This article was accepted into the corpus but its outbound wikilinks were never NER-processed — typical at the deepest BFS hop or when the run's entity cap was reached. No expansion funnel to show.
| USGS Quaternary Fault and Fold Database | |
|---|---|
| Name | USGS Quaternary Fault and Fold Database |
| Type | Database |
| Established | 2006 |
| Operator | United States Geological Survey |
| Country | United States |
USGS Quaternary Fault and Fold Database The USGS Quaternary Fault and Fold Database is a curated catalogue of late Cenozoic tectonic features maintained by the United States Geological Survey, the National Earthquake Information Center, and related agencies to document active faults and folds across the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii. It supports hazard assessment for agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the California Geological Survey, and the Nevada Seismological Laboratory, and informs seismic studies by researchers affiliated with institutions like the California Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California system.
The database compiles geologic and geomorphic evidence for Quaternary faulting and folding to aid seismic hazard characterization for regulators and planners including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Southern California Earthquake Center, and the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. It synthesizes field maps, paleoseismic trenching results, geomorphology from the United States Geological Survey, and geochronology reported by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the University of Hawaii, and Colorado School of Mines. Users include state offices such as the California Office of Emergency Services, regional planners in the New York State Geological Survey, and academic groups at Oregon State University.
Records in the database are organized by fault or fold name, geographic coordinates, strike and dip data, slip rate estimates, recurrence intervals, and activity classifications used by agencies like the International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth’s Interior. Each entry cross-references published studies from journals such as Science, Geology, and the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, and cites datasets from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the United States Department of Agriculture. The spatial layer schema aligns with standards used by the National Geologic Map Database and is interoperable with tools from Esri, the Open Geospatial Consortium, and the U.S. National Map.
Primary methods include field mapping, paleoseismic trenching coordinated with researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of Nevada, paleobotanical and radiocarbon dating from laboratories at Columbia University and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and geodetic constraints from campaigns by the Plate Boundary Observatory, the Global Positioning System, and InSAR studies performed with instruments on NASA missions. Compilation follows protocols influenced by standards from the American Geophysical Union and methodological frameworks used in projects led by the United States Geological Survey and the Geological Society of America. Peer review contributions come from collaborators at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earthquake Hazards Program, the British Geological Survey, and independent experts from institutions such as Stanford University.
Planners and engineers use the database to inform seismic hazard maps used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, building-code officials in the International Code Council, and infrastructure owners including Amtrak and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Scientists apply the data in earthquake rupture modeling with software developed at SCEC, tsunami inundation studies involving the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program, and probabilistic seismic hazard analysis used in nuclear power plant assessments overseen by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It also supports forensic geology in litigation, fault-zone geothermal exploration involving the Department of Energy, and interdisciplinary studies with researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Texas.
Entries reflect uncertainties inherent in paleoseismic interpretation, radiometric dating, and slip-rate extrapolation, and may lag behind discoveries reported at meetings such as the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting or publications in Nature, Science, and Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Coverage is denser in regions spotlighted by the Southern California Earthquake Center, the Cascadia subduction zone studies by the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, and the central United States seismicity research at the New Madrid Seismic Zone, while remote areas like parts of Alaska and offshore settings mapped by the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration remain less complete. Users relying on the database alongside datasets from the National Seismic Hazard Model and regional catalogs from state geological surveys should account for classification biases and reporting delays.
Initiated in the early 2000s with pilot efforts by the United States Geological Survey and partners including the California Geological Survey and academic collaborators at universities such as University of California, Santa Barbara and University of Colorado, the database consolidated disparate fault maps and trenching reports into a standardized digital repository by 2006. Subsequent updates incorporated contributions from the Southern California Earthquake Center, the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, and international exchanges with the Geological Survey of Canada and Geoscience Australia, with methodological refinements influenced by workshops hosted by the National Academies and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.
The database is disseminated through the United States Geological Survey data portal and integrated with mapping platforms used by Esri, the U.S. National Map, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and it is consumable as GIS shapefiles, GeoJSON, and metadata records following ISO standards used by the Library of Congress. Users obtain summary reports, downloadable fault layers, and bibliographic compilations often cited alongside datasets from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (for interdisciplinary studies), and state geological surveys from California, Nevada, and Alaska.