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BookmarkMay 1, 2005 — In the Global Seismographic Network, 138 networked stations can pick up quake movement and send instant information to computers around the world. The network has passed its first real-world test: Sensors on seismometers worldwide started moving just a few minutes after the December 26, 2004 Sumatran earthquake started.
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Last December's tsunami was triggered by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean. Experts say the United States has a 1 in 5 chance of a cataclysmic earthquake off the west coast in the next 50 years, one that could trigger our own tsunami. This realization put the scientific community to work, as it now examines the vast amount of information collected from a network of seismic monitors.
When the earthquake and tsunami shook Southeast Asia, it sent seismic waves worldwide.
"They don't happen all that often, but when they do you can see the very devastating effect. It's important that we understand how those earthquakes are generated," says David Simpson, a seismologist at Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology Consortium in Washington, D.C.
Seismologists may be a step closer to that goal as they examine data from monitors linked together across the world.
Yale University seismologist Jeffrey Park, says, "The Global Seismographic Network, in the case of this earthquake, is going to help us study that process to try to understand a little more about how plate tectonics works and how these huge slabs of rock slide past each other."
The Sumatra earthquake was the first full-scale test of the network to see if it could meet the goals it was designed for. From new seismographs, scientists receive clearer and even real-time information on earthquakes -- for a faster emergency response.
Park says, "It gives a rapid indication when there is something damaging and perhaps devastating happening."
Any one of the 138 networked seismographs can pick up quake movement and send instant information to computers around the world -- sensors on seismometers worldwide started moving just a few minutes after the Sumatra earthquake started.
"This is the first time that the earth has been excited by a really large event," says Simpson, "and it lets us understand something, things about the internal structure that we couldn't see before."
Keeping this technical ear to the ground may help scientists predict quakes and plan ways to withstand them. As seismologists work on better ways to predict the impact of quakes, they say a communications network also needs to be in place to help alert governments and citizens of a threat as it occurs.
