LECTURE 24 NOTES

Earthquake Hazards (continued)

Tsunami
o Run-up heights (the height the water reaches)
As wave of water enters shallower water, the wave slows and the
height increases as water coming in from behind piles up. The
wavelength also decreases.
Bays and inlets (shape of the coast) can magnify wave height even
more by focusing waves
Run-up heights reached 20 m on Okushiri Island, 1993, 20
m in Indonesia 2004
Record run up height of 70 m reported at Cape Lopatka,
Kamchatka, in 1752
Japan 2011 reached 40 m, Waves focused near Natori due
to shape of coastline.
o Mitigation efforts
Walls were constructed in Japan to prevent tsunamis from
inundating coastal cities. These barriers did not work well in 2011.
All walls were overtopped, sometimes by nearly 10 m.
But warnings (issued 9 min after quake 15 min warning) worked:
92% of people in affected area survived
o Far-Field Travel Times
Velocity of wave = (g h) where g is gravity and h is water depth
Thus in open ocean, tsunami speeds are ~ 800 km/hr -
about the same as an airplane
Big tsunami usually have a large source area
Close-in areas may be hit in 15-30 minutes
Far from the earthquake, you have time for warnings if people
obey and leave the coast or get in a sturdy building.
o Tsunami effects
Multiple waves
First is commonly not largest
Initial wave may be receding or influx
water moves both in and out multiple times over hours
In event of tsunami, head for higher ground (or upper floors of a
well-built modern hotel) and stay there for several hours
o Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Plant
Fukushima Nuclear Plant No. 1 is reported to have been built to
withstand an acceleration of 0.45g. The observed acceleration at
the site reached ~0.55g (maximum was ~3g).
The tsunami struck 40 min after the earthquake and had a height of
over 14 m and extended 300 m inland. Three reactors were
operating at the time and they shut down (sort of) as planned due
to the post-facto warning system (issued 3 sec after event, 30 sec
 before S-waves hit). However, the tsunami flooded the electrical
systems leading to the problems with cooling the reactors.
Tsunami barrier designed to withstand 6-8 m wave; in the event it
was a 14-25 m wave and overtopped the barriers by over 8 m.
o Item added for these lecture notes: Can (and will) Japan restart the
other reactors shut down after Fukushima?
Study of Active Faults by Nuclear Regulation Agency (NRA)
commission chaired by Kunihiko Shimazaki
Commission identifies faults active in past 120,000 years
under Oi (11/5/12), and Tsuruga and Higashidori (12/10/12).
This is contested by the utilities.
Issues include
What is the age of movement on such faults?
Are the crushed rocks found really due to fault movement?
o US nuclear power plants are generally in the eastern US, an area
considered low seismic risk (except for the New Madrid zone see later in
course). But many of them are in tornado prone areas (two reactors have
been struck by tornadoes). Also moderate sized earthquakes (M 5 6)
have occurred in areas with power plants (1905 Illinois, 2011 Virginia).
o Attenuation is less in the craton. Thus a magnitude 8 earthquake in, say,
Missouri, will cause more damage than one in California, where
attenuation is greater because the energy travels farther. The area that
suffers damage in the Midwest is much larger than for a similar sized
earthquake in the west.
o Cascadia (Seattle, Portland) was struck by a M ~ 9 earthquake on January
26, 1700. Like Japan 2011, it was a megathrust earthquake.
Tsunami of unknown origin struck Japan in January, 1700
Native American legends speak of a cold winter night when the sea
receded, among others that tell of a flood from the sea and people
being killed
Mysterious dead trees, tsunami deposits
ages from radiocarbon dating
With computer modeling, determined to be M 9 from Pacific
northwest.
Present situation in Cascadia
Outer thrust zone appears locked further inland, there is
episodic slip, separated by events with large numbers of
tremors (ETS Episodic Tremor and Slip) that coincide with
displacement measured by GPS. Situation is silimar to
Tohoku, Japan.
Study of tsunami deposits suggests large earthquakes every
~1000 years and smaller tsunamigenic ones every ~400
years. Stay tuned.
o Tsunami warning systems deployed in Pacific since 1946
Uses seismometers, tide gauges, and buoys telemetered to
analysis centers
 4-5 min to get preliminary location P wave
10 min to get better location (Japan 2011 warning issued
about here)
30 min to get good size estimate and type of earthquake -
surface waves, M0
Need to identify earthquakes that are bigger than M 7.5,
underwater, and deforms the sea-floor. Remember surface waves
travel much more slowly than P-waves and carry most of the
energy so need to wait for them to get a good measure of size
and focal mechanism; by which time some local areas may have
been hit already.
Buoys and tide gauges confirm the tsunami post-facto.

