Latest Seismology Stories

MIT researchers report that they have reconstructed Baja California's 2010 "Easter Earthquakes."The earthquake that shook Baja California took placed on April 4, 2010, sending tremors throughout a region 40 miles south of the U.S. - Mexico border. The months after the 7.2-magnitude earthquake triggered aftershocks that shook Los Angeles. "The southern San Andreas Fault has not had a major earthquake on it since the 1600s," Thomas Herring, professor of geophysics in the Department of...

Seismic responseJapan's March 11 Tohoku Earthquake is among the strongest ever recorded, and because it struck one of the world's most heavily instrumented seismic zones, this natural disaster is providing scientists with a treasure trove of data on rare magnitude 9 earthquakes. Among the new information is what is believed to be the first study of how a shock this powerful affects the rock and soil beneath the surface.Analyzing data from multiple measurement stations, scientists at the...

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., July 15, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Digitexx Data Systems, Inc. has launched REFLEXX Smart System for Buildings, a new damage detection and performance evaluation reporting system that provides essential structural health data in less than 15 minutes. REFLEXX is a turnkey solution that combines real-time data with sophisticated structural algorithms based on generally accepted engineering methodologies such as FEMA-356, HAZUS-MH, ASCE-41 and ATC-58 to provide detailed,...

Study finds that faults beneath the Salton Sea ruptured during Colorado River floods and may have triggered large earthquakes on the southern San Andreas FaultSouthern California's Salton Sea, once a large natural lake fed by the Colorado River, may play an important role in the earthquake cycle of the southern San Andreas Fault and may have triggered large earthquakes in the past.Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the...

A series of powerful aftershocks rocked the already quake-battered New Zealand city of Christchurch Monday, destroying one of the few remaining buildings downtown and throwing thousands of residents into darkness. The aftershocks come almost four months after a 6.3 magnitude temblor struck the city on February 22, and a 7.1 quake that struck in September of last year. That quake left the city in near ruin and killed as many as 181 people. Luckily, in Monday's madness, there were no reported...

An unusual signal detected by the seismic monitoring station at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's research facility on Barro Colorado Island results from waves in Lake Gatun, the reservoir that forms the Panama Canal channel, scientists report. Understanding seismic background signals leads to improved earthquake and tsunami detection in the Caribbean region where 100 tsunamis have been reported in the past 500 years.As part of a $37.5 million U.S. presidential initiative to...

Japan's recent magnitude 9.0 earthquake, which triggered a devastating tsunami, relieved stress along part of the quake fault but also has contributed to the buildup of stress in other areas, putting some of the country at risk for up to years of sizeable aftershocks and perhaps new main shocks, scientists say.After studying data from Japan's extensive seismic network, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Kyoto University and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have...

By Louis Bergeron, StanfordThe magnitude 9 earthquake and resulting tsunami that struck Japan on March 11 were like a one-two punch "“ first violently shaking, then swamping the islands "“ causing tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. Now Stanford researchers have discovered the catastrophe was caused by a sequence of unusual geologic events never before seen so clearly."It was not appreciated before this earthquake that this size of earthquake...

VIENNA, May 25, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Paradigm(TM)(www.pdgm.com)announced today the signing of a multi-year software license agreement with JKX Oil & Gas plc (www.jkx.co.uk) for a seismic-to-simulation workflow to be deployed as the company's standard toolkit. The announcement was made at the 2011 European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers (EAGE) Annual Conference and Exhibition , during the Paradigm 2011 Industry Briefing. The contract will provide JKX with access to...

VANCOUVER, May 19 /PRNewswire/ - Kimber Resources Inc. (NYSE Amex:KBX) (TSX:KBR) is pleased to announce the results of a further 9 drill holes from its ongoing drill program at the Carmen Deposit at its Monterde Project in Mexico.  Five of the drill holes (MTR-480, 481, 482, 490 and 491) were drilled to upgrade the confidence level of shallow mineral resources potentially amenable to open pit extraction ("Carmen Pit" targets), while the remaining holes were drilled with the...