TimesLeader.com

Keystone College station monitors global quakes

Kelly Leighton Abington Journal Correspondent

LA PLUME - Keystone College recently acquired a seismic monitoring station with a seismograph, which allows viewers to monitor global earthquakes in near real-time, including the latest activity regarding last week’s earthquakes in Indonesia and near American Samoa.

click image to enlarge

In front is Dr. Won-Young Kim. Back row, from left: Dr. Mitchell Gold, Jason Zarnowski, Tom Cupillari and Samantha Watkins.

Select images available for purchase in the
Times Leader Photo Store

“When I checked the seismic data on September 29, I could tell right away that something very big had happened, but I wasn’t sure where,” said Keystone Geology Professor Ian Saginor. “Once we had identified the size and location of the quake as an 8.0 magnitude from Samoa, my first thought was that it could have caused a tsunami,” he added.

“It’s a very strange feeling to be watching such a devastating event from your safe office, knowing the terror it must be causing people thousands of miles away. I watched our seismograph over the next few days expecting to see aftershocks, but I was not expecting another large earthquake from Indonesia,” said Saginor. Saginor added that although it was an active week for earthquakes, these types of events are common in that region. Saginor described the monitoring station as a small concrete bunker, set three feet in the ground and anchored to bedrock. Inside is the seismometer, which records the actual motion of the ground as the waves from an earthquake pass through it.

“Even though the energy from the Samoan earthquake had to travel 7,000 miles to get to Pennsylvania, our seismometer was able to detect the small amount of energy remaining. This energy was far too small to be felt by anyone, which is why we need a sophisticated piece of equipment to see it,” explained Saginor.

To set up the seismic station at Keystone College, the department contacted Dr. Won-Young Kim, the head of the Lamont Doherty Cooperative Seismic Network (LCSN). The LCSN invited Keystone College to become a member, said Saginor. The LCSN is run out of the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, which is affiliated with Columbia University in New York.

“We raised money from a number of sources, including the Rita Cupillari Foundation and the Keystone College Environmental Education Institute. The folks at Lamont agreed to loan us much of the equipment we used. They sent a team out to Keystone College to help select a location and again to install the seismometer,” said Saginor.

According to Saginor, the LCSN has seismometers all over the northeast United States, but had no station in this area. He said that this is one of the reasons that this cooperation works well for everyone. “We received equipment and technical support and they get to expand their network into an area where they had poor coverage,” he added.

Saginor clarified that the purpose of the seismometer is not to predict earthquakes. “In fact, earthquake prediction is an extremely difficult task and seismologists have only had limited success in that area. Based on all of the available data, we could make statements such as ‘There is a 10 percent chance that there will be at least one major earthquake in a particular region over the next 50 years’, but it is virtually impossible to predict the exact time and location of an earthquake with enough warning for people to evacuate. Our goal is to learn more about how and where earthquakes happen. One would hope this would improve our chances of predicting earthquakes in the future,” said Saginor.

The monitoring system usually picks up several earthquakes per week, approximately 50 or 60 since its installation this summer, said Saginor. “It varies a lot, though. In the last few days, we’ve picked up at least six, but sometime we’ll go several days and not see a thing,” said Saginor. Although the system is not monitored at all hours, all the data is archived, so “we don’t miss a thing,” added Saginor.

Saginor also said that Keystone College has already begun integrating the new data into the curriculum for the Environmental Resource Management major. “As a geologist, I cover earthquakes in several of my classes, however, now we have the ability to use data collected right here on Keystone College’s campus, which is very exciting. Already, we have one student doing a full year research project interpreting the seismic data,” he said.

The data can be monitored by anyone with an Internet connection at any time. It is free to the public and is updated within minutes of the data arriving at the station. Visit http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/LCSN/WebSeis/24hr_heli.pl?id=.