Quake Watch 2012

This may interest some, tectonics applied to economy/geopolitics.

DOD, U.S. Agencies Help Afghanistan Exploit Mineral Wealth

By Cheryl Pellerin
American Forces Press Service

www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=117330

WASHINGTON, July 30, 2012 – Officials from the Defense Department and the U.S. Geological Survey gathered this month at Afghanistan’s U.S. Embassy to unveil what the director of a DOD task force called a “treasure map” of the nation’s mineral resources.

At the event, James Bullion of the Defense Department’s Task Force for Business and Stability Operations, or TFBSO, shared the podium with USGS Director Marcia McNutt, who described a new remote-sensing technology that has made it possible, for the first time, she said, to map more than 70 percent of the country’s surface and identify potential high-value deposits of copper, gold, iron, and other minerals.

(...)

“Hyperspectral data uses the reflectance of light and uses the fact that different minerals reflect light in different wavelength bands,” McNutt explained. “Every mineral has its own signature or fingerprint.”

Hyperspectral imaging characterizes minerals only on the surface of the Earth, not underground where the minerals are mined. The technology wouldn’t work well in countries where forests, grasses and soil cover the ground, but it’s perfect for Afghanistan. Over 50 million years, the slow-motion collision of Iran and Eurasian tectonic plates beneath Afghanistan formed rugged, rocky mountains out of what used to be mineral-laden subsurface rock.

The hyperspectral instrument “can be used in a place where there’s no vegetative cover, and Afghanistan happens to have almost no vegetation and it is resource-laden,” McNutt explained. “And because of plate tectonic properties, … it has been tectonically uplifted and tectonically unroofed to reveal at the surface the mother lode of resources.”

Over 43 days and 23 flights, USGS flew nearly 23,000 miles, collecting data that covered 170,000 square miles.

(...)

hisz.rsoe.hu...

Have never seen a quake labelled as (location) 'North Pole' before. Probably just me! I hope Santa and the Elves are OK. Sucks to be Santa with all the ice melting. I wonder if Star Dust Castle has floatation devices. I am just feeling a little whimsical! (84° 26.520, 1° 49.686)

Some interesting quakes happening.

P

I have created a seperate blog for Japan to use the NIEC data, style is the same as eqarchives, in fact its called eqarchivesj
visitors are welcome
be the first, I just published it

On there you will find maps showing preliminary data from NIEC (which I have to download each day), similar numbers, seems the Ryukyu Islands data comes in later, like in New Zealand the Fiordland data comes in a few days behind the rest.
I think the NIEC preliminary data is like NZ's Geonet Rapid, not sure though it will be 4 days before I can get the reviewed data and compare them.
Hense the 4 day gap between 26th and 30th maps.
I've done this so I can limit the number of maps, in this case 10 per page,so they load without timeouts and delays.

The header says earthquake archives - "summary", or "results" I'm not sure which, I have no clue about Japanese script, got the script off a NIEC tab on their web page, don't they write right to left rather than English left to right?
anyone here can confirm what it says for sure?

bit of a swram going off os Kamaishi, Iwate Prefecture, Honshu, NE of Sendai, not sure if these are aftershocks of a mag 5+ earlier than 22nd July, will have to process some more data to find out

.

What are some of your thoughts on this little swarm off the coast of Oregon??

Some of the depths are at zero....data error

This seems to be right inside the subduction area....potential yikes???

earthquake.usgs.gov...

usgs=5.1 2012/08/01 09:24:43 -35.837 -179.720 48.2 EAST OF THE NORTH ISLAND, NEW ZEALAND
geofon=2012-08-01 09:24:52 5.0 35.76°S 179.54°E 80 C Off E. Coast of N. Island, N.Z.
ldeo= 2012 8 1 9 24 40.0 -35.50 -179.50 33.0 5.2 EAST OF NORTH ISLAND, N.Z.
geoau=5.3 01 August 2012 @ 09:24:59 -36.374 178.781 107 AUST Off East Coast of New Zealand.

Geonet = not showing, either GeonetRapid or magma search
maybe will be added later

got to go do some work, been raining on and off for 3 days , might get an whole afternoon in this week

reply to post by pheonix358


Noticed that as well.

Just wondering, is there a statistical analyses on the amount of quakes in the north in northern summer, and same for the south in southern summer, if that makes sense?

In other words, does the Earth's nearest pole to the Sun present any stastical difference on the likelehood of an earthquake occuring at any time of the year?

