23 April 2008
Here’s one for Julian!
Posted by Jessica Ball
The USGS has released updated versions of their National Seismic Hazard Maps.
(Image from the 2008 USGS Fact Sheet)
(Image from the 2008 USGS Fact Sheet)
And look! A green spot over western New York! That’s way better than being in the blue. (Not as exciting as sitting on a subduction zone capable of generating M9+ earthquakes, but I suppose I can’t have everything.)
Update: While poking around the USGS Urban Hazard Maps, I found this one of Seattle. All I can say is, wow. What did they build UW on, a giant sandbox? That wouldn’t stop me wanting to go there later, but if they have a big earthquake and Johnson Hall collapses on me, it would be pretty hard to finish a Ph.D.
Jessica Ball is a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, researching volcanic hydrothermal systems and stability, and doing science communication for the California Volcano Observatory. She previously worked at the Geological Society of America's Washington DC Policy Office, learning about the intersection of Earth science and legislative affairs. Her Mendenhall postdoc and PhD focused on how water affects the stability of volcanoes, and involved both field investigations and numerical modeling applications. Her blogging covers a range of topics, from her experiences in academic geosciences to science outreach and communication to her field and lab work in volcanology. 
I live in a red spot! Woohoo!(?)(Actually, considering I live close to the reddest red spot on those very recent rupture probability maps for California, probably not woohoo…)I bet the people in Illinois who just felt last week’s 5.2 and otherwise know nothing about earthquakes are going to have a cow over that red blob. I read some news coverage on the two aftershocks that followed the 5.2, and the media and people interviewed were all, “OMG LOTTA EARTHQUAEKS GONNA BE TEH BIG ONE NEXT RUN AND HIIIIDE!” The word “aftershock” was not in this article, and “New Madrid Seismic Zone” certainly wasn’t mentioned. To me, this says places other than the West Coast need earthquake awareness talks/materials, too.
Ouch. I am firmly of the opinion that anyone who lives in the Midwest should be made to sit down and watch the OLD Planet Earth TV series, the one made in the 80s where the seismologists talk extensively about the New Madrid Seismic Zone and say that they’re just waiting for something big to happen. (And that was in the 80s. Plus, watching them point at the old green-on-black computer screens is pretty fun.)
My father is a building inspector, and apparently his whole office was very surprised when they realized that parts of Iowa aren’t actually in the lowest level of earthquake hazard.