Vidale completed his undergraduate degree at Yale University and earned his doctorate in seismology from the California Institute of Technology. He began his career at the University of California, Santa Cruz, then worked for the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park before joining the University of California, Los Angeles, faculty from 1995 until 2006, when he joined the UW.

Vidale studies Earth鈥檚 interior, including earthquakes and volcanoes. Some of his research at the 91探花has looked at how , how beneath Puget Sound, and performing a seismic ultrasound to beneath Mount St. Helens. He is director of the UW鈥檚 , an interdisciplinary effort to prepare for a magnitude-9 earthquake.

Vidale is also active in applied work and public communication about natural hazards. Since 2006 he has directed the , which tracks all seismic activity in the region, and serves as Washington鈥檚 state seismologist. He also is involved in the current effort to build a West Coast , which would provide seconds to minutes of warning for the damaging effects of a large earthquake.

Vidale was previously elected as a fellow of the American Geophysical Union. Other honors include the Macelwane Medal for early-career geoscientists, a Gutenberg Lecturer from the AGU and an outstanding researcher award from the 91探花College of the Environment.

The newly elected scientists bring the total number of active academy members across all of science to 2,290 and the total number of foreign associates to 475.聽Vidale’s聽selection brings to 75聽the total number 91探花faculty named to the National Academy of Sciences.

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The first Pacific Northwest pilot users of the system are Bothell, Wash.-based , which will use the alerts to secure municipal water and sewer systems so these structures remain usable after a major quake. Oregon’s first test user, the , will use alerts to lower water levels in a canal above a residential area in Oregon, and to stop turbines at a river power plant. A parallel launch event was held in Eugene the same day.

Both utility providers participated in a that has been learning about the system since early 2015 from the UW-based , which coordinates the system in Washington and Oregon.

“We are thrilled to take the first steps in integrating earthquake early warning into life in the Pacific Northwest,” , 91探花professor of Earth and space sciences and director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. “Our teamwork has made it possible to reach this milestone so quickly.”

The ShakeAlert system will provide seconds to minutes of warning before damaging shaking arrives. That would be enough time to get out of a dangerous building, turn off a vehicle, stop surgeries and other delicate activities, and prepare for the imminent ground shaking.

Other speakers at the event included David Applegate, USGS acting deputy director; Doug Given, USGS coordinator of earthquake early warning; U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Port Angeles); Maximilian Dixon, earthquake program manager at Washington State Emergency Management Division; and Dan Ervin, chair of RH2 Engineering.

The system’s development at the USGS and four partner universities has been with a combination of public and private grants. Development of ShakeAlert at the 91探花has been supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Amazon Catalyst program and Puget Sound Energy.

Three new staff members have been hired in the 91探花Department of Earth and Space Sciences as part of the effort. is the Pacific Northwest’s new ShakeAlert coordinator, and will be answering questions about the system and obtaining permits for approximately 200 new Pacific Northwest sites. is a new programmer who will work on improving quality control for the alerts. and are new field technicians who will assist with upgrading existing seismometers and assist with installing new sensors.

Given, of the USGS, said the agency plans to begin limited public alerts in 2018, but that more seismometers will be needed to provide reliable alerts for communities throughout the earthquake-prone regions.

“At the 91探花College of the Environment, ShakeAlert is a shining example of our commitment to engaging public, private, nonprofit and academic partners in solving the greatest environmental challenges of our time,” 91探花College of the Environment Dean said in her remarks. “Together, we co-create scientific solutions that have real impacts on people鈥檚 lives.”

The USGS estimates $38.3 million in initial costs to complete a reliable, public system for the entire West Coast, and $16.1 million each year to maintain and operate the ShakeAlert system. About half of the operational costs have been funded so far, researchers say.

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For more information, contact Vidale at 310-210-2131 or vidale@uw.edu, or seismic network communications manager Bill Steele at 206-685-5880 or wsteele@uw.edu.

The study was led by scientists at the University of New Mexico with co-authors at the 91探花, Rice University and Cornell University. All are part of an ambitious effort to use remote sensing to better understand the hidden passageways beneath one of the country’s most dangerous active volcanoes.

