olboyd | Southern California Earthquake Center

About Me Publications

Oliver Boyd is a Research Geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey studying multiple issues relevant to seismic hazards. He began with the National Seismic Hazards Modeling Project in Golden, CO in 2004 studying time-dependent seismic hazard in Alaska and producing a seismic hazard analysis of Afghanistan, the latter being done in conjunction with other U.S. Agency for International Development’s reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. He moved to the USGS office in Memphis, TN in 2007, collocated with the University of Memphis Center for Earthquake Research and Information, to focus on earthquake hazards in the central and eastern United States (CEUS) and returned to Golden in 2013 to work on issues related to earthquake hazards across the conterminous United States, specifically those related to earthquake ground motions as part of the Ground Motion Project.

Much of Oliver’s past research has centered on several aspects of earthquake hazards including time-dependent earthquake probabilities, earthquake magnitude, and earthquake stress drop. He helped revise CEUS source models for the 2008 and 2014 updates of the National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM) and helped to incorporate basin models in the western United States for the 2018 update of the NSHM. More recently, he has been helping to construct a geology-based National Crustal Model for earthquake hazard studies.

Prior to joining the Survey, Oliver studied Geology at the University of Colorado at Boulder and worked for Geo-Insight in Denver, Colorado and Western Geophysical in Houston, Texas, and on seismic crews in the deserts of Algeria and Egypt. He returned to academics and obtained his Ph.D. in Geophysics from the University of Colorado at Boulder. His graduate research included laboratory experiments of seismic wave attenuation in artificial glass cracks and glass bead cylinders, tomographic modeling of seismic wave attenuation and velocity beneath the western United States, and receiver function studies in New Zealand.

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SCEC Mentor (2008)

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Ahdi, S. K., Aagaard, B. T., Moschetti, M. P., Boyd, O. S., Parker, G. A., & Stephenson, W. J. (2023, 09). Empirical Assessment of Site and Basin Response in the Pacific Northwest via Testing Site-Response Models for Different Tectonic Regimes. Poster Presentation at 2023 SCEC Annual Meeting. SCEC Contribution 13238

Moschetti, M. P., Thompson, E. M., Peterson, R., Engler, D., Smith, J. A., Aagaard, B. T., & Boyd, O. S. (2023, 09). Development of a partially nonergodic ground-motion model for Fourier amplitude spectra for the San Francisco Bay Area, California . Poster Presentation at 2023 SCEC Annual Meeting. SCEC Contribution 13225

Zeng, Y., Petersen, M. D., & Boyd, O. S. (2023, 09). Lower Seismogenic Depth Model for Western U.S. Earthquakes. Poster Presentation at 2023 SCEC Annual Meeting. SCEC Contribution 13218

Boyd, O. S., Graves, R. W., & Hirakawa, E. T. (2023, 09). A California state-wide seismic velocity model extracted from the USGS National Crustal Model. Poster Presentation at 2023 SCEC Annual Meeting. SCEC Contribution 13178

Zeng, Y., Petersen, M. D., & Boyd, O. S. (2022, 09). Lower Seismogenic Depth Model of Western U.S. Earthquakes. Poster Presentation at 2022 SCEC Annual Meeting. SCEC Contribution 12553

Ahdi, S. K., Moschetti, M. P., Aagaard, B. T., Boyd, O. S., Parker, G. A., & Stephenson, W. J. (2022, 09). Assessment of Western U.S. Empirical Basin Response for the 2023 Update of the National Seismic Hazard Model . Poster Presentation at 2022 SCEC Annual Meeting. SCEC Contribution 12483

Boyd, O. S., Thompson, E. M., Shumway, A., Moschetti, M. P., Stephenson, W. J., & Rezaeian, S. (2017, 08). Basin ZX Maps for use in the USGS National Seismic Hazard Model for the Western United States. Poster Presentation at 2017 SCEC Annual Meeting. SCEC Contribution 7706

Petersen, M. D., Shumway, A. M., Powers, P. M., Field, E. H., Moschetti, M. P., Jaiswal, K. S., Milner, K. R., Rezaeian, S., Frankel, A., Llenos, A. L., Michael, A. J., Altekruse, J., Ahdi, S. K., Withers, K. B., Mueller, C. S., Zeng, Y., Chase, R., Salditch, L., Luco, N., Rukstales, K. S., Herrick, J. A., Girot, D. L., Aagaard, B. T., Bender, A. M., Blanpied, M. L., Briggs, R., Boyd, O. S., Clayton, B. S., DuRoss, C. B., Evans, E. L., Haeussler, P., Hatem, A., Haynie, K. L., Hearn, E. H., Johnson, K. M., Kortum, Z. A., Kwong, N. S., Makdisi, A. J., Mason, B., McNamara, D., McPhillips, D., Okubo, P., Page, M. T., Pollitz, F. F., Rubinstein, J. L., Shaw, B. E., Shen, Z., Shiro, B., Smith, J. A., Stephenson, W. J., Thompson, E. M., Thompson Jobe, J. A., Wirth, E., & Witter, R. C. (2023). The 2023 US 50-State National Seismic Hazard Model: Overview and implications. Earthquake Spectra,. doi: 10.1177/87552930231215428. SCEC Contribution 13391

Ramirez-Guzman, L., Graves, R. W., Olsen, K. B., Boyd, O. S., Cramer, C., Hartzell, S., Ni, S., Somerville, P. G., Williams, R., & Zhong, J. (2015). Ground‐Motion Simulations of 1811–1812 New Madrid Earthquakes, Central United States. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 105(4), 1961-1988. doi: 10.1785/0120140330. SCEC Contribution 6073

Last updated Apr 02, 2024.

Oliver S. Boyd

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