Matt Patrick’s office is perched not far from the summit of Hawaii’s busiest
volcano: Kilauea. When it erupts, he has a good view. Of course, it’s his job to see every possible vista of the peak, whether it’s flying over in a helicopter, hiking to fissures and along lava fields or checking webcams, seismometers and satellites. Working at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, Patrick is part of a team that monitors the volcano’s every tremor, eruption, burp of gas and lava path. This diligence helps researchers track potential danger and understand the details ... (p. 32)
Teams work to understand and model what could happen next.
Published:
2010-01-16 10:10:52
Found in: Earth and Science & Society
Jeff McGuire says he does not want to be known as the guy who predicts earthquakes. But in September 2008, a magnitude 6.0 quake shook the bottom of the ocean at a fault along the East Pacific Rise — within 10 kilometers from where and within the year-and-a-half window that McGuire and his colleagues had predicted.
It is in fact possible to predict a large quake on a short timescale, says McGuire, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution — when the geology is relatively simple, as on a transform fault along the East Pacific Rise. And his year-and-a-half time frame is short compared w... (p. 26)