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| The New Madrid Earthquake of 1812 shook almost the entire eastern half of the United States and left destruction in it's wake. (Graphic by Fossil HD) |
2000 years of Chinese records shows migrating mid-continent earthquakes
COLUMBIA, Mo. – This December marks the bicentennial of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12, which are the biggest earthquakes known to have occurred in the central U.S.
Now, based on the earthquake record in China, a University of Missouri researcher says that mid-continent earthquakes tend to move among fault systems, so the next big earthquake in the central U.S. may actually occur someplace else other than along the New Madrid faults.
Mian Liu, professor of geological sciences in the College of Arts and Science at MU, examined records from China, where earthquakes have been recorded and described for the past 2,000 years. Surprisingly, he found that during this time period big earthquakes have never occurred twice in the same place.
“In North China, where large earthquakes occur relatively frequently, not a single one repeated on the same fault segment in the past two thousand years,” Liu said. “So we need to look at the ‘big picture’ of interacting faults, rather than focusing only on the faults where large earthquakes occurred in the recent past.”
