From The DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Via The DOE’s Exascale Computing Project: “EQSIM Shakes up Earthquake Research at the Exascale Level”

From The DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Via

The DOE’s Exascale Computing Project

12.7.22
Kathy Kincade | The DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Since 2017, EQSIM—one of several projects supported by the DOE’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP)—has been breaking new ground in efforts to understand how seismic activity affects the structural integrity of buildings and infrastructure. While small-scale models and historical observations are helpful, they only scratch the surface of quantifying a geological event as powerful and far-reaching as a major earthquake.

EQSIM bridges this gap by using physics-based supercomputer simulations to predict the ramifications of an earthquake on buildings and infrastructure and create synthetic earthquake records that can provide much larger analytical datasets than historical, single-event records.

To accomplish this, however, has presented a number of challenges, noted EQSIM principal investigator David McCallen, a senior scientist in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Earth and Environmental Sciences Area and director of the Center for Civil Engineering Earthquake Research at the University of Nevada Reno.

David McCallen is a senior scientist in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Earth and Environmental Sciences Area, director of the Center for Civil Engineering Earthquake Research at the University of Nevada Reno, and principal investigator of ECP’s EQSIM project.

“The prediction of future earthquake motions that will occur at a specific site is a challenging problem because the processes associated with earthquakes and the response of structures is very complicated,” he said. “When the earthquake fault ruptures, it releases energy in a very complex way, and that energy manifests and propagates as seismic waves through the earth. In addition, the earth is very heterogeneous and the geology is very complicated. So when those waves arrive at the site or piece of infrastructure you are concerned with, they interact with that infrastructure in a very complicated way.”

Over the last decade-plus, researchers have been applying high-performance computing to model these processes to more accurately predict site-specific motions and better understand what forces a structure is subjected to during a seismic event.

“The challenge is that tremendous computer horsepower is required to do this,” McCallen said. “It‘s hard to simulate ground motions at a frequency content that is relevant to engineered structures. It takes super-big models that run very efficiently. So, it’s been very challenging computationally, and for some time we didn’t have the computational horsepower to do that and extrapolate to that.”

Fortunately, the emergence of exascale computing has changed the equation.

“The excitement of ECP is that we now have these new computers that can do a billion billion calculations per second with a tremendous volume of memory, and for the first time we are on the threshold of being able to solve, with physics-based models, this very complex problem,” McCallen said. “So our whole goal with EQSIM was to advance the state of computational capabilities so we could model all the way from the fault rupture to the waves propagating through the earth to the waves interacting with the structure—with the idea that ultimately we want to reduce the uncertainty in earthquake ground motions and how a structure is going to respond to earthquakes.”

A Team Effort

Over the last 5 years, using both the Cori [below] and Perlmutter [below] supercomputers at The DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Summit system at The DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the EQSIM team has focused primarily on modeling earthquake scenarios in the San Francisco Bay Area.

ORNL OLCF IBM Q AC922 SUMMIT supercomputer, was No.1 now No.5 on the TOP500.

These supercomputing resources helped them create a detailed, regional-scale model that includes all of the necessary geophysics modeling features, such as 3D geology, earth surface topography, material attenuation, nonreflecting boundaries, and fault rupture.

“We’ve gone from simulating this model at 2–2.5 Hz at the start of this project to simulating more than 300 billion grid points at 10 Hz, which is a huge computational lift,” McCallen said.

Other notable achievements of this ECP project include:

Making important advances to the SW4 geophysics code, including how it is coupled to local engineering models of the soil and structure system.
Developing a schema for handling the huge datasets used in these models. “For a single earthquake we are running 272 TB of data, so you have to have a strategy for storing, visualizing, and exploiting that data,” McCallen said.
Developing a visualization tool that allows very efficient browsing of this data.

“The development of the computational workflow and how everything fits together is one of our biggest achievements, starting with the initiation of the earthquake fault structure all the way through to the response of the engineered system,” McCallen said. “We are solving one high-level problem but also a whole suite of lower-level challenges to make this work. The ability to envision, implement, and optimize that workflow has been absolutely essential.”

None of this could have happened without the contributions of multiple partners across a spectrum of science, engineering, and mathematics, he emphasized. Earth engineers, seismologists, computer scientists, and applied mathematicians from Berkeley Lab and The DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory formed the multidisciplinary, closely integrated team necessary to address the computational challenges.

“This is an inherently multidisciplinary problem,” McCallen said. “You are starting with the way a fault ruptures and the way waves propagate through the earth, and that is the domain of a seismologist. Then those waves are arriving at a site where you have a structure that has found a non-soft soil, so it transforms into a geotechnical engineering and structural engineering problem.”

It doesn’t stop there, he added. “You absolutely need this melding of people who have the scientific and engineering domain knowledge, but they are enabled by the applied mathematicians who can develop really fast and efficient algorithms and the computer scientists who know how to program and optimally parallelize and handle all the I/O on these really big problems.”

Looking ahead, the EQSIM team is already involved in another DOE project with an office that deals with energy systems. Their goal is to transition and leverage everything they’ve done through the ECP program to look at earthquake effects on distributed energy systems.

This new project involves applying these same capabilities to programs within the DOE Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response, which is concerned with the integrity of energy systems in the United States. The team is also working to make its large earthquake datasets available as open-access to both the research community and practicing engineers.

“That is common practice for historical measured earthquake records, and we want to do that with synthetic earthquake records that give you a lot more data because you have motions everywhere, not just locations where you had an instrument measuring an earthquake,” McCallen said.

Being involved with ECP has been a key boost to this work, he added, enabling EQSIM to push the envelope of computing performance.

“We have extended the ability of doing these direct, high-frequency simulations a tremendous amount,” he said. “We have a plot that shows the increase in performance and capability, and it has gone up orders of magnitude, which is really important because we need to run really big problems really, really fast. So that, coupled with the exascale hardware, has really made a difference. We’re doing things now that we only thought about doing a decade ago, like resolving high-frequency ground motions. It is really an exciting time for those of us who are working on simulating earthquakes.”

See the full article here .

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About The DOE’s Exascale Computing Project
The ECP is a collaborative effort of two DOE organizations – the DOE’s Office of Science and the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration. As part of the National Strategic Computing initiative, ECP was established to accelerate delivery of a capable exascale ecosystem, encompassing applications, system software, hardware technologies and architectures, and workforce development to meet the scientific and national security mission needs of DOE in the early-2020s time frame.

About The Office of Science

The DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit https://science.energy.gov/.

About The NNSA

Established by Congress in 2000, NNSA is a semi-autonomous agency within the DOE responsible for enhancing national security through the military application of nuclear science. NNSA maintains and enhances the safety, security, and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile without nuclear explosive testing; works to reduce the global danger from weapons of mass destruction; provides the U.S. Navy with safe and effective nuclear propulsion; and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the United States and abroad. https://nnsa.energy.gov

The Goal of ECP’s Application Development focus area is to deliver a broad array of comprehensive science-based computational applications that effectively utilize exascale HPC technology to provide breakthrough simulation and data analytic solutions for scientific discovery, energy assurance, economic competitiveness, health enhancement, and national security.

Awareness of ECP and its mission is growing and resonating—and for good reason. ECP is an incredible effort focused on advancing areas of key importance to our country: economic competiveness, breakthrough science and technology, and national security. And, fortunately, ECP has a foundation that bodes extremely well for the prospects of its success, with the demonstrably strong commitment of the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the talent of some of America’s best and brightest researchers.

ECP is composed of about 100 small teams of domain, computer, and computational scientists, and mathematicians from DOE labs, universities, and industry. We are tasked with building applications that will execute well on exascale systems, enabled by a robust exascale software stack, and supporting necessary vendor R&D to ensure the compute nodes and hardware infrastructure are adept and able to do the science that needs to be done with the first exascale platforms.the science that needs to be done with the first exascale platforms.

Depiction of ANL ALCF’s Cray Intel SC18 Shasta Aurora exascale supercomputer, to be built at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory.

ORNL Cray Frontier Shasta based Exascale supercomputer with Slingshot interconnect featuring high-performance AMD EPYC CPU and AMD Radeon Instinct GPU technology, at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, No.1 on the TOP500.

LBNL campus

Berkeley Lab campus Aerial View

Bringing Science Solutions to the World

In the world of science, The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is synonymous with “excellence.” Thirteen Nobel prizes are associated with Berkeley Lab. Seventy Lab scientists are members of the The National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors for a scientist in the United States. Thirteen of our scientists have won the National Medal of Science, our nation’s highest award for lifetime achievement in fields of scientific research. Eighteen of our engineers have been elected to the The National Academy of Engineering, and three of our scientists have been elected into The Institute of Medicine. In addition, Berkeley Lab has trained thousands of university science and engineering students who are advancing technological innovations across the nation and around the world.

Berkeley Lab is a member of the national laboratory system supported by The DOE through its Office of Science. It is managed by the University of California and is charged with conducting unclassified research across a wide range of scientific disciplines. Located on a 202-acre site in the hills above The University of California-Berkeley campus that offers spectacular views of the San Francisco Bay, Berkeley Lab employs approximately 3,232 scientists, engineers and support staff. The Lab’s total costs for FY 2014 were $785 million. A recent study estimates the Laboratory’s overall economic impact through direct, indirect and induced spending on the nine counties that make up the San Francisco Bay Area to be nearly $700 million annually. The Lab was also responsible for creating 5,600 jobs locally and 12,000 nationally. The overall economic impact on the national economy is estimated at $1.6 billion a year. Technologies developed at Berkeley Lab have generated billions of dollars in revenues, and thousands of jobs. Savings as a result of Berkeley Lab developments in lighting and windows, and other energy-efficient technologies, have also been in the billions of dollars.

Berkeley Lab was founded in 1931 by Ernest Orlando Lawrence, a University of California-Berkeley physicist who won the 1939 Nobel Prize in physics for his invention of the cyclotron, a circular particle accelerator that opened the door to high-energy physics. It was Lawrence’s belief that scientific research is best done through teams of individuals with different fields of expertise, working together. His teamwork concept is a Berkeley Lab legacy that continues today.

History

1931–1941

The laboratory was founded on August 26, 1931, by Ernest Lawrence, as the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California-Berkeley, associated with the Physics Department. It centered physics research around his new instrument, the cyclotron, a type of particle accelerator for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939.

E.O. Lawrence’ first cyclotron.

LBNL 88 inch cyclotron.

LBNL 88 inch cyclotron.

Throughout the 1930s, Lawrence pushed to create larger and larger machines for physics research, courting private philanthropists for funding. He was the first to develop a large team to build big projects to make discoveries in basic research. Eventually these machines grew too large to be held on the university grounds, and in 1940 the lab moved to its current site atop the hill above campus. Part of the team put together during this period includes two other young scientists who went on to establish large laboratories; J. Robert Oppenheimer founded The DOE’s Los Alamos Laboratory, and Robert Wilson founded The DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

1942–1950

Leslie Groves visited Lawrence’s Radiation Laboratory in late 1942 as he was organizing the Manhattan Project, meeting J. Robert Oppenheimer for the first time. Oppenheimer was tasked with organizing the nuclear bomb development effort and founded today’s Los Alamos National Laboratory to help keep the work secret. At the RadLab, Lawrence and his colleagues developed the technique of electromagnetic enrichment of uranium using their experience with cyclotrons. The “calutrons” (named after the University) became the basic unit of the massive Y-12 facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Lawrence’s lab helped contribute to what have been judged to be the three most valuable technology developments of the war (the atomic bomb, proximity fuse, and radar). The cyclotron, whose construction was stalled during the war, was finished in November 1946. The Manhattan Project shut down two months later.

1951–2018

After the war, the Radiation Laboratory became one of the first laboratories to be incorporated into the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) (now The Department of Energy . The most highly classified work remained at Los Alamos, but the RadLab remained involved. Edward Teller suggested setting up a second lab similar to Los Alamos to compete with their designs. This led to the creation of an offshoot of the RadLab (now The DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) in 1952. Some of the RadLab’s work was transferred to the new lab, but some classified research continued at Berkeley Lab until the 1970s, when it became a laboratory dedicated only to unclassified scientific research.

Shortly after the death of Lawrence in August 1958, the UC Radiation Laboratory (both branches) was renamed the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory. The Berkeley location became the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in 1971, although many continued to call it the RadLab. Gradually, another shortened form came into common usage, LBNL. Its formal name was amended to Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1995, when “National” was added to the names of all DOE labs. “Ernest Orlando” was later dropped to shorten the name. Today, the lab is commonly referred to as “Berkeley Lab”.

The Alvarez Physics Memos are a set of informal working papers of the large group of physicists, engineers, computer programmers, and technicians led by Luis W. Alvarez from the early 1950s until his death in 1988. Over 1700 memos are available on-line, hosted by the Laboratory.

The lab remains owned by the Department of Energy , with management from the University of California. Companies such as Intel were funding the lab’s research into computing chips.

Science mission

From the 1950s through the present, Berkeley Lab has maintained its status as a major international center for physics research, and has also diversified its research program into almost every realm of scientific investigation. Its mission is to solve the most pressing and profound scientific problems facing humanity, conduct basic research for a secure energy future, understand living systems to improve the environment, health, and energy supply, understand matter and energy in the universe, build and safely operate leading scientific facilities for the nation, and train the next generation of scientists and engineers.

The Laboratory’s 20 scientific divisions are organized within six areas of research: Computing Sciences; Physical Sciences; Earth and Environmental Sciences; Biosciences; Energy Sciences; and Energy Technologies. Berkeley Lab has six main science thrusts: advancing integrated fundamental energy science; integrative biological and environmental system science; advanced computing for science impact; discovering the fundamental properties of matter and energy; accelerators for the future; and developing energy technology innovations for a sustainable future. It was Lawrence’s belief that scientific research is best done through teams of individuals with different fields of expertise, working together. His teamwork concept is a Berkeley Lab tradition that continues today.

Berkeley Lab operates five major National User Facilities for the DOE Office of Science:

The Advanced Light Source (ALS) is a synchrotron light source with 41 beam lines providing ultraviolet, soft x-ray, and hard x-ray light to scientific experiments.

The DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Advanced Light Source.
The ALS is one of the world’s brightest sources of soft x-rays, which are used to characterize the electronic structure of matter and to reveal microscopic structures with elemental and chemical specificity. About 2,500 scientist-users carry out research at ALS every year. Berkeley Lab is proposing an upgrade of ALS which would increase the coherent flux of soft x-rays by two-three orders of magnitude.

Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center

A view of BELLA, the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator. Credit: Roy Kaltschmidt-Berkeley Lab.

The DOE Joint Genome Institute supports genomic research in support of the DOE missions in alternative energy, global carbon cycling, and environmental management. The JGI’s partner laboratories are Berkeley Lab, DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), and the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology . The JGI’s central role is the development of a diversity of large-scale experimental and computational capabilities to link sequence to biological insights relevant to energy and environmental research. Approximately 1,200 scientist-users take advantage of JGI’s capabilities for their research every year.

LBNL Molecular Foundry

The LBNL Molecular Foundry is a multidisciplinary nanoscience research facility. Its seven research facilities focus on Imaging and Manipulation of Nanostructures; Nanofabrication; Theory of Nanostructured Materials; Inorganic Nanostructures; Biological Nanostructures; Organic and Macromolecular Synthesis; and Electron Microscopy. Approximately 700 scientist-users make use of these facilities in their research every year.

The DOE’s NERSC National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center is the scientific computing facility that provides large-scale computing for the DOE’s unclassified research programs. Its current systems provide over 3 billion computational hours annually. NERSC supports 6,000 scientific users from universities, national laboratories, and industry.

DOE’s NERSC National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Cray Cori II supercomputer at National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, named after Gerty Cori, the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize in science.

NERSC Hopper Cray XE6 supercomputer.

NERSC Cray XC30 Edison supercomputer.

NERSC GPFS for Life Sciences.

The Genepool system is a cluster dedicated to the DOE Joint Genome Institute’s computing needs. Denovo is a smaller test system for Genepool that is primarily used by NERSC staff to test new system configurations and software.

NERSC PDSF computer cluster in 2003.

PDSF is a networked distributed computing cluster designed primarily to meet the detector simulation and data analysis requirements of physics, astrophysics and nuclear science collaborations.

Cray Shasta Perlmutter SC18 AMD Epyc Nvidia pre-exascale supercomputer.

NERSC is a DOE Office of Science User Facility.

The DOE’s Energy Science Network is a high-speed network infrastructure optimized for very large scientific data flows. ESNet provides connectivity for all major DOE sites and facilities, and the network transports roughly 35 petabytes of traffic each month.

Berkeley Lab is the lead partner in the DOE’s Joint Bioenergy Institute (JBEI), located in Emeryville, California. Other partners are the DOE’s Sandia National Laboratory, the University of California (UC) campuses of Berkeley and Davis, the Carnegie Institution for Science , and DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). JBEI’s primary scientific mission is to advance the development of the next generation of biofuels – liquid fuels derived from the solar energy stored in plant biomass. JBEI is one of three new U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Research Centers (BRCs).

