With its magnitude 6.4, price tag of $50 million, and death toll of 115, the 1933 Long Beach earthquake pales when compared to the death and destruction caused by several more recent earthquakes -- major seismic events many of you have investigated, studied, spoken and written about in the course of your work. Some may wonder then, why would the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute choose to go back some 70 years to the scene of the Long Beach earthquake for its 2002 Annual meeting?

On Saturday November 17th, 2001, the Southern California Office of the U.S. Geological Survey and SCEC held an earthquake education workshop at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, CA. The workshop explored the science of earthquakes and applied those concepts to a wide range of activities. The Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS), provided curriculum materials, posters, books and many of the supplies for the workshop. The objective of the workshop was to present educators with earth science and earthquake materials and activities that they could take back to their students.

Recently there has been discussion of how SCEC will create consensus earthquake scenarios for use by engineers and risk managers. A rapidly growing group of potential users of earthquake scenarios are public and private users of FEMA's HAZUS loss estimation software. Over the last year, SCEC, OES, FEMA, and Well's Fargo have been working to create the Southern California HAZUS User Group (SoCalHUG). SCEC is participating in order to develop an interface with implementers of SCEC research. As part of this effort, FEMA funded a workshop on November 13th specifically for SCEC scientists and our partners.

Abstracts and complete references for recently published papers based on research sponsored by SCEC are now available via SCEC News.

An earthquake education workshop for teachers will be held on November 17, 2001 from 9 am to 5 pm at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, CA. The workshop explores the science of earthquakes and applies those concepts to a wide range of activities that are ready to take back to a variety of learning environments. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) are sponsoring the program with support from Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS), Caltech and Polytechnic School.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced that the Consortium of Universities for Research in earthquake Engineering (CUREE) has been selected to develop the new organization that will manage the NSF-funded Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) during the 2004-2014 decade.

Two new web services based on data from the SCEC Phase III report are now available. One service allows visitors to the website to find basin depths in the Los Angeles area using one of the three methods: selecting from named locations (cities, airports, colleges, etc.); entering longitude and latitude values in a text box; and clicking on a map (shown below) of the greater Los Angeles Region. The newest service allows visitors to find the average S-wave velocity in the upper 30 meters of the ground for points in the Los Angeles area with the same three methods described above (the map is shown below). Basin depth and surface velocity have been shown to be significant factors in the amplification of seismic waves.

A student at Harvey Mudd College, Paul Rundle, has studied the history and physics of earthquake faults in Southern California using sophisticated new computer simulations, to uncover distinct patterns in the way in which quakes cluster and interact with each other. This research has enabled Rundle, along with six other scientists, to develop a new statistical method of analyzing earthquake faults that examines not just individual fault lines, but how they relate to each other in a network of such earthquake faults. The method also holds promise of being applied to other kinds of physical and biological systems in which energy is slowly built up, then suddenly released.

The theme of the eleventh and final SCEC Annual Meeting was "The Transition from SCEC1 to SCEC2." SCEC is in it's eleventh and final year as a NSF Science and Technology Center. Discussion focused on the highlights of SCEC, and planning the goals and methods for the next version of SCEC, generally referred to as SCEC2. The meeting was held September 23-26 at the Embassy Suites Hotel at Mandalay Beach in Oxnard, California. Photo highlights from the meeting are presented in this set of web pages.

A student at Harvey Mudd College, Paul Rundle, has studied the history and physics of earthquake faults in Southern California using sophisticated new computer simulations, to uncover distinct patterns in the way in which quakes cluster and interact with each other. This research has enabled Rundle, along with six other scientists, to develop a new statistical method of analyzing earthquake faults...

The Consortium of Organizations for Strong-Motion Observation Systems (COSMOS) has released issue 5 of the COSMOS Newsletter, available for download on SCEC News. The mission of COSMOS is to expand and modernize significantly the acquisition and application of strong-motion data in order to increase public safety from earthquakes.

