NASA Contributes To Earthquake Research

David E. Steitz
Headquarters, Washington                   December 2, 2003
(Phone: 202/358-1730)

Alan Buis 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
(Phone: 818/354-0474)

NOTE TO EDITORS: n03-135

NASA CONTRIBUTES TO EARTHQUAKE RESEARCH

     Ten years ago next month, Southern California was rocked 
by the deadly magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake, one of the 
costliest natural disasters in U.S. history. The quake was 
preceded by concentrated pre-earthquake strain in the region, 
detected by sparse readings from newly developed Global 
Positioning System (GPS) deformation monitors.

NASA's unique contributions to this rapidly maturing field of 
study and implications of this research for mitigating future 
seismic hazards are the focus of a Earth Science Update, 
Thursday, 1 p.m. EST in NASA's Webb Auditorium, 300 E Street 
S.W., Washington.

In the 10 years since the devastating Northridge earthquake, a 
high tech GPS based ground deformation network was installed 
within Southern California. It provides a continuous 
measurement of ground deformation at 250 locations with a 
precision of a few millimeters.

Advances in satellite based radar Interferometric Synthetic 
Aperture Radar and lidar are combined with the GPS 
measurements to provide images of ground deformation for the 
entire Southern California earthquake region. Researchers 
obtained very surprising results, from the discovery of quiet 
earthquakes to imaging ground water withdrawal rates. These 
new high accuracy, space based radar, lidar, and GPS 
measurement technologies, coupled with powerful new computer 
modeling capabilities, have revitalized research in earthquake 
prediction with a new understanding of how the Earth's surface 
is changing.

Panelists:
Dr. Andrea Donnellan, geophysicist and deputy manager, Earth 
and Space Sciences Division, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
     Pasadena, Calif.
Dr. Bradford H. Hager, professor, Massachusetts Institute of
     Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
Dr. John B. Rundle, professor and founding director, 
Computational Science and Engineering Center, University of
     California, Davis, Calif.
Dr. Wayne Thatcher, senior research geophysicist, U.S.
     Geological Survey, Menlo Park, Calif.
Dr. James H. Whitcomb, section head for Special Projects,
     Earth Sciences Division, National Science Foundation,
     Arlington, Va.

The program will be carried live on NASA Television with two-
way question-and-answer capability from participating agency 
centers. NASA TV is available on AMC-9, transponder 9C, C-
band, located at 85 degrees west longitude. The frequency is 
3880.0 MHz. Polarization is vertical, and audio is monaural at 
6.80 MHz. Audio of the broadcast is available on voice circuit 
by calling: 321/867-1220/1240/1260.

For the live webcast, click the "Watch NASA TV Now!" link at:

http://www.nasa.gov 

For information about NASA's Earth Science Enterprise on the 
Internet, visit:

http://www.earth.nasa.gov/ 


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