Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
<40> Mark, consider the Japan quake last month, which surprised even the
experts. We had a working model for the subduction zone off Honshu that
involved distinct segments of quake-producing fault, but the March event
ripped through all of the supposedly independent segments. The whole
"overdue" idea depends on us knowing the true earthquake model for a given
plate boundary. "Overdue" is entirely model-dependent. That is, it's a human
construction, based on a hypothesis. Considering that earthquakes think in
centuries, even millennia (as in the Midwest), and we have pitifully small
amounts of data, there is no information contained in the statement that
we're "overdue." Give us a few more centuries.

The nearest thing I've seen to scientists using that kind of statement is
about the southern segment of the San Andreas fault, which last produced a
large (M 7+) quake in the mid-1600s. And all they say is, Gee it's been an
awful long time since the last one here, and there must be a lot of strain
accumulated. But we can't specify any one scenario for releaseing that
strain, any more than we could last month in Japan.
  

    
I see what you're saying.  The whole "overdue" idea assumes you have
no major unknowns.
  

    
Great topic!

I was impressed when visiting Santa Monica recently that all the
low-lying areas had 'Tsunami Zone' signs .. and all the exit roads were
clearly marked as 'Tsunami Escape Route'.

SF area? I can't recall seeing even one such sign.
  

    
Tsunami buffs shook their heads when they heard about the one American
fatality in the Japanese earthquake - a guy who decided Crescent City,
CA would be a great place to take photos of the tsunami.  The same
city was famously wiped out by the tsunami from the 1964 Alaska quake. 
Apparently the guy was traveling and just decided to pull over in
Crescent City - talk about bad luck!
  

    
In SF the tsunami signs are out by Ocean Beach.
  

    
They're in Pacifica, too, and undoubtedly elsewhere.
  

    
Remembering my first earthquake in SoCal in 1973....it was like Gopod
shook the rug.....then later in 79, living in the high desert....you
could actually see Him/Her/It shake it.....the earthquake would casue
the desert to actually roll as it moved towards you....very
sublime,just like something really was shaking the earth's rug..
  

    
Yeah, that "the ground rolling like waves" phenomenon has been very
widely reported.
  

    
Definitely something to see....not sure I would ever want to be near a
tsunami when it rolls into shore....watched and rewatched that one
that hit the resort in Indonesia a few years ago,,,,that was
terrifying.
  

    
A technical question about earthquakes...when then get in the high 8's
and 9 categories, do they roll or kinda jolt?  Wondering if the more
powerful they are they manifest themselves differently through the
earth's crust....
  

    
It depends on multiple factors that Andrew will certainly explain.
  

    
The big difference between M 8 or M9 events and smaller ones is that they
last a lot longer and have more energy in lower frequencies. Calling that
difference "rolling" versus "jolting" is not especially true, but the
essence is right. The biggest quakes have energy at such low frequencies
that they make the Earth oscillate like a giant soap bubble, and to see
those I know of no better site than this one from the University of
Bourgogne: <http://icb.u-
bourgogne.fr/nano/MANAPI/saviot/terre/index.en.html>
  

    
Very interesting, thanks for that and the links.
  

    
Andrew, there was some news (and some interesting and scary videos)
showing soil liquefaction in the recent Japanese quake.  Can you talk a
little bit about when and why this happens?

Here's some videos:

<http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=soil+liquefaction+japan&aq=3&oq=so
il+li>
  

    

Thanks for the pointer to the CA fault line maps. I'm so very relieved
that my house is 5 blocks away from the local fault.  At least the
earthquake won't split the house into two pieces unless, of course,
there's an unknown fault under my house.

As to earthquake preparedness, we have bottled water delivered which means
we'll have a few gallons available just in case. And this topic reminds me
to do another backup to DVD in case my computer goes 'bouncy bouncy bye
bye' soon. We also have a wind up radio/light and some UPSs that we could
use to power lights for a short while. And there's the small Y2K
electric generator still in its original box that I bought in 1999. That
might work.
  

    
LOL...the perfect laid back California attitude
  

    
I should add to my last post, about the Earth's free oscillations after
earthquakes, that after the Sumatra quake of 2004, the zero-zero or
"breathing mode" was detectable for at least six weeks afterward. Chances
are the Earth is still ringing that way from the March quake as we talk.
  

