Researchers study earthquakes’ effect on delta

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

California’s vast delta, where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers pour their waters toward the sea, could be in serious danger when the next major earthquake strikes along the Hayward Fault – or on any of the other faults that make up the San Andreas zone, scientists have long warned.

Now a new study is under way to detail just how seismic waves from future quakes would travel through the delta’s thick sedimentary earth and whether the waves might grow stronger or weaken as they travel.

The nature of the ground beneath the delta’s surface would greatly affect the damage a quake could cause to the waterway’s miles of levees, which shelter roads and farms, and to the giant pumps near Tracy that send water to the state’s parched southern regions.

In the study approved by the U.S. Geological Survey, seismologist Donna Eberhart-Phillips of UC Davis and two colleagues at the University of Wisconsin hope to gain insights into the delta’s reaction to quakes of any size by recording the earth’s movements during the small temblors that occur often along the Hayward Fault as well as along many of Northern California’s smaller faults.

“We need to know how the energy from earthquakes travels through the upper 2 to 3 miles of the delta’s earth – what the properties of that earth are, how the speed of a quake’s seismic waves are attenuated when material in the region absorbs energy, and how a quake’s effects propagate throughout the delta,” Eberhart-Phillips said.

Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle by clicking here.

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