The , published Nov. 1 in Nature Communications, analyzes compressional waves traveling through the crust and reflecting off the mantle below the volcano. Results show that on one side the mantle is largely , a rare, moisture-absorbing, dark-green mineral that can look like a snake’s skin. But the mantle below the eastern half of the mountain is mostly , a common mineral that allows water 鈥� thought to play a key role in volcanic eruptions 鈥� to percolate up and into the overlying crust.

The paper presents the latest results from a July 2014 experiment that conducted a . The National Science Foundation project, nicknamed for imaging Magma Under St Helens, set off seismic waves to see how they travel under the mountain and generate a map of the volcano’s plumbing. The new paper is part of a larger collaboration that also involves researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey, Oregon State University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

During that experiment, researchers from the University of New Mexico placed 900 autonomous seismographs within 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) of the crater, increasing the density of instruments right around the volcano. All sensors were deployed along the road and trail system at Mount St. Helens with an average spacing of 250 meters.

The iMUSH experiment set off 23 active-source explosions, with energy similar to small 2.0 magnitude earthquakes, over a two-week period. The resulting dataset provides high-resolution seismic imaging of deep crustal structure beneath this active arc volcano.

“We show that Mount St. Helens sits atop a sharp lateral boundary in Moho reflectivity,” said corresponding author , a postdoctoral researcher at the University of New Mexico. The lack of reflections to the west can be explained if there is a relatively cold wedge of serpentinite to the west of the mountain, because the compressional wave speed of serpentine is not very different than that of the overriding crust.

In this context, cold is less than about 700 degrees C, or 1,300 degrees F. Below that temperature the serpentinite binds the water into a crystal structure. Above that temperature, however, serpentinite is not stable, and water can percolate up through the hot mantle unimpeded and into the overlying crust.

“The melt that supplies Mount St. Helens is probably formed to the east, in the mantle wedge below Mount Adams, and then moves west through the magmatic system somehow,” Hansen concluded.

91探花co-authors are and , both professors in the Department of Earth & Space Sciences. Other co-authors are Brandon Schmandt at the University of New Mexico, Alan Levander at Rice University, Eric Kiser at the University of Arizona and Geoff Abers at Cornell University.

鈥淭his is a nice result because it shows a very sharp boundary between where you have reflectivity and where you don’t, and that boundary between strong and weak reflectivity is pretty much directly beneath Mount St. Helens,鈥� Creager said. 鈥淭he density of data lets us see that this boundary between where there is reflectivity and where there isn’t is very sharp. Presumably what it’s telling us is the temperature of the mantle.”

Water is locked in various minerals inside the subducting oceanic plate. As the slab goes down, the temperature and pressure increase and the water is squeezed out of the crystals. The water then migrates up into the mantle of the overriding continental plate, where it reacts with olivine to become serpentinite to the west of Mount St. Helens, or olivine to the east. The temperature is key, Creager said, because that indicates where water in the descending ocean plate could be mixing with the rock to lower the melting temperature and form volcano-creating magma.

“An important question is: where is the water, and where isn’t it?” Creager said.

鈥淭his adds to a variety of other experiments that suggest that where it’s cold, this water is basically getting soaked into the mantle and turning olivine into serpentine and not going anywhere, so it can’t get up into the crust to form volcanoes,鈥� he said. 鈥淲hen you get up into where there is olivine, the temperature is hotter, serpentine isn’t stable, so the water can play its role in the volcanic process.鈥�

An iMUSH published in the spring that was led by Rice University suggested that most of the eruptive products came from one or more chambers at depths of 3 to 12 kilometers (about 2 to 7 miles), and that those chambers may be connected.

The full iMUSH experiment includes four different lines of analysis. The UW-led team deployed 70 three-directional seismometers to detect the tiny earthquakes that happen about twice a day, either due to movement of tectonic plates or motion of magma within the volcano, over a two-year period. 91探花researchers retrieved the instruments in August and are now analyzing their data. They hope to get a higher-resolution image of the deeper sections.

Overall, the goal is to create a more complete picture of the magma system beneath Mount St. Helens both to better understand and predict volcanic activity, and also to gauge the severity of the event when an eruption is imminent.

###

For more information, contact Hansen at stevenhansen@unm.edu and Creager at 206-685-2803 or kcc@uw.edu.

Adapted from a University of New Mexico .

