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December 10, 2012
Earthquakes as weathering agents: the rubbing boulders of the Atacama
A fairly unique study came out a few months ago in the journal Geology, in which the authors propose a novel mechanism of erosion: abrasion during earthquake shaking. Seismicity and the strange rubbing boulders of the Atacama desert, northern Chile The researchers were puzzled by fields of boulders sitting hardly buried atop the silty floor of Chile’s hyper-arid Atacama desert. They noted odd “moats” in broken silt crust around the boulders, …
November 28, 2012
Animations and Sonifications of the Tohoku earthquake and aftershocks
The M9.0 Tohoku earthquake that roared through Japan on March 11, 2011 made its presence felt in various ways throughout the planet. The ground rippled, the ocean churned, and even the atmosphere undulated with heavy pressure waves as the force of this sudden lurch of the Earth’s crust radiated outward from its source off the coast of Japan. [Put your headphones on now.] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PJxUPvz9Oo] Scientists all over the world have …
November 21, 2012
Amazing liquefaction in Tokyo
A new video from Japan [embedded below] shows liquefaction occurring at a scale and scope that I haven’t seen before in video footage. The video is from Urayasu town, Chiba Prefecture–an industrial suburb of Tokyo that appears to be sited on made land adjacent to Tokyo Bay. No wonder it sloshes so heavily: made land (fill) is particularly susceptible to liquefaction. We just can’t pack things down the way nature can …
April 6, 2012
Spectacular video of Devil’s Hole seiche
This video is a must-watch. A fortunate National Park Service biologist and a Scientific American reporter interviewing him were standing at a deep natural pool in Death Valley when it began to be dramatically rocked by an earthquake that had occurred 2,000 miles away. [youtube=http://youtu.be/a6h82PIi_-0] Devil’s Hole is a deep, shaded, natural pool near Death Valley, in Nevada, that is home to some very specialized species of fish and is …
March 31, 2012
Mexico City Earthquake Early Warning–it works!
Want to see what happens when you can know an earthquake is coming? Mexico has footage that’s got you covered. Update 6 April 2012: They also have an app that alerts you to earthquakes before they hit… in Mexico City. (También tiene una App que se alerta de sismos antes de tiembla!) On March 20, 2012 a very large earthquake rocked southern Mexico. With a magnitude of 7.4 and a …
February 16, 2012
Deformation from the El Mayor Cucapah earthquake: our Science paper
On Friday, February 10, the journal Science published our paper on deformation caused by the M7.2 El Mayor-Cucapah (EMC) earthquake of April 4, 2010. The data we present is the first of its kind at this scale and scope: we have both pre-earthquake and post-earthquake high resolution topographic surveys that cover virtually the entire fault rupture, all 120 km of it. We used both to calculate the topographic change resulting from this large temblor, …
February 8, 2012
Legendary phenomena in the 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquakes
200 years ago this February 7, on the western frontier of European settlement in North America, the pioneering westward expanders and the natives whose land they were colonizing were thrown from their sleep in the deep wee hours of a winter night by the culminating temblor of a harrowing, months-long sequence of major earthquakes, aftershocks of which continue to this day. The so-called New Madrid earthquakes–named for a small Missouri …
November 4, 2011
East Coast (U.S.) earthquakes – What gives?
On Tuesday afternoon, August 23, 2011, people up and down the United States’ East Coast–and as far inland as Chicago–felt an unmistakable tremor. At first, of course, the sensation was not so unmistakable: “earthquake” was not the first explanation that came to mind, especially for the explosion-conscious residents of New York and D.C. mere days before the 10th anniversary of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, nor for Americans (and Canadians!) …
May 5, 2011
Swaying high-rises and resonance frequencies
In a post a few weeks ago I linked to a humbling video of high-rise buildings in Tokyo swaying after the 9.0 quake. Well, those buildings were full of tens of thousands of people, plenty of whom had cameras. That video was only the beginning; below are many more that capture the dramatic oscillation of the towering steel edifices. The swaying is especially clear in the following video, likely filmed …
April 22, 2011
Earthquake early warning in action
No country would have been better prepared for such a massive earthquake than Japan. Straddling the boundaries between four converging tectonic plates, Japan is one of the most earthquake prone nations in the world, and is probably the most earthquake savvy. They have world-class networks of monitoring instruments including seismometers, tide gauges, and GPS locating stations; they routinely practice for massive quakes, which they are often visited by; and they …
