert earthquake early warning products and their utility
Earthquake early warning (EEW) is the rapid detection of an earthquake and issuance of an alert or notification to people and vulnerable systems likely to experience potentially damaging ground shaking. The level of ground shaking that is considered damaging is defined by the specific application; for example, manufacturing equipment may...
Cochran, Elizabeth S.; Aagaard, Brad T.; Allen, Richard M.; Andrews, Jennifer; Baltay, Annemarie S.; Barbour, Andrew J.; Bodin, Paul; Brooks, Benjamin A.; Chung, Angela; Crowell, Brendan W.; Given, Douglas D.; Hanks, Thomas C.; Hartog, J. Renate; Hauksson, Egill; Heaton, Thomas H.; McBride, Sara; Meier, Men-Andrin; Melgar, Diego; Minson, Sarah E.; Murray, Jessica R.; Strauss, Jennifer A.; Toomey, Douglas The limits of earthquake early warning: Timeliness of ground motion estimates
The basic physics of earthquakes is such that strong ground motion cannot be expected from an earthquake unless the earthquake itself is very close or has grown to be very large. We use simple seismological relationships to calculate the minimum time that must elapse before such ground motion can be expected at a distance from the earthquake,...
Minson, Sarah E.; Meier, Men-Andrin; Baltay, Annemarie S.; Hanks, Thomas C.; Cochran, Elizabeth S.
Leveraging geodetic data to reduce losses from earthquakes
Seismic hazard assessments that are based on a variety of data and the best available science, coupled with rapid synthesis of real-time information from continuous monitoring networks to guide post-earthquake response, form a solid foundation for effective earthquake loss reduction. With this in mind, the Earthquake Hazards Program (EHP) of the U...
Murray, Jessica R.; Roeloffs, Evelyn A.; Brooks, Benjamin A.; Langbein, John O.; Leith, William S.; Minson, Sarah E.; Svarc, Jerry L.; Thatcher, Wayne R. Compositional variations in sands of the Bagnold Dunes, Gale Crater, Mars, from visible-shortwave infrared spectroscopy and comparison with ground truth from the Curiosity Rover
During its ascent up Mount Sharp, the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover traversed the Bagnold Dune Field. We model sand modal mineralogy and grain size at four locations near the rover traverse, using orbital shortwave infrared single scattering albedo spectra and a Markov-Chain Monte Carlo implementation of Hapke's radiative transfer theory...
Lapotre, Mathieu G.A.; Ehlmann, B. L.; Minson, Sarah E.; Arvidson, R. E.; Ayoub, F.; Fraeman, A. A.; Ewing, R. C.; Bridges, N. T. Buried shallow fault slip from the South Napa earthquake revealed by near-field geodesy
Earthquake-related fault slip in the upper hundreds of meters of Earth’s surface has remained largely unstudied because of challenges measuring deformation in the near field of a fault rupture. We analyze centimeter-scale accuracy mobile laser scanning (MLS) data of deformed vine rows within ±300 m of the principal surface expression of the M...
Brooks, Benjamin A.; Minson, Sarah E.; Glennie, Craig L.; Nevitt, Johanna; Dawson, Timothy E.; Rubin, Ron S.; Ericksen, Todd; Lockner, David A.; Hudnut, Kenneth W.; Langenheim, Victoria; Lutz, Andrew; Murray, Jessica R.; Schwartz, David P.; Zaccone, Dana