NSF grants: 1445937, 1520875 and 1459047

The UW-based is helping to develop , an automated alert system that could save lives and prevent millions of dollars in damages by providing seconds to minutes of warning before shaking begins.

The UW; the University of California, Berkeley; California Institute of Technology; and the U.S. Geological Survey were in funding today from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to help advance the earthquake early warning system. The 91探花group will study the implementation of a network of sensors on the ocean floor to provide early warning for earthquakes from the Cascadia subduction zone, the largest threat for a catastrophic earthquake in the Pacific Northwest.

“Earthquakes pose tremendous risk to our communities, and so researchers from the 91探花and our partners are working with private funders and city, state and federal governments to create an accurate, responsive early warning system,” said , a 91探花professor of Earth and space sciences and director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, who at the summit.

“ShakeAlert’s benefits are clear: It will save lives and reduce the costs of major earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest. We’re fortunate to have strong bipartisan support that can help ShakeAlert become a key part of our efforts to make the West Coast more resilient to major quakes.”

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s office today its support with new commitments toward earthquake preparedness, including $4.6 million to identify and map geologic hazards in the state.

The White House on Feb. 2 also issued an to boost earthquake readiness standards in federal buildings throughout the nation.

Other new commitments to earthquake readiness in the Pacific Northwest include:

• is donating $100,000 to the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network over four years to buy eight strong-motion seismometers that will be installed throughout Washington to improve the state’s earthquake early warning capability.
• , a partnership launched last year between Amazon Corp. and the UW, is funding a 91探花group that will develop MegaShake, a new system that will combine GPS and seismic data to accurately identify incoming earthquakes above a magnitude 7.
• In Oregon, Intel Corp. is beginning discussions this week to broaden its support for earthquake early warning systems for the Portland area and throughout the Pacific Northwest.

The new expenditures follow a made in July by the U.S. Geological Survey to the 91探花and three other West Coast universities to develop the ShakeAlert tool.

A bipartisan West Coast congressional delegation, led by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Port Angeles, and Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Camas, has been instrumental in elevating the need for earthquake warning to the national level and advocating for increased funding. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., Rep. Adam Smith, D-Bellevue, and Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Medina, have also urged the federal government to increase its support for earthquake early warning implementation.

“We are halfway there” in terms of funding, Vidale said at the White House summit. “As a scientist, it’s most exciting and gratifying to help bring earthquake early warning to fruition for my country.”

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For more information, contact Vidale at vidale@uw.edu or 310-210-2131. He will be back in Seattle on Thursday, Feb. 4. For Seattle interviews earlier this week, contact research scientist Brendan Crowell at crowellb@uw.edu.

See also a White House on the new commitments toward advancing earthquake readiness.

Sally Jewell, secretary of the Department of the Interior, and John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, are scheduled to give the introductory remarks.

, a 91探花professor of Earth and space sciences, is among the speakers for the first session of the day, which will focus on the promise of earthquake early warning. Later sessions will focus on building for earthquake safety, the evolution of early earthquake warning, and how the federal government is committed to ensuring a future with greater earthquake readiness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSNFwH-YS7k

Vidale directs the UW-based , which monitors earthquake and volcano activity across the region. The network is involved in efforts to help the region prepare for a possible magnitude-9 earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone, off the coast of Washington, Oregon and California. Earthquake early warning systems could save many millions of dollars in damages by providing several seconds to minutes of warning before an oncoming earthquake, allowing enough time to protect lives, shut down industrial processes and halt transportation before the shaking begins.

The Pacific Northwest’s early warning system got in 2011 from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the system began a year ago with Puget Sound agencies and businesses. The UW, the University of Oregon, University of California, Berkeley and Caltech were in July by the U.S. Geological Survey to begin developing a full, reliable West Coast earthquake early warning system for the public. Vidale has estimated that such a system would cost roughly $38 million to build and $16 million per year to maintain and run.

Also representing the 91探花at Tuesday’s event are , a research professor in Earth and space sciences who manages the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, and Bill Steele, who manages the network’s communication and outreach efforts.

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For more information, contact Vidale at vidale@uw.edu or 310-210-2131.

Vidale will back in Seattle on Thursday. For an interview in the lab earlier in the week, contact research scientist Brendan Crowell at crowellb@uw.edu.

