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Haiti, Dominican Republic May Be Entering Big Earthquake Period
Haiti and the neighboring Dominican Republic could be in for a period of periodic powerful earthquakes, according to a recent scientific study.
The study says Haiti’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake two years ago is likely to be the first of several quakes of a similarly powerful magnitude.
The Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake caused widespread damage in the Haitian capital and surrounding cities. Officials say the disaster killed 314,000 people and toppled thousands of crudely built homes.
“The 2010 Haiti earthquake may mark the beginning of a new cycle of large earthquakes on the Enriquillo fault system after 240 years of seismic quiescence,” lead author William Bakun of the U.S. Geological Survey wrote. “The entire Enriquillo fault system appears to be Read more…
World-wide cholera pandemic traced to Bangladesh
A cholera pandemic that has swept poor countries in three waves over nearly four decades has been traced to a bacterial strain that first emerged in Bangladesh, scientists reported on Wednesday.The current pandemic is the seventh since cholera, a water- and food-borne diarrhoeal disease caused by the Vibrio cholerae bug, emerged nearly two centuries ago.
Gene sequencing of 154 samples of V. cholerae taken from patients around the world show today’s pandemic can be traced to an initial outbreak of cholera in the Bay of Bengal in 1975, the investigators said.
In 1982, the strain, known as El Tor, acquired genes making it resistant to antibiotics. As a result, successive waves of the disease spread around the world, propagated from the original source.
The new probe, published in the British journal Nature, points to the Read more…
NASA Eyes Dominican Republic Lake’s Mysterious Growth
Enriquillo, Cabrito island within. Photo nasa.gov.
Santo Domingo.- Enriquillo Lake has grown around 9,000 hectares from February 26, 2009, to April 15, 2011, a NASA sensor measurement reveals from space, while the Santo Domingo State University’s (UASD) Marine Research Center suggests that two underground currents at the Haiti-Dominican border as the possible cause.
The UASD hypothesis that the subsurface currents from Tierra Nueva and Las Lajas, towns adjacent to Haitian territory, spill their waters into Enriquillo and Azuey lakes, could turn out to be the cause behind the as yet unexplained flooding in both bodies of water.
“That amount of water is still draining towards Enriquillo lake from high territories” in the Dominican Republic, NASA said on its Website, and affirms that the lake’s surroundings “have been flooded even more than the floods brought about by the rain sequel caused by Hurricane Noel and Tropical Storm Olga in 2007.”
NASA’s measurements of Enriquillo’s underflow level were done with Landsat and Modis type sensors, which also provided satellite imagery in the study.
Enriquillo received 400 millimeters of water during those rains, and surpass 700 millimeters in the last two years, without any rain in the zone, which reveals the magnitude of the flooding that affects the Caribbean region’s biggest lake since 2009.
Number Of Recorded Earthquakes Rises Sharply
2011 is on target to record the largest number of earthquakes in a single year for at least 12 years.
Research by Irish Weather Online, using data from the US Geological Survey (USGS), has found that earthquake activity (5.0-9.9 magnitude) from 01 January to 19 June 2011 is already exceeding the total annual seismic activity for the years 2001, 2002 and 2003. 2011’s total number of recorded earthquakes is also expected to exceed the most seismically active year of the past 12 years, 2007.
A total of 1,445 earthquakes, ranging in magnitude from 5.0 to 9.9, have been recorded in the year up to 19 June. The total number of earthquakes recorded globally for the entire of 2007 was 2,270.
The massive earthquakes in Japan (2011), Chile (2010), Sichuan (2008), Sumatra (2005 and 2008) and Indonesia (2004) have served to remind us of the devastating impact of earthquakes on life and property. While the number of earthquakes ranging Read more…
Atmosphere Above Japan Heated Rapidly Before M9 Earthquake
Infrared emissions above the epicenter increased dramatically in the days before the devastating earthquake in Japan, say scientists.
Technology Review
Published by MIT
Geologists have long puzzled over anecdotal reports of strange atmospheric phenomena in the days before big earthquakes. But good data to back up these stories has been hard to come by.
In recent years, however, various teams have set up atmospheric monitoring stations in earthquake zones and a number of satellites are capable of sending back data about the state of the upper atmosphere and the ionosphere during an earthquake.
Last year, we looked at some fascinating data from the DEMETER spacecraft showing a significant increase in ultra-low frequency radio signals Read more…
Strain from Japan earthquake may lead to more seismic trouble, scientists say
Japan won’t stop shaking. One month after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the nation rode out yet another powerful aftershock Monday, the second in four days. This one rattled buildings in Tokyo and briefly cut power to the damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima.
