The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) 2001 Annual Meeting will take place February 7-10 at the DoubleTree Hotel in Monterey, California. The theme of the meeting will be Dealing with Issues of Acceptable Risk. The meeting will focus on and redefine "acceptable risk" at a time when performance-based engineering concepts imply that clients, building owners, and/or government agencies want to make conscious choices on risk and safety...

SCEC and FEMA Region IX are in the process of organizing the Southern California HAZUS User Group (SoCalHUG). The SoCalHUG will be modeled on FEMA's success in establishing the San Francisco Bay Area HAZUS User Group (BAHUG). Public and private risk managers, GIS professionals and earthquake experts throughout southern California are encouraged to participate...

Just 28 minutes past midnight on Saturday, December 2, 2000, a magnitude 4.1 earthquake struck the San Bernardino Mountains of southern California. What makes this earthquake especially notable, however, is its status as the first earthquake greater than magnitude 4 to occur in southern California since June 26, 2000. That period of 23 weeks without an earthquake of this size or larger is one of the longest seismic "dry spells" in recorded history...

By a near-unanimous vote of the membership of California Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering (CUREe), a fundamental change in the Bylaws has been made to allow universities across the country to apply for membership. The name of the re-organized non-profit corporation is Consortium of Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering (CUREE)...

Two SCEC educational products were on display at the Annual Conference of the California Science Teachers Association (CSTA), held at the Convention Center in Sacramento on October 12 - 15. The theme for this year's conference was "Honor the Past. Imagine the Future." In keeping with this theme, both SCEC presentations demonstrated how our products combine the newly-emerging power of the Internet with a more traditional hands-on approach to science education.

As version 1.0 of the Southern California Earthquake Center approaches its sunset and version 2.0 begins to take shape, we need to ask ourselves some important questions regarding our role in earthquake science and hazard analysis in southern California. This article presents some initial thoughts and answers to these questions. We would like to hear yours.

On June 6, the Los Angeles County Emergency Preparedness Commission and the Southern California Earthquake Center presented Earthquake Preparedness for Schools, a half-day seminar on earthquake awareness, preparedness and mitigation for K-12 teachers and school administrators. The presentations have been recreated for SCEC News as web pages, including video clips from the symposium.

The 2000 SCEC Summer Undergraduate Internship program has officially ended, and final reports by the interns are now available for download. All News articles covering the program are listed along with abstracts and links to each intern's mid-summer progress report and final report.

If we weren't already designating April as Earthquake Preparedness Month in California, we might easily choose October, since we've had three significant events in October over the last 30 years. California homeowners living near the faults that moved in these earthquakes undoubtedly would tell you that it's a good idea to have earthquake insurance. On the flip side, those who sell earthquake insurance will undoubtedly tell you that if you provide earthquake coverage in California, it's a good idea to "plug in" to the earthquake research community...

The halfway point in the month of October is a good time to reflect upon the lessons learned from previous California earthquakes; the anniversaries of three recent large earthquakes fall on consecutive days this week. October 15 marks the anniversary of the 1979 Imperial Valley earthquake, October 16 is the one-year anniversary of the Hector Mine earthquake, and October 17 is the eleventh anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake. What did each of these three earthquakes teach us?

The Los Angeles Region Seismic Experiment (LARSE), was designed to obtain detailed images of the geologic structure of the L.A. region -- particularly of deep, unknown faults where earthquakes will certainly occur in the future. This spotlight article begins with a brief history of LARSE I and II and then presents abstracts for posters shown at the 2000 SCEC Annual Meeting which highlighted the status of LARSE II results.

Last July researchers from the US Geological Survey (Denver, Bozeman, and Menlo Park), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Montana State University jointly conducted paleoseismic investigations at three sites on the Hebgen fault and Red Canyon fault in southwest Montana. These faults were the primary structures that ruptured during the 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake. An informal field review will be held on Thursday, October 26 for all interested parties...

Tom Jordan, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and internationally renowned geophysicist, has come to the University of Southern California from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to be the W. M. Keck Professor of Geophysics in the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences' department of earth sciences. In September, he was confirmed by the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) Board of Directors as the new scientific director...

The Southern California Earthquake Center is undergoing a major transition. After a decade as a successful NSF Science and Technology Center, SCEC is about to enter its last year of STC funding. However, there is a strong consensus among scientists, users of earthquake information, and the sponsoring agencies that SCEC should continue as a major center for earthquake science. Several recent developments have encouraged SCEC to renew its charter...

