Advancing earthquake science worldwide
22 January 2020–The 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence, which startled nearby California residents over the 4 July holiday with magnitude 6.4 and magnitude 7.1 earthquakes, included 34,091 earthquakes overall, detailed in a high-resolution catalog created for the sequence. The catalog, developed by David Shelly at the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, … Continue Reading »
7 January 2020–The magnitude of the Great Lisbon Earthquake event, a historic and devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Portugal on All Saints’ Day in 1755, may not be as high as previously estimated. In his study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, Joao F. B. … Continue Reading »
18 December 2019–Alan Kafka’s career as a seismologist began with a Ph.D. studying earthquakes associated with the Caribbean plate, but “I ended up focusing on the Northeast U.S. (NEUS) for a not-very-exotic reason,” he explains. “I feel at home in the NEUS, and I didn’t want to leave.” “What I … Continue Reading »
16 December 2019–The term “public service” has broad meaning when it comes to the Frank Press Public Service Award, which the Seismological Society of America created to honor outstanding efforts on behalf of seismology and public safety. In part, the award has a broad reach due to the trailblazing and … Continue Reading »
3 December 2019–Each hair-thin glass fiber in a buried fiber optic cable contains tiny internal flaws—and that’s a good thing for scientists looking for new ways to collect seismic data in places from a busy urban downtown to a remote glacier. In Seismological Research Letters, California Institute of Technology seismologist … Continue Reading »
20 November 2019–The terms may seem interchangeable to a layperson, but “hazard” and “risk” mean very different things in earthquake science. A seismic hazard is a natural phenomenon such as the level of ground shaking caused by an earthquake. Seismic risk, on the other hand, refers to the probability that … Continue Reading »