[Rockhounds] Artificial Intelligence Takes On Earthquake Prediction

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

In May of last year, after a 13-month slumber, the ground beneath
Washington’s Puget Sound rumbled to life. The quake began more than 20
miles below the Olympic mountains and, over the course of a few weeks,
drifted northwest, reaching Canada’s Vancouver Island. It then briefly
reversed course, migrating back across the U.S. border before going silent
again. All told, the monthlong earthquake likely released enough energy to
register as a magnitude 6. By the time it was done, the southern tip of
Vancouver Island had been thrust a centimeter or so closer to the Pacific
Ocean.

Because the quake was so spread out in time and space, however, it’s likely
that no one felt it. These kinds of phantom earthquakes, which occur deeper
underground than conventional, fast earthquakes, are known as “slow slips.”
They occur roughly once a year in the Pacific Northwest, along a stretch of
fault where the Juan de Fuca plate is slowly wedging itself beneath the
North American plate. More than a dozen slow slips have been detected by
the region’s sprawling network of seismic stations since 2003.  And for the
past year and a half, these events have been the focus of a new effort at
earthquake prediction by the geophysicist Paul Johnson.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/artificial-intelligence-takes-on-earthquake-prediction-20190919/