Department Logo for Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences

What geology and geodesy reveal about future earthquakes


Dec. 2, 2015, noon - 12:50 p.m.
Geology 1707

Presented By:
David D. Jackson
UCLA EPSS

See Event on Google. Subscribe to Calendar

What geology and geodesy reveal about future earthquakes

Instrumental recordings of large California earthquakes cover just over a century, and accurate data for moderate quakes are available only since the mid 1930s. Thus deformation rates inferred from geological and geodetic data are needed to estimate the rates of potentially damaging earthquakes. But these data provide indirect information, and important assumptions are needed to infer earthquake rates from surface deformation. Large earthquake rates inferred from geology generally exceed those observed instrumentally, leaving open the question of whether recent rates are anomalously low (and perhaps due to increase), or instead that measurement uncertainties or incorrect assumptions explain the differences. How can we resolve this question?