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12 recordsLinked to original sources
USGS2009

Drag-out effect of piezomagnetic signals due to a borehole: The Mogi source as an example

We show that using borehole measurements in tectonomagnetic experiments allows enhancement of the observed signals. New magnetic dipoles, which vary with stress changes from mechanical sources, are produced on the walls of the borehole. We evaluate such an effect quantitatively. First we formulate a general expression for the borehole effect due to any arbitrary source models. This is valid everywhere above the ground surface as well as within the cylindrical hole. A first-order approximate solution is given by a line of horizontal dipoles and vertical quadrupoles along the central axis of the borehole, which is valid above the ground surface and a slightly away (several tens of cm) from the top of the borehole. Selecting the Mogi model as an example, we numerically evaluated the borehole effect. It turned out that the vertical quadrupoles produce two orders of magnitude more intense magnetic field than the horizontal dipoles. The borehole effect is very local, i.e. detectable only within a few m from its outlet, since it is of the same order or more than the case without a borehole. However, magnetic lines of force cannot reach the ground surface from a deeper portion (> 10 m) of a borehole.

Annals of Geophysics↗
USGS2009

Uncertainty analysis for seismic hazard in Northern and Central Italy

In this study we examine uncertainty and parametric sensitivity of Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) and 1-Hz Spectral Acceleration (1-Hz SA) in probabilistic seismic hazard maps (10% probability of exceedance in 50 years) of Northern and Central Italy. The uncertainty in hazard is estimated using a Monte Carlo approach to randomly sample a logic tree that has three input-variables branch points representing alternative values for b-value, maximum magnitude (Mmax) and attenuation relationships. Uncertainty is expressed in terms of 95% confidence band and Coefficient Of Variation (COV). The overall variability of ground motions and their sensitivity to each parameter of the logic tree are investigated. The largest values of the overall 95% confidence band are around 0.15 g for PGA in the Friuli and Northern Apennines regions and around 0.35 g for 1-Hz SA in the Central Apennines. The sensitivity analysis shows that the largest contributor to seismic hazard variability is uncertainty in the choice of ground-motion attenuation relationships, especially in the Friuli Region (???0.10 g) for PGA and in the Friuli and Central Apennines regions (???0.15 g) for 1-Hz SA. This is followed by the variability of the b-value: its main contribution is evident in the Friuli and Central Apennines regions for both 1-Hz SA (???0.15 g) and PGA (???0.10 g). We observe that the contribution of Mmax to seismic hazard variability is negligible, at least for 10% exceedance in 50-years hazard. The overall COV map for PGA shows that the uncertainty in the hazard is larger in the Friuli and Northern Apennine regions, around 20-30%, than the Central Apennines and Northwestern Italy, around 10-20%. The overall uncertainty is larger for the 1-Hz SA map and reaches 50-60% in the Central Apennines and Western Alps.

Annals of Geophysics↗
USGS2004

California earthquake history

This paper presents an overview of the advancement in our knowledge of California's earthquake history since ??? 1800, and especially during the last 30 years. We first review the basic statewide research on earthquake occurrences that was published from 1928 through 2002, to show how the current catalogs and their levels of completeness have evolved with time. Then we review some of the significant new results in specific regions of California, and some of what remains to be done. Since 1850, 167 potentially damaging earthquakes of M ??? 6 or larger have been identified in California and its border regions, indicating an average rate of 1.1 such events per year. Table I lists the earthquakes of M ??? 6 to 6.5 that were also destructive since 1812 in California and its border regions, indicating an average rate of one such event every ??? 5 years. Many of these occurred before 1932 when epicenters and magnitudes started to be determined routinely using seismographs in California. The number of these early earthquakes is probably incomplete in sparsely populated remote parts of California before ??? 1870. For example, 6 of the 7 pre-1873 events in table I are of M ??? 7, suggesting that other earthquakes of M 6.5 to 6.9 occurred but were not properly identified, or were not destructive. The epicenters and magnitudes (M) of the pre-instrumental earthquakes were determined from isoseismal maps that were based on the Modified Mercalli Intensity of shaking (MMI) at the communities that reported feeling the earthquakes. The epicenters were estimated to be in the regions of most intense shaking, and values of M were estimated from the extent of the areas shaken at various MMI levels. MMI VII or greater shaking is the threshold of damage to weak buildings. Certain areas in the regions of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Eureka were each shaken repeatedly at MMI VII or greater at least six times since ??? 1812, as depicted by Toppozada and Branum (2002, fig. 19).

