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Ancient fault lines may have become re-activated

May 14, 2003

On June 18, 2002, a magnitude 5.0 earthquake occurred in southern Indiana, followed by a 1.2 magnitude aftershock on June 25, 2002. Because the region of occurrence, the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone, is seismically active, Dr. Won-Young Kim, a seismologist with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, conducted research to determine the potential hazard of future earthquakes to this region. His findings suggest that an ancient fault line dating back to the Precambrian era of geological history (from 4.6 billion to 570 million years ago) has become reactivated and was the likely cause of the June 2002 earthquakes. Kim is presenting his findings at the Seismological Society of America in May, and publishing in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

Researcher Uses Forensic Seismology to 'Fingerprint' Mystery Explosions

December 12, 2002

If you think seismology concerns only earthquakes and plate tectonics, think again.
Terry Wallace represents a different breed of seismologist, that of forensic seismologist. By using seismic stations as "little ears to the ground," Wallace continues to push the forefront of forensic seismology by studying the sinking of submarines, industrial explosions, nuclear weapons testing, landslides, and other unidentified phenomena that leave their mark by shaking the ground. Wallace, a geosciences professor at the University of Arizona, says that seismographic records can provide the tools necessary to reconstruct a sequence of events on land or in the ocean. "Seismological tools and theory can be used as constraints to tell when an accident occurs or something that's not accidental, like a nuclear explosion. We can then put behind that some ideas of how big an explosion might be, or if it's a landslide, how big the landslide might have been, or how far the rocks have fallen, for example," he explains.



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