Berkeley Lab has a major role in two DOE Energy Innovation Hubs. The mission of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) is to find a cost-effective method to produce fuels using only sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. The lead institution for JCAP is the California Institute of Technology and Berkeley Lab is the second institutional center. The mission of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) is to create next-generation battery technologies that will transform transportation and the electricity grid. DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory leads JCESR and Berkeley Lab is a major partner.

From The American Geophysical Union Via “phys.org” : “New tectonic plate model could improve earthquake risk assessment”

From The American Geophysical Union

Via

“phys.org”

12.22.22
Morgan Rehnberg

The authors modeled the Hope Fault on New Zealand’s South Island, among others. Credit: Ulrich Lange, CC-BY 3.0

New Zealand is no stranger to earthquakes. Scientists estimate that more than 20,000 occur each year, and the deadliest ones can shudder the entire nation.

The country’s seismic activity stems from its position atop the boundary of the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates, which are colliding at a rate of 3–5 centimeters per year.

The Tectonic Plates of the world were mapped in 1996, Credit: Geological Survey.

Understanding where and how plates interact is essential for determining earthquake risk. And according to a new model of plate boundaries, some regions of New Zealand might be more at risk than previously expected.

Hirschberg and Sutherland developed a new kinematic model of the Australian-Pacific plate boundary using fault slip rate measurements and physics-based estimates where slip rates were unavailable.

Australian-Pacific plate boundary. https://teara.govt.nz/en/map/4398/plate-boundary-through-new-zealand

The method allowed them to estimate fault slip rates across New Zealand. It output a velocity field that like a budget, balanced deformation occurring elsewhere along the plate boundary. Critically, the predicted velocities could vary across faults, which allowed model resolution approaching 10 kilometers—an order of magnitude better than many contemporary approaches.

The authors then compared their computed velocity field to GPS observations. In Wellington, the model suggested slip rates have been overestimated, which the authors say represents decreased hazard risk. Meanwhile, in the northeastern North Island, differences between the model and GPS observations may be explained by uncertainty in deformation north of New Zealand or undiscovered faults within New Zealand that could pose earthquake risk.

The paper is published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.
See the science paper for instructive material with images.

These new-and-improved models can be applied along other plate boundaries, the authors say, to improve risk assessment and to better target field observations in risk-prone areas.

See the full post here .

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The purpose of the The American Geophysical Union is to promote discovery in Earth and space science for the benefit of humanity.

To achieve this mission, AGU identified the following core values and behaviors.

Core Principles

As an organization, AGU holds a set of guiding core values:

The scientific method
The generation and dissemination of scientific knowledge
Open exchange of ideas and information
Diversity of backgrounds, scientific ideas and approaches
Benefit of science for a sustainable future
International and interdisciplinary cooperation
Equality and inclusiveness
An active role in educating and nurturing the next generation of scientists
An engaged membership
Unselfish cooperation in research
Excellence and integrity in everything we do

When we are at our best as an organization, we embody these values in our behavior as follows:

We advance Earth and space science by catalyzing and supporting the efforts of individual scientists within and outside the membership.
As a learned society, we serve the public good by fostering quality in the Earth and space science and by publishing the results of research.
We welcome all in academic, government, industry and other venues who share our interests in understanding the Earth, planets and their space environment, or who seek to apply this knowledge to solving problems facing society.
Our scientific mission transcends national boundaries.
Individual scientists worldwide are equals in all AGU activities.
Cooperative activities with partner societies of all sizes worldwide enhance the resources of all, increase the visibility of Earth and space science, and serve individual scientists, students, and the public.
We are our members.
Dedicated volunteers represent an essential ingredient of every program.
AGU staff work flexibly and responsively in partnership with volunteers to achieve our goals and objectives.

From The California Institute of Technology: “Hawai‘i Earthquake Swarm Caused by Magma Moving Through ‘Sills'”

From The California Institute of Technology

12.22.22
Robert Perkins
(626) 395‑1862
rperkins@caltech.edu

Mauna Loa’s Northeast Rift Zone fissure 3 vent and lava channel. Credit: L. Gallant/USGS.

Magma pumping through a massive complex of flat, interconnected chambers deep beneath volcanoes in Hawai‘i appears to be responsible for an unexplained swarm of tiny earthquakes felt on the Big Island over the past seven years, in particular since the 2018 eruption and summit collapse of Kīlauea.

The pancake-like chambers called “sills” channel magma laterally and upward to recharge the magma chambers of at least two of the island’s active volcanoes: Mauna Loa and Kīlauea. Using a machine-learning algorithm, geoscientists at Caltech were able to use data gathered from seismic stations on the island to chart out the structure of the sills, mapping them with never-before-seen precision and demonstrating that they link the volcanoes.

Cartoon summarizing observations. Eruptions and intrusions at Kīlauea cause pressure gradients to rapidly propagate through the Kīlauea transport structure to the Pāhala sill complex. Magma is injected into the Pāhala sill complex from the underlying magma- bearing volume; the sills are proximal to the plagioclase-spinel phase boundary, possibly in a polyphase coexistence region. The sills are connected to Kīlauea and the decollement/Ka‘ōiki region within the Mauna Loa edifice along continuous bands of seismicity. Credit: Science (2022).

Further, the researchers were able to monitor the progress of the magma as it pushed upward through the sills, and to link that to Kīlauea’s activity. They analyzed a period that ended in May 2022, so it is not yet possible to say whether they can spot the magma flow that led to the November 27 eruption of Mauna Loa, but the team intends to look at that next.

“Before this study we knew very little about how magma is stored and transported deep beneath Hawai‘i. Now, we have a high-definition map of an important part of the plumbing system,” says John D. Wilding (MS ’22), Caltech graduate student and co-lead author of a paper describing the research that was published in the journal Science [below] on December 22. The study represents the first time scientists have been able to directly observe a magma structure located this deep underground. “We know pretty well what the magma is doing in the shallow part of the system above 15 kilometer depth, but until now, everything below that has just been the subject of speculation,” Wilding says.

With data on more than 192,000 small temblors (less than magnitude 3.0) that occurred over the 3.5-year period from 2018 to mid-2022, the team was able to map out more than a dozen sills stacked on top of one another. The largest is about 6 kilometers by 7 kilometers. The sills tend to be around 300 meters thick, and are separated by a distance of about 500 meters.

“Volcanic earthquakes are typically characterized by their small magnitude and frequent occurrence during magmatic unrest,” says Weiqiang Zhu, postdoctoral scholar research associate in geophysics and co-lead author of the Science paper. “We are excited about recent advances in machine learning, particularly deep learning, which are helping to accurately detect and locate these small seismic signals recorded by dense seismic networks. Machine learning can be an effective tool for seismologists to analyze large archived datasets, identify patterns in small earthquakes, and gain insights into underlying structures and physical mechanisms.”

Wilding and Zhu worked with Jennifer Jackson, the William E. Leonhard Professor of Mineral Physics; and Zachary Ross, assistant professor of geophysics and William H. Hurt Scholar; who are both senior authors on the paper. In October, Ross was named one of the 2022 Packard Fellows for Science and Engineering, which will provide funding to support this research moving forward.

The team did not have to place a single piece of hardware to do the study; rather, they relied on data gathered by United States Geological Survey seismometers on the island. However, the machine-learning algorithm developed in Ross’s lab gave them an unprecedented ability to separate signal from noise—that is, to clearly identify earthquakes and their locations, which create a sort of 3-D “point cloud” that illustrates the sills.

“It’s analogous to taking a CT [computerized tomography] scan, the way a doctor can visualize the inside of a patient’s body,” Ross says. “But instead of using controlled sources with X-rays, we use passive sources, which are earthquakes.”

The team was able to catalog about 10 times as many earthquakes as was previously possible, and they were able to pinpoint their locations with a margin of error of less than a kilometer; previous locations were determined with error margins of a few kilometers. The work was accomplished using a deep-learning algorithm that had been taught to spot earthquake signals using a training dataset of millions of previously identified earthquakes. Even with small earthquakes, which might not stand out to the human eye on a seismogram, the algorithm finds patterns that distinguish quakes from background noise. Ross previously used the technique to reveal how a naturally occurring injection of underground fluids drove a four-year-long earthquake swarm near Cahuilla, California.

The sills appear to be at depths ranging from around 36–43 kilometers. (For reference, the deepest humans have ever drilled into the Earth is a little over 12 kilometers.) Scientists have long known that a phase boundary is present at a depth of around 35 kilometers beneath Hawai‘i; at such a phase boundary, rock of the same chemical composition transitions from one group of minerals above to a different group below. Studying the new data, Jackson recognized that the transitions occurring in this rock coupled to magma injections could host chemical reactions and processes that stress or weaken the rock, possibly explaining the existence of the sills—and by extension, the active seismicity.

“The transition of spinel to plagioclase within the lherzolite rock may be occurring through diffuse migration, entrapment, and crystallization of magma melts within the shallow lithospheric mantle underneath Hawai‘i,” Jackson says. “Such assemblages can exhibit transient weakening arising from coupled deformation and chemical reactions, which could facilitate crack growth or fault activation. Recurrent magma injections would continuously modulate grain sizes in the sill complex, prolonging conditions for seismic deformation in the rock. This process could exploit lateral variations in strength to produce and sustain the laterally compact seismogenic features that we observe.”

It is unclear whether the sills beneath the Big Island are unique to Hawai‘i or whether this sort of subvolcanic structure is common, the researchers say. “Hawai‘i is the best-monitored island in the world, with dozens of seismic stations giving us a window into what’s going on beneath the surface. We have to wonder, at how many other locations is this happening?” Wilding says.

Also unclear is exactly how the magma’s movement triggers the tiny quakes. The earthquakes map out the structures, but the actual mechanism of earthquakes is not well understood. It could be that the injection of a lot of magma into a space creates a lot of stress, the researchers say.

Science paper:
Science
See the science paper for instructive material with images.

See the full article here .

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Caltech campus

The California Institute of Technology is a private research university in Pasadena, California. The university is known for its strength in science and engineering, and is one among a small group of institutes of technology in the United States which is primarily devoted to the instruction of pure and applied sciences.

The California Institute of Technology was founded as a preparatory and vocational school by Amos G. Throop in 1891 and began attracting influential scientists such as George Ellery Hale, Arthur Amos Noyes, and Robert Andrews Millikan in the early 20th century. The vocational and preparatory schools were disbanded and spun off in 1910 and the college assumed its present name in 1920. In 1934, The California Institute of Technology was elected to the Association of American Universities, and the antecedents of National Aeronautics and Space Administration ‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which The California Institute of Technology continues to manage and operate, were established between 1936 and 1943 under Theodore von Kármán.

The California Institute of Technology has six academic divisions with strong emphasis on science and engineering. Its 124-acre (50 ha) primary campus is located approximately 11 mi (18 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles. First-year students are required to live on campus, and 95% of undergraduates remain in the on-campus House System at The California Institute of Technology. Although The California Institute of Technology has a strong tradition of practical jokes and pranks, student life is governed by an honor code which allows faculty to assign take-home examinations. The The California Institute of Technology Beavers compete in 13 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division III’s Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC).

As of October 2020, there are 76 Nobel laureates who have been affiliated with The California Institute of Technology, including 40 alumni and faculty members (41 prizes, with chemist Linus Pauling being the only individual in history to win two unshared prizes). In addition, 4 Fields Medalists and 6 Turing Award winners have been affiliated with The California Institute of Technology. There are 8 Crafoord Laureates and 56 non-emeritus faculty members (as well as many emeritus faculty members) who have been elected to one of the United States National Academies. Four Chief Scientists of the U.S. Air Force and 71 have won the United States National Medal of Science or Technology. Numerous faculty members are associated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as well as National Aeronautics and Space Administration. According to a 2015 Pomona College study, The California Institute of Technology ranked number one in the U.S. for the percentage of its graduates who go on to earn a PhD.

Research

The California Institute of Technology is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity”. Caltech was elected to The Association of American Universities in 1934 and remains a research university with “very high” research activity, primarily in STEM fields. The largest federal agencies contributing to research are National Aeronautics and Space Administration; National Science Foundation; Department of Health and Human Services; Department of Defense, and Department of Energy.

In 2005, The California Institute of Technology had 739,000 square feet (68,700 m^2) dedicated to research: 330,000 square feet (30,700 m^2) to physical sciences, 163,000 square feet (15,100 m^2) to engineering, and 160,000 square feet (14,900 m^2) to biological sciences.

In addition to managing NASA-JPL/Caltech , The California Institute of Technology also operates the Caltech Palomar Observatory; The Owens Valley Radio Observatory;the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory; the W. M. Keck Observatory at the Mauna Kea Observatory; the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory at Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford, Washington; and Kerckhoff Marine Laboratory in Corona del Mar, California. The Institute launched the Kavli Nanoscience Institute at The California Institute of Technology in 2006; the Keck Institute for Space Studies in 2008; and is also the current home for the Einstein Papers Project. The Spitzer Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center located on The California Institute of Technology campus, is the data analysis and community support center for NASA’s Spitzer Infrared Space Telescope [no longer in service].

Caltech Palomar Observatory. Credit:The California Institute of Technology, Altitude 1,713 m (5,620 ft), located in San Diego County, California.

California Institute of Technology The Owens Valley Radio Observatory, Owens Valley, California, Altitude 1,222 m (4,009 ft). Credit: Caltech.

W.M. Keck Observatory two ten meter telescopes operated by California Institute of Technology and The University of California, at Mauna Kea Observatory, Hawai’i, altitude 4,207 m (13,802 ft). Credit: Caltech.

Caltech /MIT Advanced aLigo. Credit: Caltech.

Caltech/MIT Advanced aLigo Hanford, WA installation. Credit: Caltech.

Caltech/MIT Advanced aLigo detector installation Livingston, LA. Credit: Caltech.

The California Institute of Technology partnered with University of California at Los Angeles to establish a Joint Center for Translational Medicine (UCLA-Caltech JCTM), which conducts experimental research into clinical applications, including the diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as cancer.

The California Institute of Technology operates several Total Carbon Column Observing Network stations as part of an international collaborative effort of measuring greenhouse gases globally. One station is on campus.

From “temblor” : “Earthquake rumbles Northern California triple junction”

From “temblor”

12.20.22

A magnitude-6.4 earthquake struck off the seismically active coast of Northern California not far from Eureka on Tuesday Dec. 20, 2022

At 2:34 a.m. local time, a magnitude-6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Northern California. The epicenter was about 9 miles (15 kilometers) southwest of Ferndale, California, which is 19 miles (31 kilometers) south of Eureka. The quake, which was 11 miles (17.9 kilometers) deep, jolted people awake and caused extensive power outages and widespread damage, especially to roads and gas and water lines. Many houses were damaged as well, according to preliminary news reports. No tsunami occurred. Aftershocks continue in the region. At least two people have died and at least 11 have been injured. California officials are warning people to inspect their gas and water lines carefully for damage. The Sacramento Bee has a great primer on what and how to check.

At 2:34 a.m. local time on Dec. 20, a magnitude-6.4 earthquake struck about 9 miles (15 kilometers) southwest of Ferndale, California.

This region is incredibly tectonically active, thanks to the junction of three tectonic plates (called a triple junction): the North American Plate, the Pacific Plate and the Juan de Fuca Plate. The place where the three meet is where the northern tip of the San Andreas Fault interacts with the Mendocino Fracture Zone (a transform fault) and the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which is capable of megathrust (including magnitude-9-plus) earthquakes.

San Andreas Fault

Cascadia subduction zone. https://pnsn.org/outreach

This “crunch zone” where the Juan de Fuca Plate slams into North America from the west results in a subduction zone where the Juan de Fuca Plate cannot go smoothly down the hatch because of a space problem (Silver, 1971), says Ross Stein, CEO of Temblor and publisher of Temblor Earth News (TEN), who also wrote an analysis for TEN of this region in 2019. “The downgoing plate is deformed into a wide band of faults, one of which likely fired off this morning,” Stein says. “An earthquake of this size is expected in one’s lifetime if they live in the Eureka area. So, this is not unexpected or unusual,” Stein adds.

This region is incredibly tectonically active, thanks to the junction of three tectonic plates: the North American Plate, the Pacific Plate and the Juan de Fuca Plate. The place where the three meet, also called a triple junction, is where the northern tip of the San Andreas Fault interacts with the Mendocino Fracture Zone (a transform fault) and the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

In fact, a magnitude-6.2 earthquake occurred about 12 miles (20 kilometers) away a year ago today. In the last century, earthquakes above magnitude 7 and more than 40 quakes above magnitude 6 have struck within 155 miles (250 kilometers) of today’s temblor.

In Temblor’s hazard model, an earthquake of this size is expected in one’s lifetime if they live in the Eureka area.

Preliminary analysis by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) suggests today’s earthquake occurred “as a result of strike-slip faulting on a steeply dipping fault,” likely within part of the Gorda Plate, which is part of the Juan de Fuca Plate that subducts beneath Northern California, Oregon and Washington.