Induced Seismicity
Mainly due to human injection of fluids into the Earth which increases fluid pore
pressure and thus reduces cohesion of the rock.
o Deep injection conducted at Rocky Mountain Arsenal in 1960s and
Rangely oil field (both in Colorado) in 1970s. Good temporal correlation of
small earthquakes and injection was noted.
o Fracking
Fracking (breaking rock to release hydrocarbons) itself should
cause small earthquakes with M < 0.0. Fracking is primarily
performed in shale for natural gas extraction.
Starting in the early to mid-2000s, there was a dramatic
increase in earthquake activity in the central and eastern US.
Oklahoma went from an average of 2 earthquakes/year to
nearly 600.
Wastewater and brine from the fracking process is generally
disposed by deep injection.
This has resulted in earthquakes with magnitude up to the
low 5s in formerly quiet areas. Oklahoma had more
earthquakes than California in 2014.
There have been a few direct fracking associated earthquakes in
Ohio. These appear to result from the fracking fluid entering small
local faults and causing small (M ~ 2) earthquakes.
o Reservoir loading
Reservoir induced seismicity is due to loading by water (stress) and
by water forced into the ground. Many correlations are uncertain.
Example, Zipingpu Reservoir (Sichuan M 7.9 2008)
stress changes could have shortened recurrence rate by 10s
to 100s of years
but... calculations critically dependent on assumptions (fault
dip, location, etc.)
Located in a region of high natural seismicity

Earthquake Prediction
 Item added for these lecture notes
o No one but fools, charlatans, and liars predict earthquakes.
o Prediction provides a happy hunting ground for amateurs, cranks, and
outright publicity-seeking fakers. - both attributed to C. F. Richter
o Both US and Japanese prediction programs missed the damaging
earthquakes of the 1990 and the early 21st century while studying other
areas
Semantically, forecast might be a better word than prediction
Long-term prediction
o Decades to Centuries
o Recurrence Rates
Usually modeled or demonstrated with a block and spring model
Ideally
o faults are moving at constant rates
o earthquakes should occur at equally spaced intervals
in time
In reality
o earthquakes vary in size (displacement varies)
o time between earthquakes varies
So we dont know exactly when or exactly how big the next
earthquake will be
Recurrence rates are usually specified as the average time
between large earthquakes for any given area. For example, Chile
is 130 30 years, southern Japan is 180 85 years; given the
variations, these are not societally useful forecasts.
Seismic Gaps
Regions that have not had an earthquake in a long time
one might expect one is overdue
o Identification of these has worked well many of
these gaps have ruptured in big earthquakes
o Item added for these lecture notes: There are some issues with the
seismic gap approach. One is that we know about long recurrence rates
for really large events. Tohoku, Japan, was considered a gap but it was
expected to be a M ~ 7.5 8 event, not 9+. Recurrence rates of >~1000
years would not be well known. Other areas (e.g., Lisbon, Portugal, 1755)
have big earthquakes with no known recurrence history. Other issues
exist, but at least in many places, it does seem to at least identify places
where earthquakes exist.