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) issued a national earthquake risk report on September 17, 2000. This new study estimates that the Annualized Earthquake Loss to the nation's building stock is $4.4 billion per year. The majority (84%) of the average annual loss is located on the West Coast (California, Oregon, Washington), with 74 percent ($3.3 billion per year) concentrated in the state of California and 25 percent in the County of Los Angeles alone. While we must not overlook the risk in other parts of the country, it is essential that we address the risk in southern California through the following actions:

• implementing aggressive retrofit programs for vulnerable buildings and structures,
• initiating a statewide nonstructural mitigation program for schools,
• maintaining a strong earthquake science and engineering research effort through continuing support to organizations such as SCEC, the USGS, the California Universities for Earthquake Engineering (CUREe), and the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Center (PEER), and
• continuing development of immediate response tools such as ShakeMap from TriNet to aid city and county emergency response teams in a post-earthquake setting.

Position Announcement: Website Manager and Publications Coordinator for California Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering (CUREe) located at the University of California research park in Richmond adjacent to San Francisco Bay.

SCEC and the ROSRINE program will hold a 1-day workshop on Thursday, November 16, 2000, at the Riviera Resort in Palm Springs, CA. The workshop will focus on the current status and use of borehole data, and the future directions for integration and operations of data from borehole arrays.

The theme of the tenth annual SCEC Annual Meeting was The SCEC Transition and Future, appropriate as SCEC is about to enter it's eleventh and final year as a NSF Science and Technology Center. Discussion focused on the highlights of SCEC, the research to conclude in the next year, and how SCEC will continue beyond its current funding. The meeting was held September 17-20 at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Oxnard, California. ÊHighlights from the meeting are presented here.

In partnership with The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Kerry Sieh and Aron Meltzner of Caltech are designing an interpretive trail along a particularly spectacular and accessible 2 km long stretch of the San Andreas Fault near Wallace Creek. The trail opens in December 2000. The objective of the project is to provide a first rate interpretive trail at a geologically significant site along the San Andreas Fault. Students, scientists, and the general public will investigate the basic nature of strike slip faulting...

In May, 2000, SCEC Associate Director for Outreach Mark Benthien visited the Hokudan-Town Earthquake Memorial Park, on the west coast of Awaji Island (just south of Kobe, Japan). This museum and park is a memorial to the people who died during the January 17, 1995 Magnitude 6.9 Hyogoken Nambu earthquake (also known as the "Kobe earthquake"). The main feature of the park is the Nojima fault scarp which has been enclosed inside a greenhouse-type building for present and future generations to view. This photo-essay includes pictures of the museum and park as well as video tours of the memorial and a video presentation shown at the museum.

Online versions of the presentations from the SCEC Intern Colloquium have been added to the SCEC Website over the month of August. Each presentation summarizes the intern's project and its status mid-way during the summer. This third and last installment includes presentations by the remaining four interns.

The California Seismic Safety Commission has put three new publications on-line: lessons learned from recent large earthquakes; the status of California's unreinforced masonry building law; and earthquake risk management tools for decision makers.

California Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering (CUREe) has an opening for an Administrative Assistant. The CUREe office is located at the University of California's Richmond Field Station adjacent to San Francisco Bay...

Online versions of the presentations from the SCEC Intern Colloquium will be added to the SCEC Website over the month of August. Each presentation summarizes the intern's project and its status mid-way during the summer.This second installment includes presentations by three more of the ten interns.

Online versions of the presentations from the SCEC Intern Colloquium will be added to the SCEC Website over the month of August. Each presentation summarizes the intern's project and its status mid-way during the summer.This first installment includes presentations by three of the ten interns.

Over the past year SCEC has been moving toward greater use and understanding of Hazards US (HAZUS), FEMA's earthquake loss estimation software. The result is that SCEC is now considering both improving the data and models which HAZUS uses, and promoting the use of the tool by forming a southern California HAZUS users group.This article also includes an announcement of a Bay Area HAZUS Users Group Conference which will present the results of committees that have worked to develop management protocols, priority post-earthquake maps, and auto-mapping capabilities.

SCEC Outreach announces the release of a new educational video designed to augment the Seismic Sleuths curriculum and scheduled to appear in the spring season, 2001, on Discovery Channel's Assignment Discovery. Because of generous support from the California Earthquake Authority and the Institute for Business and Home Safety, this new video was produced by Summer Productions, a professional educational film company with clients such as Discovery Networks' educational service (Assignment Discovery, TLC Elementary School, The Learning Channel), and Discovery Health Channel.

The video can be used by teachers as an excellent advance organizer, or viewed by interested citizens who want to learn more about earthquakes, the destruction they can cause, the scientists and engineers who study them, and what they can do to prepare. The video is now scheduled to appear on television in the Spring season, 2001, on Discovery Channel's Assignment Discovery. This educational television show is available on cable television to more than 76,000 schools. Assignment Discovery is used by more than 200,000 teachers in high school and middle school classrooms across the country.