The U.S. Geological Survey聽 $5 million in funding that will allow the 91探花 and three other institutions to help transition the prototype earthquake early warning system, under development since 2005, into a public-facing tool.

“The impression you got from the article was that the only advance warning you’d ever get would be barking dogs,” said , a 91探花research professor of Earth and space sciences. Bodin manages the Pacific Northwest’s earthquake early warning system, a tool set to launch within the next few years.

The new award provides funds to the UW, the University of Oregon, the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology to help develop a coast-wide system that would detect the first tremors and alert people, seconds or minutes in advance, of incoming ground shaking.

The newly awarded funds were in President Obama’s budget earlier this year, and Congress subsequently approved funding that is being distributed this week. The award includes $4 million shared between the four universities, as well as $1 million in USGS funds for about 150 new and upgraded sensors that will improve the speed and reliability of the West Coast network.

“This will allow us to continue developing and expanding the country’s first earthquake early warning system,” said , a 91探花professor of Earth and space sciences and director of the , which includes the 91探花and University of Oregon. “This is just part of what we need to have a fully operational system, but it is an important step in the right direction.”

The California prototype gave some warning of the in August 2014. The Pacific Northwest prototype, which currently operates separately, recruited its in February. About two dozen agencies and businesses get alerts delivered to their computers and have begun thinking about how they could integrate earthquake alerts into their operations plans.

When finished, in as soon as three years depending on future funding, the warning system will give Seattle and Portland as much as three or four minutes’ warning for a big offshore quake, and as much as 30 seconds for an earthquake on one of the onshore faults. The warning times depend on the epicenter and depth of the quake, the person’s location and the processing time through the seismic network.

In Washington and Oregon, the federal funding will support:

• An additional staff position to fully integrate the current Pacific Northwest prototype system into the West Coast-wide USGS ShakeAlert system
• Improving collaboration with Canadian seismologists who are monitoring seismicity north of the border
• Gradually expanding the Pacific Northwest test user group, which now includes about 20 regional agencies and businesses
• Extending the regional ShakeAlert magnitude estimates to include the largest Pacific Northwest earthquakes, past magnitude 8, using GPS-based methods
• Speeding up a portion of the older data communication infrastructure to improve warning times
• Upgrading 59 of the current 144 contributing seismic stations, distributed between the two states, to improve speed and reliability
• Planning future station deployments

The federal funding will speed up recent progress on the Pacific Northwest portion of the warning system. The regional network has carried out testing, equipment upgrades and algorithm development to make the warnings faster and more reliable. In the past year, with startup funding from the , the UW-based team has built and installed about a dozen new sensors to improve coverage along the coast.

The University of Oregon recently used state funding to to the network, which the university will maintain. The entire network benefits from closely spaced, high-quality sensors in seismically active areas.

The 91探花and its academic partners are also working with a California company to turn the ShakeAlert warnings from a computer-based display into a mobile app.

The fully operational network will require about $16.1 million each year to maintain and run. Vidale testified in Congress earlier this year in support of full funding for the earthquake early warning system. The Washington project has received support from Sen. Patty Murray, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-3rd District) and Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-6th District).

“This award from USGS is an important down payment that provides a crucial step toward developing the type of warning system that has saved lives in Japan,” Vidale said.

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For more information, contact Vidale at 310-210-2131 or vidale@uw.edu; Pacific Northwest Seismic Network communications manager Bill Steele at 206-685-5880 or bill@ess.washington.edu. In Oregon, contact seismologist Doug Toomey at drt@uoregon.edu.

Adapted from the USGS press release: “.”

The software, implemented by the 91探花-based based on a California tool, is the region’s first warning system for incoming earthquakes. A prototype was shared this week with a group of people from outside the research community.

The trial group includes Boeing, Microsoft, Sound Transit, Providence Hospital and other hospitals, transportation agencies, utilities and emergency managers. Members will meet Tuesday, Feb. 17, on the 91探花campus for a workshop to introduce the system and discuss its potential for emergency planning and response in the region, which spans the coastal area from Northern California to southern British Columbia.