Today, many aftershocks are extending east of the mainshock. Shaking has been felt from southern Oregon south to San Jose. If you’re in the region, stay alert. If you feel shaking, remember to Drop, Cover and Hold On, as per the USGS guidelines. And once it’s safe to do so, report the shaking you felt to USGS’s Did You Feel It? website. As of 11 a.m. local time, more than 5,100 people had reported feeling shaking from the magnitude-6.4 quake; aftershocks are tracked separately, so if you feel shaking from an aftershock, report that as well.

Millions of people across the state received alerts of the shaking from Android Earthquake Alerts, the MyShake app, or other earthquake early warning apps at 2:34 this morning. The warnings told people nearby, including in the San Francisco Bay area, to Drop, Cover and Hold On. If you’re in California, Oregon and Washington, download the MyShake app on your smartphone to get early warning alerts of shaking in your area. If you have an Android smartphone, the feature is native, so no need for any apps to receive a warning (See this TEN article for more about MyShake and Android Earthquake Alerts).
 
References

Eli A. Silver (1971), Tectonics of the Mendocino Triple Junction, Geological Society of American Bulletin, 82, 2965-2978, doi.org/10.1130/0016-7606(1971)82[2965:TOTMTJ]2.0.CO;2

See the full article here .

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

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Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct.

___________________________________________________________________

Earthquake Alert

Earthquake Alert

Earthquake Network projectEarthquake Network is a research project which aims at developing and maintaining a crowdsourced smartphone-based earthquake warning system at a global level. Smartphones made available by the population are used to detect the earthquake waves using the on-board accelerometers. When an earthquake is detected, an earthquake warning is issued in order to alert the population not yet reached by the damaging waves of the earthquake.

The project started on January 1, 2013 with the release of the homonymous Android application Earthquake Network. The author of the research project and developer of the smartphone application is Francesco Finazzi of the University of Bergamo, Italy.

Get the app in the Google Play store.

Smartphone network spatial distribution (green and red dots) on December 4, 2015

Meet The Quake-Catcher Network

Quake-Catcher Network

The Quake-Catcher Network is a collaborative initiative for developing the world’s largest, low-cost strong-motion seismic network by utilizing sensors in and attached to internet-connected computers. With your help, the Quake-Catcher Network can provide better understanding of earthquakes, give early warning to schools, emergency response systems, and others. The Quake-Catcher Network also provides educational software designed to help teach about earthquakes and earthquake hazards.

After almost eight years at Stanford, and a year at CalTech, the QCN project is moving to the University of Southern California Dept. of Earth Sciences. QCN will be sponsored by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) and the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC).

The Quake-Catcher Network is a distributed computing network that links volunteer hosted computers into a real-time motion sensing network. QCN is one of many scientific computing projects that runs on the world-renowned distributed computing platform Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC).

The volunteer computers monitor vibrational sensors called MEMS accelerometers, and digitally transmit “triggers” to QCN’s servers whenever strong new motions are observed. QCN’s servers sift through these signals, and determine which ones represent earthquakes, and which ones represent cultural noise (like doors slamming, or trucks driving by).

There are two categories of sensors used by QCN: 1) internal mobile device sensors, and 2) external USB sensors.

Mobile Devices: MEMS sensors are often included in laptops, games, cell phones, and other electronic devices for hardware protection, navigation, and game control. When these devices are still and connected to QCN, QCN software monitors the internal accelerometer for strong new shaking. Unfortunately, these devices are rarely secured to the floor, so they may bounce around when a large earthquake occurs. While this is less than ideal for characterizing the regional ground shaking, many such sensors can still provide useful information about earthquake locations and magnitudes.

USB Sensors: MEMS sensors can be mounted to the floor and connected to a desktop computer via a USB cable. These sensors have several advantages over mobile device sensors. 1) By mounting them to the floor, they measure more reliable shaking than mobile devices. 2) These sensors typically have lower noise and better resolution of 3D motion. 3) Desktops are often left on and do not move. 4) The USB sensor is physically removed from the game, phone, or laptop, so human interaction with the device doesn’t reduce the sensors’ performance. 5) USB sensors can be aligned to North, so we know what direction the horizontal “X” and “Y” axes correspond to.

If you are a science teacher at a K-12 school, please apply for a free USB sensor and accompanying QCN software. QCN has been able to purchase sensors to donate to schools in need. If you are interested in donating to the program or requesting a sensor, click here.

BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience.BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, developed at UC Berkeley.

Earthquake safety is a responsibility shared by billions worldwide. The Quake-Catcher Network (QCN) provides software so that individuals can join together to improve earthquake monitoring, earthquake awareness, and the science of earthquakes. The Quake-Catcher Network (QCN) links existing networked laptops and desktops in hopes to form the worlds largest strong-motion seismic network.

Below, the QCN Quake Catcher Network map

ShakeAlert: An Earthquake Early Warning System for the West Coast of the United States

The U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) along with a coalition of State and university partners is developing and testing an earthquake early warning (EEW) system called ShakeAlert for the west coast of the United States. Long term funding must be secured before the system can begin sending general public notifications, however, some limited pilot projects are active and more are being developed. The USGS has set the goal of beginning limited public notifications in 2018.

Watch a video describing how ShakeAlert works in English or Spanish.

The primary project partners include:

United States Geological Survey
California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (CalOES)
California Geological Survey
California Institute of Technology
University of California Berkeley
University of Washington
University of Oregon
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

The Earthquake Threat

Earthquakes pose a national challenge because more than 143 million Americans live in areas of significant seismic risk across 39 states. Most of our Nation’s earthquake risk is concentrated on the West Coast of the United States. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has estimated the average annualized loss from earthquakes, nationwide, to be $5.3 billion, with 77 percent of that figure ($4.1 billion) coming from California, Washington, and Oregon, and 66 percent ($3.5 billion) from California alone. In the next 30 years, California has a 99.7 percent chance of a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake and the Pacific Northwest has a 10 percent chance of a magnitude 8 to 9 megathrust earthquake on the Cascadia subduction zone.

Part of the Solution

Today, the technology exists to detect earthquakes, so quickly, that an alert can reach some areas before strong shaking arrives. The purpose of the ShakeAlert system is to identify and characterize an earthquake a few seconds after it begins, calculate the likely intensity of ground shaking that will result, and deliver warnings to people and infrastructure in harm’s way. This can be done by detecting the first energy to radiate from an earthquake, the P-wave energy, which rarely causes damage. Using P-wave information, we first estimate the location and the magnitude of the earthquake. Then, the anticipated ground shaking across the region to be affected is estimated and a warning is provided to local populations. The method can provide warning before the S-wave arrives, bringing the strong shaking that usually causes most of the damage.

Studies of earthquake early warning methods in California have shown that the warning time would range from a few seconds to a few tens of seconds. ShakeAlert can give enough time to slow trains and taxiing planes, to prevent cars from entering bridges and tunnels, to move away from dangerous machines or chemicals in work environments and to take cover under a desk, or to automatically shut down and isolate industrial systems. Taking such actions before shaking starts can reduce damage and casualties during an earthquake. It can also prevent cascading failures in the aftermath of an event. For example, isolating utilities before shaking starts can reduce the number of fire initiations.

System Goal

The USGS will issue public warnings of potentially damaging earthquakes and provide warning parameter data to government agencies and private users on a region-by-region basis, as soon as the ShakeAlert system, its products, and its parametric data meet minimum quality and reliability standards in those geographic regions. The USGS has set the goal of beginning limited public notifications in 2018. Product availability will expand geographically via ANSS regional seismic networks, such that ShakeAlert products and warnings become available for all regions with dense seismic instrumentation.

Current Status

The West Coast ShakeAlert system is being developed by expanding and upgrading the infrastructure of regional seismic networks that are part of the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS); the California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN) is made up of the Southern California Seismic Network, SCSN) and the Northern California Seismic System, NCSS and the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN). This enables the USGS and ANSS to leverage their substantial investment in sensor networks, data telemetry systems, data processing centers, and software for earthquake monitoring activities residing in these network centers. The ShakeAlert system has been sending live alerts to “beta” users in California since January of 2012 and in the Pacific Northwest since February of 2015.

In February of 2016 the USGS, along with its partners, rolled-out the next-generation ShakeAlert early warning test system in California joined by Oregon and Washington in April 2017. This West Coast-wide “production prototype” has been designed for redundant, reliable operations. The system includes geographically distributed servers, and allows for automatic fail-over if connection is lost.

This next-generation system will not yet support public warnings but does allow selected early adopters to develop and deploy pilot implementations that take protective actions triggered by the ShakeAlert notifications in areas with sufficient sensor coverage.

Authorities

The USGS will develop and operate the ShakeAlert system, and issue public notifications under collaborative authorities with FEMA, as part of the National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program, as enacted by the Earthquake Hazards Reduction Act of 1977, 42 U.S.C. §§ 7704 SEC. 2.

For More Information

Robert de Groot, ShakeAlert National Coordinator for Communication, Education, and Outreach
rdegroot@usgs.gov
626-583-7225

Learn more about EEW Research

ShakeAlert Fact Sheet

ShakeAlert Implementation Plan

QuakeAlertUSA

About Early Warning Labs, LLC

Early Warning Labs, LLC (EWL) is an Earthquake Early Warning technology developer and integrator located in Santa Monica, CA. EWL is partnered with industry leading GIS provider ESRI, Inc. and is collaborating with the US Government and university partners.

EWL is investing millions of dollars over the next 36 months to complete the final integration and delivery of Earthquake Early Warning to individual consumers, government entities, and commercial users.

EWL’s mission is to improve, expand, and lower the costs of the existing earthquake early warning systems.

EWL is developing a robust cloud server environment to handle low-cost mass distribution of these warnings. In addition, Early Warning Labs is researching and developing automated response standards and systems that allow public and private users to take pre-defined automated actions to protect lives and assets.

EWL has an existing beta R&D test system installed at one of the largest studios in Southern California. The goal of this system is to stress test EWL’s hardware, software, and alert signals while improving latency and reliability.

Earthquake Early Warning Introduction

The United States Geological Survey (USGS), in collaboration with state agencies, university partners, and private industry, is developing an earthquake early warning system (EEW) for the West Coast of the United States called ShakeAlert. The USGS Earthquake Hazards Program aims to mitigate earthquake losses in the United States. Citizens, first responders, and engineers rely on the USGS for accurate and timely information about where earthquakes occur, the ground shaking intensity in different locations, and the likelihood is of future significant ground shaking.

The ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning System recently entered its first phase of operations. The USGS working in partnership with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) is now allowing for the testing of public alerting via apps, Wireless Emergency Alerts, and by other means throughout California.

ShakeAlert partners in Oregon and Washington are working with the USGS to test public alerting in those states sometime in 2020.

ShakeAlert has demonstrated the feasibility of earthquake early warning, from event detection to producing USGS issued ShakeAlerts ® and will continue to undergo testing and will improve over time. In particular, robust and reliable alert delivery pathways for automated actions are currently being developed and implemented by private industry partners for use in California, Oregon, and Washington.

Earthquake Early Warning Background

The objective of an earthquake early warning system is to rapidly detect the initiation of an earthquake, estimate the level of ground shaking intensity to be expected, and issue a warning before significant ground shaking starts. A network of seismic sensors detects the first energy to radiate from an earthquake, the P-wave energy, and the location and the magnitude of the earthquake is rapidly determined. Then, the anticipated ground shaking across the region to be affected is estimated. The system can provide warning before the S-wave arrives, which brings the strong shaking that usually causes most of the damage. Warnings will be distributed to local and state public emergency response officials, critical infrastructure, private businesses, and the public. EEW systems have been successfully implemented in Japan, Taiwan, Mexico, and other nations with varying degrees of sophistication and coverage.

Earthquake early warning can provide enough time to:

Instruct students and employees to take a protective action such as Drop, Cover, and Hold On
Initiate mass notification procedures
Open fire-house doors and notify local first responders
Slow and stop trains and taxiing planes
Install measures to prevent/limit additional cars from going on bridges, entering tunnels, and being on freeway overpasses before the shaking starts
Move people away from dangerous machines or chemicals in work environments
Shut down gas lines, water treatment plants, or nuclear reactors
Automatically shut down and isolate industrial systems

However, earthquake warning notifications must be transmitted without requiring human review and response action must be automated, as the total warning times are short depending on geographic distance and varying soil densities from the epicenter.

From The Department of Earth and Space Sciences At The University of Washington : “Signals from the ionosphere could improve tsunami forecasts”

From The Department of Earth and Space Sciences

At

The University of Washington

12.12.22

A series of GOES-17 satellite images caught the umbrella cloud generated by the underwater eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano on Jan. 15, 2022. Credit: NASA

NOAA GOES-17 satellite annotated

Satellite images show the cloud generated by the underwater eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano on Jan. 15, 2022. Credit: NASA.

Research from the University of Washington shows that signals from the upper atmosphere could improve tsunami forecasting and, someday, help track ash plumes and other impacts after a volcanic eruption.

A new study analyzed the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption in the South Pacific earlier this year. The Jan. 15, 2022, volcanic eruption was the largest to be recorded by modern equipment [Nature (below)]. Ash blanketed the region. A tsunami wave caused damage and killed at least three people on the island of Tonga. It also had unexpected distant effects.

No volcanic eruption in more than a century has produced a global-scale tsunami. The tsunami wave from the underwater eruption was first predicted as only a regional hazard. Instead, the wave reached as far as Peru, where two people drowned.

Results of the new study, published this fall in Geophysical Research Letters [below], uses evidence from the ionosphere to help explain why the tsunami wave grew larger and traveled faster than models predicted.

“This was the most powerful volcanic eruption since the 1883 eruption of Krakatau, and a lot of aspects of it were unexpected,” said lead author Jessica Ghent, a UW doctoral student in Earth and space sciences. “We used a new monitoring technique to understand what happened here and learn how we could monitor future natural hazards.”

She presented the work in a poster Wednesday, Dec. 14, at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in Chicago and she presented the work at the meeting that afternoon.

Tsunamis are rare enough occurrences that forecast models, relying on a limited number of tide gauges and ocean sensors, are still being perfected. This study is part of an emerging area of research exploring the use of GPS signals traveling through the atmosphere to track events on the ground.

A big earthquake, or in this case a huge volcanic eruption, generates pressure waves in the atmosphere. As these pressure waves pass through the zone from about 50 to 400 miles altitude where electrons and ions float freely, known as the ionosphere, the particles are disturbed. GPS satellites beaming coordinates back down to Earth transmit a slightly altered radio signal that tracks the disturbance.

“Other groups have been looking at the ionosphere to monitor tsunamis. We are interested in applying it for volcanology,” said co-author Brendan Crowell, a UW research scientist in Earth and space sciences. “This Tonga eruption kicked our research into overdrive. There was a big volcanic eruption and a tsunami — normally you’d study one or the other.”

For the new study, the researchers analyzed 818 ground stations in the Global Navigation Satellite System, the global network that include GPS and other satellites, around the South Pacific to measure the atmospheric disturbance in the hours following the eruption. Results support the hypothesis that the sonic boom generated by the volcanic explosion made the tsunami wave bigger and faster. The ocean wave got an extra push from the atmospheric pressure wave created by the eruption. This extra push wasn’t included in the initial tsunami forecasts, researchers said, because volcano-triggered tsunamis are so rare.

“Tsunamis typically can travel in the open ocean at 220 meters per second, or 500 miles per hour. Based on our data, this tsunami wave was moving at 310 meters per second, or 700 miles per hour,” Ghent said.

The authors were able to separate out different aspects of the eruption – the acoustic sound wave, the ocean wave and other types of pressure waves – and check their accuracy against ground-based observation stations.

“The separation of these signals, from the acoustic sound wave to the tsunami, was what we had set out to find,” Ghent said. “From a hazards-monitoring perspective, it validates our hope for what we can use the ionosphere for. This unusual event gives us confidence that we might someday use the ionosphere to monitor hazards in real time.”

While the Tonga eruption didn’t eject much ash for the size of the event, Ghent and Crowell say the Global Navigation Satellite System signals could be used in other ways to accurately track volcanic ash plumes.

Looking upward to monitor volcanoes and tsunamis is appealing because ground-based monitoring has challenges in the Pacific Northwest and other areas. Sensors must be maintained and repaired, snow and ice can block signals or cause damage, accessing the monitoring stations may be difficult.

What’s more, “the wild mountain goats can eat the cables of the ground instruments because the goats like salt,” Ghent said.

“If you have a way to monitor an area without actually being there, you’re really opening the door to being able to monitor it all year long and help keep people safe around the world.”

This research was funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Nature

Science paper:
Geophysical Research Letters
See the science paper for instructive material with images.

See the full article here .

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Welcome to the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington.

In 2001, the Department of Earth and Space Sciences was created through the merger of two UW departments, the Department of Geological Sciences and the Geophysics Program. It has a distinguished history of excellence in research and education.

Research in our department includes the solid earth, surface processes, geobiology, planetary science, space physics and glaciology. Research centers and programs closely linked to the department — including the Program on Climate Change, the Astrobiology Program, the Quaternary Research Center, and others, allow for enhanced educational and research experiences. We maintain extensive collaborations with local, regional, and national agencies such as the Washington State Emergency Management Division, the Department of Natural Resources, USGS, NASA and NOAA.

