Numerical Modeling of Moderate Magnitude Earthquakes
| Category | Publications |
|---|---|
| Abstract | The scope of the existing NSF award is to numerically model ground motions of moderate magnitude earthquakes in the San Francisco Bay, California, USA and Osaka Bay, Japan. The numerical modeling is to focus on the effects of local soil conditions on ground motions recorded in sedimentary basins. The original NSF award's scope of work focused on the San Francisco Bay region and the Kobe region because both have suffered from recent earthquakes (the 1989 Loma Prieta and 1995 Kobe earthquakes) and also have recorded more recent moderate size earthquakes at multiple locations. Although estimation of the in-situ seismic properties was not part of the original award, the opportunity to support and improve the original goals of the award was created through collaboration with Dr. Robert Kayen at the United States Geologic Survey and Dr. Yasuo Tanaka at Kobe University. This collaboration involved collecting a dense set of in-situ seismic measurements in Osaka Bay to supplement existing data. We are using this dataset to study the spatial correlation structure of S-wave velocity in the Osaka sedimentary basin. These data complement previously collected data in the San Francisco Bay area. The Osaka data cover a broader area than the San Francisco Bay area data and reflects the spatial correlation in a second sedimentary basin. These datasets provide insight into the scale of variation of S-wave velocity within sedimentary basins, which has important implications for how accurately can it be modeled. These measurements will have important implications for how the effects of the soil conditions are estimated at unsampled locations, and how these properties are modeled in numerical simulations of earthquakes in sedimentary basins. |
| Contributor | Mourad Ouzzani
|
| Bio | Laurie G. Baise received the B.S.E. degree in Civil Engineering and Operations Research from Princeton University. She received two M.S. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley: the first in Civil and Environmental Engineering in 1997 and the second in Geology and Geophysics in 2000. She also received her Ph.D. degree from the University of California at Berkeley in Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2000. She is currently an Associate Professor at Tufts University in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Geology.
Eric M. Thompson received the B.S. degree in Earth and Planetary Science from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 2002. He is currently a graduate student at Tufts University working on a PhD degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering. |
| Cite this work | Researchers should cite this work as follows: Laurie Baise and Eric Thompson, "Numerical Modeling of Moderate Magnitude Earthquakes", Trip report presented at the NSF IREE 2008 Grantees Conference, May 2008, Washington, D.C. |
| Tags |