“We have found capable partners that will give us good feedback, but we also value diversity,” said , a 91探花professor of Earth and space sciences and director of the seismic network, which includes the 91探花and the University of Oregon and is overseen by the U.S. Geological Survey.

“The test group is a cross-section of our region’s economy so we can find the best ways of reducing losses from the next earthquake.”

In Japan, similar earthquake alerts have been used to slow bullet trains to prevent derailment, trigger automated earthquake and tsunami alarms in schools, and shut down expensive manufacturing equipment to avoid damage due to shaking.

Here, some 240 seismometers installed throughout Washington and Oregon currently detect vibrations and send readings to a computer at the UW, where the regional seismic network creates within about 10 minutes after any seismic event.

The new early warning system being tested will create an automated alert as quickly as four seconds after a quake’s fast-moving but harmless is first detected. Depending on the geography, earthquake size and distance to the user, that could mean a few seconds to more than a minute’s warning before people would start to feel the ground-shaking .

Over the coming months, the researchers expect they will run into problems with missed events or having a single event trigger multiple alerts. They hope to work out these kinks for the next year or so, while institutions begin to think about how they might integrate the alerts into their emergency planning.

“The reason we’re working with this limited group is because they have a tolerance for the errors that we know might crop up,” said , a 91探花research professor of Earth and space sciences who is tuning the regional tool.

The 91探花is collaborating on West Coast early earthquake warnings with the University of California, Berkeley and Caltech, the two groups that developed the software. The 91探花joined the existing California collaboration after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and got from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the USGS to develop a system similar to the one that saved lives in Japan.

The California and Pacific Northwest regions collaborate, but currently focus on their own equipment, user groups and distinct types of seismic risks.

California has been testing its version with institutional users for more than a year with the support of the state’s emergency management office. The Bay Area Rapid Transit system, or BART, recently began using the alerts to slow its trains to prevent crashes.

The new Pacific Northwest tool will by default issue an alert for any earthquakes above magnitude 3, which are generally harmless and occur somewhere in the region about every two to three weeks. Users can move that minimum threshold upward. Magnitude-4 earthquakes generally happen in this region about twice a year, and magnitude-5 earthquakes, which generate noticeable shaking, occur roughly once a year. A last happened here in 1700, but a repeat could come at any time.

The software works on Windows, Apple and Linux desktop computers. Future work will include providing alert messages for mobile devices and other means.

The University of Oregon has, until recently, primarily provided technical assistance for the seismic network, but that role is expanding thanks to federal and state support, said , a professor of geophysics. A $670,000 request in the Oregon governor鈥檚 proposed budget will allow the UO to add additional sensors in the state.

The federal proposed this month by President Obama includes $5 million per year of long-term funding for a West Coast earthquake warning system. That helps reach the $16 million annually that USGS estimates it would cost to implement and maintain a West Coast warning system for the public. A reliable system, Vidale said, would require roughly doubling the current number of seismometers to fill in gaps, replacing older seismometers, updating some telecom equipment to minimize delays in the data transfer, and hiring a larger staff to maintain the equipment.

With funding, alerts could be available to the public within a few years, Vidale said. The goal is to get the technology and the users ready in the two regions, and eventually to merge the two into a single earthquake-alert system that spans the whole West Coast, and perhaps someday other earthquake-prone regions such as Hawaii, Nevada, Utah and Alaska.

“Eventually, we want to provide simple, fast and uniform coverage to protect the citizens and infrastructure,” Vidale said. “This is an exciting first step in that direction.”

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For more information, contact Vidale at 310-210-2131 or vidale@uw.edu, Bodin at 206-616-7315 or bodin@uw.edu, and seismic network communications manager Bill Steele at 206-685-5880 or wsteele@uw.edu.

The Feb. 17 workshop will be held at the 91探花from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and is not open to reporters or the public. Reporters may set up interviews with workshop organizers or attendees; for details contact Bill Steele at 206-685-5880 or wsteele@uw.edu.

Scientists with the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network will install instruments this Thursday to provide real-time monitoring of the stadium’s movement during the 2015 NFL playoffs.

This year, the 91探花researchers have also upped their game. A new tool will provide a faster connection between the sensors and the website. This Saturday will be the first test of the software that displays vibrations within three seconds 鈥� five to 10 times faster and more reliably than readings from the same sensors installed last year.

