Advancing earthquake science worldwide
10 February 2025—Wilnelly Ventura-Valentín’s research as a Ph.D. student at Miami University in Ohio focuses on earthquake swarms, the bursts of seismic activity—small earthquakes all about the same magnitude—that start abruptly and end abruptly. “We don’t know a lot about what triggers this activity,” she explains, “and because we don’t … Continue Reading »
22 January 2025—The magnitude 7.9 Bonin Islands earthquake sequence, which ruptured deep within the earth near the base of the upper mantle, did not include an aftershock that extended to record depths into the lower mantle, according to a study in The Seismic Record. When Hao Zhang of the University … Continue Reading »
22 January 2025—Gather around, and let Susan Hough tell you the tale of the Summerville Light. Legend has it that the strange orb sometimes seen hovering over the railroad tracks in the remote area around Summerville, South Carolina is a lantern borne by a ghost whose husband lost his head … Continue Reading »
10 January 2025—Using an existing telecommunications fiber optic cable running along the sea floor, researchers identified faults and tracked the locations of whales traveling up and down the central California coast. Their study, published in Seismological Research Letters, demonstrates the potential of distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) for visualizing the geohazards … Continue Reading »
9 January 2025—Earthquakes may be the noisy, attention-getters of seismological research, but geophysicist Daniel Gittins is focused on something a bit quieter. “Creep is the slow, gradual movement along faults that happens without causing an earthquake. Unlike sudden earthquakes, which release a lot of energy, aseismic creep occurs smoothly and … Continue Reading »
24 December 2024–The rapid, decade-long depletion of groundwater in Morocco’s Haouz plain may have affected the accumulation of tectonic stress that led to the deadly 8 September 2023 magnitude 6.8 Al Haouz earthquake, according to a new study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. Bhaskar Kundu … Continue Reading »