Descripción del proyecto
Sacar a la luz la física de los terremotos y las fallas
Los terremotos de gran intensidad pueden dejar un rastro de destrucción, provocando muertes y pérdidas por valor de millones de euros en daños materiales. Se han realizado grandes esfuerzos para predecir cuándo tendrán lugar. Sin embargo, hasta la fecha, todavía no se han podido detectar los precursores geofísicos (fenómenos que preceden a los terremotos) antes de un terremoto importante. Para abordar esta cuestión, el proyecto financiado con fondos europeos FaultScan tiene como objetivo crear un nuevo enfoque de vigilancia sísmica, de alta resolución y basado en el ruido, para examinar el núcleo de fallas sísmicas reales y permitir la detección de los precursores de los terremotos. El proyecto se centrará en la falla de San Jacinto, la cual se cree que representa uno de los mayores riesgos sísmicos en California.
Objetivo
The recent September 2017, magnitude 7.1 central Mexico earthquake that caused 370 casualties reminds us that earthquakes are among the most dramatic natural disasters worldwide. Causal physical processes are not instantaneous and laboratory and numerical experiments predict that earthquakes should be preceded by a detectable slow preparation phase. Despite considerable efforts, however, robust geophysical precursors have not yet been observed before damaging earthquakes.
My FaultScan project will revolutionize our ability to directly observe transient deformation within the core of active faults and provide unprecedented accuracy in the detection of earthquake precursors. My ambition is to develop a new, noise-based, high resolution, seismic monitoring approach. I intend to grasp the opportunity of a recent step change in seismic instrumentation and data processing capabilities to achieve a dream for seismologists: reproduce repeatable, daily, virtual seismic sources that can probe the core of active faults at seismogenic depths using only passive seismic records.
I plan to target the San Jacinto Fault (a branch of the San Andreas Fault system) that is currently believed to pose one of the largest seismic risks in California. It is an ideal fault for this project because it is very active, already extensively studied and easily accessible for the pilot field data acquisition work.
This project is in collaboration with the Univ. of South. California, the Univ. of Cal. San Diego and specialists in earthquake mechanics and will include earthquake preparation processes and seismic modeling that will guide us for our long-term (3 years), breakthrough, passive seismic experiment and further data analysis and interpretation.
I strongly believe that this project has a very high potential for providing fundamental results on the physics of earthquakes and faults and that it will have a major impact on earthquake prediction worldwide in the near future.
Ámbito científico
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesgeologyseismology
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesphysical geographynatural disasters
- social sciencessociologygovernancecrisis managementseismic risk management
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdata sciencedata processing
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantInstitución de acogida
38058 Grenoble
Francia