

If quakes begin in a cascade, there will be no way to predict which small quake is going to start a chain reaction leading to a large quake.īecause few instruments are set up to detect subtle effects before an earthquake, it is difficult to study the nucleation phase and find out which model is more accurate. They said that if earthquakes begin with a pre-slip nucleation phase, it might be possible to detect that phase ahead of time and predict which quakes are going be large ones. Ellsworth and Beroza presented data to show that the larger and more extensive the pre-slip, the more likely that the ensuing quake also would be large. This pre-slip nucelation phase would be silent, too slow or too subtle to pick up with seismic instruments. They showed that instead of cascading, earthquakes might start with a pre-slip stage, hours to days before the earthquake. His findings lend support to an explanation of the observed weak beginning of earthquakes, the seismic nucleation phase, proposed by Ellsworth and Beroza in Science magazine on May 12, 1995. Dodge reported the results at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco on Wednesday, Dec. Geological Survey in Menlo Park also was a co-author of the study. Instead of triggering each other, both the foreshocks and the main shock appeared to be triggered by some other mechanism.

"Instead of taking the main shock closer to failure, the foreshocks took the main shock further away from failure," said Dodge's co-author, Gregory Beroza, associate professor of geophysics. But when Stanford graduate student Douglas Dodge analyzed the mechanics of foreshock sequences preceding six recent California earthquakes, he found that the small quakes were more likely to relieve the stress that led to the main quake rather than to increase it. Indeed, according to one scientific model of nucleation - the start of an earthquake - a tiny rupture triggers a small quake, which then triggers a larger one in a cascade of increasing size. STANFORD - Most people think of foreshocks as the small earthquakes that trigger a big quake. We’ll be happy to chat with you and point you towards tools that can help.Study of foreshocks lends support to concept of a silent start for quakes Study of foreshocks lends support to concept of a silent start for quakes
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