Animal Tracking Could Help Predict Earthquakes

[longknife]

Scientists are just now coming to realize this?


During the original exploration of California in 1769, the Spaniards reached the present-day Santa Ana River in Southern California and noticed that all the birds and animals had disappeared. They immediately took shelter and, sure enough, before long the earth shook so hard it reversed the course of the river.


And, having lived on a ranch in Southern California, I can attest to how the livestock alerted us before any quakes came along.


Anyhow, read more of this @ Animal Tracking Could Help Predict Earthquakes - The Crux

 

[Delta4Embassy]

Good idea. Better one's simply don't build population centers on active faultlines. Quakes are going to happen near and around faultlines. Predicting them doesn't matter if you have several million people clustered on top of one though. Like cities popping up on the slopes of active volcanos. Get too many people in a city and knowing the volcano's about to erupt wont help much when you imagine millions of people hauling ass on a dozen or so roadways out of the city.

 

[longknife]

Good idea. Better one's simply don't build population centers on active faultlines. Quakes are going to happen near and around faultlines. Predicting them doesn't matter if you have several million people clustered on top of one though. Like cities popping up on the slopes of active volcanos. Get too many people in a city and knowing the volcano's about to erupt wont help much when you imagine millions of people hauling ass on a dozen or so roadways out of the city.

Does Pompeii come to mind?

 

[waltky]

Subtle Seismic Activity Hints at Predicting Large Quakes...

Scientists: Subtle Seismic Activity Hints at Predicting Large Quakes
January 28, 2016 — The ability to accurately predict earthquakes is a holy grail of geology. Now, a group of researchers says it has found a previously unrecognized pattern just before larger earthquakes, observed with the devastating magnitude-9.0 tremor in northeastern Japan in 2011.

This “has the potential to help refine time-dependent earthquake forecasts,” according to an article published Friday in the journal Science. “Although it will be a long way to make earthquake predictions that are useful for society, I believe this is a significant step toward that,” lead author Naoki Uchida, an assistant professor at Tohoku University’s Research Center for the Prediction of Earthquakes and Volcanic Eruptions, told VOA. But several prominent scientists told VOA they had issues with the methodology and did not see this as a major breakthrough.

The 2011 quake and resulting tsunami waves killed an estimated 18,000 people and triggered the meltdowns of three nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan.​

Slips prior to quake

Uchida, two Japanese colleagues and two University of California-Berkeley scientists have outlined data they said reveals that subtle slips began accelerating a few days before the massive quake on March 11, 2011, which unleashed a devastating tsunami. The quake and resulting tsunami waves killed an estimated 18,000 people and triggered the meltdowns of three nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan.

The massive quake on March 11, 2011, unleashed a devastating tsunami upon Japan​

The offshore quake was the largest ever known to hit the seismically active island nation. Uchida and his colleagues analyzed the data of more than 6,000 seismic moments over a period of 28 years to detect slip-rate fluctuations in northeastern Japan. “The results suggest the possibility of an earthquake is larger when slow slips are occurring,” Uchida told VOA. “By taking account of such relationships, the probability forecast of earthquakes can be improved.”

Slow (or aseismic) slips displace rocks much more slowly than earthquakes and without generating seismic waves. But these slow slips can increase stress in adjacent areas and may trigger damaging earthquakes. The analysis done by Uchida and his colleagues revealed that intervals of slow slips range from one to six years — often coinciding with clusters of large magnitude earthquakes, according to the paper published Friday.

Some have doubts

 

[waltky]

Moon increases earthquake intensity...

Moon Phases Linked to Big Quakes
September 12, 2016 - Full moons may cause bigger earthquakes, according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo say large quakes are more likely during high tides, which happen twice a day. During high tides, the oceans are pulled by the moon’s gravity, but during a full and new moon, twice a month, the tides are particularly high, especially when the moon, sun and Earth line up.

This, researchers say, can further stress geological faults, triggering earthquakes. “The probability of a tiny rock failure expanding to a gigantic rupture increases with increasing tidal stress levels,” the researchers wrote on an article that appeared in the British journal Nature Geoscience.

Seagulls fly as the full moon rises behind the ancient marble Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion, southeast of Athens, on the eve of the summer solstice​

While the theory is not new, the study is the first to find a statistical link between the moon and earthquakes. For example, the researchers found that the 2004 Sumatra quake as well as a major 2011 quake in Japan both happened during high tides. The researchers say nine of the 12 biggest quakes ever recorded were timed with full or new moons.

The findings could help with earthquake forecasting, especially in places like Japan where earthquakes are common. "Scientists will find this result, if confirmed, quite interesting," said University of Washington seismologist John Vidale, who was not involved in the study. But he added that "even if there is a strong correlation of big earthquakes with full or new moons, the chance any given week of a deadly earthquake remains miniscule."

Moon Phases Linked to Big Quakes

 

[ChrisL]

Scientists are just now coming to realize this?


During the original exploration of California in 1769, the Spaniards reached the present-day Santa Ana River in Southern California and noticed that all the birds and animals had disappeared. They immediately took shelter and, sure enough, before long the earth shook so hard it reversed the course of the river.


And, having lived on a ranch in Southern California, I can attest to how the livestock alerted us before any quakes came along.


Anyhow, read more of this @ Animal Tracking Could Help Predict Earthquakes - The Crux

Makes sense to me. Animals' senses are better than humans in most cases. They know when to get out of Dodge.