The annual SCEC Intern Colloquium and Field Trip was held August 3-6. Presentations about SCEC and by each Intern about their projects were on the first day, followed by a field trip to southern California earthquake research sites. Comments by the interns and pictures from the activities are included.

I'd been doing field work on Santa Cruz Island, off the coast of California, originally measuring the scratches and grooves on fault surfaces that record slip of past earthquakes. Santa Cruz Island is part of a large fold that includes the Santa Monica Mountains. During the low sea levels of the last glacial maximum at 18,000 years ago, Santa Cruz Island and neighboring islands were joined...

The Association of Engineering Geologists (AEG) and Groundwater Resources Association (GRA) are pleased to offer an earth-science teacher's workshop in conjunction with their 2000 annual meeting in San Jose. The goal is to inform local teachers about methods and teaching resources available in earth science and about some interesting aspects of local geology that can be conveyed to students...

The USGS Earthquake Hazards Program has launched a new website, earthquakes.usgs.gov, that serves as the entry point for all USGS earthquake information. The site provides information for both global and U.S. earthquakes, and links regional USGS earthquake centers from across the country...

On Tuesday, July 11, viewers were able to witness what happens to a house when it is hit with near-fault shaking recorded by a strong motion seismograph in the 1994 Northridge Earthquake in Los Angeles. Based on current design and building practices in California, the house had a tile roof, stucco exterior finish and all rooms were finished with painted gypsum board walls...

June 28th marked the anniversary of three of the largest earthquakes to strike southern California in recent history. It was nine years ago that a magnitude 5.8 earthquake shook the communities along the southern edge of the San Gabriel Mountains. Exactly one year later, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake tore across the Mojave desert and triggered a magnitude 6.4 aftershock beneath the San Bernardino Mountains...

Interns from SCEC and the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) recently attended a Communications Workshop. Topics included the technical writing process, techniques in technical writing, and forms of technical writing and presentations. SCEC Interns stayed after for an orientation...

On July 11th, 2000, California Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering (CUREe) and the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) will conduct the final damaging test to be performed on a specially-built 2-story woodframe house. Viewers will be able to witness what happens to a house when it is hit with epicentral or near-fault shaking recorded by a strong motion seismograph in the 1994 Northridge Earthquake in Los Angeles. A live Webcast of the event will be generated by UCSD's Supercomputing Center and will be available for viewing...

What should every kid know about earthquakes? This has been on the minds of Jill Andrews and Robert de Groot of SCEC Outreach. In partnership with the Riverside County Youth Museum (KidZone), CUREe and UC Riverside, SCEC is creating an innovative earthquake exhibit called ShakeZone. ShakeZone will debut at KidZone in 2001...

The National Earthquake Risk Management Conference is scheduled for September 17-22, 2000 in Seattle, Washington. Leading experts in each of these areas will participate in panel discussions and interactions with the audience in six plenary sessions: Lessons Learned, Real-Time Warnings, Policy Strategies, Successful Mitigation Strategies, Building Codes and Standards for the 21st Century, and Public Policy...

The President s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), in partnership with the National Environmental Education & Training Foundation (NEETF), is proud to announce a new program of Environmental Education Teacher Professional Development Awards. This program identifies outstanding K-12 teachers who are environmental educators and/or use the environment as an integrating context for learning for their students...

The TriNet ShakeMap Working Group (SMaWG) is pleased to announce the activation ofVersion 2 of ShakeMap (V2). While many of the revisions are "under-the-hood" you will find that the web pages have been redesigned to be simpler, more intuitive, and for faster access. The new, official, ShakeMap web site is http://www.trinet.org/shake...

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is offering earthquake education workshops this summer for K-12 teachers at its Emmitsburg, Maryland Emergency Management Institute. These workshops include science background lectures and discussions on the nature of earthquakes, basic seismology, and general geology...

On Friday, April 28th a demonstration earthquake test was conducted on a two-story, 640 square-foot full-scale woodframe house built on top of a shake table. Researchers shook the house to simulate ground motions that occurred during the 1994 Northridge earthquake near Los Angeles. Video highlights are now online...

Devastating earthquakes in California remind us that our State faces a serious earthquake risk that only increases with each passing day as our population continues to expand. Much to our benefit, California has a long history of addressing the earthquake risk, and it is imperative that those efforts continue into the 21st century with the next generation of tools...

Teaching the public about earthquake hazards is much more complicated than simply telling folks to duck, cover, and hold. "Public Education for Earthquake Hazards," available via the Internet from the Natural Hazards Research and Information Center, tells why it's important to education the public about earthquakes...

