The article I read has to do with a new model that has been developed in California by Danijel Schorlemmer that is said to be able to forecast future earthquakes. The model was developed by looking at the different amounts of stress caused by different fault lines. Stress deep below the earth's surface is thought to be the cause of earthquakes, and the amount of stress is thought to be how large of an earthquake it will be. The model measures the stress and location of each earthquake, and depending on the results and fault line the earthquake occurs on, predicts how large and where the next earthquake might occur. The model is not perfect, and has not yet been proven to be effective. It also has a lot more development to undergo. Unfortunately, scientists are still not close to being able to tackle the challenge of finding out when exactly the next earthquake may occur. This is still a very ground-breaking idea, because the more preparation and information people and scientists have on the topic of earthquake forecasting, the better.
I found this article to be very relevant to the topics that we are currently discussing in class. In fact, we just read an article talking about early warning systems for earthquakes. Those systems are designed to react rapidly to an already occurring earthquake and send out information to people in affected areas to be prepared. These systems only give the people a few seconds to prepare. A model that predicts the location and severity of an earthquake, even not giving the time, would at least let people in the area know what they are going to be dealing with. Just knowing that it will happen, even not knowing the timing, will potentially save lives.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091203171712.htm
http://www.alpinesurvival.com/px-earthquakes-map_us.gif (map showing severe US quakes)
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