Is there any statistical analyses of quakes, their hemisphere and time of year?

reply to post by petethespark

Yes half an analysis has been done,
No it makes no difference what time of year.
NZ is only part of the Southern Hemisphere, but its the most southern country
Numbers count and Energy released graphs 2009-2012

Pretty good size quake hit, somewhere near Peru/Ecuador, not sure, lot of stations down for me....waiting on USGS report. Stay tuned.... might be 6+

EDIT: yup. 6.1

earthquake.usgs.gov...


At a moderate depth of 143 km that should help, but that is still a powerful quake.

Hmm...that's epicentered pretty close to some communities and near a river. This might not be good.


Edit: I think the 6.3 P.N.G. listed by USGS is a mistake. I saw it. Totally disagree.
That's coming down in mag, almost for sure.


Edit more: Ha, the record edit post!

Seriously, the situation directly north of New Zealand on the zone does not look good with those quakes. Lookout.

Magnitude 5.8 mb - New Ireland Region P.N.G.

Location map by EMSC (Google Map)

• Date-Time: Thursday, August 02, 2012 @ 09:56:45 UTC
  
• Earthquake location: 4.861°S, 153.208°E,
  
• Earthquake depth: 60.0 km
  
• Distances:
  2533 km N Brisbane (pop 1,843,392 ; local time 19:56:44.9 2012-08-02)
  858 km NE Port moresby (pop 283,733 ; local time 19:56:44.9 2012-08-02)
  117 km E Kokopo (pop 26,273 ; local time 19:56:44.9 2012-08-02)
  
• Event ID: 280322
  

Derived from Event Data Source: EMSC
Powered by QVSData

That translates to a 6 in Mw - time will tell.

Yup

Magnitude 6.3 - New Ireland Region. Papua New Guinea

Location in Google Maps

• Date-Time: Thursday, August 02, 2012 @ 09:56:44 UTC
  
• Earthquake location: 4.706°S, 153.228°E,
  
• Earthquake depth: 70.6 km
  
• Distances:
  34km (21mi) SE of Taron, PNG
  113km (70mi) ESE of Kokopo, Papua New Guinea
  305km (189mi) WNW of Arawa, Papua New Guinea
  354km (219mi) ENE of Kimbe, Papua New Guinea
  848km (526mi) NE of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea
  
• Event ID: usb000bldc
  

Derived from Event Data Source: USGS
Powered by QVSData

6.3 says USGS.

earthquake.usgs.gov...

Right on top of the 6.5 that happened on Saturday.

reply to post by murkraz


Apologies - did not see you had posted. My bad.

Refresh works wonders!!! I should try it.

Originally posted by PuterMan
reply to post by murkraz

 

Apologies - did not see you had posted. My bad.

Refresh works wonders!!! I should try it.

No worries, it's good that you updated your post. It stands out more and is more organized.

USGS down??

Anyone else getting this or is it just me?

reply to post by PuterMan


I am getting a webpage temporarily unavailable message. Guess we weren't invited to the party.

reply to post by amcpwoy

DOD, U.S. Agencies Help Afghanistan Exploit Mineral Wealth

Am I the only on that sees something wrong with that headline? Shal we try that again?

DOD, U.S. Agencies Exploit Afghanistan Mineral Wealth

reply to post by PuterMan


I couldn't get on USGS about 8 hours ago.
I finally figured out they had changed their DNSKey, but my DNS server didn't have the new one. So I had to switch my DNS server from my ISP provided one to OpenDNS.
Works fine now
Appearantly quite a few .gov sites have been changing keys in the past few months.

reply to post by PuterMan


Disgusting. This is probably the true reason why our (U.S.) troops haven't left.

Originally posted by PuterMan
USGS down??

Anyone else getting this or is it just me?

Last night and today has been a problem when trying to view usgs... Just havent been able to see anything. :-(

Originally posted by Olivine
reply to post by PuterMan

 

I couldn't get on USGS about 8 hours ago.
I finally figured out they had changed their DNSKey, but my DNS server didn't have the new one. So I had to switch my DNS server from my ISP provided one to OpenDNS.
Works fine now.

Um... Lol.... So..... How do you do that? How can I change the server name?

reply to post by Doodle19815


eqs7day-M1_20120802115533.txt

Last file I have been able to collect so it has been down 2 hours now as it is 1407 my time

When usgs goes down they still send out live feeds, don't they? I guess we could watch the other sites. Strange they went down without warning of updates or maintenance.