The Berkeley Seismological Laboratory conducts essential research on earthquakes and solid earth processes while collecting and delivering high quality geophysical data.
We provide robust and real-time earthquake and hazard information on Northern California earthquakes, in collaboration with our partners.
We enable the broad consumption of earthquake information by the general public while educating and training students at all levels.
Barbara Romanowicz awarded the Bowie Medal
AGU’s highest honor, the Bowie medal for "outstanding contributions for fundamental geophysics and for unselfish cooperation in research", is being awarded to Barbara Romanowicz. The medal will be presented at the 2019 fall AGU meeting in San Francisco.
Today in Earthquake History: Hebgen Lake, 1959
Very often it is not a single instant but a chain of events which turn a rare natural occurrence into a devastating natural disaster. One of the prime examples of how much havoc a sequence of events can cause took place sixty years ago today in the area around Hebgen Lake near Yellowstone National Park in southwestern Montana...
It Worked ... and It Did Not!
The magnitude 7.1 quake under the Mojave Desert on Independence Day weekend was the first test of the West Coast wide earthquake early warning system in a really strong shaker – and this system dubbed Shake-Alert performed very well...
Not All is Quiet at the Eastern Front
California is full of famous earthquake faults. Almost everybody in the state has heard of the San Andreas Fault. Northern Californians fear the possible rupture of the Hayward Fault, Angelinos are aware of the Newport-Inglewood Fault and in the far northern reaches of California the major fault line lies offshore marking the subduction zone of the Juan de Fuca and Gorda Plates under North America. To be exact, there are a total of 15,700 known faults in our state. But the strong quakes which rocked the northwestern Mojave Desert around the town of Ridgecrest in the few days following July 4th, 2019, happened on a fault zone almost nobody has ever heard of...
HayWired Earthquake Scenario Wins Award
The HayWired Earthquake Scenario was just recognized with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's Bay Area Metro Award. We are proud of BSL scientists' contribution toward this effort!
Rumbles on the Red Planet
Mars, the Red Planet, is alive. No, we are not talking about a sudden success in the elusive search for "Life on Mars". We are talking about the living interior of our immediate neighbor in the solar system...
BSL researchers track Earth's hum after Pacific storms
Former BSL postdoc Dr. Satish Maurya as well as BSL's Prof. Barbara Romanowicz and Dr. Taka'aki Taira used Berkeley Digital Seismic Network sites, including ocean-bottom station MOBB, to track the earth's hum after Pacific storms. Read more at EOS...