The Southern California Earthquake Center was well-represented at the 2^nd Annual Conference of the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE), held at Northern Arizona University (NAU) in Flagstaff, Arizona, on August 2-4, 2001. SCEC, through its partnership with CUREE and IRIS in the Electronic Encyclopedia of Earthquakes -- a National SMETE (Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology Education) Digital Library project -- has already established a bond with the DLESE community.

Make plans now to attend the upcoming Western States Seismic Policy Council's (WSSPC) Annual Conference, October 21-24, 2001, in Sacramento, California. This is going to be an exciting and influential conference, co-hosted by the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services and the Department of Conservation's Division of Mines and Geology (CDMG, the state geological survey of California) under the auspices of WSSPC.

Abstracts and complete references for eight recently published papers based on research sponsored by SCEC are now available via SCEC News.

Summer is almost over, and the deadline to register for the WSSPC Annual Conference at the reduced early-bird rate is coming up, too. This year's conference, "Seismic Risk Communication: Creating Greater Public Awareness and Action" will be held in Sacramento, California, October 21-24, and will feature a variety of plenary and workshop sessions, an exhibitor fair, and a field trip to the Napa Valley.

The SCEC/USGS working group for the development of Regional Earthquake Likelihood Models (RELM) announces an all new web site (http://www.relm.org), where you can find all pertinent information related to the effort. RELM is the lead activity of SCEC in the area of seismic hazard analysis.

The two most important factors influencing the level of earthquake ground motion at a site are the magnitude and distance of the earthquake. A new wall poster (30" x 36", $10) shows the influence of a third important factor, the site effect, where conditions at a particular location can increase (amplify) or decrease the level of shaking that is otherwise expected for a given magnitude and distance.

On July 2, 2001, four days before its scheduled unveiling, the Southern California Integrated GPS Network (SCIGN) reached its goal of 250 GPS stations spread out across southern California and northern Baja California, Mexico. On July 6, the SCIGN team officially unveiled this remarkable array with a ceremony held at the Glendale Civic Auditorium. A detailed overview of the event, including photos of speakers and complete transcripts is now online.

For 10 years, SCEC has been the coordinating organization in southern California for earthquake science, and through its outreach programs has advocated actions which make buildings more resistant to damage in the earthquakes SCEC studies. Now, as SCEC prepares for its own future, the building which has housed the SCEC administration and outreach offices is being renovated -- and retrofitted to withstand earthquake shaking.

A HAZUS training was held July 24-26 at California State University Fullerton for 23 Geographic Information System professionals employed by local governments, utilities, universities, and corporations. Funding for the training was provided by FEMA in response to a proposal by the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) and the California Office of Emergency Services (CA OES).

Abstracts and complete references for fifteen recently published papers based on research sponsored by SCEC are now available via SCEC News.

On July 6, 2001, earthquake scientists unveiled the Southern California Integrated GPS Network (SCIGN), a new type of ground motion monitoring network. Unlike other instrument networks that record shaking, SCIGN tracks the slow motion of the Earth's plates by using the Global Positioning System (GPS) -- a constellation of satellites, originally designed for military navigation, that are used to determine precise locations on the ground. With SCIGN, the link between the motions of the plates that make up the Earth's crust and the resulting earthquakes is now being observed by an array of GPS stations operating in southern California and Baja California -- one of the world's most seismically active and highly populated areas. The 250th SCIGN station was installed on July 2, 2001.

Using SCIGN data to measure deformation of the Earth's crust, which can occur as movement on faults or as slow distortion of the ground, scientists can determine how strain builds up slowly over time before being released suddenly during earthquakes. The accumulated strain is directly related to earthquake potential, and measurement of it contributes to earthquake hazard assessments that help motivate people to prepare for earthquakes. "We have in southern California over half of the nation's earthquake risk, and we are applying GPS technology in new ways to assess this risk," said SCIGN chairman Ken Hudnut of the U.S. Geological Survey.

