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NEW
RESEARCH REVEALS HIDDEN EARTHQUAKE TROUBLE SPOTS
A team from the The 2005 Now the scientists
from the
Departments of Geology and Geography at the The scientists have
pioneered use
of the laser probe to map active fault systems in The Dr. Dickson
Cunningham in the
Department of Geology and Dr. Kevin Tansey in the Department of
Geography
collaborated on a NERC funded project to map the distribution of
recently
active earthquake-prone faults in the southeastern Alps in Their key research
results are
now published in the latest issue of Geophysical
Research Letters. The work was further supported by a Masters
student in
Geography, Stephen Grebby. Dr. Cunningham said:
"Locating
earthquake-prone faults in forested mountainous regions and
understanding the
potential seismic hazard they pose to local population centers has
always been
a problem to geoscientists. "Many regions of the
world
have undiscovered seismically active faults hidden by dense forests,
including
Indonesia, India, NW North America, all Andean nations and the alpine
countries
of Europe. Unfortunately for people living in these regions, these
faults can
be ticking time bombs. "We have
demonstrated that
airborne LiDAR can be used in mountainous terrain to virtually deforest
the
landscape and reveal details of the forest floor topography, including
the
traces of active faults." Dr. Cunningham
reports that the
research involved collaborative efforts with Slovenian geoscientists
and
InfoTerra, a global geo-information supplier based in The topographic
images derived
from LiDAR data of two major plate boundary faults, the Idrija and
Ravne
strike-slip faults in He added: "For the
first
time, we are able to see how the faults connect at the surface and cut
the
landscape. This allows us to assess whether the faults are likely to
produce
large earthquakes or small events in the future. The images also allow
efficient identification of sites suitable for detailed fault analysis
to
calculate the recurrence interval of major earthquakes and make
probabilistic
estimates of the timing and magnitude of the next major earthquake." A field excursion in
August 2006
verified the remote observations. Dr. Tansey said: "As we trekked
through
the forest we found overwhelming evidence for previous fault activity,
never
before seen by earth scientists. We are now building on our initial
results
with follow-up research and have established the
http://www.le.ac.uk/external/
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