On April 14th through the 16th, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers held its Far West Section, Spring 2000 Field Conference in the San Fernando Valley. SCEC Outreach was asked to present some of its educational materials to the participants of the conference. This proved to be a great opportunity for us to advertise the availability of the recently completed SCEC educational module: "Investigating Earthquakes through Regional Seismicity" (http://www.data.scec.org/Module/) to an eager audience of primarily community college and high school educators...

A symposium on Active Faulting was held at the community center of Hokudan town, Japan, January 16-20, 2000. Several SCEC researchers attended and presented papers (see http://home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/kojiok/hokudan.htm for more information). SCEC Outreach director Jill Andrews was invited to give an overview on the development of programs to promote public awareness of seismic hazards and encourage risk mitigation in vulnerable communities...

The Worldwide Database of Earthquake Recurrence from Paleoseismological Data within the International Lithosphere Program is a project to contribute to a better understanding of how earthquakes recur through time. This has a critical impact on seismic hazard assessment and this contribution is a great responsibility for the scientific community...

Web-based information is now available about the Masters of Disaster children's disaster safety curriculum project, jointly sponsored by Allstate Insurance and the American Red Cross. This curriculum components will help teachers integrate disaster safety into their regular lesson plans...

The Emergency Preparedness Commission and The Southern California Earthquake Center Present Earthquake Preparedness for Schools: Tuesday, June 6, 2000 8:30am -12:30pm...

Dr. Chris Goldfinger and Dr. Mark Legg were recently aboard the R/V Atlantis studying the active offshore San Clemente fault zone. During submersible dives the scientists found multiple seafloor fault scarps up to 2-3 meters high. The Orange County News channel will be discussing these recent discoveries with Dr. Mark Legg, and showing brief videotapes of some of the scarps at 7pm on the program Prime Story, Tuesday, April 18...

On May 24, 1965, Charles Richter sent Frank Press his impressions of a (then) relatively unknown seismologist named Keiiti Aki (former Science Director of SCEC). In his letter he wrote, "Dr. Aki is one of the brightest and most original of the very productive group of younger Japanese seismologists and geophysicists who have been coming forward in the last ten or fifteen years..." Thirty-five year later, Richter probably wouldn't have been surprised by the size, significance, and practicality of Aki's contributions to seismology - parts of which were reviewed at a SCEC-sponsored Symposium in honor of his retirement...

Immediately following an earthquake, individuals involved in earthquake preparedness, planning, and response will now be able to save valuable time when assessing damage and determining appropriate response with a significantly faster version of HAZUS (short for "Hazards U.S."), a state-of-the-art computer program...

In September 1999, SCEC held a workshop to introduce people to three software packages useful for stress triggering and deformation studies. These can be freely downloaded, along with manuals and tutorials...

If there was a certain apocalyptic feeling to the spate of recent earthquake activity worldwide, rest assured, it sometimes felt that way to the Earth sciences community as well. While Earth scientists don't see recent worldwide activity as a biblical harbinger, they were reeling in late 1999 from having to deal with the scientific and media response to five significant earthquakes in Taiwan, Mexico, California and two in Turkey, in such close succession...

Similarities between the San Andreas fault and the North Anatolian fault in Turkey are discussed by Ross Stein during a Fall 1999 interview on National Public Radio...

The U.S. Geological Survey and the Swiss Seismological Service have released the first quantitative map of global seismic hazard. The Global Seismic Hazard Map is a product of the Global Seismic Hazard Assessment Program (GSHAP), launched in 1992 and terminated last year, which was part of the United Nations International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction....

The U.S. Geological Survey and the Swiss Seismological Service have released the first quantitative map of global seismic hazard. The Global Seismic Hazard Map is a product of the Global Seismic Hazard Assessment Program (GSHAP), launched in 1992 and terminated last year, which was part of the United Nations International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction....

EarthScope is a multi-component, state-of-the-art, geophysical observatory that will provide, for the first time, the facilities necessary to explore, in three-dimensions, the geologic structure and inner workings of the North American continent - from the active tectonic plate boundaries in the west to the ancient mountains and passive continental margin in the east. It will secure the United States' role as world leader in Solid Earth Sciences well into the next century....

The words "Slow Earthquake" conjure up an image of a fault moving silently, stealthily, slipping over the course of several minutes to a few weeks, generally avoiding the scrutiny of geologists and geophysicists by generating few - if any - waves. Relatively little research has been conducted on slow events, mostly because of their elusive nature. The author presents two mini-interviews: one with Malcolm Johnston, a US Geological Survey scientist who was part of the team that detected the 1992 slow earthquake on the San Andreas fault, and the other with Yehuda Bock, a geodecist with Scripps Institute of Oceanography, who questions the terminology...