On September 8-9, 2008, the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission co-sponsored a workshop on Mmax east of the Rocky Mountains. Mmax is the magnitude of the largest earthquake that is thought to be possible within a specified geographic area. Mmax is an important variable in seismic-hazard computations.
The minutes of the workshop are now available online as a 308-page USGS Open-File Report titled “Sizes of the Largest Possible Earthquakes in the Central and Eastern United States—Summary of a Workshop, September 8–9, 2008, Golden, Colorado”. To download the report, please go to http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2009/1263/. The first half of the report is text and the second half is the PowerPoint slides of the 15 invited speakers. A 30 MB PDF file contains both the text and the slides. In addition, a directory contains each speaker’s slides as an individual downloadable PowerPoint file.
Before the workshop, a foundation document went to the invitees to provide a common basis for discussions. That document is the 44-page Open-File Report “Methods of Mmax Estimation East of the Rocky Mountains”. It’s available at http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2009/1018/.
