And you thought I was talking about New Orleans politics. Through 3D Boundary Element Modeling of the Los Angeles Basin fault system, my friend, Michele Cooke, and her PhD student have discovered that “some faults may be moving faster than earlier models estimated.”
To fill in the gaps where direct measurements are impossible or difficult to obtain, scientists will often use models that simulate geologic deformations. But previous models of the L.A. metropolitan area–a network of interacting active faults in several directions–have oversimplified fault geometry and thus predicted unusually high slip rates, says Michele Cooke, a structural geologist at UMass Amherst.
Copyright © Science DailyIn the new model, faults move due to stresses and strains arising from regional deformation, but they also may move due to neighboring fault activity. This is important, says Cooke, because how faults are connected has a lot do with how they will behave … Her main premise is that faults evolve to minimize the energy in a system and therefore will grow along the path of least resistance.
The new model, in which fault slip matches existing direct measurements, should help increase earthquake predictability and adjust insurance rates in the quake-prone area. Look for the publication of this research in the Nov. 21 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.
