The Queen Charlotte Fault (QCF) is a major strike-slip fault that forms the boundary between the Pacific and North American plates from 51° to 58° N. Near 53.2° N, the angle of oblique convergence predicted by the Mid-Ocean Ridge VELocity (MORVEL) interplate pole of rotation decreases from >15° in the...
The Queen Charlotte fault (QCF) is a dextral transform system located offshore of southeastern Alaska and western Canada, accommodating ∼4.4 cm/yr of relative motion between the Pacific and North American plates. Oblique convergence along the fault increases southward, and how this convergence is accommodated is still debated. Using seismic reflection...
The 2014 Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities (WGCEP 2014) presents time-dependent earthquake probabilities for the third Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF3). Building on the UCERF3 time-independent model published previously, renewal models are utilized to represent elastic-rebound-implied probabilities. A new methodology has been developed that solves applicability issues in...
The 2014 Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities
(WGCEP14) present the time-independent component of the Uniform California
Earthquake Rupture Forecast, Version 3 (UCERF3), which provides authoritative
estimates of the magnitude, location, and time-averaged frequency of potentially
damaging earthquakes in California. The primary achievements have been to relax
fault segmentation and...
Maximum earthquake magnitude (m[subscript x]) is a critical parameter in seismic
hazard and risk analysis. However, some recent large earthquakes have shown that
most of the existing methods for estimating m[subscript x] are inadequate. Moreover, m[subscript x] itself is ill-defined because its meaning largely depends on the context, and it...
Several approaches to interpreting the Cascadia paleoseismic record are used to derive relationships between fault area, slip, and moment and to compare the results with the scaling relationships determined by Somerville et al. (2015) for recent subduction-zone events. In two models (CA12a and CA12b), taken from Goldfinger et al. (2012),...
This article summarizes the geotechnical effects of the 25 April 2015 M 7.8 Gorkha, Nepal, earthquake and aftershocks, as documented by a reconnaissance team that undertook a broad engineering and scientific assessment of the damage and collected perishable data for future analysis. Brief descriptions are provided of ground shaking, surface...
The Tertiary geologic evolution of the Oregon and Washington continental margin was molded by episodic periods of convergence between the Pacific oceanic plates and the North American plate. This margin is the site of a deep basin that is floored by Paleocene to lower Eocene oceanic crust and contains more...
Studies of active fault zones have flourished with the availability of high-resolution topographic data, particularly where airborne light detection and ranging (lidar) and structure from motion (SfM) data sets provide a means to remotely analyze submeter-scale fault geomorphology. To determine surface offset at a point along a strike-slip earthquake rupture,...