A University of Michigan-led team of geologists and engineers is mapping surface ruptures and some of the tens of thousands of landslides triggered by last month's magnitude-7.8 earthquake in New Zealand.
Northwestern University researchers now have an answer to a vexing age-old question: Why do earthquakes sometimes come in clusters? The research team has developed a new computer model and discovered that earthquake faults are smarter -- in the sense of having better memory -- than seismologists have long assumed.
University of Utah researchers will be among the approximately 24,000 scientists convening in San Francisco for the annual Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union Dec. 12-16. Below are summaries of select presentations at the meeting, along with the time and date of the presentation and primary contact information. All times are in Pacific Standard Time.
Columbia Engineering Prof Steve WaiChing Sun has won the Air Force’s Young Investigator Program Award to model load response of granular materials; he is leading a combined experiential-modeling effort to help understand the high-strain-rate responses of wetted granular materials to impact loadings released into the soil, such as blasts, explosion, munitions, subsurface exploration, ground improvement, and ballistic vulnerability of military structures.
Even before the opening kickoff of the Ohio State-Michigan football game, fans' celebrations had broken all previous records for seismic energy generated by the biggest plays of the 2016 season.
The Ohio State University doesn’t just make big plays—it measures exactly how big those plays are, and uses the data to teach students valuable lessons in science.
How do you make half the mass of two continents disappear? To answer that question, you first need to discover that it’s missing. That’s what a trio of University of Chicago geoscientists and their collaborator did, and their explanation for where the mass went significantly changes prevailing ideas about what can happen when continents collide.
Scientists have developed a method to estimate weakness in the Earth’s outer layers which will help explain and predict volcanic activity and earthquakes.
Nearly two years ago, on August 24, 2014, just south of Napa, California, a fault in the Earth suddenly slipped, violently shifting and splitting huge blocks of solid rock, 6 miles below the surface. The underground upheaval generated severe shaking at the surface, lasting 10 to 20 seconds. When the shaking subsided, the magnitude 6.0 earthquake -- the largest in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1989 -- left in its wake crumpled building facades, ruptured water mains, and fractured roadways.
Seismology geophysicist Steve Roecker is using a network of broadband seismometers to learn more about the complex overlap between tectonic plates that causes an 8.3 magnitude earthquake near Illapel, Chile in 2015.
Effective warnings are a growing need as expanding global populations confront a wide range of hazards, such as a hurricane, wildfire, toxic chemical spill or any other environmental hazard threatens safety.
A top engineer from the city of Los Angeles visited Cornell University this month as researchers tested a new earthquake-resilient pipeline designed to better protect southern California’s water utility network from natural disasters. The test mimicked a fault rupture that can occur during an earthquake when global plates begin to slip past each other, causing the ground to shift and deform.
The triggering of small, deep earthquakes along California’s San Andreas Fault reveals depth-dependent frictional behavior that may provide insight into patterns signaling when a major quake could be on the horizon, according to a paper released this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Every now and then in Earth's history, a pair of continents draws close enough to form one. There comes a time, however, when they must inevitably part ways.
A huge earthquake may be building beneath Bangladesh, the most densely populated nation on earth. Scientists say they have new evidence of increasing strain there, where two tectonic plates underlie the world's largest river delta. They estimate that at least 140 million people in the region could be affected if the boundary ruptures; the destruction could come not only from the direct results of shaking, but changes in the courses of great rivers, and in the level of land already perilously close to sea level.
An array of GPS instruments near the San Andreas Fault System in Southern California detects constant motion of Earth's crust--sometimes large, sudden motion during an earthquake and often subtle, creeping motion. By carefully analyzing the data recorded by the EarthScope Plate Boundary Observatory's GPS array researchers from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa (UHM), University of Washington and Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) discovered nearly 125 mile-wide "lobes" of uplift and subsidence--a few millimeters of motion each year--straddling the fault system. This large scale motion was previously predicted in models but until now had not been documented.
MISSOULA, Montana - A University of Montana researcher is part of a team whose research is breaking ground on the complexity of earthquakes and the possibility to forecast them. The journal Nature Geoscience features their research online at http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2734.html.
Scientists at the Australian National University have developed the Time Reverse Imaging Method to take real-time data from the ocean sensors and use that information to recreate what the tsunami looked like when it was born. Once scientists have the tsunami source pinpointed, they can use it to make better predictions about what will happen once the waves reach shore. This new method is fast enough to compete with existing algorithms but much more accurate.
New geologic mapping in the Himalayan mountains of Kashmir between Pakistan and India suggests that the region is ripe for a major earthquake that could endanger the lives of as many as a million people.
Researchers have uncovered key features of the dynamics of a form of jerky motion responsible for phenomena as diverse as squeaks and squeals in door hinges and automotive brakes, joint wear in the human body and the sudden shifting of tectonic plates leading to earthquakes.
A team of researchers led by University of Utah civil and environmental engineering professor Chris Pantelides has developed a new process of fixing damaged bridge columns that takes as little as a few days.
Repair of damaged bridge columns following an earthquake is a good alternative to replacement. New repair method shows benefits include cost savings, reduction in construction time, and decreased interruption of emergency services.
With the monsoon fast approaching, the landslide risk in Nepal remains high a year after a magnitude-7.8 earthquake that killed more than 8,000 people, according to a University of Michigan-led research team.
University of Auckland researchers test frame components from a 20-story building damaged during the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes to help engineers improve earthquake design and assessment guidelines
A spate of major earthquakes on small faults could overturn traditional views about how earthquakes start, according to a study from researchers at the Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior in Ensenada, Mexico, and the University of California, Davis.
In Japan and areas like the Pacific Northwest where megathrust earthquakes are common, scientists may be able to better forecast large quakes based on periodic increases and decreases in the rate of slow, quiet slipping along the fault.
Researchers from the University of Southampton are using mobile phone data to monitor the movement of people affected by the earthquake in Nepal and help with the continuing relief effort in the country.
The likelihood of an area experiencing a potentially devastating landslide could be influenced by its previous exposure to earthquakes many decades earlier.
After scientists led by NASA publish a study in the journal Earth and Space Science, the U.S. Geological Survey issues statement that raises doubts on the studies earthquake forecasts for the greater Los Angeles area.
Amrit Kandel and Biraj Pokharel, natives of Nepal now living in Omaha, Neb., are raising money to rebuild a school devastated by last spring's earthquakes and honor six Marines killed while on a humanitarian mission in Nepal.
Stacked in gravity-defying arrangements in the western San Bernardino Mountains, near the San Andreas Fault, granite boulders that should have been toppled by earthquakes long ago resolutely remain. In exploring why these rocks still stand, researchers have uncovered connections between Southern California’s San Jacinto and San Andreas faults that could change how the region plans for future earthquakes.
New research led by the University of Adelaide hopes to close the debate on whether a major mud volcano disaster in Indonesia was triggered by an earthquake or had man-made origins.