Unified Interior Regions

There is a 70 percent probability that one or more damaging earthquakes of magnitude 6.7 or larger will strike the San Francisco Bay area during the next 30 years, according to a report released today (Oct. 14, 1999) by the U.S. Geological Survey. A magnitude 6.7 earthquake is equivalent to the 1994 Northridge earthquake which killed 57 people and caused $20 billion in damage.

A new set of maps from the U.S. Geological Survey explains in depth, literally, more than 30,000 earthquakes that occurred in north-central California between 1967 and 1993. That time frame, of course, includes the largest earthquake to occur in the area since 1906, the 1989, 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake.

When is a badly damaged, but stable building safe to enter after an earthquake? That is a question that safety-response and building-department officials have to answer in order to let occupants retrieve important possessions and business records, and to let contractors begin emergency repairs

When their offices and homes began shaking at 5:04 p.m., Oct. 17, 1989, earthquake scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., were as surprised as anyone.

With a press run of more than three million copies, "The Next Big Earthquake In The Bay Area May Come Sooner Than You Think-- Are You Prepared?" is the most widely distributed publication ever prepared by the U.S. Geological Survey. Nine years after it’s publication, it is still available from the USGS, and still helpful as a preparedness guide for Bay Area residents.

A new screening method, based on geology and climatology, has been shown to be a reliable means for predicting where lands in irrigated areas are susceptible to contamination from selenium, according to a report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Reclamation, and Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The USGS scientist who intrigued Ted Kennedy Jr., Tuesday, with her foot-and voice-operated computer/microscope, will give interviews and demonstrations again Wednesday, during the second day of the USGS’s seventh annual Conference on Addressing the Employment of People with Disabilities, on the USGS campus in Menlo Park.

Some employees at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park don’t wait for an annual "take your dog to work" day; they do it every day. Like the USGS human roster, some of the dogs are still in training, while others have graduate degrees and are now gainfully and fully employed.

A drilling project that is harvesting 1,000 feet of earth and rock cores from the Los Angeles basin will establish a virtual library of information on the geology of the area, according to scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Providing a plan to help resource managers restore the Bering Sea and North Pacific ecosystem is a task research scientist Jim Estes of the U.S. Geological Survey will pursue during the next four years with funding help from a 1999 Pew Marine Conservation fellowship of $150,000.

It is well known that fire suppression in forests has led to an increase in catastrophic forest fires. The same has been assumed to be true for fire suppresion in shrublands. However, a recent USGS study has found that urban sprawl -- not fire suppression -- is largely responsible for the wildfires that occur in the shrublands of southern and central-coastal California.