Local News in Brief : Funds Sought for Sensors
Scientists are seeking $4.1 million to install hi-fi seismic monitors to make better pictures of Earth’s interior and detect small tremors, “silent” earthquakes and huge jolts that make the planet ring like a bell.
“This new array will be able to detect the very smallest earthquakes as well as the very largest earthquakes with equal fidelity,” which existing seismic networks can’t do, said Don Anderson, director of the California Institute of Technology’s seismological laboratory.
Anderson said the seismometers, to be placed around Southern California, also would measure “silent” quakes, which can have large magnitudes and generate giant sea waves, but break the ground so slowly they can’t be detected by the existing Caltech-U.S. Geological Survey array of 250 conventional seismometers.
Scientists installed the first of Terrascope’s 10 high-dynamic-range seismometers about six months ago in Caltech’s Kresge Lab, near the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, at a cost of about $100,000.
Researchers now are talking to the governor’s staff, state lawmakers and private donors to raise the remainder of the cost, Anderson said.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
