The JPL folks used UAVSAR mounted on their Gulfstream-III aircraft to take highly accurate radar measurements of the ground surface in Baja, California, near the site of the April 4, 2010 magnitude 7.2 Baja earthquake that rocked portions of Mexico and the US. This interferrogram imagery is on the U.S. side of the border, and stops about 10-km from the northernmost point of fault rupture. However it does show about 31-inches of downward and southerly ground movement associated with the event. The overall project is surveying the San Andreas fault system from North of San Francisco to the Mexican border every 6-months to allow for detailed measurements of displacements after earthquakes and to observe how different fault systems behave in relation to each other. For a picture of the aircraft, see a previous GeoPrac post. [Source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory via Geoengineer.org. Image: NASA/JPL/USGS/Google]
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Anniversary of Loma Prieta Earthquake – USGS Warns of Hayward Fault
October 17 was the 18th anniversary of the 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake that struck the Bay area. But a recent story by the Bay Area’s local ABC affiliate, ABC7, chose to focus on another earthquake, a 1868 earthquake of about the same magnitude that occurred on the Hayward Fault. According to the USGS, the Hayward Fault has a return period of about 140-years and "It’s the most heavily urbanized fault in the U.S. and it’s just waiting to go off…" Next year will be the 140-th anniversary of the last earthquake on the Hayward Fault. At some point it has the potential to be a very bad earthquake there. More after the break. (Photo by sanbeiji)
LIDAR Helps Locate New England Archaeological Sites
Lasers, Software and the Devil’s Slide
[Editor] National Science Foundation (NSF) Press Release – June 30, 2008. Screenshot Credits: Jeramy Decker, Kiewit Corp [/Editor]
Running for more than 1,000 kilometers along picturesque coastline, California’s Highway 1 is easy prey for many of the natural hazards plaguing the region, including landslides.
The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is currently building a kilometer-long tunnel to bypass one of the most landslide-prone stretches of the highway, the Devil’s Slide, to help ensure drivers’ safe passage.
Using a new software package developed by researchers at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., project engineers are getting a detailed 3-D view of the rock exposed in the excavation, adding a new tool for improving both safety and construction progress.
[Editor] Click through for the rest of the press release. [/Editor]