After the devastating 2011 earthquake, early prediction is a huge priority for Japan
歷經二○一一年那場毀滅性的地震之後，早期預測成為日本極為觀注的優先要務
Japan keeps watch for the next big earthquake
by Sandi Doughton / © 2014, The Seattle Times. Distributed by MCT Information Services.
If you expect your sensors to transmit data from the seafloor for a decade or more, it pays to do a lot of testing upfront.
That’s why Eiichiro Araki and fellow researchers from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology set up shop [in 2014] in an equipment plant on the outskirts of Tokyo.
“We need to make sure everything is working,” Araki said. Once the instruments are cemented into a half-mile-deep borehole under 6,500 feet of water, it’ll be too late to fix glitches.
Araki’s goal is to spy on the infamous Nankai Trough—an underwater fault similar to the one off the coast of the U.S. Pacific Northwest. Both are capable of [releasing] earthquakes and tsunamis on a par with the disaster that struck Japan’s Tohoku coast in 2011. And both faults are so far from shore that land-based instruments provide only a fuzzy view.
In the zone
Japan sits in the cross hairs of four of these so-called subduction zones, so it’s no wonder the island nation leads the world in seafloor monitoring. Araki’s sensors will be some of the most sophisticated ever deployed.
The aim is to improve understanding of how subduction zones work, provide rapid tsunami warnings and—perhaps—answer an intriguing question raised by the 2011 Tohoku quake: Do the world’s most dangerous faults signal their intentions by slipping slowly before they snap?
Even before the Tohoku quake and tsunami, Japan was gathering data from dozens of ocean-bottom sensors. Since then, the country has committed more than $500 million to expanding those networks. Within a few years, Japan will have more than 200 clusters of seismometers and pressure sensors standing sentinel off its shores.
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Discussion Questions
-Does your city or country sit in the crosshairs of anything threatening? Explain.
-Should researchers in your area do more to discover early warning signs that precede earthquakes? Explain.
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