Download Earthquakes - DU Portfolio

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LIS4361 Pathfinders: Earthquakes
Carol A. Stahlberg
University of Denver
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What research project doesn’t involve Google? If you Google “earthquake” the first
result is from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) indicating recent earthquake
activity:
Recent earthquakes
Time
Magnitude
1 hour ago 6.1
16 hours
5.5
ago
Yesterday
6.5
earthquake.usgs.gov
This was as of 2:10 pm MST on
Location
Jujuy, Argentina
Lake Tanganyika region, Dem. Republic of the
Congo-Tanzania
Offshore Tarapaca, Chile
November 14, 2009.
Some definitions
Seismology-the branch of Geology that studies earthquakes
(http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=seismology)
Map
Map
Map
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Magnitude-the amount of energy released during an earthquake
(http://www.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/louie/class/100/magnitude.html)
A magnitude 6 earthquake has 10 times as much energy as a magnitude 5 earthquake
and 100 times as much energy as a magnitude 4
earthquake. http://www.okgeosurvey1.gov/magnitude_e.html
Richter Scale-how earthquakes are measured. Created by Charles Richter in 1934, the
scale calculates the largest seismic wave recorded from the earthquake.
(http://www.geo.mtu.edu/UPSeis/intensity.html)
Know your waves
P Wave: the primary and fastest wave, also known as compressional waves. These
waves can pass through rock and fluids
S Wave: secondary waves that can only move through rock.
Love Wave: this is a surface wave which moves the ground from side to side. This
wave is named after the mathematician A.E.H. Love.
Raleigh Wave: this wave “rolls” and moves the ground up and down.
http://www.geo.mtu.edu/UPSeis/waves.html
The United States Geological Survey is the authority when it comes to earthquake
related research. The website provides a wealth of information: maps, educational
materials, library resources, and hazards.
The USGS (www.usgs.gov) statement of purpose is: “Your source for science you can
use” and is “an unbiased, multi-disciplinary science organization that focuses on biology,
geography, geology, geospatial information, and water, we are dedicated to the timely,
relevant, and impartial study of the landscape, our natural resources, and the natural
hazards that threaten us.” They focus on biology, geography, geology, geospatial, and
water disciplines.
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The USGS has a interesting Photographic Library of earthquake aftermath:
http://libraryphoto.cr.usgs.gov/earth.htm. This photographic library is limited in scope,
based on the numerous devastating earthquakes that have occurred since photography
has been around. It appears as the project almost lost steam.
The USGS is a rich source of information. This
website http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/earthq1/ provides some useful educational materials
and great graphics.
Additionally, this site explains the types of faults, which occur when two pieces of the
earth’s crust move. A “normal” fault has properties of pulling or tension. A “thrust” or
“reverse” fault is the result of compression. A “strike-slip” fault is caused by two pieces
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of the crust moving horizontally past each other. The San Andreas Fault is a strike-slip
fault.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) was created in 1950, and currently has a budget
of just over $6 billion dollars. The NSF funds approximately 20% of the nation’s college
and university research projects, with a primary focus on computer science,
mathematics, and social sciences. By querying “earthquake” within the NSF website,
there are 13,000 results; querying “seismic” reduces the results to 5,860; querying “San
Andreas Fault” produced 1,960 results; querying “lithosphere” produced 799 results; and
querying “plate tectonics” produced 1,050 results. This website provides a wealth of
statistical information pertaining to numerous disciplines.
http://www.nsf.gov/
Higher Ed:
There are numerous terms, some familiar, some not so familiar, when it comes to
earthquake terminology. We are familiar with terms such as aftershocks, epicenter,
Richter Scale, and magnitude; but what about terms such as such as Love Waves,
Lithosphere, and Physiographic? This website, hosted by Montana Tech Campus in
Butte, Montana provides definitions to many terms we may not be familiar with in the
study of earthquakes.
