earthquake prediction waves?

[DrLeftover]

January 24, 2014

When studying earthquakes, especially in California, scientists often find that ocean waves get in the way. As the water hits the coast, it creates tiny seismic waves that interfere with researchers’ efforts to listen for the bigger waves created by quakes.

Now scientists at Stanford University and MIT have figured out a way to use ocean waves to simulate the ground motion that occurs in real earthquakes -- and they’ve confirmed that Los Angeles is particularly vulnerable to a large quake along the southern San Andreas Fault.

When the Big One hits, it could create shaking in Los Angeles that’s three times stronger than in surrounding areas, the team reported in Friday’s edition of the journal Science. That’s because the city sits atop a soft sedimentary basin, they said.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-virtual-earthquake-ocean-waves-20140124,0,4506840.story#ixzz2rVk1EL5l

 

[DrLeftover]

Ocean waves won't help here:

Jan. 24, 2014
LOS ANGELES — The New Madrid fault zone in the nation's midsection is active and could spawn future large earthquakes, scientists reported.

It's "not dead yet," said U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Susan Hough, who was part of the study published online Thursday by the journal Science.

Researchers have long debated just how much of a hazard New Madrid (MAD'-rihd) poses. The zone stretches 150 miles, crossing parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee.

In 1811 and 1812, it unleashed a trio of powerful jolts — measuring magnitudes 7.5 to 7.7 — that rattled the central Mississippi River valley. Chimneys fell and boats capsized. Farmland sank and turned into swamps. The death toll is unknown, but experts don't believe there were mass casualties because the region was sparsely populated then.

Unlike California's San Andreas and other faults that occur along boundaries of shifting tectonic plates, New Madrid is less understood since it's in the middle of the continent, far from plate boundaries.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/new-madrid-fault-zone-could-spawn-huge-quakes-u-s-2D11988493

More about the New Madrid earthquakes
http://www.newmadrid2011.org/

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

Interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing.