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.

How Earthquakes Break the Speed Limit

One of the reasons earthquakes are so dangerous is that they are fast, really fast. Consider seismic waves: Even the slowest common wave type, the Rayleigh waves, circles the globe with speeds of more than 7,000 miles per hour...

The geodetic signature of slow slip events in the roots of the San Andreas Fault Parkfield segment

In a recent study, BSL researchers Baptiste Rousset and Roland Bü&rgmann and a colleague from the Université Grenoble Alpes in France jointly analyzed GPS time series and tremor catalogs around Parkfield, CA to search for slow slip event signals at the base of the seismogenic zone...

Barbara Romanowicz Awarded Emil Wiechert Medal

Professor Barbara Romanowicz is being recognized with the Emil Wiechert Medal from the German Geophysical Society (Deutsche Geophysikalische Gesellschaft, or DGG) for outstanding contributions to the field of geophysics.

Seismo Blog: How Storms Shake The Ground

The system of winter storms which is currently pummeling much of the West Coast of the United States is not merely a weather nuisance. Aside from causing extensive flooding, land- and mudslides, and hampering the traffic flow on highways, these storms are also of concern to us seismologists...

Taka'aki Taira Wins JSPS Bridge Award

The 2018 Bridge Award, from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), recognizes researchers from Japan working at US institutions who are actively promoting internationalization within the broader research community and also mentoring the next generation of Japanese researchers.

A Quake Inside a Diving Plate

The magnitude 7 earthquake which shook large parts of Alaska last Friday morning (Nov 30, 2018) caused extensive damage in and around Anchorage, with more than 300,000 inhabitants, the largest city our northernmost State. Roads crumbled, wide cracks appeared in bridges and overpasses, and the Alaska Railroad line between Anchorage and Fairbanks has been closed since the quake due to significant damage to the tracks...

Ten Years of the ‘Seismo Blog’

"In search of another way to communicate earthquake science to the public, we began an experiment at the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory (BSL) ten years ago this fall. We wanted to offer seismological information in bite‐sized pieces, tell small stories about the restless Earth and its temblors and do this over and over again. In short, we created a blog about seismology and earthquakes. Following a decade of publication and more than 160 blog posts, it is time to report about our experience with the ‘Seismo Blog.’..." (Link for those with SRL access)

A Deadly Quake and a Tsunami Mystery

The strong earthquake, which struck the Indonesian island of Sulawesi just a few miles south of the equator on Friday evening (local time) was remarkable in many ways...

Infragravity Wave Radiation Across the Shelf Break

Berkeley Seismo Lab seismologists Barbara Romanowicz and Taka'aki Taira used Cascadia Array data to model the origin and radiation of infragravity waves in a JGR Oceans paper collaborating with partners in industry. More...