Documentation for 2003 USGS Seismic Hazard Maps for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands

Mueller, C.S.; Frankel, Arthur; Petersen, Mark D.; Leyendecker, E. V.

doi:10.3133/ofr03379

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This seismic zone is excluded from our analysis since the rates of activity in this zone are poorly known [17] and it seems that based on the knowledge of the seismic history, the motion along the Muertos Trough appears to be a small fraction that of the Puerto Rico Trench [14]. The authors confirm this suggestion based on the slow slip rate in this boundary form historical literature consulted to compile the catalogue.…”

Section: Zone 6-8: Puerto Rico and Virgin Islandssupporting

confidence: 61%

“…This seismogenic source has produced earthquakes of magnitude 7.5 and 7.3 (M w ) in the Anegada and Mona Passage in 1867 and 1918, respectively, yielding normal faulting in a broad zone of active crustal extension and accompanied by destructive tsunamis [17]. The absence of volcanism in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands suggests that this zone is not an extension of the island-arc Lesser Antilles structure [18].…”

Section: Zone 6-8: Puerto Rico and Virgin Islandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment for Bridgetown-Barbados, Employing Subduction Interface Characteristic Earthquakes

Salazar¹,

Brown²,

Mannette³

2013

JCEA

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:A new probabilistic seismic hazard analysis was performed for the city of Bridgetown, Barbados, West Indies. Hazard computations have been performed using the standard Cornell-McGuire approach based on the definition of appropriate seismogenic sources and expected maximum magnitudes, the authors take into consideration the possibility of large subduction interface earthquakes of magnitude 8.0-9.0 beneath the Barbados accretionary prism via application of a characteristic model and slip rates. The analysis has been conducted using a standard logic-tree approach. Uniform hazard spectra have been calculated for the 5% of critical damping and the horizontal component of ground motion for rock site conditions setting 5 return periods (95, 475, 975,2,475 and 4,975 years) and spectral accelerations for 34 structural periods ranging from 0 to 3 s. The disaggregation results suggest that the magnitude-distance pair that dominates the hazard yields M 7.4 and 8.6 and a distance of 42.5 km in the Interface Subduction Zone beneath Barbados for the 475 and 975 years RP (return period), respectively. An event with an M 8.0 at a distance of 107.5 km in the Intraplate Subduction Zone is the second scenario that dominates the hazard for both 475 and 975 years RP.

show abstract

Section: Zone 6-8: Puerto Rico and Virgin Islandssupporting

confidence: 61%

Section: Zone 6-8: Puerto Rico and Virgin Islandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment for Bridgetown-Barbados, Employing Subduction Interface Characteristic Earthquakes

Salazar¹,

Brown²,

Mannette³

2013

JCEA

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Along the Japan Trench, for example, normal faulting produced strong shaking and a disastrous tsunami in 1933 (Kanamori, 1971;Usami, 2003). In the northeast Caribbean, the outer rise was neglected as a regional earthquake source (Mueller et al, 2003) but modeled as a potential source of Puerto Rican tsunamis (Mercado Irizarry and Justiniano Sepulveda, 2003). However, like the subduction thrust along the Lesser Antilles, the outer rise along the Puerto Rico Trench is not known to have generated a regional tsunami in written history that begins with Columbus in 1492.…”

Section: Hypothetical Hazards From the Puerto Rico Trenchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extreme waves in the British Virgin Islands during the last centuries before 1500 CE

