Latest Active fault Stories
FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology Enjoying Spanish participation, an international group of researchers have analyzed the most recent history of the Alhama de Murcia fault. They discovered that it has experienced six major earthquakes above 7 on the Richter scale. According to the scientists, this provides "convincing evidence" that the maximum earthquake magnitudes in the area are higher than originally thought. Since 2001, researchers from the Universities of...
Results of a new U.S. Geological Survey study conclude that faults west of Lake Tahoe, Calif., referred to as the Tahoe-Sierra frontal fault zone, pose a substantial increase in the seismic hazard assessment for the Lake Tahoe region of California and Nevada, and could potentially generate earthquakes with magnitudes ranging from 6.3 to 6.9. A close association of landslide deposits and active faults also suggests that there is an earthquake-induced landslide hazard along the steep...
Like scars that remain on the skin long after a wound has healed, earthquake fault lines can be traced on Earth's surface long after their initial rupture. Typically, this line of intersection between the area where the fault slips and the ground is more complicated at the surface than at depth. But a new study of the April 4, 2010, El Mayor"“Cucapah earthquake in Mexico reveals a reversal of this trend. While the fault involved in the event appeared to be superficially straight, the fault...
TAU researchers investigate sediment slides and coral reefs to study historic earthquake patternsIn the wake of the devastating loss of life in Japan, the urgent question is where the next big earthquake will hit. To answer it, geologist Prof. Zvi Ben-Avraham and his doctoral student Gal Hartman of Tel Aviv University's Department of Physics and Planetary Sciences in the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences are examining coral reefs and submarine canyons to detect earthquake...
New data suggest that the Limon and Pedro Miguel faults in Central Panama have ruptured both independently and in unison over the past 1400 years, indicating a significant seismic risk for Panama City and the Panama Canal, according to research published Nov. 18 by the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA).The Panama Canal is undergoing expansion to allow for greater traffic of larger ships, scheduled for completion by 2014. As part of a seismic hazard characterization for...
By Philipp GollnerSAN FRANCISCO -- Scientists studying the San Andreas fault in California will soon be able to monitor seismic activity from deep inside the Earth's crust so they can identify patterns that might foreshadow a major quake, scientists said on Tuesday.The Stanford-U.S. Geological Survey project is the first time geologists have dug deep below the Earth's surface to within tens of meters (yards) of an active fault zone to study earthquakes, Stanford University geologist Mark...