The International Conference on Disaster Management will be held August 6-10, 2001 in Orlando, Florida. This conference is aimed at all emergency responders and will cover Terrorism, Hazmat, Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Wildfire, Flooding, Volcanoes and Hurricanes. SCEC Outreach is organizing three of the sessions on earthquakes.

In August and November of 1999, two giant earthquakes devastated northwest Turkey. Together, the quakes killed between 30,000 and 40,000 people. This new television program (July 6, 10-11 pm on The Learning Channel) features interviews with victims, survivors and their rescuers as they explain what happened during and after the earthquake, and features interviews with Ross Stein (USGS/SCEC).

On June 13th Tom Henyey and Bob de Groot led a field trip for thirty 9th grade students from Los Angeles High School. Richard Redman, their enthusiastic teacher provided his students with the basics of plate tectonics before taking the trip. Redman made contact with SCEC in April during an earthquake education workshop at UCLA (please read News article: SCEC Works with LAUSD Educators).

For 10 years, SCEC has been the coordinating organization in southern California for earthquake science, and through its outreach programs has advocated actions which make buildings more resistant to damage in the earthquakes SCEC studies. Now, as SCEC prepares for its own future, the building which has housed the SCEC administration and outreach offices is being renovated -- and retrofitted to withstand earthquake shaking.

On April 18th SCEC sponsored a professional development seminar for middle and secondary educators of the Los Angeles Unified School District. This program was held at UCLA in conjunction with the Los Angeles Systemic Initiative, an organization that provides dynamic educator inservice programs.

Twenty-five post-doctoral opportunities are available at the USGS through the Mendenhall program. These positions are throughout the US and start between October 1, 2001 and April 1, 2002 and last for two years. However, applications are due by May 18, 2001 so do not delay if you might be interested.

A workshop will be held October 10-12, 2001 in Snowbird, Utah, to explore and develop a wide range of scientific targets for EarthScope, a major research initiative proposed by the NSF Earth Sciences Division to examine the structure and tectonics of North America in unprecedented detail. The facility component of EarthScope includes four elements: San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD), USArray, Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO), and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR). These elements provide highly complementary tools to address a wide variety of fundamental problems concerning continental evolution and dynamics.

A "Kick-off Meeting" of the Southern California HAZUS User Group (SoCalHUG) will be held Thursday, April 26th, in downtown Los Angeles. The FEMA Hazards U.S. (HAZUS) loss estimation methodology is a software program that is used to estimate losses from potential earthquakes. Some of the objectives of SoCalHUG are to: NETWORK risk managers, GIS professionals and earthquake experts; TRAIN GIS professionals in using HAZUS; and IMPROVE earthquake modeling capabilities and databases. The Kickoff Meeting will begin this process.

A new educational video, Earthquakes: Seismic Sleuths, will air on the Discovery Channel's Assignment Discovery on April 4, May 9, and June 13 (9 am et/pt, check local listings). The video serves as a supplement to the Seismic Sleuths curriculum package for grades 7-12, and 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.

Undergraduate students working with SCEC scientists this summer who meet certain requirements may participate in the SCEC Summer Undergraduate Internship Program. Most of the summer is spent at the mentor's institution or the project field site, except for a few internship activities that are coordinated by SCEC. Student stipends are funded by the research mentors through existing grants or supplemental grants through the NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program.

A new book for the general public, Living with Earthquakes in California - A Survivor's Guide, by Robert S. Yeats has just been published by the Oregon State University Press, with partial support from the Outreach Program at SCEC. Yeats describes California's violent geologic past and recounts the state's revolutionary efforts to grapple with the earthquake threat. An essential guide for anyone interested in understanding earthquake science or in preparing for the next major tremor, Living with Earthquakes is also a call to action. Earthquakes cannot be prevented, but the California experience provides a model for how society can learn to live with earthquakes - and survive them.

At the SSA 2001 Annual Meeting, Ross Stein (USGS) and Shinji Toda (ERI, University of Tokyo) will teach the use of Coulomb 1.5, which performs 3D elastic dislocation and 2D boundary element calculations in a halfspace. Coulomb users input fault geometry and slip, focal mechanism files, or volcanic source parameters, and the application calculates displacements, strains, and Coulomb stress changes at any depth on any surface.

