Posted on 06/23/2010 7:42:38 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
The magnitude 7.2 earthquake that gave San Diego County a long, hard shake on Easter Sunday shifted areas of the earth's crust up to 31 inches in Calexico, and by as much as 10 feet near the temblor's epicenter in northern Baja, says data released today by NASA.
The Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) data also suggests that there was some surface rupturing along the border of Imperial and San Diego counties, where lots of aftershock activity continues to occur almost three months after the mainshock.
The new findings are largely based on an airborne radar mapping program that searches for movement along the San Andreas fault and related systems, all which could produce significant shaking in San Diego County.
"Each UAVSAR flight serves as a baseline for subsequent quake activity," NASA said in a statement. "The team estimates displacement for each region, with the goal of determining how strain is partitioned between faults. When quakes do occur during the project, the team will observe their associated ground motions and assess how they may redistribute strain to other nearby faults, potentially priming them to break.
"Data from the Baja quake are being integrated into JPL's QuakeSim advanced computer models to better understand the fault systems that ruptured and potential impacts to nearby faults, such as the San Andreas, Elsinore and San Jacinto faults."
The Easter Sunday quake, which is officially known as the El Mayor-Cucapah event, erupted on April 4th on the southern section of the Borrego fault, producing seismic energy that rapidly fanned across San Diego County. The satellite data proves that it also affected the earth's crust in different places.
"That amount of shifting is consistent for a quake of that size," said Bob Dollar, a seismologist at USGS.
TYPE OF FAULTING: right-lateral strike-slip - ANIMATION
That's new to me.
See #17.
If it broke the surface, it must have been a shallow earthquake. Most earthquakes around the San Andreas Fault in California usually have a focus less than 20 km deep. This earthquake was located near the San Andreas Fault
Earthquake swarm
Seems to have the same meaning.
Every area has it’s own set of potential natural disasters. Let us hope the suggested scenario does not come to past.
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