2026 Venezuela Earthquakes: Insights from Satellite Optical Geodesy
|
Dr. Cassie Hanagan, a Mendenhall postdoctoral researcher at the USGS Earthquake Science Center in Golden, Colorado kicks off our Fall NSF NGF Webinar Series on Thursday, August 27th at 12 - 1pm MT via Zoom.
On June 24th, 2026 magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes struck northern Venezuela along the right-lateral Boconó and San Sebastián faults. Intense shaking and damage >200 km to the east of the epicentral region and preliminary subsurface slip models indicate 70% of the ~215-km-long rupture went offshore, complicating initial estimates of fault slip at the surface. In this talk, Dr. Hanagan will present observations of deformation from the earthquakes at the few locations where the fault crosses onshore. Distributed fault displacements with minimal surface rupture suggest a spectrum of recoverable elastic and permanent inelastic processes that emphasize the importance of characterizing near-surface fault strain and material properties to understand fault displacement hazard.
|
|
|
|
Eshanta is one of our 2026 career interns on the Cloud OnRamp team, supporting NSF NGF’s cloud-based geophysical research initiative.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nathan, a RESESS intern, and Nicolas, a Geo-Launchpad intern, are both completing their internships at New Mexico Tech this summer. Nathan is using ambient noise tomography to image Earth’s crust in southeastern New Mexico, while Nicolas is studying critical minerals at the Steeple Rock Mining District in New Mexico.
|
|
|
|
Rachelle is a Geo-Launchpad intern this summer, working at the USGS on calculations, maps, and 3D models to be considered in the 2029 iteration of the National Seismic Hazard Model.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Alana and Nikodemos (“Nik”) are two of our 2026 Geo-Launchpad Interns. This summer, they are working on computer modeling of burial sites using Ground Penetrating Radar at the Kansas Geological Survey in Lawrence, Kansas.
|
|
|
|
Fossil Farallon fragment's bounding faults could pose seismic hazard to area already at risk
|
Is the Pioneer Fragment really stuck to the Pacific plate beneath a part of North America that’s extremely seismically active?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Southern California's earthquake gate
|
Using geodesy and the paleoseismology record, researchers investigate how the Cajon Pass in SoCal could influence the next big earthquake.
|
|
|
|
Data Services Announcements
|
|
|
|
|
