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January 11, 2014

New map of Hollywood fault released

Amid an atmosphere of contention and high stakes, the California Geological Survey this week released a preliminary official map of the Hollywood Fault, one of the most threatening urban earthquake faults in the U.S. The map ( available in PDF format here ) delineates the best estimate surface trace of the Hollywood fault, which forms the southern boundary of the Santa Monica Mountains in urban Los Angeles. It also defines a “special …

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December 9, 2013

AGU 2013: Earth Science-palooza

After braving excruciating cold, ice-bound airports, and snow-covered mountain passes to get here, some 21,000 Earth Scientists have descended on San Francisco for the annual AGU Fall Meeting. They’ll all be happy to know that the National Weather Service calls for freezing temperatures in all areas except San Francisco tonight. So everyone from Back East can still pretend they’re having a balmy California vacation while we locals wrap our heads …

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November 25, 2013

The strongest quaking ever seen on video

Earthquake videos abound on Youtube, but there are a select few that truly stand apart for the astonishing strength of the ground motion they capture. Even with gargantuan earthquakes that have hit tech-savvy, video-grabbing cities, very few cameras have ever been located in places that experienced truly extreme ground motions. Of course, in the future this number will increase. For now, in all my perusal of YouTube quake videos, I …

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November 19, 2013

The dilemma of earthquake retrofitting

The Los Angeles Times in October went on a bit of a crusade against lagging earthquake preparations in their quake-threatened home town. They have published a series of exposés investigating the lack of public awareness and the governmental inaction regarding building safety in the aging metropolis of L.A. “Concrete Risks” is indeed an illuminating piece, publicizing the fairly alarming prevalence of dangerous, quake-prone construction throughout a city that’s doomed to …

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October 21, 2013

Watch the whole U.S. ripple

Want to see what happens to the ground in the United States when an earthquake snaps the crust elsewhere in the world? The waves ripple outward through the continent oscillating each county and city in turn. This video shows real data from seismometers deployed across the country. Each dot represents a seismometer. Each instrument’s motion is displayed here as alternating red (for upward motion) and blue (for downward motion). Individually …

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October 17, 2013

Are you ready for an earthquake? Make sure today.

What if an earthquake hit right now, the moment you read this? A big one. You get a few seconds of puzzling low rumbling to figure out what’s going on, and then the room you’re in lurches to the side and back. The floor bounces, the walls creak and crackle, books and papers topple and slide, and heavy things all around you start to wobble and flop over. You had no …

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October 7, 2013

Earthquake PSAs around the world

Earthquake public service announcements run the gamut from trite and dry to hip, beautiful, and even charming. The production quality of recent campaigns attests to both their importance and the practicality of raising awareness inexpensively through the Internet Media Machine. Public awareness and training about earthquake risks forms the foundation of any risk mitigation effort; building retrofits cost tons, but people can be trained how to protect themselves for far …

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October 2, 2013

The creative forces of earthquakes

For all the destruction wrought when human settlements and infrastructure are shaken by tectonic forces, earthquakes are the result of processes that create and rejuvenate the landscapes we live in. In late September, 2013, a mighty earthquake ripped through the Pakistani desert, causing a surprisingly small number of casualties, but nonetheless rendering homeless over 100,000 people, a major swath of nearby mountain villages’ populations. In the vicinity of the epicenter …

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August 13, 2013

Another heart-stopping tsunami video from Japan

A “new” video has emerged of the Tohoku tsunami racing inland in a Japanese port town. I don’t know that it’s never been released before, but I sure haven’t seen it, and I’ve seen basically all of them. The video is embedded at the end of this post. Update 8/19/13: I have changed the video link to a more original YouTube video. It appears that the videographer is a Mr. …

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August 2, 2013

The jiggling Earth, or, what are all those squiggles?

Ever since we first formally recorded one more or less a century and a score ago, the seismogram of an earthquake has become an iconic symbol. Oversimplified and unrealistic ones abound, but natural seismograms of earthquakes are distinctly identifiable. Despite the unique details of every earthquake, seismograms around the world are phenomenally similar. The differences among them are actually what allow seismologists to understand the propagation of earthquakes and the structure …

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