    
I have a short summary of the Sumatra quake at
<http://geology.about.com/od/historicearthquakes/a/aasumatra.htm>; be sure
to see the accompanying figures at
<http://geology.about.com/library/bl/blsumatrafigs.htm>. Soon we will be
seeing similar figures for the Japan quake.

Scientific papers about the March quake are still on their way to
publication, but I've seen some interesting results. Apparently the central
part of the rupture zone moved as much as 30 meters, looking across the
fault from one side to the other. That is truly huge, as these things go,
certainly enough to have created a melt zone down there that would have
lubricated things. Some workers are suggesting that not only did this event
release all of the accumulated strain around the source, but it may have
actually overshot the zero point and thrown the source region into reversed
stress. Both of these things are unheard-of in my experience. But if true,
it could be argued that the fault will be even quieter than expected for
centuries to come.

The quake itself was rupturing for almost 3 full minutes. Of course as that
seismic energy radiates outward in the form of waves, it spreads out in time
as well, so people in Honshu experienced primary shaking for even longer,
and reverberations and immediate aftershocks made even that time lengthen.
Imagine being in terror for your life for four minutes or longer. If you
can.

Mark asked about liquefaction. You must have noticed at the beach how, down
near the water, you can pat the sand repeatedly and eventually make it
"quick," like wet concrete. The patting suspends the sand grains in the
water that surrounds them until the water can't flow around them fast
enough. Effectively, the once-packed sand becomes a slurry. Earthquakes do
that to groundwater-saturated land, especially sandy material. As cracks
open above such a "quick" layer, liquefied material can erupt to the surface
in "sand blows" or sand volcanoes. Along riverbanks or levees or cut slopes,
the overlying land can slide sideways like so much soggy cereal. Buildings
can be engineered against these things, but it's expensive. I go into
liquefaction more at
<http://geology.about.com/od/liquefaction/a/liquefaction.htm>
  

    
National Geographic aired Witness: Disaster In Japan the other night. 
A friend recommended it, so I downloaded it off of iTunes (where it's
available in HD):

http://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/witness-disaster-in-japan/id432144672

I'd seen some of the footage in this documentary before on YouTube,
though not always at this resolution, or with English subtitles.  
 
Leaves you with a real sinking feeling in your stomach, especially
living in an earthquake zone.
 
  

    
The thing that most amazed me in the coverage of the Japanese quake
was the overhead helicopter shots of the tsunami that came out in the
first day or two.  As a geology buff, I've read hundreds of
descriptions of tsunamis and tsunami deposits.  And, frankly, none of
it really gelled in my mind.

But in those helicopter shots from overhead, you could see a tsunami
deposit (a huge overwash of sand and woody debris) being laid down in
real time.

Andrew, are there places in the US where people are now living on top
of deposits like that?
  

    
There's high-def video of that chopper coverage in that National
Geographic program.  I was amazed at how much better a sense of scale
you get for the wave, the speed it's moving at, and the debris it's
carrying, in high def.
  

    
Even on youtube, it's amazing.  It's definitely one of those things
that words fail to describe.
  

    
I agree about the footage of the tsunami. When I was a kid reading about the
1960 and 1947 tsunamis, all I had to go on was written descriptions and a
few grainy photographs. I don't watch television today, but I recognize the
power of moving images to inform the imagination and cement facts firmly in
the mind. Especially when those images are repeated a thousand times beyond
my threshold of boredom...
  

    
So to return to my question above - are there folks in the U.S. today
unwittingly living on top of tsunami deposits like that? (Or wittingly,
for that matter!).
  

    
There must be, at least in the subduction zones. During the earthquake
cycle, the deforming upper plate accumulates strain and plumps up, slowly
rising above sea level. After the earthquake it slumps and its top surface
sinks. This is purely from the huge wedge of rock acting like a giant block
of (very rigid) rubber. That favors the accumulation of tsunami deposits on
the shore. These have been excavated all over Cascadia, helping us document
previous large events into the deep past.

Tsunami deposits may well be preserved on other coasts, but they would be
harder to identify because the handy rise-and-dip cycle is absent. Also,
hurricane deposits would be hard to differentiate from tsunami deposits,
even ordinary washouts from large storms.

The other variable is that sea level rises and falls over geologic time,
especially these days of rapid ice ages. So tsunami deposits might sit
higher or lower than today's sea level.