NASA Radar Images Show How Mexico Quake Deformed Earth

Overview of the UAVSAR interferogram of the magnitude 7.2 Baja California earthquake of April 4, 2010, overlaid atop a Google Earth image of the region. Major fault systems are shown by red lines, while recent aftershocks are denoted by yellow, orange and

Overview of the UAVSAR interferogram of the magnitude 7.2 Baja California earthquake of April 4, 2010, overlaid atop a Google Earth image of the region. Major fault systems are shown by red lines, while recent aftershocks are denoted by yellow, orange and

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]