Annals of Geophysics↗
USGS2004

Scientific overview and historical context of the 1811-1812 new Madrid earthquake sequence

The central and eastern United States has experienced only 5 historic earthquakes with Mw 7.0, four during the New Madrid sequence of 1811-1812: three principal mainshocks and the so-called «dawn aftershock» following the first mainshock. Much of the historic earthquake research done in the United States has focused on the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ), because the largest New Madrid earthquakes may represent the archetype for the most damaging earthquakes to be expected in intraplate regions. Published magnitude values ranging from 7.0 to 8.75 have generally been based on macroseismic effects, which provide the most direct constraint on source size for the events. Critical to the interpretation of these accounts is an understanding of their historic context. Early settlments clustered along waterways, where substantial amplification of seismic waves is expected. Analyzing the New Madrid intensity values with a consideration of these effects yields preferred values of Mw 7.2-7.3, 7.0, and 7.4-7.5 for the December, January, and February mainshocks, respectively, and of 7.0 for the «dawn aftershock». These values are consistent with other lines of evidence, including scaling relationships. Finally, I show that accounts from the New Madrid sequence reveal evidence for remotely triggered earthquakes well outside the NMSZ. Remotely triggered earthquakes represent a potentially important new wrinkle in historic earthquake research, as their ground motions can sometimes be confused with mainshock ground motions.

Annals of Geophysics↗
USGS1999

Seismic hazard map of the western hemisphere

Vulnerability to natural disasters increases with urbanization and development of associated support systems (reservoirs, power plants, etc.). Catastrophic earthquakes account for 60% of worldwide casualties associated with natural disasters. Economic damage from earthquakes is increasing, even in technologically advanced countries with some level of seismic zonation, as shown by the 1989 Loma Prieta, CA ($6 billion), 1994 Northridge, CA ($ 25 billion), and 1995 Kobe, Japan (> $ 100 billion) earthquakes. The growth of megacities in seismically active regions around the world often includes the construction of seismically unsafe buildings and infrastructures, due to an insufficient knowledge of existing seismic hazard. Minimization of the loss of life, property damage, and social and economic disruption due to earthquakes depends on reliable estimates of seismic hazard. National, state, and local governments, decision makers, engineers, planners, emergency response organizations, builders, universities, and the general public require seismic hazard estimates for land use planning, improved building design and construction (including adoption of building construction codes), emergency response preparedness plans, economic forecasts, housing and employment decisions, and many more types of risk mitigation. The seismic hazard map of the Americas is the concatenation of various national and regional maps, involving a suite of approaches. The combined maps and documentation provide a useful global seismic hazard framework and serve as a resource for any national or regional agency for further detailed studies applicable to their needs. This seismic hazard map depicts Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) with a 10% chance of exceedance in 50 years for the western hemisphere. PGA, a short-period ground motion parameter that is proportional to force, is the most commonly mapped ground motion parameter because current building codes that include seismic provisions specify the horizontal force a building should be able to withstand during an earthquake. This seismic hazard map of the Americas depicts the likely level of short-period ground motion from earthquakes in a fifty-year window. Short-period ground motions effect short-period structures (e.g., one-to-two story buildings). The largest seismic hazard values in the western hemisphere generally occur in areas that have been, or are likely to be, the sites of the largest plate boundary earthquakes. Although the largest earthquakes ever recorded are the 1960 Chile and 1964 Alaska subduction zone earthquakes, the largest seismic hazard (PGA) value in the Americas is in Southern California (U.S.), along the San Andreas fault.