http://mbmgquake.mtech.edu/glossary.html
Looking at earth, it is apparent that the various continents, especially South America and
Africa, resemble pieces of a puzzle. Alfred Wegener developed the theory of continental
drift back in 1912, which was not well received and for all intents and purposes,
dismissed. In 1929, Author Holmes expanded on one of Wegener’s theories, that there
was a thermal convection component underneath the earth’s surface which could lead to
continental drift. Holmes’ theories were too dismissed, until the 1960’s when it was
proven that the sea floor actually does spread as a result of convection.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/tectonics.html
Naturally, many institutions of higher education in California focus on the study of
earthquakes (seismology). The University of California, Berkeley provides extensive
earthquake related information: http://seismo.berkeley.edu/. The FAQ section provides
relevant glossary information pertaining to events associated with seismic activity
(volcanoes, tsunamis) http://seismo.berkeley.edu/faq/gloss_0.html. Another component
to this website is the parents guide, and children’s interpretation of seismic events.
The Centroid Moment Tensor database will allow you to input “constraints” (date,
magnitude, location). Centroid Moment Tensor is the details of the size and geometry
of the earthquake.
http://www.globalcmt.org/CMTsearch.html
The Colorado School of Mines has a Center for Wave Phenomena that studies seismic
exploration, monitoring, and wave propogation.
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http://www.cwp.mines.edu/
I’ve included the Colorado School of Mines website for graduate studies in geophysics as
it provides some interesting demographic statistics: 34% of program enrollees are
women and only 4% are minorities. Working in human resources, this information is
troubling, as these numbers are not representative of our population.
http://www.mines.edu/Geophysics_GS
This website is for the Museum of Science, Art, and Human Perception in San Francisco:
http://www.exploratorium.edu/. The “Faultline” webpage
(http://www.exploratorium.edu/faultline/index.html) covers the “Great Shakes,” “Quake
Basics,” “Damage Control,” and Active Zones. This is a fairly informative, non-technical
website that offers information in lay terms. The Northridge Earthquake of 1994
prompted retrofitting of California’s transit system, focusing primarily on bridge work.
IRIS stands for the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, which is
sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The Seismic Monitor reflects earthquake
activity in close to real time proximity. The red circles indicate activity for today
(11/15/09), the orange circles indicate activity for yesterday (11/14/09) the yellow
circles indicate activity for two weeks ago, and the pink circles represent activity during
the last five years.
http://www.iris.edu/hq/
Additionally, there is information about the PASSCAL (Program for Array of Seismic
Studies of the Continental Lithosphere) Experiments, which provides a Google Map of
past, current, and pending projects. Part of this project is the USArray project, which is
intended to place numerous portable seismographs throughout the United States. The
data from these seismographs will assist scientists in studying earthquakes and
volcanoes.
With the numerous web resources available, the University of California, Santa Barbara
provides information including famous accounts of earthquakes (by Mark Twain, Charles
Darwin, John Muir, and Jack London). Mark Twain experienced and documented his
earthquake experience in San Francisco in 1865: ‘the ground seemed to roll under me
like waves.” Another aspect of this site is the “history of seismology until 1910” in which
Aristotle’s explanation of earthquakes is described as winds beneath the surface of the
earth, which caused occasional shaking.
http://projects.crustal.ucsb.edu/understanding/
AIP is the American Institute for Physics, hosts the “scitation” website, which reestablished Online Journal Publishing Service, an online scientific and technological
publishing and journal hosting site. Earthquake Spectra (EQS) is one of the journals
published on scitation. EQS is part of the Professional Journal of Earthquake Engineering
Research Institute, which is a multi-disciplinary group dealing with mitigating earthquake
losses.
http://scitation.aip.org/EarthquakeSpectra/
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PEER stands for Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, which is sponsored by
the Berkeley. PEER is comprised of nine core institutions (from California and
Washington) and was founded by the National Science Foundation. PEER focuses on
performance based earthquake engineering which encompasses safety, cost, and post
earthquake utility, as well as conducting educational outreach.
http://peer.berkeley.edu/
PEER also has a library: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/, which includes many documents
and images pertaining to earthquakes. The library also contains links to the major
earthquake related websites: www.usgs.gov, www.nsf.gov and www.fema.gov.
