Unified Interior Regions

Holocene muds that cover the Santa Cruz, Calif., continental shelf have enough breaks to reveal traces of the San Gregorio fault, according to scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey, who will present several papers relating to the side-scan sonar images that were obtained earlier this year.

The Moscone convention center will be alive with the sound of music, Thursday, Dec. 16, as U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Andrew Michael presents, "The Music of Earthquakes -- Waveforms of Sound and Seismology."

All offices of the U.S. Geological Survey, at 345 Middlefield Road in Menlo Park, will close at 2 p.m., Wednesday, November 24, but will be open to serve the public Friday, November 26. This includes the map sales office and the USGS library.

Southern California’s deserts have been profoundly altered since the arrival of modern civilization and it may take centuries for the harsh but fragile ecosystem to recover even with vigorous intervention to restore natural habitats, according to an article in the current issue of the journal Environmental Management.

Recent devastating earthquakes have impacted Turkey, Taiwan, and Mexico. If the epicenter of last weeks 7.1 Hector earthquake in the Mojave Desert had occurred 100 miles to the east or to the west, Las Vegas or Los Angeles would still be picking up the pieces.

White abalone - 1,000 to 5,000 per acre - were easy to find in the early 1970s around the Channel Islands off California’s southern coast. But by the late 1970s, intense commercial and recreational harvesting made the abalone as difficult to locate a needle in an ocean-sized haystack.

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.