Compared to what we know about earthquake hazards in California, less is known in the Central US. The main reason for this difference is the relatively few numbers of large earthquakes in the Central US compared to California. The more frequent occurrence of small and larger earthquakes in California gives scientists data that can be used to infer the effects of historical earthquakes in the region and estimate the effects of future large earthquakes. A lack of large earthquakes in the Central US means a lack of data on stronger ground motions from big earthquakes. When there is little observational data, scientists use models to generate estimated data. A model for estimating the effects of an earthquake includes an earthquake source and the earth through which the seismic waves travel. A research paper on this modeling effort (4.7MB PDF) was published in the August 2015 issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.
Central U.S. Seismic Velocity Model
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