The Department of Earth and Space Sciences offers outstanding disciplinary and interdisciplinary education at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. We emphasize direct field and laboratory experiences at all educational levels, with active and close interactions between faculty and small groups of students. Options within the undergraduate degree include geology, physics, biology, and environmental earth science. In addition, we offer a broad spectrum of natural world and environmentally-oriented general education courses that attract on the order of 3000 students each year.

We offer experiential learning opportunities for our students through field courses and field trips, which have included the volcanic fields of the Canary Islands and Hawaii, sedimentary stratigraphy and seismicity in Sicily, and the Greenland ice sheet. Endowments and gift funds play an important role in subsidizing field courses and research, including our undergraduate summer field course in Montana, so that these are more affordable for our students.

Our graduates are highly recruited with excellent placement in educational and research institutions, government agencies, and private sector businesses and corporations.

We have an experienced staff that helps ensure that our department maintains a welcoming and supportive environment.

We are committed to high-quality education, research, public service and diversity within both the faculty and student populations.

The University of Washington is one of the world’s preeminent public universities. Our impact on individuals, on our region, and on the world is profound — whether we are launching young people into a boundless future or confronting the grand challenges of our time through undaunted research and scholarship. Ranked number 10 in the world in Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings and educating more than 54,000 students annually, our students and faculty work together to turn ideas into impact and in the process transform lives and our world. For more about our impact on the world, every day.

So what defines us —the students, faculty and community members at the University of Washington? Above all, it’s our belief in possibility and our unshakable optimism. It’s a connection to others, both near and far. It’s a hunger that pushes us to tackle challenges and pursue progress. It’s the conviction that together we can create a world of good. Join us on the journey.

The University of Washington is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in downtown Seattle approximately a decade after the city’s founding to aid its economic development. Today, the university’s 703-acre main Seattle campus is in the University District above the Montlake Cut, within the urban Puget Sound region of the Pacific Northwest. The university has additional campuses in Tacoma and Bothell. Overall, University of Washington encompasses over 500 buildings and over 20 million gross square footage of space, including one of the largest library systems in the world with more than 26 university libraries, as well as the UW Tower, lecture halls, art centers, museums, laboratories, stadiums, and conference centers. The university offers bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees through 140 departments in various colleges and schools, sees a total student enrollment of roughly 46,000 annually, and functions on a quarter system.

University of Washington is a member of the Association of American Universities and is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”. According to the National Science Foundation, UW spent $1.41 billion on research and development in 2018, ranking it 5th in the nation. As the flagship institution of the six public universities in Washington state, it is known for its medical, engineering and scientific research as well as its highly competitive computer science and engineering programs. Additionally, University of Washington continues to benefit from its deep historic ties and major collaborations with numerous technology giants in the region, such as Amazon, Boeing, Nintendo, and particularly Microsoft. Paul G. Allen, Bill Gates and others spent significant time at Washington computer labs for a startup venture before founding Microsoft and other ventures. The University of Washington’s 22 varsity sports teams are also highly competitive, competing as the Huskies in the Pac-12 Conference of the NCAA Division I, representing the United States at the Olympic Games, and other major competitions.

The university has been affiliated with many notable alumni and faculty, including 21 Nobel Prize laureates and numerous Pulitzer Prize winners, Fulbright Scholars, Rhodes Scholars and Marshall Scholars.

In 1854, territorial governor Isaac Stevens recommended the establishment of a university in the Washington Territory. Prominent Seattle-area residents, including Methodist preacher Daniel Bagley, saw this as a chance to add to the city’s potential and prestige. Bagley learned of a law that allowed United States territories to sell land to raise money in support of public schools. At the time, Arthur A. Denny, one of the founders of Seattle and a member of the territorial legislature, aimed to increase the city’s importance by moving the territory’s capital from Olympia to Seattle. However, Bagley eventually convinced Denny that the establishment of a university would assist more in the development of Seattle’s economy. Two universities were initially chartered, but later the decision was repealed in favor of a single university in Lewis County provided that locally donated land was available. When no site emerged, Denny successfully petitioned the legislature to reconsider Seattle as a location in 1858.

In 1861, scouting began for an appropriate 10 acres (4 ha) site in Seattle to serve as a new university campus. Arthur and Mary Denny donated eight acres, while fellow pioneers Edward Lander, and Charlie and Mary Terry, donated two acres on Denny’s Knoll in downtown Seattle. More specifically, this tract was bounded by 4th Avenue to the west, 6th Avenue to the east, Union Street to the north, and Seneca Streets to the south.

John Pike, for whom Pike Street is named, was the university’s architect and builder. It was opened on November 4, 1861, as the Territorial University of Washington. The legislature passed articles incorporating the University, and establishing its Board of Regents in 1862. The school initially struggled, closing three times: in 1863 for low enrollment, and again in 1867 and 1876 due to funds shortage. University of Washington awarded its first graduate Clara Antoinette McCarty Wilt in 1876, with a bachelor’s degree in science.

19th century relocation

By the time Washington state entered the Union in 1889, both Seattle and the University had grown substantially. University of Washington’s total undergraduate enrollment increased from 30 to nearly 300 students, and the campus’s relative isolation in downtown Seattle faced encroaching development. A special legislative committee, headed by University of Washington graduate Edmond Meany, was created to find a new campus to better serve the growing student population and faculty. The committee eventually selected a site on the northeast of downtown Seattle called Union Bay, which was the land of the Duwamish, and the legislature appropriated funds for its purchase and construction. In 1895, the University relocated to the new campus by moving into the newly built Denny Hall. The University Regents tried and failed to sell the old campus, eventually settling with leasing the area. This would later become one of the University’s most valuable pieces of real estate in modern-day Seattle, generating millions in annual revenue with what is now called the Metropolitan Tract. The original Territorial University building was torn down in 1908, and its former site now houses the Fairmont Olympic Hotel.

The sole-surviving remnants of Washington’s first building are four 24-foot (7.3 m), white, hand-fluted cedar, Ionic columns. They were salvaged by Edmond S. Meany, one of the University’s first graduates and former head of its history department. Meany and his colleague, Dean Herbert T. Condon, dubbed the columns as “Loyalty,” “Industry,” “Faith”, and “Efficiency”, or “LIFE.” The columns now stand in the Sylvan Grove Theater.

20th century expansion

Organizers of the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition eyed the still largely undeveloped campus as a prime setting for their world’s fair. They came to an agreement with Washington’s Board of Regents that allowed them to use the campus grounds for the exposition, surrounding today’s Drumheller Fountain facing towards Mount Rainier. In exchange, organizers agreed Washington would take over the campus and its development after the fair’s conclusion. This arrangement led to a detailed site plan and several new buildings, prepared in part by John Charles Olmsted. The plan was later incorporated into the overall University of Washington campus master plan, permanently affecting the campus layout.

Both World Wars brought the military to campus, with certain facilities temporarily lent to the federal government. In spite of this, subsequent post-war periods were times of dramatic growth for the University. The period between the wars saw a significant expansion of the upper campus. Construction of the Liberal Arts Quadrangle, known to students as “The Quad,” began in 1916 and continued to 1939. The University’s architectural centerpiece, Suzzallo Library, was built in 1926 and expanded in 1935.

After World War II, further growth came with the G.I. Bill. Among the most important developments of this period was the opening of the School of Medicine in 1946, which is now consistently ranked as the top medical school in the United States. It would eventually lead to the University of Washington Medical Center, ranked by U.S. News and World Report as one of the top ten hospitals in the nation.

In 1942, all persons of Japanese ancestry in the Seattle area were forced into inland internment camps as part of Executive Order 9066 following the attack on Pearl Harbor. During this difficult time, university president Lee Paul Sieg took an active and sympathetic leadership role in advocating for and facilitating the transfer of Japanese American students to universities and colleges away from the Pacific Coast to help them avoid the mass incarceration. Nevertheless, many Japanese American students and “soon-to-be” graduates were unable to transfer successfully in the short time window or receive diplomas before being incarcerated. It was only many years later that they would be recognized for their accomplishments during the University of Washington’s Long Journey Home ceremonial event that was held in May 2008.

From 1958 to 1973, the University of Washington saw a tremendous growth in student enrollment, its faculties and operating budget, and also its prestige under the leadership of Charles Odegaard. University of Washington student enrollment had more than doubled to 34,000 as the baby boom generation came of age. However, this era was also marked by high levels of student activism, as was the case at many American universities. Much of the unrest focused around civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam War. In response to anti-Vietnam War protests by the late 1960s, the University Safety and Security Division became the University of Washington Police Department.

Odegaard instituted a vision of building a “community of scholars”, convincing the Washington State legislatures to increase investment in the University. Washington senators, such as Henry M. Jackson and Warren G. Magnuson, also used their political clout to gather research funds for the University of Washington. The results included an increase in the operating budget from $37 million in 1958 to over $400 million in 1973, solidifying University of Washington as a top recipient of federal research funds in the United States. The establishment of technology giants such as Microsoft, Boeing and Amazon in the local area also proved to be highly influential in the University of Washington’s fortunes, not only improving graduate prospects but also helping to attract millions of dollars in university and research funding through its distinguished faculty and extensive alumni network.

21st century

In 1990, the University of Washington opened its additional campuses in Bothell and Tacoma. Although originally intended for students who have already completed two years of higher education, both schools have since become four-year universities with the authority to grant degrees. The first freshman classes at these campuses started in fall 2006. Today both Bothell and Tacoma also offer a selection of master’s degree programs.

In 2012, the University began exploring plans and governmental approval to expand the main Seattle campus, including significant increases in student housing, teaching facilities for the growing student body and faculty, as well as expanded public transit options. The University of Washington light rail station was completed in March 2015, connecting Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood to the University of Washington Husky Stadium within five minutes of rail travel time. It offers a previously unavailable option of transportation into and out of the campus, designed specifically to reduce dependence on private vehicles, bicycles and local King County buses.

University of Washington has been listed as a “Public Ivy” in Greene’s Guides since 2001, and is an elected member of the American Association of Universities. Among the faculty by 2012, there have been 151 members of American Association for the Advancement of Science, 68 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 67 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 53 members of the National Academy of Medicine, 29 winners of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, 21 members of the National Academy of Engineering, 15 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators, 15 MacArthur Fellows, 9 winners of the Gairdner Foundation International Award, 5 winners of the National Medal of Science, 7 Nobel Prize laureates, 5 winners of Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research, 4 members of the American Philosophical Society, 2 winners of the National Book Award, 2 winners of the National Medal of Arts, 2 Pulitzer Prize winners, 1 winner of the Fields Medal, and 1 member of the National Academy of Public Administration. Among UW students by 2012, there were 136 Fulbright Scholars, 35 Rhodes Scholars, 7 Marshall Scholars and 4 Gates Cambridge Scholars. UW is recognized as a top producer of Fulbright Scholars, ranking 2nd in the US in 2017.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) has consistently ranked University of Washington as one of the top 20 universities worldwide every year since its first release. In 2019, University of Washington ranked 14th worldwide out of 500 by the ARWU, 26th worldwide out of 981 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and 28th worldwide out of 101 in the Times World Reputation Rankings. Meanwhile, QS World University Rankings ranked it 68th worldwide, out of over 900.

U.S. News & World Report ranked University of Washington 8th out of nearly 1,500 universities worldwide for 2021, with University of Washington’s undergraduate program tied for 58th among 389 national universities in the U.S. and tied for 19th among 209 public universities.

In 2019, it ranked 10th among the universities around the world by SCImago Institutions Rankings. In 2017, the Leiden Ranking, which focuses on science and the impact of scientific publications among the world’s 500 major universities, ranked University of Washington 12th globally and 5th in the U.S.

In 2019, Kiplinger Magazine’s review of “top college values” named University of Washington 5th for in-state students and 10th for out-of-state students among U.S. public colleges, and 84th overall out of 500 schools. In the Washington Monthly National University Rankings University of Washington was ranked 15th domestically in 2018, based on its contribution to the public good as measured by social mobility, research, and promoting public service.

From “temblor” : Two articles – “Miles below the seafloor scientists gather data on subduction stress” and “Two large quakes hit Abra Philippines in three months. What does this mean?”

From “temblor”

Miles below the seafloor, scientists gather data on subduction stress
12.2.22
Jay Barber, Science Writer (@JayBarber77)

Earthquakes can cause catastrophic damage and loss of life. Yet, no one can predict them. Earthquakes in subduction zones under the ocean pose a particular scourge. In this setting, two tectonic plates meet, with the less-buoyant plate diving below the other. When the plates get stuck, stress builds. Eventually, the locked plates must release the stress. If the release is abrupt, the result can be a megathrust earthquake, and the sudden movement can displace water, causing a tsunami.

Scientists who study subduction zones have long thought that if stress could be measured where the plates meet, the data could help them better forecast such events. However, because much of any given subduction zone dwells miles below Earth’s surface (which likely sits beneath miles of ocean water), physical measurements have been impossible — until now.

In recent research published in Geology [below], scientists drilled nearly 2 miles (3,058 meters) below the seafloor, toward the megathrust fault in Japan’s Nankai Subduction Zone. The data they collected show, rather unexpectedly, that tectonic stress does not seem to build up where scientists expected to find it.

The Nankai Trough poses a hazard to many of Japan’s southern islands.

Drilling for data

Harold Tobin, a seismologist at the University of Washington and Director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, and his colleagues had hoped to drill all the way to the boundary where the Philippine Sea Plate subducts below the Amurian Plate in the Nankai Subduction Zone. But when they got down there, they found they couldn’t drill quite so deep. “It turns out that the place where the fault was accessible is in 2,000 meters (6,600 feet) of water and then 5 more kilometers (3 miles) below the bottom of the ocean,” Tobin says. For researchers to access the fault, they would need to drill 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) below the ship, which was floating off the southeastern coast of Japan. Thus far, they’ve drilled about 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) short of the fault. Nonetheless, the subduction zone is revealing some surprises.

Prior to this study, scientists hypothesized that the horizontal stress — the stress caused by the pressure of the tectonic plates pushing together — would be greater than the vertical stress caused by the weight of the rock at this depth. If true, then stress measurements could help scientists directly assess stress that’s built up from plate motion.

Because the last major earthquake in the Nankai Subduction Zone struck nearly 80 years ago (1944), Tobin and his colleagues expected to measure substantial stress accumulation. In other words, stress should have built up since that last earthquake, based in part on how the plates have since moved toward one another, which scientists know from other measurements, like GPS. But the team’s measurements did not show the level of stress they were expecting; measurements showed far less. “This finding was counter to our [expectation] of what we thought [the stress] would look like,” Tobin says.

Researchers drilled 2 miles below the seafloor at site C0002F/N/P. This cross section through the subduction zone helps visualize just how close they got. The surface labeled “megasplay fault” is the beginning of the plate interface. Credit: Tobin et al., (2022)

One piece of the puzzle

Though researchers observed less stress than they expected, their findings don’t mean that the fault isn’t building toward a major earthquake. In fact, they suspect that if they could drill further down and get closer to the fault, or if they could extend the duration over which they collected their measurements, they might find what they originally expected. “We know that the plates really are converging. It’s definitely a subduction zone,” Tobin says. “Either the stress is changing in that next few thousand meters [closer to the fault], and it’s changing really rapidly, or it’s going to change over time [in the future].”

“It seems very likely that the stress near a major subduction fault should be pushing the fault in the direction of motion,” says Emily Brodsky, an earthquake physicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has studied the workings of megathrust zones. “Oddly, this data shows that it is not.” The fault could still be early in its cycle, she says, which agrees with Tobin’s possible explanations. “It is a head-scratcher,” she says.

This research marks the first time seismic data have been collected so near to the subduction zone plate interface. “We [historically] make all of our observations with seismometers and GPS instruments here on the surface of the Earth,” explains Tobin. Yet, because earthquakes nucleate deep below the Earth’s surface, “we need observations down near the fault zones,” he says. “It’s like looking at Mars through a telescope versus sending a rover up to Mars.”

Because of this difference between where earthquakes begin versus where scientists collect data, much of researchers’ current understanding of earthquakes relies on models of how they think Earth breaks. These new data will allow them to update those models, says Tobin. “This is one piece in the giant puzzle of how earthquakes work.”

Ideally instruments could be placed into the drilled hole that would allow for long-term monitoring of stress buildup, says Tobin. The eventual goal of this work would be to use data from those instruments to understand whether precursory signs or activity exist prior to an earthquake that researchers can monitor. Should some measurable stress signal occur before a quake, then scientists could better forecast major seismic activity.
 
References:

Tobin, H. J., Saffer, D. M., Castillo, D. A., & Hirose, T. (2022). Direct constraints on in situ stress state from deep drilling into the Nankai subduction zone, Japan. Geology, 50(11), 1229-1233.