Under the NSF funded Learning From Earthquakes program, the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) has announced technical briefings for the Bhuj Earthquake (India) of January 26, 2001, and the Nisqually Earthquake (Washington) of February 28, 2001. The briefings will be held April 3rd (San Francisco, CA), April 4th (Pasadena, CA), and April 26th (Washington, D.C.).

The Western States Seismic Policy Council will hold its Annual Conference October 21-24, 2001, in Sacramento, California. The theme of this year's conference is Risk Communication as a Means of Creating Greater Public Awareness and Action. Topics discussed will be risk communication with elected officials,coming to consensus on seismic hazards and risk, communicating across disciplines, communicating with the media, and legal ramifications of risk communication...

This one-day short course has been designed to provide greater understanding of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) and its applications. The course provides in-depth discussion of this specialized topic, in clear terms, with an emphasis on both fundamental and more advanced concepts. This course is jointly sponsored by the Association of Engineering Geologists (AEG), Southern California Section, and the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC)...

The most common information available immediately following an earthquake is the location and magnitude. However, what we really want to know is where the shaking was felt, and in the case of emergency response, where it shook the most. As part of the USGS Pasadena Public Lecture series at Caltech, on March 15th David Wald will describe two new systems that can answer these questions within minutes following an earthquake...

When large earthquakes happen in other areas of the world, SCEC is often asked questions such as, "What would the damage have been if it had happened in southern California?" or, "Why was there so much damage (in the other area) even though the magnitude of the earthquake was not that large?" After the recent earthquake in Washington state, SCEC was asked an unusual question: "Why was the damage in the Washington so much less than the damage caused by the 1994 Northridge earthquake, when their magnitudes were so similar-- 6.8 vs. 6.7?" This article presents a comparison of the geological aspects of the two earthquakes, which account for most of the differences in resulting damage.

The Applied Technology Council (ATC) has announced the 2nd ATC-35 Workshop on National Earthquake Ground-Motion Mapping, to be held May 10-11, 2001. This Workshop will provide an examination of key scientific and design-related issues that affect the preparation of national ground-motion maps by the USGS and their possible modification and usage in recommended seismic design provisions and codes...

The Consortium of Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering (CUREE) has announced that six new university members have been admitted into membership (see article for the list). The process of admitting universities with strong educational and research programs in the engineering aspects of earthquakes from around the country fulfills the strategic plan of the organization.

Results of research by SCEC Scientists at UCLA and Kansas State University, published in Science, explain why the City of Santa Monica experienced anomalously concentrated damage during the Northridge earthquake. Seismic records from aftershocks suggest that the damage resulted from the focusing of seismic waves by several underground acoustic lenses at depths of about 3 kilometers, formed by the faults that bound the northwestern edge of the Los Angeles basin. Links to the study, selected images, and media coverage (including a recording of a radio interview) are provided...

SCEC CEO staff member Robert de Groot assisted with an earthquake education field trip at the California Science Center on January 18th. Students first visited The Earthquake Experience, a human size shake table with a video presentation. After being "shaken up" the students fanned out to learn about liquefaction, plate tectonics, the response of buildings to earthquakes and how to construct an earthquake survival kit...

The announcement of research that located "hotspots" of ground-motion amplification in the Los Angeles area turned the Davidson Executive Conference Center at USC into a kind of "media hotspot" on Tuesday, January 16, as reporters from over 30 different news organizations converged to hear what SCEC scientists had to say. The SCEC "Phase III" Report has quantified how local geologic conditions, known as "site effects," contribute to the shaking experienced in an earthquake...

The most intense shaking experienced during earthquakes generally occurs near the rupturing fault, and decreases with distance away from the fault. In a single earthquake, however, the shaking at one site can easily be 10 times stronger than at another site, even when their distance from the ruptured fault is the same...