Not necessarily. A year or two ago seismologists from Northwestern, Purdue, and the University of Missouri suggested that the New Madrid Fault is actually shutting down.
” A year or two ago seismologists from Northwestern, Purdue, and the University of Missouri suggested that the New Madrid Fault is actually shutting down “
That would be good - my mother and two of my brothers are in the area likely to be affected by a major quake... (Not in the ‘red zone’, but well within the ‘yellow’...)
Not saying there is anything to worry about, but a year or two ago were there this many quakes happening? I am more amazed at what we don't know, then what we do. Also, my trust in scientists has been shattered by the global warming fear mongering. Any result for grant money, contrary to the facts.
Despite the assurances of the learned seismologist types, I'd still pass on any real estate investment in the Memphis area.
“A year or two ago seismologists from Northwestern, Purdue, and the University of Missouri suggested that the New Madrid Fault is actually shutting down.”
“The conclusions by Stein and co-investigator Mian Lu, professor of geological sciences at the University of Missouri, are controversial.
While acknowledging that Stein’s GPS measurements are accurate and important, researchers at the Center for Earthquake Research and Information at the University of Memphis say it’s overly simplistic to interpret them as meaning the fault system has shut down.
“It’s one piece of data,” said Chuck Langston, director of the Memphis center.
Despite the lack of movement, the historical record for New Madrid is clear, he said. Every 400 to 500 years, the fault zone has produced huge earthquakes. In addition to the 1811-12 shocks, which were estimated to have magnitudes of up to 7.8, researchers have found geologic evidence of similarly large quakes in the New Madrid zone around the years 1450 and 900 A.D. and as far back as 2350 B.C.
Given the slow pace of geologic changes, Langston questions how a fault zone that produced such powerful quakes only two centuries ago could undergo such a dramatic transformation so quickly.
“It just doesn’t work that way,” he said. “It takes hundreds of thousands of years for the Earth to do something — either start up or shut off.”
In 2006, a panel of experts convened by the U.S. Geological Survey to assess earthquake hazards in the eastern half of the nation evaluated the GPS data on which Stein bases his conclusions. The panel did not find the data to be a “convincing reason” to downgrade the seismic hazard in the New Madrid zone, a USGS report says.”
http://www.scrippsnews.com/content/scientists-debate-if-new-madrid-fault-dead-or-just-sleeping
That would be nice. I live a couple hundred miles away, but the latest map indicates that an 8.1 at New Madrid would feel like a 6.8 here in Elizabethtown (E-Town). After seeing what 6.8’s have done out in California, I’ll pass on that.