Researchers have tried to estimate the frequency of earthquakes in the past in order to indicate possible earthquakes in the future. To do so researchers of Oregon provided a method to correlate the settlement of the ground with previous earthquakes.
An experiment was conducted to find out the accuracy of the predicted size of the past earthquakes, according to Andrea Hawkes, a coastal geologist at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. During the experiment a section of marsh peat was relocated to higher depth simulating the settlement that is expected to happen after an earthquake. Hawkes and her colleagues that carried out the experiment at the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve in Oregon visited this place after a year and then again after five years to examine what happened through samples.
The team reported two significant observations. The first one confirmed the accuracy of the prediction of the settlement as the estimated movement (0,61m) was only 3cm less than the actual subsidence (0,64m) from a previous earthquake. On the contrary, the second one wasn’t so convincing. Although an abrupt change in microorganisms would be anticipated due to abrupt ground movement due to earthquake loading, such abrupt change was not observed. Instead a gradual transition was observed, eliminating any indication of deformation, as Hawkes mentioned.
Eventually, the above method is not suggested by the team for estimating deformation as a way to predict earthquakes and new technologies like GPS are more appropriate, according to Hawkes.
Source: earthmagazine.org
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