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Extraordinary marine inundation scattered clasts southward on the island of Anegada, 120 km south of the Puerto Rico Trench, sometime between 1200 and 1480 calibrated years (cal yr) CE. Many of these clasts were likely derived from a fringing reef and from the sandy flat that separates the reef from the island's north shore. The scattered clasts include no fewer than 200 coral boulders, mapped herein for the first time and mainly found hundreds of meters inland. Many of these are complete colonies of the brain coral Diploria strigosa. Other coral species represented include Orbicella (formerly Montastraea) annu laris, Porites astreoides, and Acropora palmata. Associated bioclastic carbonate sand locally contains articulated cobble-size valves of the lucine Codakia orbicularis and entire conch shells of Strombus gigas, mollusks that still inhabit the sandy shallows between the island's north shore and a fringing reef beyond. Imbricated limestone slabs are clustered near some of the coral boulders. In addition, fields of scattered limestone boulders and cobbles near sea level extend mainly southward from limestone sources as much as 1 km inland. Radiocarbon ages have been obtained from 27 coral clasts, 8 lucine valves, and 3 conch shells. All these additional ages predate 1500 cal yr CE, all but 2 are in the range 1000-1500 cal yr CE, and 16 of 22 brain coral ages cluster in the range 1200-1480 cal yr CE. The event marked by these coral and mollusk clasts likely occurred in the last centuries before Columbus (before 1492 CE). The pre-Columbian deposits surpass Anegada's previously reported evidence for extreme waves in post-Columbian time. The coarsest of the modern storm deposits consist of coral rubble that lines the north shore and sandy fans on the south shore; neither of these storm deposits extends more than 50 m inland. More extensive overwash, perhaps by the 1755 Lisbon tsunami, is marked primarily by a sheet of sand and shells found mainly below sea level beneath the floors of modern salt ponds. This sheet extends more than 1 km southward from the north shore and dates to the interval 1650-1800 cal yr CE. Unlike the pre-Columbian deposits, it lacks coarse clasts from the reef or reef flat; its shell assemblage is instead dominated by cerithid gastropods that were merely stirred up from a marine pond in the island's interior. In their inland extent and clustered pre-Columbian ages, the coral clasts and associated deposits suggest extreme waves unrivaled in recent millennia at Anegada. Bioclastic sand coats limestone 4 m above sea level in areas 0.7 and 1.3 km from the north shore. A coral boulder of nearly 1 m 3 is 3 km from the north shore by way of an unvegetated path near sea level. As currently understood, the extreme flooding evidenced by these and other clasts represents either an extraordinary storm or a tsunami of nearby origin. The storm would need to have produced tsunami-like bores similar to those of 2013 Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. Normal faults and a thrust fault provide nearby tsunami ...

show abstract

“…For the present research, all the Fortran routines have been grouped together eliminating the C routine and introducing attenuation relations suitable for the study region. In recent years, this approach was used to compute the seismic hazard maps of Slovenia [Lapajne et al, 1997[Lapajne et al, , 2003, Alaska [Wesson et al, 1999], Hawaii [Klein et al, 2001], Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands [Mueller et al, 2003], and some parts of Italy [Akinci et al, 2004].…”

Section: The Spatially Smoothed Seismicity Approach For Pshamentioning

confidence: 99%

Seismic Hazard Map for Cuba and Adjacent Areas Using the Spatially Smoothed Seismicity Approach

García

Slejko

Rebez

et al. 2008

Journal of Earthquake Engineering

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The seismic hazard assessment for Cuba and the surrounding regions has been performed according to the spatially smoothed seismicity approach. The major motivation for using this methodology is to avoid drawing seismic sources in a region where the seismogenic structures are not well known. We have defined two different seismicity models and three zonation models, based on the evidence of seismotectonic heterogeneity of the broader Cuban region, and two attenuation models for rock and three for soil. The resulting hazard estimates have been treated with a logic tree approach. The highest hazard was obtained around Santiago de Cuba with a PGA larger than 0.28 g on rock and 0.40 g on soil, for a 475-year return period. When the epistemic uncertainties of the different models considered are taken into account, these ground motion values exceed 0.40 g on rock and 0.60 g on soil. A comparison between these new hazard estimates and those computed according to the standard approach of the seismotectonic probabilism indicates the areas where the spatial distribution of the seismicity supports the seismogenic zonation and the areas where a disagreement exists.

show abstract

Documentation for 2003 USGS Seismic Hazard Maps for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands

Cited by 11 publications

References 30 publications

Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment for Bridgetown-Barbados, Employing Subduction Interface Characteristic Earthquakes

Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment for Bridgetown-Barbados, Employing Subduction Interface Characteristic Earthquakes

Extreme waves in the British Virgin Islands during the last centuries before 1500 CE

Seismic Hazard Map for Cuba and Adjacent Areas Using the Spatially Smoothed Seismicity Approach

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About