Two large quakes hit Abra, Philippines, in three months. What does this mean?
12.6.22
Mario Aurelio, Sandra Donna Catugas, Structural Geology and Tectonics Laboratory, University of Philippines National Institute of Geological Sciences, Alec Benjamin Ramirez, Geomorphology and Active Tectonics Research Laboratory, University of Philippines National Institute of Geological Sciences, Semantha Chesca Aurelio, Association of Structural Engineers of the Philippines, Regional Sub-Committee, Laoag City, and Alfredo Mahar Francisco Lagmay, Executive Director, University of the Philippines Resilience Institute-Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards Center (@nababaha)

An October magnitude-6.4 quake succeeded a July magnitude-7.0 earthquake that struck the same region. What do these quakes tell us about the faults involved and whether the second was an aftershock?

On Oct. 25, 2022, at 10:59 p.m., Manila time, a magnitude-6.4 earthquake struck 16 kilometers (10 miles) below Abra, on the northwestern sector of Luzon in the Philippines. The event occurred less than three months after a magnitude-7.0 earthquake that hit the same region on July 27, 2022. The most recent epicenter was located only about 18 kilometers (11 miles) from where the July earthquake struck.

What this close proximity means for stress on the region’s faults is still being studied.
 
An area prone to earthquakes

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) plots the epicenter of the October main shock around 5 kilometers (3 miles) north-northeast of Lagayan, Abra. More than 1,000 aftershocks with magnitudes ranging from 1.3 to 4.8 have been recorded. No ground rupture has been observed.

Figure 1 Seismotectonics of the two earthquakes affecting the province of Abra in northern Philippines in less than three months this year, namely a magnitude 7.0 July 27 and a magnitude 6.4 October 25. Result of Coulomb stress change modeling shown, using the July earthquake as source and the northeast striking, southeast dipping nodal plane of the focal mechanism solutions of the October earthquake as the receiver. Aftershocks of the two seismic events are shown as light purple circles with purple outline for the July earthquake, and light green circles with green outline for the October earthquake. Gray circles with white outline are background historical earthquake epicenters. Inset map on the lower right corner indicates place names of towns and provinces discussed in the text. Locations of CST cross sections A-A’, B-B’ and C-C’ shown in Figure 2 indicated as light green lines. References: Jarvis et al., 2008 for SRTM topography; Weatherall et al., 2020 for bathymetry; Toda et al., 2011 for CST modeling; PHIVOLCS for earthquake data. GMT (Wessel and Smith, 1995) was used to generate the map. See text for more discussion. Credit: Aurelio, Catugas, Ramirez, Aurelio, Lagmay.

The main shock struck on a reverse fault, oriented roughly northeast, in an area of compression, according to data from PHIVOLCS. This is similar to the July earthquake.

The aftershocks were located north and north-northeast of the mainshock, in the upper Laoag River Basin, located in Ilocos Norte, the province immediately north of Abra. This aftershock configuration is distinctly different from that of the July event, which plotted west and southwest of the mainshock. This suggests that the fault responsible for the July event was different than that of the October event; however, both faults were dipping gently to the east or southeast.

Large earthquakes such as these can change the distribution of stress in Earth’s crust. We evaluated whether the July event could have triggered the recent quake. Assuming certain fault parameters, we find that the October earthquake occurred in an area that had seen a decrease in stress due to the July earthquake. This may suggest that the October event could be an aftershock of the July event. However, it was larger than a typical aftershock. Theoretically, aftershocks should have a maximum magnitude that is an order of magnitude lower — a magnitude-6.0 in this case. Aftershocks typically decrease in magnitude at a fairly predictable rate, with the largest in the minutes to days following a mainshock and then declining to smaller and smaller quakes in the weeks and months to follow. So this one doesn’t fit the pattern.

Instead, the October quake may be considered a doublet. Doublets are two related quakes that occur in close proximity and time; they are sometimes considered to be “interruptions in the rupture process,” causing the second part of an earthquake to be delayed due to an asperity or an irregularity of the fault plane such as a bend (see also discussion for Figure 4 below). Doublets are usually thought to occur closer in time than a period of months. Thus, whether these quakes are a doublet or not is still up for debate.

Figure 2 Coulomb stress transfer cross sections along lines indicated in Figure 1. (a) Section drawn perpendicular to and passing through the NNE-striking, ESE-dipping nodal plane of the July magnitude-7.0 earthquake, showing the fault mechanism solutions of the mainshock and the aftershocks (small circles); (b) Section drawn perpendicular to and passing through the NE-striking, SE-dipping nodal plane of the magnitude-6.4 October earthquake, showing the fault mechanism solutions of the mainshock and the aftershocks (small circles); (c) Section passing through both the July and October, 2022 earthquakes, showing the fault mechanism solutions of both mainshocks and their aftershocks (small circles). Coulomb stress transfer and aftershock color codes same as in Figure 1. See text for discussion. References: Jarvis et al., 2008 for SRTM topography; Weatherall et al., 2020 for bathymetry; Toda et al., 2011 for CST modeling; PHIVOLCS for earthquake data. GMT (Wessel and Smith, 1995) was used to generate the cross section. See text for more discussion. Credit: Aurelio, Catugas, Ramirez, Aurelio, Lagmay.

Infrastructure damage and ground deformation

No deaths were reported following the October quake, but at least nine provinces in three regions were affected. Around 140 injuries were reported and the earthquake displaced more than 114,000 individuals (NDRRMC SitRep 4, 01 November 2022). Infrastructure damage included totally (>400) and partially (>13,000) destroyed houses, and damaged government buildings, including hospitals and other health facilities, roads and bridges.

The total estimated cost of infrastructure damage is around 85 million Philippine pesos (~$1.5 million USD). Schools and offices in both the government and private sector were closed in the first few days after the earthquake.

The temblor was also felt slightly in Metro Manila, located more than 300 kilometers (190 miles) away, especially by occupants of high-rise residential complexes who reported experiencing swaying and movement of hanging objects such as ceiling fans and chandeliers.

The severe damage can be attributed to structural defects compounded by the shaking of loose sediments on which the buildings were erected. Columns below heavily built upper floors collapsed. Insufficient rebar support within columns and poor-quality concrete mix led to additional collapse. This is especially the case for buildings constructed on poorly consolidated subsurface, in which shaking during the earthquake was amplified. Such failure features were observed in residential houses as well as in government establishments such as municipal halls, hospitals and other health facilities.

Although less intense than in the July earthquake, ground deformation did occur with the October tremor as well. Numerous landslides occurred in mountainous regions and liquefaction was observed in at least one coastal site in Ilocos Sur, a province west of Abra (NDRRMC SitRep 4, 01 November 2022).

Figure 3 Infrastructure damage, observed in Marcos town, Ilocos Norte province, located around 35 kilometers (21 miles) to the northwest of the epicenter of the October magnitude-6.4 earthquake. (a) Residential building collapsing toward the front; (b) View from the front of the collapsed building shown in photo (a), showing shear failure of columns: Note the 2nd floor already hugging the ground after the total collapse of the 1st floor; (c) Tilting to one side of an unfinished warehouse due to column and wall failure, and differential settlement of poorly consolidated subsurface; (d) Column damage on a government building due to shear failure and poor quality of concrete mixture (crumbles on slight hammer tap). Photo credits: S.C. Aurelio.

In Ilocos Norte, the province located to the north of Abra, particularly in the towns of Marcos, Banna, Solsona, Batac and the city of Laoag, some residents reported that the magnitude-6.4 event in October generated stronger ground shaking (higher intensity) than the magnitude-7.0 event in July. Although weaker in magnitude by about 15 times, the October event was felt more strongly by the Ilocos Norte residents since the epicenter was closer to them. Further, their towns are located within the vast floodplains of the Laoag River, which is underlain by loose river deposits that tend to shake more strongly during earthquakes. This may also explain the more intense infrastructure damage in these towns, despite the weaker magnitude.

Current maps indicate that several active faults are present in the upper Laoag River Basin. These faults form the branches of the northern segment of the Philippine Fault system. In August 1983, a magnitude-6.5 earthquake struck beneath Solsona, jolting the same region as the recent event and inflicting heavy infrastructure damage over a large area. To avoid future catastrophes, engineers should consider designing buildings strictly according to current structural codes, particularly those related to seismic loading, and particularly in floodplains where loose sediments predominate.
 
New insights on fault configuration

The magnitude-7.0 July earthquake did not leave any visible surface ground rupture. Neither did the magnitude-6.4 October quake. Without a surface mark of fault offset, identifying the fault that generated either earthquake is difficult. However, the close proximity of the two events in space and time provides some insights on the possible configuration of a fault(s) that could have triggered both earthquakes.

Though the calculated fault orientations from the two earthquakes are similar (compressional, thrust pair), the aftershock configurations are distinctly different, suggesting a fault geometry that curves to the right and steepens as it extends northward. The westerly distribution of the July aftershocks is consistent with the northerly trending, east dipping Vigan-Aggao Fault. On the other hand, the northerly distribution of the October aftershocks suggests a northeast striking, southeast dipping rupturing fault.

Figure 4 Trace of suspected fault responsible for the two 2022 Abra earthquakes of July 25 (magnitude-7.0) and October 25 (magnitude-6.4), determined from a 3-D rendering of earthquake hypocenters of the mainshocks and their aftershocks. Fault plane is formed by connecting the NNE-striking, ESE-dipping Vigan-Aggao Fault and the NE-striking, SE-dipping South Solsona Fault. Focal mechanism solutions shown for earthquakes with magnitudes greater than 4.5. 3-D rendering using QGIS. See text for discussion. Credit: Aurelio, Catugas, Ramirez, Aurelio, Lagmay.

A curving fault plane is consistent with several known faults in the region that belong to the branches of the northern segment of the Philippine Fault system. Such faults include the West Ilocos Fault System (PHIVOLCS, 2022), which is made up of the Vigan-Aggao Fault, the South Solsona Fault and the North Solsona Fault (Aurelio and Peña, 2010; Pinet, 1990; Pinet and Stephan, 1990; Ringenbach, 1992; Ringenbach et al., 1990). Assuming that the July and October earthquakes were generated by a single fault, the best-fitting model would be a fault plane that connects the Vigan-Aggao Fault in the south with the South Solsona Fault toward the northeast. Such a fault plane, albeit bent to the northeast on its northern section, would be more than 90 kilometers (56 miles) long, capable of generating a future earthquake with a magnitude larger than 7.0.
 
References:

Aurelio, M., Catugas, S.D., and Lagmay, A.M.F. (2022). Fault that caused a July quake in the Philippines still in question, Temblor, http://doi.org/10.32858/temblor.268

Aurelio, M.A. and Peña, R.E., Editors (2010). Geology of the Philippines, 2nd Edition – Vol. 1: Tectonics and Stratigraphy. 532 pages. Published by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Quezon City, Philippines

Jarvis, A., H.I. Reuter, A. Nelson, E. Guevara (2008). Hole-filled SRTM for the globe Version 4, available from the CGIAR-CSI SRTM 90m Database (http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org).

NDRRMC SitRep 4 (01 November 2022). National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC) Situational Report No. 4. Situational Report for Magnitude 6.4 Earthquake in Lagayan, Abra (2022). Available at: https://monitoring-dashboard.ndrrmc.gov.ph/page/reports/situational-report-for-magnitude-64-earthquake-in-lagayan-abra-2022

Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology Earthquake Intensity Scale – PEIS. Available at: https://www.phivolcs.dost.gov.ph/index.php/earthquake/earthquake-intensity-scale

Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology Earthquake Data (2022). Available at: https://www.phivolcs.dost.gov.ph/index.php/earthquake/earthquake-information3

Pinet, N. (1990). Un exemple de grand decrochement actif en context de subduction oblique: a faille Philippine dans se partie Septentrionale. Doctoral Dissertation, Université de Nice – Sophia Antipolis, France. 390 p.

Pinet, N. and Stephan, J. F. (1990). The Philippine wrench fault system in the Ilocos Foothills, northwestern Luzon, Philippines: Tectonophysics, 183, 207-224.

Ringenbach, J.C. (1992). La Faille Philippine et les châines en décrochement associés (centre et nord de Luzon): Evolution cénozoique et cinématique des déformations uaternaires.
Doctoral Dissertation, Université de Nice – Sophia Antipolis, France. 316 p.

Ringenbach, J. C., Stephan, J. F., Maleterre, P. and Bellon, H. (1990). Structure and geological history of the Lepanto-Cervantes releasing bend in the Abra River Fault, Luzon Central Cordillera, Philippines. Tectonophysics, 183, 225-241.

Toda, S., Stein, R.S., Sevilgen, V. and Lin, J. (2011). Coulomb 3.3 Graphic-rich deformation and stress-change software for earthquake, tectonic, and volcano research and teaching—user guide: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2011–1060, 63 p., available at https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1060/

Weatherall, P., Tozer, B., Arndt, J.E., Bazhenova, E., Bringensparr, C., Castro, C.F., Dorschel, B., Ferrini, V., Hehemann, L., Jakobsson, M., Johnson, P., Ketter, T., Mackay, K., Martin, T.V., Mayer, L.A., McMichael-Phillips, J., Mohammad, R., Nitsche, F.O., Sandwell, D.T., Snaith, H., Viquerat, S. (2020). The GEBCO_2020 Grid – a continuous terrain model of the global oceans and land. British Oceanographic Data Centre, National Oceanography Centre, NERC, UK. doi:10.5285/a29c5465-b138-234d-e053-6c86abc040b9

Wessel, P. and Smith, W.H.F., (1995). New version of the Generic Mapping Tools released. EOS Trans. Am. Geophys. Union 76, 329.

Science paper:
Geology
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See the full articles here and here.

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Earthquake Alert

Earthquake Alert

Earthquake Network projectEarthquake Network is a research project which aims at developing and maintaining a crowdsourced smartphone-based earthquake warning system at a global level. Smartphones made available by the population are used to detect the earthquake waves using the on-board accelerometers. When an earthquake is detected, an earthquake warning is issued in order to alert the population not yet reached by the damaging waves of the earthquake.

The project started on January 1, 2013 with the release of the homonymous Android application Earthquake Network. The author of the research project and developer of the smartphone application is Francesco Finazzi of the University of Bergamo, Italy.

Get the app in the Google Play store.

Smartphone network spatial distribution (green and red dots) on December 4, 2015

Meet The Quake-Catcher Network

Quake-Catcher Network

The Quake-Catcher Network is a collaborative initiative for developing the world’s largest, low-cost strong-motion seismic network by utilizing sensors in and attached to internet-connected computers. With your help, the Quake-Catcher Network can provide better understanding of earthquakes, give early warning to schools, emergency response systems, and others. The Quake-Catcher Network also provides educational software designed to help teach about earthquakes and earthquake hazards.

After almost eight years at Stanford, and a year at CalTech, the QCN project is moving to the University of Southern California Dept. of Earth Sciences. QCN will be sponsored by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) and the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC).

The Quake-Catcher Network is a distributed computing network that links volunteer hosted computers into a real-time motion sensing network. QCN is one of many scientific computing projects that runs on the world-renowned distributed computing platform Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC).

The volunteer computers monitor vibrational sensors called MEMS accelerometers, and digitally transmit “triggers” to QCN’s servers whenever strong new motions are observed. QCN’s servers sift through these signals, and determine which ones represent earthquakes, and which ones represent cultural noise (like doors slamming, or trucks driving by).

There are two categories of sensors used by QCN: 1) internal mobile device sensors, and 2) external USB sensors.

Mobile Devices: MEMS sensors are often included in laptops, games, cell phones, and other electronic devices for hardware protection, navigation, and game control. When these devices are still and connected to QCN, QCN software monitors the internal accelerometer for strong new shaking. Unfortunately, these devices are rarely secured to the floor, so they may bounce around when a large earthquake occurs. While this is less than ideal for characterizing the regional ground shaking, many such sensors can still provide useful information about earthquake locations and magnitudes.

USB Sensors: MEMS sensors can be mounted to the floor and connected to a desktop computer via a USB cable. These sensors have several advantages over mobile device sensors. 1) By mounting them to the floor, they measure more reliable shaking than mobile devices. 2) These sensors typically have lower noise and better resolution of 3D motion. 3) Desktops are often left on and do not move. 4) The USB sensor is physically removed from the game, phone, or laptop, so human interaction with the device doesn’t reduce the sensors’ performance. 5) USB sensors can be aligned to North, so we know what direction the horizontal “X” and “Y” axes correspond to.

If you are a science teacher at a K-12 school, please apply for a free USB sensor and accompanying QCN software. QCN has been able to purchase sensors to donate to schools in need. If you are interested in donating to the program or requesting a sensor, click here.

BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience.BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, developed at UC Berkeley.

Earthquake safety is a responsibility shared by billions worldwide. The Quake-Catcher Network (QCN) provides software so that individuals can join together to improve earthquake monitoring, earthquake awareness, and the science of earthquakes. The Quake-Catcher Network (QCN) links existing networked laptops and desktops in hopes to form the worlds largest strong-motion seismic network.

Below, the QCN Quake Catcher Network map

ShakeAlert: An Earthquake Early Warning System for the West Coast of the United States

The U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) along with a coalition of State and university partners is developing and testing an earthquake early warning (EEW) system called ShakeAlert for the west coast of the United States. Long term funding must be secured before the system can begin sending general public notifications, however, some limited pilot projects are active and more are being developed. The USGS has set the goal of beginning limited public notifications in 2018.

