The Evaluating Las Vegas’s Internal Seismic structure (ELVIS) experiment
Heather A. Ford, Joseph Byrnes, Delton A. Samuel, Beth Shallon, Ashley Stroup, Binayak Parida, Groniston Dorome, Evan O. Marschall, Jennifer Garcia, Nicolas C. Barth, Jose Murillo, Ashley Luna, Long Ho, Rufus D. Catchings, Donna Shillington, James Gaherty, Ryan C. Porter, & Luke FrazeurSubmitted August 30, 2026, SCEC Contribution #15485, 2026 SCEC Annual Meeting Poster #TBD
The Las Vegas Valley is a densely populated region located within the Central Basin and Range, bounded by mountain ranges and underlain by a basin thought to extend to depths of up to 5 km. At one time it was thought that the present-day Las Vegas Valley experienced only a small amount of diffuse deformation however more recent geodetic work suggests that rates of crustal deformation within the valley are greater than previously estimated, accommodating 0.59 ± 0.12 mm/yr of extension. While it is acknowledged that Las Vegas is at risk for a damaging earthquake, seismic imaging and seismic source studies of the region are limited. Faults thought to be primarily responsible for accommodating slip include the Eglington and Frenchman Mountain faults, although considerable controversy exists around slip rate on the Eglington Fault. Likewise, significant uncertainties exist as to the structure and associated predictions of ground motion across the basin.
The Evaluating Las Vegas’s Internal Seismic structure (ELVIS) experiment consisted of three interrelated seismic deployments designed to assess seismic hazard within and around the Las Vegas Basin. The experiment combined a seven-month long deployment of 16 broadband seismometers surrounding Las Vegas Valley, a temporally overlapping month-long, dense deployment of 91 three-component nodal seismometers within the valley and a separate month-long, dense deployment of 50 three-component nodal seismometers targeting the California Wash Fault, which is situated north of Las Vegas Valley and identified as a priority fault by the USGS. The primary goal of the proposed project is to improve characterization of seismic hazard within the densely populated Las Vegas Valley through the generation of an improved earthquake catalog generated using machine-learning-based detection and denoising methods and an improved shear velocity model of the region determined through the use of ambient noise.
Citation
Ford, H. A., Byrnes, J., Samuel, D. A., Shallon, B., Stroup, A., Parida, B., Dorome, G., Marschall, E. O., Garcia, J., Barth, N. C., Murillo, J., Luna, A., Ho, L., Catchings, R. D., Shillington, D., Gaherty, J., Porter, R. C., & Frazeur, L. (2026, 08). The Evaluating Las Vegas’s Internal Seismic structure (ELVIS) experiment. Poster Presentation at 2026 SCEC Annual Meeting.
Related Projects & Working Groups
Seismology
