[Island Chris]

The link below is about a project lead by someone (Jamie Steidl) where I work. In addition to Nepal and strong ground motion, he mentions short term earthquake prediction: sounds like Roger.

http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2015/015465/whe...%2C%202015

Chris

[Skywise]

(06-02-2015, 02:50 PM)Island Chris Wrote: The link below is about a project lead by someone (Jamie Steidl) where I work. In addition to Nepal and strong ground motion, he mentions short term earthquake prediction: sounds like Roger.

http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2015/015465/whe...%2C%202015

Chris

Very important quotes from the article:

Quote:"If you predict there will be an earthquake but it’s a 1, nobody cares. If you predict an 8 but not where it will happen, it’s not useful.

"My own sort of bias is that I probably won’t see an earthquake prediction capability in my lifetime, and the reason is that the human time scale is so different from the earth’s time scale, the geologic time scale," he continued. "We’re just a little blip. We haven’t been around long enough yet to experience what is called the earthquake cycle. We need more data before we’ll be able to make accurate predictions."

Brian

[Island Chris]

I disagree about whether predicting a M8 but not its location is useful. If someone can short-term predict quakes in a very significant way, then it is interesting because it says something about what triggers quakes, or if no trigger, how they occur. You may have to learn this before you, in 100 years, are able to also occasionally predict location also. So, if Duffy succeeds in predicting quakes, then it says something is happening before the quake, and that could lead to some instrumentation to measure whatever it is in different critical areas. I'm not saying Duffy is predicting quakes: it seems a longshot, but unlike many others, he has a scientific approach.

Chris

[Island Chris]

I had an interesting email exchange with a Chinese student at UCSB. She sent me an email about whether UCSB/Santa Barbara were dangerous. I said the question was vague, but that, if there was a damaging M6+ earthquake every 100 years in the area of Santa Barbara to UCSB, there was a 1 in 100 chance she would experience one in the 1 year before she finishes her studies. I said there is always something to worry about. I spared her my snarky comment about what you really have to worry about in Isla Vista, the student ghetto she lives in next to UCSB, is massacres by young people (is the 1 year anniversary of a massacre with 6 fatalities). This is not the first fatal problem they have had in Isla Vista in the last decade.

I mentioned that the construction is presumably good, and that the older buildings have been presumably retrofitted. I said I was a bit concerned that the strong ground motion may be really high. Santa Barbara and especially UCSB are in a bad location right above very large, very active thrust fault system.

I gave a talk at USGS in April showing a deep industry seismic reflection profile that ends about 1 km offshore of Campus Point, UCSB. It shows the faults, with the main one (Pitas Point fault) projecting to maybe 8 km depth at the point, and the Red Mountain fault above that. On that I showed a picture of the older 6 story building I work out of at the same horizontal scale as the profile. On the same figure I also showed a map of the USA with UCSB and my home office on opposite coasts.

Chris

[Skywise]

(06-03-2015, 10:19 AM)Island Chris Wrote: I disagree about whether predicting a M8 but not its location is useful. If someone can short-term predict quakes in a very significant way, then it is interesting...

Putting it that way, I agree. If someone were able to say the date/time within even 72 hours of an M8 quake even without location, and do that 10 times in a row.... wow!!!

And I agree about Duffy's work. I like his approach. Something that bugs me is that it's actually something I could potentially replicate, but I'm just not in a circumstance to set things up to do it, though.

Brian