19 April 2017-DENVER — Researchers working in Wyoming have deployed a full suite of technologies, including seismic data acquisition and multi-attribute processing originally developed for shallow fault imaging, to locate the hazardous underground voids left behind by coal mining in the state. At the 2017 SSA Annual Meeting, Jamey Turner of Fugro discussed his team’s efforts to locate mining voids, which can pose a risk to buildings, roads and other infrastructure.

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18 April 2017-DENVER — Experiments conducted high in the skies over New Mexico suggest that balloon-borne sensors could be useful in detecting the infrasound signals generated by small, extraterrestrial debris entering Earth’s atmosphere, according to a report at the 2017 SSA Annual Meeting.

Infrasound, sometimes called low-frequency sound, is sound waves that occur at frequencies lower than the limit of human hearing. Infrasound signals can remain strong as they travel over large distances, making them useful for pinpointing the location and size of events such as nuclear explosions, meteorite strikes, volcanic eruptions and sometimes earthquake ruptures.

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18 April 2017-DENVER — In September 2016, about 100 small earthquakes between magnitude 2 and 4.3 took place in Bombay Beach, rattling the region in Southern California and raising questions about whether the swarm’s location near the southern end of the San Andreas Fault would trigger a larger earthquake.

In a presentation at the 2017 SSA Annual Meeting, U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Andrea Llenos discussed lessons learned from the 2016 Bombay Beach swarm, in particular the challenges in modeling swarms and communicating their risk to the public.

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