Comment on Alaska aquiver: State hosts plate tectonics research effort

By DAN JOLING, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle
Wed, 05/24/2017 - 12:22am

Alaska aquiver: State hosts plate tectonics research effort

A federal agency that supports basic science research is completing installation in Alaska of an array of seismometers as part of its quest to map the Earth's upper crust beneath North America. At the end of this summer, there will be 260, swathing the state with instruments that record seismic waves and give geologists a picture of the upper 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the Earth. A helicopter flies in a lightweight drill rig to dig into bedrock or permafrost for the seismograph, said Bob Busby, transportable array manager for Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology. Solar panels mounted on fiberglass huts must gather energy throughout summer to charge lithium iron phosphate batteries — equivalent to two or three batteries in a Prius — that power equipment through the long winter. The array of seismometers, part of the science foundation's EarthScope project, has the ambitious goal of explaining how continents formed as well as something of more immediately interest: where dangerous earthquakes of the future may occur. Companies routinely make hundred-million-dollar design decisions for mines, pipelines and ports based on knowledge of earthquake hazards.

 

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