Earthquake History of the Green Duwamish Watershed

SUMMARY: Earthquakes are one of western Washington's most dangerous natural hazards. Earthquake hazard is estimated from what we know about the magnitude and recurrence intervals of past earthquakes. Sources of earthquakes include several bands of shallow crustal faults that cross the Puget Sound region. One of these bands, the Seattle Fault, is projected to cross downtown Seattle. A large earthquake about 1000 years ago is thought to have occurred along this fault, shaking the region, lifting the south side of the fault by several meters, triggering local landslides and a tsunami in Puget Sound. Have other earthquakes, on this fault or on others, shaken Seattle and the Duwamish Waterway since this last event? This talk describes the methods by which we might begin to answer this question, and presents some of the preliminary results.

BIO: Elizabeth Davis is a graduate student at the University of Washington’s Department of Earth and Space Sciences. Her current geology research, advised by Dr. Juliet Crider and Dr. Brian Atwater, consists of analyzing evidence for former earthquakes and through the Duwamish Waterway in Seattle. She came to Seattle after a B.S. in Environmental Science and Math from Indiana University and a stint working in public land restoration and organic farming.

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