Cornell Feb 10 Seminar to Explore Sumatra Earthquake and Tsunami

baalke_at_earthlink.net
Date: 02/03/05 

Date: 3 Feb 2005 10:10:10 -0800

http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Feb05/TsunamiSeminar.bpf.html

Cornell Feb. 10 seminar to explore Sumatra earthquake and tsunami

FOR RELEASE: Feb. 2, 2005

Contact: Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.
Office: 607-254-8093
E-mail: bpf2@cornell.edu

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell University will present a seminar, "The
Sumatra Earthquake and Tsunami: The Science Behind the Headlines,"
Thursday, Feb. 10, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in room B14 of Hollister Hall.
It is being held by the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
and the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

The public is invited to attend without charge.

Philip Liu, professor of civil engineering, and Muawia Barazangi and
Dan Karig, professors of earth and atmospheric sciences, will make
presentations.

Liu recently returned from a scientific fact-finding trip to Sri
Lanka on the Dec. 26 Asian tsunami. Karig will provide a general
overview of the geographical and geological setting of the region
devastated by the tsunami.

Barazangi will explain how the tsunami-triggering earthquake occurred
near Sumatra along a major convergent plate boundary, where the
oceanic Indian plate is subducting beneath the continental Southeast
Asia plate. He says that as much as 750 miles of the contact zone
between these two tectonic plates ruptured during the earthquake,
with an average slip of 49 to 66 feet. "The occurrence of such
mega-thrust, great earthquakes [magnitude 9] is infrequent,
approximately once every 200 years," Barazangi says.

"It appears that no such great earthquake occurred in the recent past
along the northern continuation of this plate boundary from the
Andaman Islands to Assam in northeast India. This is a matter of
utmost concern for the future, considering that Bangladesh is located
very near this segment of the plate boundary, and that most of this
nation, with a population of over 130 million, lies very close to sea
level," Barazangi says.

He also will examine the tsunami threat to the eastern Mediterranean.
Compounding this problem is a lack of warning system in the region,
he says.

-30-

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