Annals of Geophysics↗
USGS1999

Seismic hazard map of North and Central America and the Caribbean

Minimization of the loss of life, property damage, and social and economic disruption due to earthquakes depends on reliable estimates of seismic hazard. National, state, and local government, decision makers, engineers, planners, emergency response organizations, builders, universities, and the general public require seismic hazard estimates for land use planning, improved building design and construction (including adoption of building construction codes), emergency response preparedness plans, economic forecasts, housing and employment decisions, and many more types of risk mitigation. The seismic hazard map of North and Central America and the Caribbean is the concatenation of various national and regional maps, involving a suite of approaches. The combined maps and documentation provide a useful regional seismic hazard framework and serve as a resource for any national or regional agency for further detailed studies applicable to their needs. This seismic hazard map depicts Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) with a 10% chance of exceedance in 50 years. PGA, a short-period ground motion parameter that is proportional to force, is the most commonly mapped ground motion parameter because current building codes that include seismic provisions specify the horizontal force a building should be able to withstand during an earthquake. This seismic hazard map of North and Central America and the Caribbean depicts the likely level of short-period ground motion from earthquakes in a fifty-year window. Short-period ground motions effect short-period structures (e.g., one-to-two story buildings). The highest seismic hazard values in the region generally occur in areas that have been, or are likely to be, the sites of the largest plate boundary earthquakes.

Annals of Geophysics↗
USGS1996

Observations of rapid-fire event tremor at Lascar volcano, Chile

During the Proyecto de Investigacio??n Sismolo??gica de la Cordillera Occidental (PISCO '94) in the Atacama desert of Northern Chile, a continuously recording broadband seismic station was installed to the NW of the currently active volcano, Lascar. For the month of April, 1994, an additional network of three, short period, three-component stations was deployed around the volcano to help discriminate its seismic signals from other local seismicity. During the deployment, the volcanic activity at Lascar appeared to be limited mainly to the emission of steam and SO2. Tremor from Lascar is a random, ??rapid-fire?? series of events with a wide range of amplitudes and a quasi-fractal structure. The tremor is generated by an ensemble of independent elementary sources clustered in the volcanic edifice. In the short-term, the excitation of the sources fluctuates strongly, while the long-term power spectrum is very stationary.

Annals of Geophysics↗
USGS2012

USGS "Did You Feel It?" internet-based macroseismic intensity maps

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) "Did You Feel It?" (DYFI) system is an automated approach for rapidly collecting macroseismic intensity data from Internet users' shaking and damage reports and generating intensity maps immediately following earthquakes; it has been operating for over a decade (1999-2011). DYFI-based intensity maps made rapidly available through the DYFI system fundamentally depart from more traditional maps made available in the past. The maps are made more quickly, provide more complete coverage and higher resolution, provide for citizen input and interaction, and allow data collection at rates and quantities never before considered. These aspects of Internet data collection, in turn, allow for data analyses, graphics, and ways to communicate with the public, opportunities not possible with traditional data-collection approaches. Yet web-based contributions also pose considerable challenges, as discussed herein. After a decade of operational experience with the DYFI system and users, we document refinements to the processing and algorithmic procedures since DYFI was first conceived. We also describe a number of automatic post-processing tools, operations, applications, and research directions, all of which utilize the extensive DYFI intensity datasets now gathered in near-real time. DYFI can be found online at the website http://earthquake.usgs.gov/dyfi/. ?? 2011 by the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia.

