Earthquakes happen every day. Many are so small they aren’t felt, but large magnitude earthquakes can be deadly if they cause strong ground shaking or tsunamis and affect populated areas, such as the quake that hit Nepal in April or the one in Afghanistan and Pakistan this week.
The challenge for scientists is to try to understand where earthquakes will occur, and the likely physical impacts, so we can be better prepared for any future event.
Take the earthquake that shook northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011. It wasn’t the worst earthquake or tsunami to hit the region in recent years: that record goes to the 2004 Sumatran Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami which caused more than 230,000 deaths.
However, there was something unusual about the magnitude 9 Japanese earthquake which caused more than 19,000 deaths, around US$300 billion of damage and left many thousands homeless.
Drilling in the Deep
A year after the quake hit, the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) vessel Chikyu sailed to a position 200km offshore of Sendai, a region devastated by the tsunami. Aboard, a team of 28 top scientists – including myself – from 10 countries examined data and rock recovered from boreholes drilled into the fault responsible for this natural disaster.