Watch a video describing how ShakeAlert works in English or Spanish.

The primary project partners include:

United States Geological Survey
California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (CalOES)
California Geological Survey
California Institute of Technology
University of California Berkeley
University of Washington
University of Oregon
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

The Earthquake Threat

Earthquakes pose a national challenge because more than 143 million Americans live in areas of significant seismic risk across 39 states. Most of our Nation’s earthquake risk is concentrated on the West Coast of the United States. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has estimated the average annualized loss from earthquakes, nationwide, to be $5.3 billion, with 77 percent of that figure ($4.1 billion) coming from California, Washington, and Oregon, and 66 percent ($3.5 billion) from California alone. In the next 30 years, California has a 99.7 percent chance of a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake and the Pacific Northwest has a 10 percent chance of a magnitude 8 to 9 megathrust earthquake on the Cascadia subduction zone.

Part of the Solution

Today, the technology exists to detect earthquakes, so quickly, that an alert can reach some areas before strong shaking arrives. The purpose of the ShakeAlert system is to identify and characterize an earthquake a few seconds after it begins, calculate the likely intensity of ground shaking that will result, and deliver warnings to people and infrastructure in harm’s way. This can be done by detecting the first energy to radiate from an earthquake, the P-wave energy, which rarely causes damage. Using P-wave information, we first estimate the location and the magnitude of the earthquake. Then, the anticipated ground shaking across the region to be affected is estimated and a warning is provided to local populations. The method can provide warning before the S-wave arrives, bringing the strong shaking that usually causes most of the damage.

Studies of earthquake early warning methods in California have shown that the warning time would range from a few seconds to a few tens of seconds. ShakeAlert can give enough time to slow trains and taxiing planes, to prevent cars from entering bridges and tunnels, to move away from dangerous machines or chemicals in work environments and to take cover under a desk, or to automatically shut down and isolate industrial systems. Taking such actions before shaking starts can reduce damage and casualties during an earthquake. It can also prevent cascading failures in the aftermath of an event. For example, isolating utilities before shaking starts can reduce the number of fire initiations.

System Goal

The USGS will issue public warnings of potentially damaging earthquakes and provide warning parameter data to government agencies and private users on a region-by-region basis, as soon as the ShakeAlert system, its products, and its parametric data meet minimum quality and reliability standards in those geographic regions. The USGS has set the goal of beginning limited public notifications in 2018. Product availability will expand geographically via ANSS regional seismic networks, such that ShakeAlert products and warnings become available for all regions with dense seismic instrumentation.

Current Status

The West Coast ShakeAlert system is being developed by expanding and upgrading the infrastructure of regional seismic networks that are part of the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS); the California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN) is made up of the Southern California Seismic Network, SCSN) and the Northern California Seismic System, NCSS and the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN). This enables the USGS and ANSS to leverage their substantial investment in sensor networks, data telemetry systems, data processing centers, and software for earthquake monitoring activities residing in these network centers. The ShakeAlert system has been sending live alerts to “beta” users in California since January of 2012 and in the Pacific Northwest since February of 2015.

In February of 2016 the USGS, along with its partners, rolled-out the next-generation ShakeAlert early warning test system in California joined by Oregon and Washington in April 2017. This West Coast-wide “production prototype” has been designed for redundant, reliable operations. The system includes geographically distributed servers, and allows for automatic fail-over if connection is lost.

This next-generation system will not yet support public warnings but does allow selected early adopters to develop and deploy pilot implementations that take protective actions triggered by the ShakeAlert notifications in areas with sufficient sensor coverage.

Authorities

The USGS will develop and operate the ShakeAlert system, and issue public notifications under collaborative authorities with FEMA, as part of the National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program, as enacted by the Earthquake Hazards Reduction Act of 1977, 42 U.S.C. §§ 7704 SEC. 2.

For More Information

Robert de Groot, ShakeAlert National Coordinator for Communication, Education, and Outreach
rdegroot@usgs.gov
626-583-7225

Learn more about EEW Research

ShakeAlert Fact Sheet

ShakeAlert Implementation Plan

QuakeAlertUSA

About Early Warning Labs, LLC

Early Warning Labs, LLC (EWL) is an Earthquake Early Warning technology developer and integrator located in Santa Monica, CA. EWL is partnered with industry leading GIS provider ESRI, Inc. and is collaborating with the US Government and university partners.

EWL is investing millions of dollars over the next 36 months to complete the final integration and delivery of Earthquake Early Warning to individual consumers, government entities, and commercial users.

EWL’s mission is to improve, expand, and lower the costs of the existing earthquake early warning systems.

EWL is developing a robust cloud server environment to handle low-cost mass distribution of these warnings. In addition, Early Warning Labs is researching and developing automated response standards and systems that allow public and private users to take pre-defined automated actions to protect lives and assets.

EWL has an existing beta R&D test system installed at one of the largest studios in Southern California. The goal of this system is to stress test EWL’s hardware, software, and alert signals while improving latency and reliability.

Earthquake Early Warning Introduction

The United States Geological Survey (USGS), in collaboration with state agencies, university partners, and private industry, is developing an earthquake early warning system (EEW) for the West Coast of the United States called ShakeAlert. The USGS Earthquake Hazards Program aims to mitigate earthquake losses in the United States. Citizens, first responders, and engineers rely on the USGS for accurate and timely information about where earthquakes occur, the ground shaking intensity in different locations, and the likelihood is of future significant ground shaking.

The ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning System recently entered its first phase of operations. The USGS working in partnership with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) is now allowing for the testing of public alerting via apps, Wireless Emergency Alerts, and by other means throughout California.

ShakeAlert partners in Oregon and Washington are working with the USGS to test public alerting in those states sometime in 2020.

ShakeAlert has demonstrated the feasibility of earthquake early warning, from event detection to producing USGS issued ShakeAlerts ® and will continue to undergo testing and will improve over time. In particular, robust and reliable alert delivery pathways for automated actions are currently being developed and implemented by private industry partners for use in California, Oregon, and Washington.

Earthquake Early Warning Background

The objective of an earthquake early warning system is to rapidly detect the initiation of an earthquake, estimate the level of ground shaking intensity to be expected, and issue a warning before significant ground shaking starts. A network of seismic sensors detects the first energy to radiate from an earthquake, the P-wave energy, and the location and the magnitude of the earthquake is rapidly determined. Then, the anticipated ground shaking across the region to be affected is estimated. The system can provide warning before the S-wave arrives, which brings the strong shaking that usually causes most of the damage. Warnings will be distributed to local and state public emergency response officials, critical infrastructure, private businesses, and the public. EEW systems have been successfully implemented in Japan, Taiwan, Mexico, and other nations with varying degrees of sophistication and coverage.

Earthquake early warning can provide enough time to:

Instruct students and employees to take a protective action such as Drop, Cover, and Hold On
Initiate mass notification procedures
Open fire-house doors and notify local first responders
Slow and stop trains and taxiing planes
Install measures to prevent/limit additional cars from going on bridges, entering tunnels, and being on freeway overpasses before the shaking starts
Move people away from dangerous machines or chemicals in work environments
Shut down gas lines, water treatment plants, or nuclear reactors
Automatically shut down and isolate industrial systems

However, earthquake warning notifications must be transmitted without requiring human review and response action must be automated, as the total warning times are short depending on geographic distance and varying soil densities from the epicenter.

From “Eos” : “Enhancing Earthquake Detection from Orbit”

From “Eos”

AT

AGU

12.2.22
Sarah Stanley

A new algorithm was shown to improve the use of data for earthquake sensing from Global Navigation Satellite System sensors, like this one on the Aleutian Peninsula of Alaska. Credit: Ellie Boyce/UNAVCO, CC BY 4.0.

When a major earthquake strikes, nearby seismometers can inform rapid alerts to residents and emergency services that potentially hazardous shaking or tsunamis may be headed their way. However, local seismometer measurements are not sufficient to determine in real time just how big the largest earthquakes are.

Scientists have harnessed high-precision measurements of ground displacement from Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), such as GPS, to complement seismometer observations. GNSS data can differentiate between the largest earthquakes but are noisier than data from conventional seismometers, which has limited their contributions in natural hazards applications.

To address the noisy data, Dittmann et al. made two experimental decision choices predicated on previous GNSS seismology research and machine learning development: They adopted an alternative method for processing geodetic measurements, and they trained a machine learning model to use GNSS sensor data to detect earthquakes. The team trained, validated, and tested the model using data from the National Science Foundation’s Geodetic Facility for the Advancement of Geoscience archive from 77 earthquakes greater than magnitude 4.5 that occurred over 20 years.

When pitted against existing GNSS earthquake detection methods, the new model detected more true seismic signals and triggered fewer false alarms. In addition, unlike previous methods, the new model relies on computationally lightweight processing and does not rely on additional corrections to account for false signals.

The researchers suggest that the new model could be widely applied to enhance the role of GNSS sensors in earthquake detection. They also outline opportunities for future refinement, such as applying more extensive data sets to train and validate the model.

Science paper:
Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth
See the science paper for instructive material with images.

See the full article here .

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Earthquake Alert

Earthquake Alert

Earthquake Network project is a research project which aims at developing and maintaining a crowdsourced smartphone-based earthquake warning system at a global level. Smartphones made available by the population are used to detect the earthquake waves using the on-board accelerometers. When an earthquake is detected, an earthquake warning is issued in order to alert the population not yet reached by the damaging waves of the earthquake.

The project started on January 1, 2013 with the release of the homonymous Android application Earthquake Network. The author of the research project and developer of the smartphone application is Francesco Finazzi of the University of Bergamo, Italy.

Get the app in the Google Play store.

Smartphone network spatial distribution (green and red dots) on December 4, 2015
Meet The Quake-Catcher Network

Quake-Catcher Network

The Quake-Catcher Network is a collaborative initiative for developing the world’s largest, low-cost strong-motion seismic network by utilizing sensors in and attached to internet-connected computers. With your help, the Quake-Catcher Network can provide better understanding of earthquakes, give early warning to schools, emergency response systems, and others. The Quake-Catcher Network also provides educational software designed to help teach about earthquakes and earthquake hazards.
After almost eight years at Stanford University (US), and a year at California Institute of Technology (US), the QCN project is moving to the University of Southern California (US) Dept. of Earth Sciences. QCN will be sponsored by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) and the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC).

The Quake-Catcher Network is a distributed computing network that links volunteer hosted computers into a real-time motion sensing network. QCN is one of many scientific computing projects that runs on the world-renowned distributed computing platform Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC).

The volunteer computers monitor vibrational sensors called MEMS accelerometers, and digitally transmit “triggers” to QCN’s servers whenever strong new motions are observed. QCN’s servers sift through these signals, and determine which ones represent earthquakes, and which ones represent cultural noise (like doors slamming, or trucks driving by).

There are two categories of sensors used by QCN: 1) internal mobile device sensors, and 2) external USB sensors.

Mobile Devices: MEMS sensors are often included in laptops, games, cell phones, and other electronic devices for hardware protection, navigation, and game control. When these devices are still and connected to QCN, QCN software monitors the internal accelerometer for strong new shaking. Unfortunately, these devices are rarely secured to the floor, so they may bounce around when a large earthquake occurs. While this is less than ideal for characterizing the regional ground shaking, many such sensors can still provide useful information about earthquake locations and magnitudes.

USB Sensors: MEMS sensors can be mounted to the floor and connected to a desktop computer via a USB cable. These sensors have several advantages over mobile device sensors. 1) By mounting them to the floor, they measure more reliable shaking than mobile devices. 2) These sensors typically have lower noise and better resolution of 3D motion. 3) Desktops are often left on and do not move. 4) The USB sensor is physically removed from the game, phone, or laptop, so human interaction with the device doesn’t reduce the sensors’ performance. 5) USB sensors can be aligned to North, so we know what direction the horizontal “X” and “Y” axes correspond to.

If you are a science teacher at a K-12 school, please apply for a free USB sensor and accompanying QCN software. QCN has been able to purchase sensors to donate to schools in need. If you are interested in donating to the program or requesting a sensor, click here.

BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience.BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, developed at UC Berkeley.
Earthquake safety is a responsibility shared by billions worldwide. The Quake-Catcher Network (QCN) provides software so that individuals can join together to improve earthquake monitoring, earthquake awareness, and the science of earthquakes. The Quake-Catcher Network (QCN) links existing networked laptops and desktops in hopes to form the worlds largest strong-motion seismic network.

Below, the QCN Quake Catcher Network map

QuakeAlertUSA

About Early Warning Labs, LLC

Early Warning Labs, LLC (EWL) is an Earthquake Early Warning technology developer and integrator located in Santa Monica, CA. EWL is partnered with industry leading GIS provider ESRI, Inc. and is collaborating with the US Government and university partners.

EWL is investing millions of dollars over the next 36 months to complete the final integration and delivery of Earthquake Early Warning to individual consumers, government entities, and commercial users.

EWL’s mission is to improve, expand, and lower the costs of the existing earthquake early warning systems.

EWL is developing a robust cloud server environment to handle low-cost mass distribution of these warnings. In addition, Early Warning Labs is researching and developing automated response standards
and systems that allow public and private users to take pre-defined automated actions to protect lives and assets.

EWL has an existing beta R&D test system installed at one of the largest studios in Southern California. The goal of this system is to stress test EWL’s hardware, software, and alert signals while improving latency and reliability.

ShakeAlert: An Earthquake Early Warning System for the West Coast of the United States

The U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) along with a coalition of State and university partners is developing and testing an earthquake early warning (EEW) system called ShakeAlert for the west coast of the United States. Long term funding must be secured before the system can begin sending general public notifications, however, some limited pilot projects are active and more are being developed. The USGS has set the goal of beginning limited public notifications in 2018.

Watch a video describing how ShakeAlert works in English or Spanish.

The primary project partners include:

United States Geological Survey
California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (CalOES)
California Geological Survey California Institute of Technology
University of California Berkeley
University of Washington
University of Oregon
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

The Earthquake Threat

Earthquakes pose a national challenge because more than 143 million Americans live in areas of significant seismic risk across 39 states. Most of our Nation’s earthquake risk is concentrated on the West Coast of the United States. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has estimated the average annualized loss from earthquakes, nationwide, to be $5.3 billion, with 77 percent of that figure ($4.1 billion) coming from California, Washington, and Oregon, and 66 percent ($3.5 billion) from California alone. In the next 30 years, California has a 99.7 percent chance of a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake and the Pacific Northwest has a 10 percent chance of a magnitude 8 to 9 megathrust earthquake on the Cascadia subduction zone.

Part of the Solution

Today, the technology exists to detect earthquakes, so quickly, that an alert can reach some areas before strong shaking arrives. The purpose of the ShakeAlert system is to identify and characterize an earthquake a few seconds after it begins, calculate the likely intensity of ground shaking that will result, and deliver warnings to people and infrastructure in harm’s way. This can be done by detecting the first energy to radiate from an earthquake, the P-wave energy, which rarely causes damage. Using P-wave information, we first estimate the location and the magnitude of the earthquake. Then, the anticipated ground shaking across the region to be affected is estimated and a warning is provided to local populations. The method can provide warning before the S-wave arrives, bringing the strong shaking that usually causes most of the damage.

Studies of earthquake early warning methods in California have shown that the warning time would range from a few seconds to a few tens of seconds. ShakeAlert can give enough time to slow trains and taxiing planes, to prevent cars from entering bridges and tunnels, to move away from dangerous machines or chemicals in work environments and to take cover under a desk, or to automatically shut down and isolate industrial systems. Taking such actions before shaking starts can reduce damage and casualties during an earthquake. It can also prevent cascading failures in the aftermath of an event. For example, isolating utilities before shaking starts can reduce the number of fire initiations.

System Goal

The USGS will issue public warnings of potentially damaging earthquakes and provide warning parameter data to government agencies and private users on a region-by-region basis, as soon as the ShakeAlert system, its products, and its parametric data meet minimum quality and reliability standards in those geographic regions. The USGS has set the goal of beginning limited public notifications in 2018. Product availability will expand geographically via ANSS regional seismic networks, such that ShakeAlert products and warnings become available for all regions with dense seismic instrumentation.

Current Status

The West Coast ShakeAlert system is being developed by expanding and upgrading the infrastructure of regional seismic networks that are part of the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS); the California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN) is made up of the Southern California Seismic Network, SCSN) and the Northern California Seismic System, NCSS and the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN). This enables the USGS and ANSS to leverage their substantial investment in sensor networks, data telemetry systems, data processing centers, and software for earthquake monitoring activities residing in these network centers. The ShakeAlert system has been sending live alerts to “beta” users in California since January of 2012 and in the Pacific Northwest since February of 2015.

In February of 2016 the USGS, along with its partners, rolled-out the next-generation ShakeAlert early warning test system in California joined by Oregon and Washington in April 2017. This West Coast-wide “production prototype” has been designed for redundant, reliable operations. The system includes geographically distributed servers, and allows for automatic fail-over if connection is lost.

This next-generation system will not yet support public warnings but does allow selected early adopters to develop and deploy pilot implementations that take protective actions triggered by the ShakeAlert notifications in areas with sufficient sensor coverage.