Annals of Geophysics↗
USGS2012

Twitter earthquake detection: Earthquake monitoring in a social world

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is investigating how the social networking site Twitter, a popular service for sending and receiving short, public text messages, can augment USGS earthquake response products and the delivery of hazard information. Rapid detection and qualitative assessment of shaking events are possible because people begin sending public Twitter messages (tweets) with in tens of seconds after feeling shaking. Here we present and evaluate an earthquake detection procedure that relies solely on Twitter data. A tweet-frequency time series constructed from tweets containing the word "earthquake" clearly shows large peaks correlated with the origin times of widely felt events. To identify possible earthquakes, we use a short-term-average, long-term-average algorithm. When tuned to a moderate sensitivity, the detector finds 48 globally-distributed earthquakes with only two false triggers in five months of data. The number of detections is small compared to the 5,175 earthquakes in the USGS global earthquake catalog for the same five-month time period, and no accurate location or magnitude can be assigned based on tweet data alone. However, Twitter earthquake detections are not without merit. The detections are generally caused by widely felt events that are of more immediate interest than those with no human impact. The detections are also fast; about 75% occur within two minutes of the origin time. This is considerably faster than seismographic detections in poorly instrumented regions of the world. The tweets triggering the detections also provided very short first-impression narratives from people who experienced the shaking.

Annals of Geophysics↗
USGS2019

Analog experiments of lava flow emplacement

Laboratory experiments that simulate lava flows have been in use by volcanologists for many years. The behavior of flows in the lab, where “eruption” parameters, material properties, and environmental settings are tightly controlled, provides insight into the influence of various factors on flow evolution. A second benefit of laboratory lava flows is to provide a set of observations with which numerical models of flow emplacement can be tested. Models of lava flow emplacement vary in mathematical approach, physical assumptions, and computational cost. Nonetheless, all models require thorough testing and evaluation, and laboratory experiments produce an excellent test for models. This paper provides a primer on modern analog laboratory lava flow experiments. It reviews scaling con- siderations and provides quantitative information meant to guide future experimentalists in designing their experiments to be relevant to natural processes. Traditional and novel laboratory techniques are described, including a discussion of current limitations. New insights from recent experiments highlight the impact of topographic conditions and highlight the importance of considering bed roughness, major obstacles, and slope breaks. The influence of episodic or non-uniform effusion rate is demonstrated through recent experi- mental works. Lastly, the paper discusses several open questions about lava flow emplacement and the ways in which future improvements in experimental methods, such as the ability to utilize three-phase suspensions and materials with complex rheologies and to image the interior of flows could help answer these.

Annals of Geophysics↗
USGS2024

A case for improved global coordination of volcano observatories

The distribution of volcano monitoring networks and volcano expertise does not correlate well with the global distribution of volcanic risk. All countries have cultural, financial, bureaucratic, political, and logistical barriers to effective risk reduction. The lack of parity amongst volcano observatories jeopardizes public safety and curtails scientific research and understanding. Having global data compiled daily to retain a full record of volcanic unrest would lead to large and meaningful improvements in future eruption forecasts. To make progress on these issues, the volcanological community needs greater collaboration, standardization, and support..

Annals of Geophysics↗
USGS2023

Named landforms of the World: A geomorphological and physiographic compilation

Prior to the current era of digital geomorphological mapping, global and regional-scale land surface characterization was advanced by qualitative interpretations that relied on human visualization aided by disciplinary knowledge of geophysical processes combined with extensive field study. In the early twentieth century, Fenneman proposed to devise systematic physiographic divisions of the United States and in 1916 produced what is still regarded as an authoritative map of these divisions. His physiographic regions were developed to provide context when describing land surface characteristics of smaller areas using well-known regional characteristics and descriptors. In 1968, geographer Richard E. Murphy published a large-format map of the “Landforms of the World” to fill a gap in the suite of standard classroom maps. In 1990, the British geomorphologist E. M. Bridges published World Geomorphology , providing the first global treatment and description of divisions, provinces, and sections—the same hierarchical land partitioning concepts that Fenneman used decades earlier. In the twenty-first century, geographic information systems (GIS) technologies are nearly ubiquitous, yet neither Murphy’s nor Bridges’s work existed as GIS data. To further illuminate their pioneering work, we (1) recompiled Murphy’s landforms as a spatial combination of modern existing data layers, and (2) used the recompiled Murphy’s landforms as a basis for the boundaries of the divisions, provinces, and sections described by Bridges. Our aggregation yields a new resource, Named Landforms of the World, version 2.0, which provides a reference-level, basemap-quality data layer that can significantly facilitate mapping, assessing, and understanding Earth surface features.

Annals of the AAG↗