The monitors earthquake and volcanic activity throughout the region. Network scientists first got interested in football when a seismometer a block away from the stadium showed vibrations during Marshawn Lynch’s legendary Jan. 8, 2011, touchdown run. The resulting seismograph became a celebrity in its own right and coined the term “.”

After a couple of quieter years, the group got permission to place two strong-motion earthquake sensors inside the stadium. The project was a huge hit and the group added for the 2014 playoff game.

A Beast Quake happens when the energetic jumping and stomping of so many fans at once shakes the stadium and reverberates through the surrounding soil. Seahawks fans also generate , of course, but sound waves don鈥檛 rock the building.

A guaranteed shaking event with significant public interest is a great test case.

“We’re mostly interested in the speed and the reliability of the communications,” said , a 91探花professor of Earth & space sciences and director of the seismic network. “It’s hard to simulate thousands of people using this tool all at once. When we can get a lot of people looking, we can see problems that we’d encounter during an actual earthquake.”

For fans at home, the faster data transfer means that TV viewers may get a tipoff to a big play they’ll see on the screen after the 10-second broadcast delay. The researchers have dubbed them “Early Football Rowdiness Warnings.”

The foot-stomping is a real-world test of technology to detect the bigger shaking that originates underground. The seismic group is working with the U.S. Geological Survey to offer that could provide tens of seconds to several minutes’ notice of an incoming strong shaking. This year some public agencies and large businesses will have a first chance to try out the system that will eventually be available to the public.

“The Seahawks experiment should provide us and the Internet-connected public with a feel for the minimum time early warning might provide,” said , a 91探花professor emeritus of Earth & space sciences. “In this case it’s football fan activity that generates a signal as a warning for what shows up on TV some seconds later. In the future, it might be seconds to minutes of warning after an earthquake starts.”

This weekend the group will be beefing up its social-media presence to post updates and respond to questions during the game. That also helps get ready for an emergency situation.

“During the rumblings on Mt. St. Helens a decade ago there was a huge influx of Web visits and phone calls,” Malone said. “Now with social media, it’s a whole new ballgame. We’ve got to learn how to deal with that because it’s going to snow us over if we’re not prepared.”

The group will have more staff monitoring social media during the game, and more robust websites that they hope won’t slow down or crash during heavy traffic.

On the scientific side, they hope to explore the different readings between the three sensors placed at different levels. They also hope to explain some mysterious patterns of shaking during commercial breaks, what one researchers hypothesizes may be a “dance quake.”

Several researchers will be at the 91探花campus lab Saturday monitoring the sensors. Two group members will be at the stadium providing eyes on the ground to help explain what could be causing any unusual spikes. They will be rooting for a victory for the Seahawks 鈥� and for science.

“We’re developing these new Web tools, and monitoring the game really motivates everyone to get excited,” Vidale said,聽“and we鈥檙e rooting for a second helping of roars and rumbles against the Packers or Cowboys to perfect the system.”

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For more information, contact Vidale at vidale@uw.edu or 310-210-2131 and Malone at smalone@uw.edu or 206-685-3811.

To attend the Thursday afternoon installation, contact Bill Steele, communications manager of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, at 206-685-5880 or wsteele@uw.edu.

Now, with a $2 million grant from the to the 91探花, a similar warning system could be operational in the Pacific Northwest in as little as three years.

One-quarter of the grant money will go to placing 24 sensors that combine strong-motion detection and GPS readings along the coast to record the first signals from a major earthquake on the Cascadia subduction zone, which is just off the Pacific Coast from northern California to southern British Columbia.

“The main point is to spot a big earthquake at the time it starts. The main motivation for these stations is Puget Sound,鈥� said John Vidale, a 91探花professor of and director of the Pacific Northwest Seismograph Network based at UW.

The cities of Portland, Ore., and Vancouver, B.C., also would benefit from the system, but they are not believed to be as vulnerable as Seattle and the surrounding area, which is closer to the subduction zone. In addition, much of Seattle is built on a softer basin more susceptible to shaking in a huge quake.

The system is designed to provide warning for very large coastal earthquakes. Smaller earthquakes might be more dangerous locally, if they happen for example in the immediate Puget Sound region, but it is more difficult and costlier to provide warning for them.