Authorities

The USGS will develop and operate the ShakeAlert system, and issue public notifications under collaborative authorities with FEMA, as part of the National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program, as enacted by the Earthquake Hazards Reduction Act of 1977, 42 U.S.C. §§ 7704 SEC. 2.

For More Information

Robert de Groot, ShakeAlert National Coordinator for Communication, Education, and Outreach
rdegroot@usgs.gov
626-583-7225

Learn more about EEW Research

ShakeAlert Fact Sheet

ShakeAlert Implementation Plan

Earthquake Early Warning Introduction

The United States Geological Survey (USGS), in collaboration with state agencies, university partners, and private industry, is developing an earthquake early warning system (EEW) for the West Coast of the United States called ShakeAlert. The USGS Earthquake Hazards Program aims to mitigate earthquake losses in the United States. Citizens, first responders, and engineers rely on the USGS for accurate and timely information about where earthquakes occur, the ground shaking intensity in different locations, and the likelihood is of future significant ground shaking.

The ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning System recently entered its first phase of operations. The USGS working in partnership with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) is now allowing for the testing of public alerting via apps, Wireless Emergency Alerts, and by other means throughout California.

ShakeAlert partners in Oregon and Washington are working with the USGS to test public alerting in those states sometime in 2020.

ShakeAlert has demonstrated the feasibility of earthquake early warning, from event detection to producing USGS issued ShakeAlerts ® and will continue to undergo testing and will improve over time. In particular, robust and reliable alert delivery pathways for automated actions are currently being developed and implemented by private industry partners for use in California, Oregon, and Washington.

Earthquake Early Warning Background

The objective of an earthquake early warning system is to rapidly detect the initiation of an earthquake, estimate the level of ground shaking intensity to be expected, and issue a warning before significant ground shaking starts. A network of seismic sensors detects the first energy to radiate from an earthquake, the P-wave energy, and the location and the magnitude of the earthquake is rapidly determined. Then, the anticipated ground shaking across the region to be affected is estimated. The system can provide warning before the S-wave arrives, which brings the strong shaking that usually causes most of the damage. Warnings will be distributed to local and state public emergency response officials, critical infrastructure, private businesses, and the public. EEW systems have been successfully implemented in Japan, Taiwan, Mexico, and other nations with varying degrees of sophistication and coverage.

Earthquake early warning can provide enough time to:
Instruct students and employees to take a protective action such as Drop, Cover, and Hold On
Initiate mass notification procedures
Open fire-house doors and notify local first responders
Slow and stop trains and taxiing planes
Install measures to prevent/limit additional cars from going on bridges, entering tunnels, and being on freeway overpasses before the shaking starts
Move people away from dangerous machines or chemicals in work environments
Shut down gas lines, water treatment plants, or nuclear reactors
Automatically shut down and isolate industrial systems

However, earthquake warning notifications must be transmitted without requiring human review and response action must be automated, as the total warning times are short depending on geographic distance and varying soil densities from the epicenter.

GNSS-Global Navigational Satellite System

GNSS station | Pacific Northwest Geodetic Array, Central Washington University (US)
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

“Eos” is the leading source for trustworthy news and perspectives about the Earth and space sciences and their impact. Its namesake is Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn, who represents the light shed on understanding our planet and its environment in space by the Earth and space sciences.

From Newcastle University upon Tyne (UK): “Landslide risk remains long after an earthquake”

From Newcastle University upon Tyne (UK)

11.30.22

Satellite observations have revealed that weak seismic ground shaking can trigger powerful landslide acceleration – even several years after a significant earthquake.

[2] Landslide the Italian island of Ischia. Credit: CNN.

These observations help paint a comprehensive picture of landslide behavior triggered by seismic activity and provide the tools for real-time monitoring to support rapid rescue operations.

Landslides, a natural geological hazard worldwide, cause serious human and economic losses every year. Between 1998-2017, landslides affected an estimated 4.8 million people worldwide and cause more than 18,000 deaths (estimates from WHO). Landslides can be triggered by earthquakes, volcanoes, rainfall or human activity and the recent landslide that tore across the Italian island of Ischia is an example of a landslide triggered by rainfall.

Published in the journal Nature Communications [below], the study focused on earthquake-accelerated landslides (EALs). These types of landslides are affected by the long-term seismic effects and may maintain accelerated motion for a long time after the earthquake. EALs cause particularly serious human casualties, especially in seismically active areas.

Informing long-term landslide risk assessment

The research was led by Professor Zhenhong Li, presently at Chang’an University (China), and Professor Utili at Newcastle University. They also worked with Professors Giovanni Crosta and Paolo Frattini at the University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy.

The scientists used satellite radar observations to detect and investigate the activation and recovery of EALs in Central Italy. Their work has led to the first ever complete EAL inventory, which has the potential to inform long-term landslide risk assessment in seismically active areas.

Science paper:
Nature Communications
See the science paper for instructive material with images.

See the full article here .

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

Newcastle University Upon Tyne (UK) is a public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England with overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is a red brick university and a member of the Russell Group, an association of research-intensive UK universities. It holds the Gold Award in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), one of ten Russell Group universities to achieve the Gold TEF rating.

The university can trace its origins to a School of Medicine and Surgery (later the College of Medicine), established in 1834, and to the College of Physical Science (later renamed Armstrong College), founded in 1871. These two colleges came to form one division of the federal University of Durham (UK), with the Durham Colleges forming the other. The Newcastle colleges merged to form King’s College in 1937. In 1963, following an Act of Parliament, King’s College became the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

The university subdivides into three faculties: the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; the Faculty of Medical Sciences; and the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering. The university offers around 175 full-time undergraduate degree programmes in a wide range of subject areas spanning arts, sciences, engineering and medicine, together with approximately 340 postgraduate taught and research programs across a range of disciplines. Newcastle University currently has one of the largest EU research portfolios in the UK.

The establishment of a university in Newcastle upon Tyne was first proposed in 1831 by Thomas Greenhow in a lecture to the Literary and Philosophical Society. In 1832 a group of local medics – physicians George Fife (teaching materia medica and therapeutics) and Samuel Knott (teaching theory and practice of medicine), and surgeons John Fife (teaching surgery), Alexander Fraser (teaching anatomy and physiology) and Henry Glassford Potter (teaching chemistry) – started offering medical lectures in Bell’s Court to supplement the apprenticeship system (a fourth surgeon, Duncan McAllum, is mentioned by some sources among the founders, but was not included in the prospectus). The first session started on 1 October 1832 with eight or nine students, including John Snow, then apprenticed to a local surgeon-apothecary, the opening lecture being delivered by John Fife. In 1834 the lectures and practical demonstrations moved to the Hall of the Company of Barber Surgeons to accommodate the growing number of students, and the School of Medicine and Surgery was formally established on 1 October 1834.

On 25 June 1851, following a dispute among the teaching staff, the school was formally dissolved and the lecturers split into two rival institutions. The majority formed the Newcastle College of Medicine, and the others established themselves as the Newcastle upon Tyne College of Medicine and Practical Science. In July 1851 the majority college was recognized by the Society of Apothecaries and in October by the Royal College of Surgeons of England and in January 1852 was approved by the University of London (UK) to submit its students for London medical degree examinations. Later in 1852, the majority college was formally linked to the University of Durham (UK), becoming the “Newcastle-upon-Tyne College of Medicine in connection with the University of Durham”. The college awarded its first ‘Licence in Medicine’ (LicMed) under the auspices of the University of Durham in 1856, with external examiners from Oxford and London, becoming the first medical examining body on the United Kingdom to institute practical examinations alongside written and viva voce examinations. The two colleges amalgamated in 1857, with the first session of the unified college opening on 3 October that year. In 1861 the degree of Master of Surgery was introduced, allowing for the double qualification of License of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, along with the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine and Doctor of Medicine, both of which required residence in Durham. In 1870 the college was brought into closer connection with the university, becoming the Durham University College of Medicine with the Reader in Medicine becoming the Professor of Medicine, the college gaining a representative on the university’s senate, and residence at the college henceforth counting as residence in the university towards degrees in medicine and surgery, removing the need for students to spend a period of residence in Durham before they could receive the higher degrees.

Attempts to realize a place for the teaching of sciences in the city were finally met with the foundation of the College of Physical Science in 1871. The college offered instruction in mathematics, physics, chemistry and geology to meet the growing needs of the mining industry, becoming the Durham College of Physical Science in 1883 and then renamed after William George Armstrong as Armstrong College in 1904. Both these separate and independent institutions later became part of the University of Durham, whose 1908 Act formally recognized that the university consisted of two Divisions, Durham and Newcastle, on two different sites. By 1908, the Newcastle Division was teaching a full range of subjects in the Faculties of Medicine, Arts, and Science, which also included agriculture and engineering.

Throughout the early 20th century, the medical and science colleges vastly outpaced the growth of their Durham counterparts and a Royal Commission in 1934 recommended the merger of the two colleges to form King’s College, Durham. Growth of the Newcastle Division of the federal Durham University led to tensions within the structure and on 1 August 1963 an Act of Parliament separated the two, creating the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

From “Live Science” : “Dozens of earthquakes swarm Hawaii as the world’s largest volcano erupts”

From “Live Science”

11.28.22
Ben Turner

Mauna Loa erupts after forty years.

Mauna Loa Volcano. Credit: USGS

The eruption is so far not threatening downhill communities or affecting flights.

The lava-filled Moku’āweoweo caldera as captured by the USGC webcam. (Image credit: US Geological Survey)

Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano, is erupting for the first time in nearly 40 years. 

Dozens of earthquakes — one of them a magnitude 4.2 quake — have swarmed the region after the volcano’s Moku’āweoweo summit caldera erupted on Sunday (Nov. 27) night. Officials have issued an ashfall advisory for Hawaii’s Big Island and residents have been asked to remain vigilant. 

So far the eruption’s lava flows pose no risk to people living downhill from the eruption and air travel is currently unaffected, according to Hawaii’s Tourism Agency.

“At this time, lava flows are contained within the summit area and are not threatening downslope communities,” officials from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) wrote in a hazard notification. They warned, however, that, “based on past events, the early stages of a Mauna Loa eruption can be very dynamic and the location and advance of lava flows can change rapidly.” 

The alert, issued in conjunction with USGS’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO), noted that the HVO is set to perform aerial reconnaissance flights as soon as possible “to assess hazards and better describe the eruption,” and that “winds may carry volcanic gas and possibly fine ash and Pele’s Hair downwind.” Pele’s hair are thin strands of volcanic glass formed from cooling lava, which can be carried aloft by strong winds and are sharp enough to lacerate skin and eyes.

Mauna Loa takes up more than half of Hawaii’s Big Island and rises 13,679 feet (4,169 meters) above the Pacific Ocean, according to USGS. The volcano is fairly active, having erupted 33 times since its first well-documented eruption in 1843. Its last eruption was in 1984 when it sent a lava flow close to the city of Hilo. After that, Mauna Loa entered its longest dormant period in recorded history.

Warning signs of an eruption have gradually increased since September, as geologists tracked an uptick in earthquake frequency. This began with five to 10 earthquakes a day in June, and grew to up to around 40 a day in October. 

See the full article here .

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

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From “temblor” : Three articles – “Three earthquakes strike near the western US-Mexico border”; “Shallow and deadly earthquake strikes Indonesia”; “Detecting smaller earthquakes”

From “temblor”

Three earthquakes strike near the western US-Mexico border

11.23.22

Hector Gonzalez-Huizar, Ph.D., Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada, Baja California (CICESE)
 

Three unrelated magnitude-6-plus earthquakes shook Baja California in three weeks, on three different faults.

View of the Pacific Ocean and volcanoes of the San Quintin volcanic field, near the epicenter of the Nov. 22, 2022, magnitude-6.2 earthquake in Baja California. Credit: Luis A. Yegres Herrera.

When a magnitude-6.2 earthquake struck Baja California (Mexico) on Nov. 22, it marked the third quake larger than magnitude 6 to be felt in the region in less than three weeks. Within a period of only 20 days, three large earthquakes were felt by people in Baja California (Mexico) and Southern California (United States). The first quake, a magnitude-6.0 event, occurred on Nov. 2, with an epicenter located in the Pacific Ocean, some 950 miles (about 1,500 kilometers) west of San Diego, California. The second quake, a magnitude-6.1, occurred in the Gulf of California, in Mexico, on Nov. 4. The epicenter of the third one was near the town of San Quintin, in Baja California. Fortunately, there are no reports of significant damage caused by these three events. However, they are a reminder that this region along the western U.S.-Mexico border is surrounded by faults capable of generating large, damaging earthquakes.

The three earthquakes were felt in many cities near the U.S.-Mexico border, including San Diego and Tijuana, according to the reports of the USGS Did You Feel It? website. Yesterday’s quake was felt as far as Los Angeles, California, and Phoenix, Arizona, around 250 and 350 miles (400 and 560 kilometers) from the epicenter, respectively.

Red circles on the map mark the location of the epicenters of the three recent earthquakes. The three earthquakes were felt in some parts of California (CA) in the U.S. and Baja California (BC) in Mexico. GoC stands for the Gulf of California. The blue line represents the tectonic boundary between the North American and Pacific tectonic plates.

The three quakes’ epicenters

The first quake, the magnitude 6.0, occurred in a region where large earthquakes are rare. The epicenter is far from any tectonic boundary (that is, the limit between two tectonic plates, where most earthquakes worldwide are generated).

The second event, the magnitude 6.1, occurred along the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate in the Gulf of California. The system of faults that defines the plate boundary in this region connects to the north with the San Andreas Fault system in California (Castro et al., 2021). The epicenter of this earthquake is located close to 70 miles (about 110 kilometers) from the epicenter of a magnitude-7.0 earthquake that occurred in 2012. The USGS earthquake catalog reports that 15 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or larger have occurred along the Gulf of California since 2007, meaning on average, one of these events has occurred per year. However, it is important to mention that these numbers are slightly higher than what is reported in the catalog of the CICESE Seismic Network, which monitors the seismicity in this part of Mexico—one of the most seismically active regions in the country.

Yesterday’s quake, the magnitude-6.2 event, was located near the town of San Quintin, in Baja California, around 125 miles (200 kilometers) south of San Diego. The earthquake can be attributed to motion along the large San Clemente Fault system. This large strike-slip fault system can be considered as part of a broader North American-Pacific Plate boundary (Walton et al., 2020), which includes the San Andreas Fault Zone that gave us the 1857 magnitude-7.9 Ft.Tejon quake and the 1906 magnitude-7.8 San Francisco quake. The San Clemente Fault can be thought of as the westernmost strand, or sliver, of the San Andreas Fault Zone.

The San Clemente Fault extends for 200 to 300 miles (400 to 500 kilometers) offshore, where it could generate earthquakes up to a magnitude 8.0. Within 24 hours of the magnitude-6.2 quake, more than 100 aftershocks have been detected, the largest with a magnitude of 4.5.

Even though the three earthquakes occurred in the seafloor, no tsunamis were produced. The three earthquakes were generated by faults in which the blocks of rocks have moved mostly horizontally, known as strike-slip faulting. In these kind of quakes, the vertical displacement of the seafloor during the movement is expected to be small. Thus, no big sea waves are generated, and tsunamis are less likely to occur.

Map showing the location of the most recent of the three earthquakes and the large San Clemente Fault.

 References:

Castro, R., Carciumaru, D., Collin, M., Vetel, W., Gonzalez-Huizar, H., Mendoza, A., et al. (2021), Seismicity in the Gulf of California, Mexico, in the period 1901–2018, J. South Am. Earth Sci. 106, 103087, doi: 10.1016/j.jsames.2020.103087.

Gonzalez-Huizar, H., Fletcher, J. M., (2020), Baja quakes highlight seismic risk in northern Mexico, Temblor, http://doi.org/10.32858/temblor.116

Walton, M.A.L., Brothers, D.S., Conrad, J.E., Maier, K.L., Roland, E.C., Kluesner, J.W., and Dartnell, P., (2020), Morphology, structure, and kinematics of the San Clemente and Catalina faults based on high-resolution marine geophysical data, southern California Inner Continental Borderland (USA): Geo- sphere, v. 16, no. 5, p. 1312–1335, https://doi.org/10 .1130/GES02187.1.
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Shallow, deadly earthquake strikes Indonesia

11.21.22

At 1:21 p.m. local time on Nov. 21 (06:21 UTC Nov. 21), a shallow magnitude-5.6 earthquake shook the Cianjur region in West Java, Indonesia, which lies about 80 kilometers (50 miles) southeast of Jakarta. News reports suggest 268 people have already been reported dead, 151 missing, more than 1,000 injured and thousands more displaced. The missing may still be trapped in collapsed buildings. Hospitals have been treating victims in parking lots because of damages and loss of power, and for fear of further collapse.

Location of magnitude-5.6 earthquake that struck West Java, Indonesia.

