Current Status and Future of Regional Seismic Network Monitoring in the Central and Eastern United States

Abstract

Abstract The central and eastern United States (CEUS) is an area of generally low-to-moderate seismic hazard with a number of large cities with high seismic risk, a history of occasional damaging earthquakes, and seismic activity induced by wastewater disposal. Seismic monitoring in the CEUS, which began at the beginning 1900s, has undergone many changes through time. Over the past two decades, broadband digital seismic stations connected by internet communications have become widespread. Modern data processing systems to automatically locate earthquakes and assign event magnitudes in near-real time have become the norm, and, since the inception of the Advanced National Seismic System in 2000, more than 10,000 earthquakes have been located and cataloged. Continuously recorded digital seismic data at 100 samples per second are allowing new avenues of research into earthquake source parameters, ground-motion excitation, and seismic wave propagation. Unfortunately, over the past two decades the number of regional seismic network (RSN) centers has diminished due to consolidations and terminations, as funding has tightened. Nevertheless, the public in different parts of the CEUS still looks to local experts for information when earthquakes take place or when they have questions about earthquakes and seismic hazard. The current RSNs must evolve to encompass the need for local seismic information centers and to serve the needs of present and future research into the causes and effects of CEUS earthquakes.