A warning that strong shaking is coming from a coastal quake could, for example, allow a doctor to halt a surgery. Trains could be stopped before they reach vulnerable bridges and sensitive equipment could be shut down before suffering significant damage.

Inexpensive and very simplified systems that send alarms when shaking is detected 鈥� such as those that close gates on the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle 鈥� are currently in operation, but Vidale noted that they provide much less lead time and much less accurate warning.

The San Francisco-based Moore Foundation also is making $2 million grants to the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology to build on a prototype earthquake early warning system already in development in California. The three universities will collaborate with the U.S. Geological Survey on the project.

It is estimated that a comprehensive earthquake early warning system along the West Coast would cost $150 million over five years, about $70 million of that in the Northwest.

The work in the Northwest will build on work already being done in California, Vidale said, though the seismic characteristics of the two regions are different. California already makes warnings available to some emergency managers, a capability still several years away in the Northwest.

The new monitors will send data on strong shaking associated with an earthquake, which will help seismologists determine the size of the quake. But they also will provide GPS data, monitored at Central Washington University, to show how far the ground is moving. That can be a key piece of information in determining quickly whether an earthquake is occurring in the subduction zone, where it could grow to a magnitude 9 and trigger a Pacificwide tsunami. In such a quake, ground can move from several inches to several feet.

Some of the monitors could be placed along the Washington coast, though more likely they will be deployed along the northern California-Oregon coast, Vidale said. There already are some monitors along the Washington coast and there is much less data available farther south.

In the easiest scenario, Vidale said, the system could detect a magnitude 7 or 7.5 earthquake within the first 30 seconds. A quake of that intensity could grow to a magnitude 9 as the rupture spreads along the fault line.

Vidale said geologic evidence indicates that, historically, perhaps half of the Cascadia subduction zone earthquakes that achieved a magnitude of 7 or 7.5 grew to the range of magnitude 9. Scientists have shown that the last major quake on the subduction zone, in January 1700, was likely a magnitude 9 that set off a tsunami across the Pacific and caused land along the Washington coast to drop substantially.

Detecting a magnitude 7 or 7.5 quake at the southern end of the fault, off northern California or southern Oregon, could provide as much as five minutes warning to the Seattle area, he said. A rupture of that magnitude off the Washington coast might provide only 30 seconds of warning to the Seattle area, but Portland and Vancouver would still receive warning.

In the early stages of the systems operation, Vidale said, data will be shared only with a few companies on a test basis because there will not be enough confidence in the information.

“We have to learn what were doing before we tell the public about it,鈥� he said. “I think at the end of three years we could have enough confidence to share the information with the public. But we have to have confidence and we have to have a delivery system.鈥�

Implementing delivery will be up to emergency managers in three states and one Canadian province, he noted, and so will require a great deal of coordination and cooperation. The Moore Foundation grant is for three years, so additional funding would be needed after that.

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For more information, contact Vidale at 310-210-2131 or vidale@uw.edu, or Bill Steele, Pacific Northwest Seismic Network coordinator, at 206-685-2255 or wsteele@uw.edu.

See the primary news release about the Moore Foundation grant at .

Other contacts:

Genny Biggs, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, genny.biggs@moore.org.
Leslie Gordon, U.S. Geological Survey, 650-329-4006, lgordon@usgs.gov.
Bob Sanders, UC Berkeley, 510-643-6998, rsanders@berkeley.edu.
Deborah Williams-Hedges, CalTech, 626-395-3227, debwms@caltech.edu.
Washington

John Schelling, state Emergency Management Division EarthquakeVolcanoTsunami program manager 鈥� 253-512-7084 or j.schelling@emd.wa.gov.
James Mullen, state Emergency Management Division director 鈥� 253-512-7001 or j.mullen@emd.wa.gov.
 

Oregon

Ian Madin, state Department of Geology and Mineral Industries 鈥� 971-673-1542 or ian.madin@dogami.state.or.us.
Vicki McConnell, state geologist, 971-673-1550, 503-709-8529 (cell), or vicki.mcConnell@dogami.state.or.us.
California

Jim Goltz, EarthquakeTsunami Program Manager, state Emergency Management Agency 鈥� 626-356-3810 or jim.goltz@calema.ca.gov.