Hi Everyone,

I was doing some research last night about ULF monitoring, research which has been done regarding animal activity prior to earthquakes and I also came across something about quake sensitive people.

Reports about research activities in regard to ULF are confusing at best. Some researchers report ULF spikes or reading changes hours in advance of quakes while others are weeks to months in advance. I'm not at all sure why there is this variance, but I was wondering if it had anything to do with types of instruments or proximity of instruments to area's being monitored. It can also be that there are lesser important signals being received at early detection followed by stronger, more intense signals later.

For anyone who doesn't understand my interest in ULF, let me say that the ear tone research group does detect events such as episodic tremors (ETS) at the same time ULF records them. So I have to wonder if all of the ear tones we hear are being recorded by ULF instruments and we are only marginally apart on connecting ULF and ear tones. In other words, the instrument has already been developed, but they are not everywhere. I'm still trying to get an answer as to whether or not the ULF instruments in Parkfield detected the 6.0 or not and if so, when, but maybe I'll receive that sometime soon.

Next, my research on ULF took me to animal behavior prior to earthquakes. There was some research done by people who work with ULF who studied "small animal" behavior, but they found that in most cases the animal behavior changed only minutes before earthquakes and therefore was not viable for early warning detection. But this research had no information about "large animal" behavior prior to earthquakes.

And lastly, let me give credit where credit is due in regard to a scientist researching the human element of early warning signals prior to earthquakes. Someone did take a look and this person was interested in people who had headaches prior to quakes. He walked away from it when people residing in California said they had headaches for moderate earthquakes in exotic places like Guatemala. I don't know if he ever heard about Kathy Gori who seems to have headaches predominantly for Southern, CA, however, she does not predict earthquakes, she only files headache reports which mostly denote earthquakes occurring within 70 miles of her location at the time of the onset of the headache.

Summing up, it seems to me we may be closer to solving the mystery of ear tones. They do seem to be heard by people who hear ultra low frequency sounds however, people who hear these sounds really need to work with ULF people and see what correlates and what doesn't. As to how to accomplish this task I'm not sure due to the lack of instrumentation across California. More research needs to be done on large animals to determine when they receive their early warning. And people who make reports of precursory information really need to get a handle on it. Such as self-testing to determine what type of information correlates to locations of future earthquakes. Hearing ranges for ear tones is a good solid test. A person has to know how far away from their location they can hear a 3.0 for example. And people with headaches need to know how far away they can accurately detect an earthquake and of what size.

Therefore, it seems there may be a link between ULF, animals and people, but we need to bring all of the information to the table and honestly create a working group to study it.

Petra