Advancing earthquake science worldwide
14 November 2023–The devastating September 2023 earthquake in Morocco and the unusual series of October 2023 earthquakes in Afghanistan are painful reminders of the seismic hazard that exists even in slowly deforming mountain belts away from major plate boundaries. Earthquakes take place infrequently in these regions, but their impacts can … Continue Reading »
7 November 2023–New maps of more than 1,000 deep-seated landslides in the Puget Lowlands of Washington State provide evidence of the last major earthquake along the Seattle Fault about 1,100 years ago—and may also hold traces of older earthquakes along the fault. Clusters of landslides offer a potential record of … Continue Reading »
1 November 2023–The chance discovery of a note written in a 15th century Hebrew prayer book fills an important gap in the historical Italian earthquake record, offering a brief glimpse of a previously unknown earthquake affecting the Marche region in the central Apennines. Paolo Galli, who found the note in … Continue Reading »
One of the biggest challenges for earthquake early warning systems (EEW) is the lack of seismic stations located offshore of heavily populated coastlines, where some of the world’s most seismically active regions are located. In a new study published in The Seismic Record, researchers show how unused telecommunications fiber optic … Continue Reading »
10 October 2023–Fiber optic cable snaking beneath the Penn State campus, passing under the athletic buildings and campus fields, can detect seismic waves generated by lightning storms. But what exactly causes lightning quakes—and why do we care about them? A new study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society … Continue Reading »
12 September 2023–Fires that raged in the days following the 1 September 1923 magnitude 7.9 Kantō earthquake killed roughly 90% of the 105,000 people who perished in and around Tokyo, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in history—comparable to the number of people killed in the World War … Continue Reading »