Monday, June 28, 2010

Baja quake generated 2.5 foot offset


The April 4, 2010, El Mayor-Cucapah M7.2 quake in Baja California resulted in the area around the city of Calexico moving up to 31 inches (80 cms) to the southeast. I presume that this is the relative slip across a right-lateral fault system.

A team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab used combined airborne radar images from flights on Oct. 21, 2009, and April 13, 2010 to create interferograms that show the deformation.

[right, "overview of the UAVSAR interferogram of the magnitude 7.2 Baja California earthquake of April 4, 2010, overlaid atop a Google Earth image of the region. Major fault systems are shown by red lines, while recent aftershocks are denoted by yellow, orange and red dots. Image credit: NASA/JPL/USGS/Google"]