Earthquake Science Center Seminars

Zachary Smith, University of California Berkley Intense dynamic stresses during earthquakes can activate numerous subsidiary faults and generate off-fault damage that alters fault properties and can impact the source processes and rupture dynamics of future earthquakes. Distinguishing how much damage accumulates during a single earthquake versus multiple earthquake cycles and deter

Yifang Cheng, Tongji University, Shanghai Earthquake focal mechanisms offer insights into the architecture, kinematics, and stress at depth within fault zones, providing observations that complement surface geodetic measurements and seismicity statistics. We have improved the traditional focal mechanism calculation method, HASH, through the incorporation of machine learning algorit

Travis Alongi, U.S. Geological Survey Many of the world’s most damaging faults are offshore, presenting unique challenges and opportunities for studying earthquakes and faults. This talk explores how earthquake-generated (passive) and human-made (active) marine seismic methods improve our knowledge of on-fault slip behavior and off-fault damage. The first part of my talk

Thomas Rockwell, San Diego State University The Salton Basin was free of significant water between about 100 BCE and 950 CE but has filled to the sill elevation of +13 m six times between ca 950 and 1730 CE. Based on a dense array of cone penetrometer (CPT) soundings across a small sag pond, the Imperial fault is interpreted to have experienced an increase in earthquake rate and ac

Taiyi Wang, Stanford University All instrumented basaltic caldera collapses generate Mw > 5 very long period earthquakes. However, previous studies of source dynamics have been limited to lumped models treating the caldera block as rigid, leaving open questions related to how ruptures initiate and propagate around the ring fault, and the seismic expressions of those rupture dyn

Shinji Toda, Tohoku University The 1 Jan 2024 Noto Hanto earthquake launched a plethora of ills on the Noto Hanto population, taking 200 lives, and causing $25B in damage, only $5B of which was insured. These ills include a tsunami that arrived within a few minutes of the mainshock, as well as unexpectedly strong shaking throughout the Noto peninsula. In addition to direct shaking

Mong-Han Huang, University of Maryland The Ross Ice Shelf (RIS) in Antarctica is the largest ice shelf in the world. As the RIS flows toward the Ross Sea, a buildup of tensile stress due to increasing ice flow velocity develops a series of flow-perpendicular rift zones. Although these rifts are essential in contributing to future calving and reduction in size of the ice shelf, thei

Peter Shearer, University of California, San Diego Similar-sized earthquakes vary in the strength of their high-frequency radiation and various modeling assumptions can be used to translate these differences into stress-drop estimates. Empirical methods are widely applied to correct earthquake spectra for path effects in order to estimate corner frequencies and stress drops, but su

Toño Bayona, University of Bristol The Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP) is a global community of scientists whose mission is to advance earthquake predictability research though the rigorous and prospective evaluation of probabilistic seismicity forecasts. One of CSEP’s major international achievements is the development and operation o

Jack W. Baker, Stanford University The amplitude of ground shaking during an earthquake varies spatially, due to location-to-location differences in source features, wave propagation, and site effects. These variations have important impacts on infrastructure systems and other distributed assets. This presentation will provide an overview of efforts to quantify spatial correlations