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is renowned for its educational programming.
The Savage Earth provides easy to understand earthquake information, as well as
animated depictions fault and wave activities. The three waves described, Surface,
Primary, and Secondary also contain brief descriptions of wave attributes. PBS
sponsored programming provides complicated information in easy to understand
terminology.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/savageearth/earthquakes/index.html
California
Based on population density, California tends to receive the most attention when it
comes to earthquake activity. California’s Department of Conservation houses the
California Geological Survey (CSG).
http://www.consrv.ca.gov/CGS/geologic_hazards/earthquakes/Pages/09282004_field_ob
s.aspx
Roots in Earthquake Country” handbook. Other aspects of this website include the
state’s response to a miniseries “10.5” (aired in 2004) which depicted part of the state
falling into the ocean. There are many broken links in this website.
http://www.earthquakecountry.info/
This webpage provides information on earthquake hazards, structures and building
codes, as well as preparedness for Northern California. One of links included is “Late
Night Musings of an Earthquake Seismologist” which is an interesting perspective of the
seismologist’s experience in Palo Alto after the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989.
http://quake.usgs.gov/prepare/
The Southern California Earthquake Data Center is a comprehensive data base that
permits one to search preformatted queries on an Oracle database; provides general
earthquake information, and educational resources. The database queries are
structured so that one must know the network, station, and channel of their query. I’m
sure the database queries provide valuable information, once one has all the information
needed to conduct the query.
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http://www.data.scec.org/
This website is focused primarily on Southern California, but the information concerning
earthquake preparedness is universal. Included in this website is guide is “Putting Down
The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network website focuses on seismic activity in Oregon
and Washington and is sponsored by the University of Washington. The website
features an interactive tremor activity map, which there were 12 tremor (tremors
generally precede earthquakes) events on 11/14/2009.
http://www.pnsn.org/
Although skeptical about using Wikipedia, this webpage offers some interesting
information concerning the 1994 Northridge Earthquake”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Northridge_earthquake
California will not fall into the ocean, contrary to legend. The San Andreas Fault is a
strike-slip fault which does not result in
separation. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/faq/?faqID=19
Colorado Earthquake Activity
Colorado does enjoy some seismic activity, but not at the level that California and the
Pacific Northwest does:
http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2001/12dec/colo_quakes.cfm
Unless you were in Colorado in the 1960’s, you may not know that there was some
minor earthquake activity that was man made. In 1961, a 12,045 deep injection well
was drilled at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. This webpage provides some frightening
details as to the lack of knowledge of what the composition of waste that the Army was
pumping into the well. This practice ended in 1966 when it was theorized that pumping
waste into the well may be causing the earthquakes.
http://www.rma.army.mil/cleanup/facts/deep-wel.html
The state of Colorado is fortunate as it only experiences minor earthquake activity. The
first recorded earthquake was in Pueblo in 1870. This website details earthquake
activity in our state, and provides a better explanation as to what occurred with the
Rocky Mountain Arsenal. The strongest earthquake in the Denver (November 1967)
measured 5.2 on the Richter Scale.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/colorado/history.php
Asia
Japan witnesses its fair share of seismic activity. Earthquake activity is monitored by the
Japanese Meteorological Agency: http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/indexe.html
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China experienced a devastating earthquake back in May of 2008. More than 10,000
people lost their lives. The China Earthquake Network Center appears to provide some
valuable information, if one can read Chinese: http://www.ceic.ac.cn/
A Deadly side-effect: Tsunamis
In the last five years, we’ve witnessed two devastating tsunamis: the Somoan Tsunami
on September 29, 2009 and the Christmas day Tsunami in Southeast Asia. Tsunamis
are the result of earthquakes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s
(NOAA) Center for Tsunami Research continues to conduct research in forecasting and
warnings of tsunamis. DART (Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis) are
placed throughout the oceans and assist in tsunami forcasting.