The quake was particularly damaging because it ruptured a mere 10 kilometers (about 6 miles) below the surface. Severe shaking (VIII on the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale) occurred nearest the epicenter, affecting some 232,000 people. Some 514,000 were expected to have felt very strong shaking, with an additional 3-plus million people likely feeling moderate to strong shaking, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). “Significant casualties and damage are likely and the disaster is potentially widespread,” according to the USGS. Damaged roads and landslides are hampering disaster relief efforts.

“Earthquakes like this are such a marker of a nation’s wealth and resolve,” says geophysicist Ross Stein, CEO of Temblor (publisher of TEN). “A quake of the same size struck the Southern California city of Claremont in 1990. Some 30 people were injured and there was $12 million in damage. But on Java — the most populated island on Earth — yesterday’s quake, at the same depth, was devastating for families, buildings, and the fabric of the the community.”

The quake appears to be the result of strike-slip faulting (the same kind as occurs on the San Andreas) within the crust of the Sunda Plate in Indonesia, based on the USGS moment tensor solution. (Confused about moment tensor solutions? See this video for more information.) About 260 kilometers (about 160 miles) southwest of the epicenter of this quake lies the Sunda Trench, a subduction zone where the Australian Plate dives beneath the Sunda Plate; far larger quakes can occur on subduction zones than typically occur on strike-slip faults, a prime example being the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman magnitude-9.1 quake.

This region is no stranger to strong earthquakes. On Feb. 9, a magnitude-6.6 quake struck offshore West Java, but didn’t cause much damage (see “Intraslab earthquake shakes (half of) Java, Indonesia, again” for more on that event). It was offshore and deeper than today’s quake, which struck on land.

Since 2007, four earthquake larger than magnitude-6.5 have struck within a couple hundred kilometers of today’s quake. Some occur on the Sunda Plate, some on the Australian, and some at the boundary between the two.

Aftershocks are still rocking the region and are expected to continue.

If you were in the region and felt shaking (or even if you didn’t), consider reporting it to the USGS’s “Did You Feel It?” citizen science project.
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Detecting smaller earthquakes could improve forecasting of larger temblors

11.18.22
Laura Fattaruso, Simpson Strong Tie Fellow (@labtalk_laura)

Using machine learning techniques on ten years of seismic data from Oklahoma and Kansas, researchers identified faults that could generate large earthquakes.

Oil pump in Hanna, Oklahoma. Credit: meganjean, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Advances in machine learning have helped seismologists find more, smaller earthquakes than ever before. With improved re-location of exactly where these small earthquakes come from, researchers are now able to see previously hidden faults which could initiate bigger, more damaging earthquakes. A recent study in The Seismic Record showed how researchers using these techniques identified 80% of the faults that had hosted magnitude-4.0 or greater earthquakes in Oklahoma and Kansas from 2010 to 2019.

“If we could find these small earthquakes, could that pre-illuminate the fault structures that later hosted larger earthquakes?” asks Yongsoo Park, the lead author of the study, which he worked on as a doctoral student at Stanford University. “If that’s the case, maybe larger earthquakes wouldn’t have to be a complete surprise like they used to be.”

Park and co-authors evaluated data from 420 seismic stations in Oklahoma and Kansas. Using new computational methods that automatically detect quakes in seismic data, they found many times more temblors than previously observed. For example, in one region, they identified and relocated 13,231 earthquakes from 2010-2016, a major increase from previous research. Studies in 2017 and 2019 had found just 880 and 3,141 quakes over the same time span.

Precise detection of more, smaller earthquakes enabled researchers to find hidden fault structures in Oklahoma and Kansas. The same region in Oklahoma is shown with data analyzed in 2017 (left), 2019 (middle), and 2022 (right) showing how advances in earthquake detection have led to better definition of fault zones. (Adapted from Park et al., 2022)

The increased number of detected earthquakes allowed researchers to see connected fault structures where previously the data had appeared scattered and disconnected. Larger faults can host larger earthquakes and the new connections brought many of these potential regional hazards to light.

“The key message here is that monitoring small earthquakes is important,” says Park.

According to Park, almost all the notable earthquakes in the region occurred on previously unmapped faults. Of the 60 faults that hosted greater than magnitude-4.0 earthquakes over the past decade, 48 could have been imaged from the tiny earthquakes that occurred prior to the big quake.

“[The study] is a creative way of integrating machine learning with what we know about relationships between fault size and earthquake magnitude. You cannot nucleate a magntidue-6.0 earthquake on a one-kilometer-long fault,” explains Folarin Kolawole, a structural geologist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, who was not involved in the study.

Monitoring small quakes for signs of larger ones

Oklahoma and Kansas have experienced “unprecedented seismic activity” due to hydrofracking and related wastewater injection, according to the study authors. Hydrofracking is used to tap into unconventional petroleum resources — natural gas trapped in the small pore spaces of shales. Extracting the gas requires large volumes of water mixed with sand and chemicals, which is pumped deep below the surface to force open that pore space. After the extraction process, operators are left with wastewater, which is stored in the now empty pore space. Injection of large volumes of wastewater into deep wells puts pressure on pre-existing, unmapped faults, sometimes triggering earthquakes.

In 2011, Oklahoma experienced one such event, a magnitude-5.7 earthquake, the most powerful quake ever recorded in the state up to that point, until they were struck by a magnitude-5.8 quake in 2016. Both earthquakes resulted in lawsuits against the petroleum industry, which had been operating in the area at the time.

To avoid inducing more of these larger earthquakes, wastewater injection operations have utilized a “stoplight” system based on the rate of detected earthquakes. When the number of earthquakes that strike in a given time period begins to increase, the stoplight changes from green to yellow or red. Operators will then throttle wastewater injection.
Park suggests that based on his research, the industry and the regulators should consider the size of the illuminated faults in addition to observed earthquake magnitudes when analyzing seismic hazards.

The method could also hold potential for better forecasting of earthquakes in other regions, but relies on having a lot of data. That’s what made Oklahoma and Kansas ideal settings for testing it — the large number of smaller induced earthquakes, as well as the large number of monitoring stations. In most places, collecting data on so many earthquakes will take a much longer time, Kolawole explains. “If you don’t have enough events, you don’t have enough data to work with. [This method] can be applied to other places, but instrumentation will be critical.”

See the full articles here, here, and here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

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Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct.

___________________________________________________________________

Earthquake Alert

Earthquake Alert

Earthquake Network projectEarthquake Network is a research project which aims at developing and maintaining a crowdsourced smartphone-based earthquake warning system at a global level. Smartphones made available by the population are used to detect the earthquake waves using the on-board accelerometers. When an earthquake is detected, an earthquake warning is issued in order to alert the population not yet reached by the damaging waves of the earthquake.

The project started on January 1, 2013 with the release of the homonymous Android application Earthquake Network. The author of the research project and developer of the smartphone application is Francesco Finazzi of the University of Bergamo, Italy.

Get the app in the Google Play store.

Smartphone network spatial distribution (green and red dots) on December 4, 2015

Meet The Quake-Catcher Network

Quake-Catcher Network

The Quake-Catcher Network is a collaborative initiative for developing the world’s largest, low-cost strong-motion seismic network by utilizing sensors in and attached to internet-connected computers. With your help, the Quake-Catcher Network can provide better understanding of earthquakes, give early warning to schools, emergency response systems, and others. The Quake-Catcher Network also provides educational software designed to help teach about earthquakes and earthquake hazards.

After almost eight years at Stanford, and a year at CalTech, the QCN project is moving to the University of Southern California Dept. of Earth Sciences. QCN will be sponsored by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) and the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC).

The Quake-Catcher Network is a distributed computing network that links volunteer hosted computers into a real-time motion sensing network. QCN is one of many scientific computing projects that runs on the world-renowned distributed computing platform Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC).

The volunteer computers monitor vibrational sensors called MEMS accelerometers, and digitally transmit “triggers” to QCN’s servers whenever strong new motions are observed. QCN’s servers sift through these signals, and determine which ones represent earthquakes, and which ones represent cultural noise (like doors slamming, or trucks driving by).

There are two categories of sensors used by QCN: 1) internal mobile device sensors, and 2) external USB sensors.

Mobile Devices: MEMS sensors are often included in laptops, games, cell phones, and other electronic devices for hardware protection, navigation, and game control. When these devices are still and connected to QCN, QCN software monitors the internal accelerometer for strong new shaking. Unfortunately, these devices are rarely secured to the floor, so they may bounce around when a large earthquake occurs. While this is less than ideal for characterizing the regional ground shaking, many such sensors can still provide useful information about earthquake locations and magnitudes.

USB Sensors: MEMS sensors can be mounted to the floor and connected to a desktop computer via a USB cable. These sensors have several advantages over mobile device sensors. 1) By mounting them to the floor, they measure more reliable shaking than mobile devices. 2) These sensors typically have lower noise and better resolution of 3D motion. 3) Desktops are often left on and do not move. 4) The USB sensor is physically removed from the game, phone, or laptop, so human interaction with the device doesn’t reduce the sensors’ performance. 5) USB sensors can be aligned to North, so we know what direction the horizontal “X” and “Y” axes correspond to.

If you are a science teacher at a K-12 school, please apply for a free USB sensor and accompanying QCN software. QCN has been able to purchase sensors to donate to schools in need. If you are interested in donating to the program or requesting a sensor, click here.

BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience.BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, developed at UC Berkeley.

Earthquake safety is a responsibility shared by billions worldwide. The Quake-Catcher Network (QCN) provides software so that individuals can join together to improve earthquake monitoring, earthquake awareness, and the science of earthquakes. The Quake-Catcher Network (QCN) links existing networked laptops and desktops in hopes to form the worlds largest strong-motion seismic network.

Below, the QCN Quake Catcher Network map

ShakeAlert: An Earthquake Early Warning System for the West Coast of the United States

The U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) along with a coalition of State and university partners is developing and testing an earthquake early warning (EEW) system called ShakeAlert for the west coast of the United States. Long term funding must be secured before the system can begin sending general public notifications, however, some limited pilot projects are active and more are being developed. The USGS has set the goal of beginning limited public notifications in 2018.

Watch a video describing how ShakeAlert works in English or Spanish.

The primary project partners include:

United States Geological Survey
California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (CalOES)
California Geological Survey
California Institute of Technology
University of California Berkeley
University of Washington
University of Oregon
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

The Earthquake Threat

Earthquakes pose a national challenge because more than 143 million Americans live in areas of significant seismic risk across 39 states. Most of our Nation’s earthquake risk is concentrated on the West Coast of the United States. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has estimated the average annualized loss from earthquakes, nationwide, to be $5.3 billion, with 77 percent of that figure ($4.1 billion) coming from California, Washington, and Oregon, and 66 percent ($3.5 billion) from California alone. In the next 30 years, California has a 99.7 percent chance of a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake and the Pacific Northwest has a 10 percent chance of a magnitude 8 to 9 megathrust earthquake on the Cascadia subduction zone.

Part of the Solution

Today, the technology exists to detect earthquakes, so quickly, that an alert can reach some areas before strong shaking arrives. The purpose of the ShakeAlert system is to identify and characterize an earthquake a few seconds after it begins, calculate the likely intensity of ground shaking that will result, and deliver warnings to people and infrastructure in harm’s way. This can be done by detecting the first energy to radiate from an earthquake, the P-wave energy, which rarely causes damage. Using P-wave information, we first estimate the location and the magnitude of the earthquake. Then, the anticipated ground shaking across the region to be affected is estimated and a warning is provided to local populations. The method can provide warning before the S-wave arrives, bringing the strong shaking that usually causes most of the damage.

Studies of earthquake early warning methods in California have shown that the warning time would range from a few seconds to a few tens of seconds. ShakeAlert can give enough time to slow trains and taxiing planes, to prevent cars from entering bridges and tunnels, to move away from dangerous machines or chemicals in work environments and to take cover under a desk, or to automatically shut down and isolate industrial systems. Taking such actions before shaking starts can reduce damage and casualties during an earthquake. It can also prevent cascading failures in the aftermath of an event. For example, isolating utilities before shaking starts can reduce the number of fire initiations.

System Goal

The USGS will issue public warnings of potentially damaging earthquakes and provide warning parameter data to government agencies and private users on a region-by-region basis, as soon as the ShakeAlert system, its products, and its parametric data meet minimum quality and reliability standards in those geographic regions. The USGS has set the goal of beginning limited public notifications in 2018. Product availability will expand geographically via ANSS regional seismic networks, such that ShakeAlert products and warnings become available for all regions with dense seismic instrumentation.

Current Status

The West Coast ShakeAlert system is being developed by expanding and upgrading the infrastructure of regional seismic networks that are part of the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS); the California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN) is made up of the Southern California Seismic Network, SCSN) and the Northern California Seismic System, NCSS and the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN). This enables the USGS and ANSS to leverage their substantial investment in sensor networks, data telemetry systems, data processing centers, and software for earthquake monitoring activities residing in these network centers. The ShakeAlert system has been sending live alerts to “beta” users in California since January of 2012 and in the Pacific Northwest since February of 2015.

In February of 2016 the USGS, along with its partners, rolled-out the next-generation ShakeAlert early warning test system in California joined by Oregon and Washington in April 2017. This West Coast-wide “production prototype” has been designed for redundant, reliable operations. The system includes geographically distributed servers, and allows for automatic fail-over if connection is lost.

This next-generation system will not yet support public warnings but does allow selected early adopters to develop and deploy pilot implementations that take protective actions triggered by the ShakeAlert notifications in areas with sufficient sensor coverage.

Authorities

The USGS will develop and operate the ShakeAlert system, and issue public notifications under collaborative authorities with FEMA, as part of the National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program, as enacted by the Earthquake Hazards Reduction Act of 1977, 42 U.S.C. §§ 7704 SEC. 2.

For More Information

Robert de Groot, ShakeAlert National Coordinator for Communication, Education, and Outreach
rdegroot@usgs.gov
626-583-7225

Learn more about EEW Research

ShakeAlert Fact Sheet

ShakeAlert Implementation Plan

QuakeAlertUSA

About Early Warning Labs, LLC

Early Warning Labs, LLC (EWL) is an Earthquake Early Warning technology developer and integrator located in Santa Monica, CA. EWL is partnered with industry leading GIS provider ESRI, Inc. and is collaborating with the US Government and university partners.

EWL is investing millions of dollars over the next 36 months to complete the final integration and delivery of Earthquake Early Warning to individual consumers, government entities, and commercial users.

EWL’s mission is to improve, expand, and lower the costs of the existing earthquake early warning systems.

EWL is developing a robust cloud server environment to handle low-cost mass distribution of these warnings. In addition, Early Warning Labs is researching and developing automated response standards and systems that allow public and private users to take pre-defined automated actions to protect lives and assets.

EWL has an existing beta R&D test system installed at one of the largest studios in Southern California. The goal of this system is to stress test EWL’s hardware, software, and alert signals while improving latency and reliability.

Earthquake Early Warning Introduction

The United States Geological Survey (USGS), in collaboration with state agencies, university partners, and private industry, is developing an earthquake early warning system (EEW) for the West Coast of the United States called ShakeAlert. The USGS Earthquake Hazards Program aims to mitigate earthquake losses in the United States. Citizens, first responders, and engineers rely on the USGS for accurate and timely information about where earthquakes occur, the ground shaking intensity in different locations, and the likelihood is of future significant ground shaking.

The ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning System recently entered its first phase of operations. The USGS working in partnership with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) is now allowing for the testing of public alerting via apps, Wireless Emergency Alerts, and by other means throughout California.

ShakeAlert partners in Oregon and Washington are working with the USGS to test public alerting in those states sometime in 2020.

ShakeAlert has demonstrated the feasibility of earthquake early warning, from event detection to producing USGS issued ShakeAlerts ® and will continue to undergo testing and will improve over time. In particular, robust and reliable alert delivery pathways for automated actions are currently being developed and implemented by private industry partners for use in California, Oregon, and Washington.

Earthquake Early Warning Background

The objective of an earthquake early warning system is to rapidly detect the initiation of an earthquake, estimate the level of ground shaking intensity to be expected, and issue a warning before significant ground shaking starts. A network of seismic sensors detects the first energy to radiate from an earthquake, the P-wave energy, and the location and the magnitude of the earthquake is rapidly determined. Then, the anticipated ground shaking across the region to be affected is estimated. The system can provide warning before the S-wave arrives, which brings the strong shaking that usually causes most of the damage. Warnings will be distributed to local and state public emergency response officials, critical infrastructure, private businesses, and the public. EEW systems have been successfully implemented in Japan, Taiwan, Mexico, and other nations with varying degrees of sophistication and coverage.

Earthquake early warning can provide enough time to:

Instruct students and employees to take a protective action such as Drop, Cover, and Hold On
Initiate mass notification procedures
Open fire-house doors and notify local first responders
Slow and stop trains and taxiing planes
Install measures to prevent/limit additional cars from going on bridges, entering tunnels, and being on freeway overpasses before the shaking starts
Move people away from dangerous machines or chemicals in work environments
Shut down gas lines, water treatment plants, or nuclear reactors
Automatically shut down and isolate industrial systems

However, earthquake warning notifications must be transmitted without requiring human review and response action must be automated, as the total warning times are short depending on geographic distance and varying soil densities from the epicenter.