With soldiers still looking for the bodies of thousands of people who vanished in the killer wave a month ago, Japan is coping with the painful reality that it sits in a seismic bull’s-eye.
A new calculation by American and Japanese scientists has concluded that the March 11 event may have heightened the stress on faults bracketing the ruptured segment of the Japan Trench.
“There’s quite a bit of real estate on which stress has increased, by our calculations,” said U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Ross Stein. “The possibility of getting large, Read more…
Japan quake set Texas aquifer in motion
When the earth shook during the March 11 earthquake off Japan, it had enough force to move water deep inside the Edwards Aquifer in Central Texas.
Within 15 minutes of the magnitude-9.0 earthquake, the Edward Aquifer Authority’s J-17 monitoring well in Bexar County started to vibrate, with the water level fluctuating about a foot.
“It moved up and down for almost two hours,” said Roland Ruiz, a spokesman for the water authority. “We thought it was certainly interesting that a quake that far away would register in the aquifer.”
It isn’t the first time vibrations from earthquakes have shown up in the aquifer. Last year’s 8.8 quake in Chile and 7.0 temblor in Haiti were also detected.
The Dec. 26, 2004, earthquake off Sumatra, Indonesia, caused the largest fluctuation in the aquifer when the water level moved about 2.6 feet. That 9.1 quake triggered a tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people.
The Edwards Aquifer Authority provides water to 1.7 million people in South Central Texas, including San Antonio.
“It just seems to be a natural ripple effect felt halfway around the world,” said Ruiz, who added that the “sloshing around” inside the aquifer did not create any problems.
Bill Hanna, 817-390-7698
The megaquake connection: Are huge earthquakes linked?
The recent cluster of huge quakes around the Pacific Ocean has fuelled speculation that they are seismically linked. New Scientist examines the evidence
A wave of activity (Image: Bernd Settnik/EPA/Corbis)
AT 2.46 pm local time on Friday last week, Japan shook like never before. The magnitude 9.0 earthquake wrenched the main island of Honshu 2.5 metres closer to the US and nudged the tilt of Earth’s axis by 16 centimetres. At the epicentre, 130 kilometres offshore, the Pacific tectonic plate lurched westwards, and a 10-metre-high tsunami sped towards the coastal city of Sendai and the surrounding region.
The devastation caused by the events is difficult to exaggerate – estimates suggest the number of fatalities could top 10,000. One of the few consolations is that quakes of magnitude 8.5 and above are rare: the Sendai earthquake is in the top 10 of the highest-magnitude quakes of the last 100 years.
Yet three of these – the December 2004 Sumatra quake, the February 2010 Chile quake, and now Sendai – have struck in just over six years. This presents a horrifying possibility: Read more…
Haiti’s cholera epidemic twice as bad as predicted, say researchers
Haiti’s cholera epidemic may be twice as bad as health officials originally thought.
The number of people affected with the disease may be nearly 800,000, double what U.N. officials predicted, BBC reports.
The bacterial disease causes severe diarrhea and vomiting and can be life-threatening if left untreated as it can lead to severe dehydration. It is spread from person-to-person through contaminated food and water.
About 150,000 people contracted cholera and 3,500 died in Haiti between October and December 2010. U.N. health officials expected the number of infected at this time to be about 400,000. But researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, say the number is likely to be double that.
The new calculations take into consideration factors such as Read more…
Three Cases of Cholera Confirmed by New York City Officials
The first known cases of cholera in New York since the outbreak of the disease in Haiti last year were confirmed on Saturday by city officials.
A commercial laboratory notified health officials on Friday that three New Yorkers had developed diarrhea and dehydration, classic symptoms of the disease, after returning from a wedding on Jan. 22 and 23 in the Dominican Republic, where the government has been trying to prevent the disease from spreading from neighboring Haiti.
The three who contracted cholera were adults who returned to the city within days of the wedding.
None were hospitalized. Dr. Sharon Balter, a medical epidemiologist for the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said on Saturday that the victims had all recovered.
Officials declined to release the names of the patients or where they lived.
City health officials are now working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to determine what the New York victims ate and to see if the strain of the disease they contracted is linked to the cholera epidemic that has ravaged Haiti, killing thousands since October and infecting many more.
“We’re providing support to the state, with lab testing, in determining which strain” is at issue, said Candice Burns Hoffmann, a spokeswoman for the C.D.C. “And I know there is an Read more…
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