75% of USA at Risk of Damaging Earthquakes With 1,000 Fault Lines Recorded Around the Country, USGS Warns

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory)
75% of USA at Risk of Damaging Earthquakes With 1,000 Faults Recorded Around the Country, USGS Warns

The United States is not safe from earthquakes. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) released its most recent report, which wasn't good news.

75% of USA at Risk of Earthquakes

The most recent National Seismic Hazard Model found 350 more fault lines, in addition to those found by USGS in 2018, bringing up the total fault lines to roughly 1,000. Seventy-five percent of the country is at risk of damaging earthquakes.

The changes increased the likelihood of catastrophic earthquakes in the "Atlantic Coastal Corridor," home to Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Washington, DC, and other cities in the center and northeast.

A higher risk was also felt in seismically active areas of California, Alaska, and Hawaii; there is now a 95% likelihood of destructive earthquakes in some sections of The Golden State in the next century.

Based on the revised model, USGS also predicted that the average annual economic losses from building damage caused by earthquakes will be $14.7 billion.

"Earthquakes are difficult to forecast but we've made great strides with this new model," said Mark Petersen, USGS geophysicist and lead author of the study.

"The update includes more faults, better-characterized land surfaces, and computational advancements in modeling that provide the most detailed view ever of the earthquake risks we face."

More than 50 reviewers and hundreds of end users and hazard scientists participated in public workshops and offered technical advice for the research.

Petersen said this was a significant, multi-year cooperative effort, including the federal, state, local, and commercial sectors. One major step toward improving public safety is creating the new seismic hazard model.

According to the model, there is a moderate to high chance of shaking in 25 states during the next 100 years. Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, Nevada, Tennessee, Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri, South Carolina, and California are among the places.

"Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana increased substantially due to changes in the methodology," the team added.

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Modern-Day Earthquakes in the USA Due to 1800s Major Quakes

In one study, scientists from Wuhan University and the University of Missouri found a connection between several of the nation's recent tremors and significant earthquakes in the 1800s.

During that time, some of the largest earthquakes ever recorded in American history happened, and many scientists believe that the more recent earthquakes were just aftershocks of those massive quakes. However, other people think they could be foreshocks or background seismic activity before a larger earthquake in the future.

The three major earthquake events in North American history that the team focuses on are the one that occurred in 1663 near southeast Quebec, the three that occurred in 1811 and 1812 at the Missouri-Kentucky boundary, and the one that occurred in 1886 near Charleston, South Carolina. After that, they looked at U.S. statistics. Geological Survey and contrasted the information with recent earthquakes in similar areas.

According to the expert, the objective is to determine the relationship between two occurrences by utilizing the timing, distance, and magnitude of event pairs. If the distance between two earthquakes is closer than expected based on background events, then one earthquake is most likely the aftershock of the other.

Understanding the nature of these earthquakes will be essential to appreciating the possibility of future calamities in various U.S. states and gaining a deeper comprehension of the geological underpinnings of this seismic activity.