http://nctr.pmel.noaa.gov/
This webpage demonstrates wave activity from the Samoan tsunami along the west
coast of the United States:
http://nctr.pmel.noaa.gov/samoa20090929/westcoast_comp_eventpage.pdf
This webpage provides some details of what scientists at the Tsunami Warning Center in
Hawaii did to notify countries outside of the Pacific region of potential tsunamis on
Christmas Day 2004. One minute after notifying Indonesia, the first wave hit the coast
of Indonesia.
http://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/magazine/tsunami_database/welcome.html
Additional Government Activity
Improving the Seismic Performance of Existing Buildings and Other Structures is the
theme of the Applied Technology Counsil and Structural Engineering Institute
conference this December in San Francisco. The focus in this inaugral conference is
continual improvement in building technologies as well as socio-economic issues.
http://www.atc-sei.org/index.html
Regional Consortia on earthquake
preparedness: http://www.fema.gov/plan/prevent/earthquake/state.shtm
The National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program (NEHRP) works to ensure building
structures and code will stand up to natural
hazards: http://www.nehrp.gov/pdf/SeismicWavesJune07.pdf
Given the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) role in domestic disaster
crisis management, their website provides some useful information for earthquake
preparedness.
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http://www.fema.gov/areyouready/earthquakes.shtm
Since FEMA was under intense scrutiny post Katrina, it will be interesting to witness how
the agency responds to the next natural disaster, which could very well be an
earthquake.
Citizen Corps, which sponsors this website, is FEMA’s grassroot project designed to bring
together government and citizens together in their emergency preparedness efforts.
This site provides some useful common sense tips for preparing your home (fastening
shelves to walls, storage of chemicals). Additionally, it provides information that 45
states that are at risk for earthquake activity.
http://www.ready.gov/america/beinformed/earthquakes.html
The Red Cross has an “earthquake safety checklist” which much of the information
mirrors FEMA’s information. Some of the safety information we take for granted, until
an natural disaster warrants response. Backing of the URL did not work with this link.
http://www.redcross.org/portal/site/en/menuitem.53fabf6cc033f17a2b1ecfbf43181aa0/?
vgnextoid=6f461c99b5ccb110VgnVCM10000089f0870aRCRD&vgnextfmt=default
Naturally, the insurance industry has a vested interest in any potential natural disaster.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the primary regulatory advisory
group for the insurance industry, has a Property and Casualty Earthquake Study Group.
An important aspect of this study group is to “assist states in determining the availability
and affordability of earthquake coverage in their states and assist in dealing with market
dislocations and affects on rate level caused by exposure to the earthquake peril.”
http://www.naic.org/committees_c_earthquake.htm
Side Notes:
In 1974, there was a motion picture titled “Earthquake”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071455/
With all the emerging communication technologies available, it is not surprising to find a
blog dedicated to earthquakes. This blog provides general information about resources
concerning earthquake activity (usgs.gov) and also provides information on using
Twitter for updates after an earthquake event.
http://earthquakewatch.blogspot.com/
In one of our homework assignments, where we were to come up with recommendations for
search strategies concerning gender issues and environmental issues, I stumbled upon this
bibliographic record for this article: Gender and earthquake preparedness : A research
study of gender issues in disaster management : Differences in earthquake
preparedness due to traditional stereotyping or cognitive appraisal os [sic] threat?
http://www.crid.or.cr/digitalizacion/pdf/eng/doc13579/doc13579.htm
My Google search
engine: http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=010311761669523428523:ryq3msukncy&hl=en