Douglas Isbell

Headquarters, Washington, DC October 28, 1996

(Phone: 202/358-1753)

Mary Hardin
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
(Phone: 818/354-5011)

Cheryl Dybas
National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA
(Phone: 703/306-1070)

Don Kelly
U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, VA
(Phone: 703/648-4466)

RELEASE: 96-218

NEW TECHNOLOGY TO HELP MEASUREMENT

AND STUDY OF EARTHQUAKES

Scientists have begun installing a network of 250 Global

Positioning System (GPS) receivers that will continuously
measure the constant, yet physically imperceptible, movements
of earthquake faults throughout southern California. This
information, which in many cases will be gathered and
analyzed with the help of local students, should help
researchers forecast future earthquake hazards in the greater
Los Angeles area.

NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin dedicated a new site

in the Southern California Integrated GPS Network (SCIGN)
today at Rialto High School, before a demonstration of the
technology to science students from the school. Goldin was
accompanied by U.S. Representative George Brown (D-CA), the
ranking minority leader of the House Science Committee, and
representatives from the National Science Foundation and the
U.S. Geological Survey.

"This network is a tremendous example of how technology

developed for space benefits life on Earth. This interagency
project will give us detailed information never before
available to track the invisible geologic strains and
stresses that lie beneath the California landscape," Goldin
said. "Such data should give us fresh insight into the
forces that produce earthquakes, and could one day help
reduce the loss of life and property from such disasters."

GPS uses data transmitted from a constellation of 24

Earth-orbiting satellites that are jointly governed by the
departments of Defense and Transportation. The satellites
are arranged so that several of them are "visible" from any
point on the surface of the Earth at any time. A user on the
ground using a GPS receiver can determine the site's precise
location by coordinating the signals from the satellites.

"The surface of the Earth is constantly moving and

southern California is being squeezed in the process. The
GPS network will continuously measure movements of the
Earth's crust with a precision of one millimeter per year,
which will show us where strain is building up," said Dr.
Andrea Donnellan, a member of the SCIGN coordinating
committee at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL),
Pasadena, CA.

"GPS is the most important new technology to emerge for

the study of earthquakes in decades. This information will
permit us to improve our estimates of the regional earthquake
hazard in southern California and to prioritize earthquake
mitigation activities, including emergency preparedness and
retrofit strategies," said Dr. Tom Henyey, director of the
USGS-NSF Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) in Los
Angeles. "Continuous GPS measurements also will allow for
more rapid regional damage assessment following large
earthquakes."

The earthquake network began in 1990 with only four GPS

receivers as a prototype project funded by NASA. It detected
very small motions of the Earth's crust in southern
California associated with the June 1992 Landers and the
January 1994 Northridge earthquakes. "The GPS receivers
operating during the Landers earthquake were able to detect
for the first time a subtle change in the regional
deformation pattern, which is potentially of great importance
for studying the physics of earthquakes and hazards
mitigation" said Dr. Yehuda Bock, a SCIGN executive board
member from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University
of California, San Diego.

Currently, the SCIGN has 40 GPS receivers up and

running, with the remaining receivers scheduled to be
installed over the next three years.

"With data from the 40 receivers, we have determined

that southern California has continued to move since the
Northridge quake in 1994. This may mean that stress is being
relieved in part without earthquakes, which may reduce the
overall earthquake hazard," JPL's Donnellan said. "We will
try to determine if other faults have been loaded as a result
of the earthquake."

"The survey data are particularly important for

identifying active buried faults that do not reach the ground
surface. Such faults may be common in the Los Angeles
metropolitan region," said Dr. David Jackson, science
director of SCEC.

The GPS measurements also will be useful to characterize

earthquake damage. "The network will help agencies monitor
important structures. GPS receivers placed on or near dams,
bridges and buildings would allow off-site detection of
probable damage to those structures. We are collaborating
with Los Angeles County in a pilot study of continuous GPS
monitoring of Pacoima Dam," said Dr. Ken Hudnut, SCIGN
executive board member at the U.S. Geological Survey in
Pasadena.
 Many of the receivers are being placed at schools so
that students can be involved in the experiment. SCEC's
"Global Science Classroom" at the University of Southern
California has formed a partnership with JPL, several school
districts and educators' groups to develop a science unit for
use in schools. The unit, titled "The Elastic Planet," will
give students access to the data being gathered by the
network.

"This network is a model of interagency cooperation

between NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey and the National
Science Foundation, as well as with local governments and
schools," Goldin said. "Students will get hands-on science
experience in using real data. It should ignite their
enthusiasm for science while providing a genuine public
service."

SCIGN is a consortium of institutions with a common

interest in using GPS for earthquake research and mitigation.
The consortium is coordinated by the SCEC, a National Science
Foundation Science and Technology Center headquartered at the
University of Southern California. The lead institutions in
the installation and operation of SCIGN are: JPL, the
Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics-Scripps
Institution of Oceanography at the University of California,
San Diego, the United States Geological Survey, the
University of California, Los Angeles and USC.

-end-

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