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Earth’s movement now recorded locally

By Mark Harrison
The Times-Journal

Published July 26, 2010

If the earth moves in Alabama next year, it will be well documented.

Students and scientists from the University of Alabama and Auburn University are jointly placing 23 highly sensitive seismic stations around the state as part of a national study of the inner earth.

One of those 23 sensors is in DeKalb County, near Fort Payne. It’s on Lookout Mountain in the Fischer community. UA geophysicist Andrew Goodliffe said the sensor was placed there, in part, because of the incidences of quakes in the area – especially the famous April 2003 quake that registered 4.6 on the Richter scale.

The ’93 quake was felt in 11 southern states, but originated some eight miles to the east-northeast of Fort Payne. More recently, DeKalb County experienced a 3.2-magnitude earthquake in May, with the epicenter near the Etowah County line – about seven miles southeast of Crossville and seven miles southwest of Collinsville. Officials with the U.S. Geological Survey said residents on Lookout Mountain felt the quake.

Data from the device now in place on Lookout Mountain and from similar sensors in various locations across the state, will record earthquakes originating all over the planet. The information will be streamed live on the Internet and could help change man's understanding of how mountains and continents formed.

"This is a huge step forward for us as geologists," said Goodliffe. "We're going to see things that we never knew were there."

The devices are part of a web of National Science Foundation seismometers being slowly marched across the country, from west to east, and will remain in Alabama collecting data for two years. Auburn geology professor Lorraine Wolf will work on the project with UA's Goodliffe and students from both schools.

In addition to gaining a greater understanding of the geology of the planet and North America, scientists hope to learn more about subterranean Alabama, and the data may help locate deposits of coal, natural gas and oil.

"We can learn a lot about how Alabama was put together," Goodliffe said. "There's an awful lot we don't know."

Among the information that may be gleaned from the data is how a major earthquake centered on the New Madrid fault, which runs through southeastern Missouri and western Tennessee, might affect Alabama.

That fault is capable of generating a magnitude eight earthquake, Goodliffe said.

"It could do damage in Alabama, and maybe we could mitigate that," he said.

Students from both universities knocked on doors in rural Alabama, asking landowners for permission to bury the devices – 6-foot tubes containing three seismometers – on their property. Work to install them is expected to begin over the next several months.

Each of the tubes includes a seismometer to measure the earth's vertical movement, one to measure its north-south movement, and one to measure east-west movement, Goodliffe said. Connected to solar panels for power and equipped with a computer hard drive and a cellular modem, the devices are completely autonomous.

After installation they should begin transmitting data immediately, and anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can monitor them. Data from devices currently arrayed from the Dakotas south through Texas can be found on the USArray website, www.usarray.org, where data from the Alabama devices also will appear.

The project, funded by the National Science Foundation and in cooperation with NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, involves universities to help identify sites for and install the seismometers, so it just made sense for UA and AU to team up, Goodliffe said.

Stanton Ingram, a UA graduate student in geology who helped find locations for the devices, said he and Auburn student James Taylor had little trouble finding landowners willing to have the devices buried on their property, despite warnings in training that it would be a tough sell.

"We were received pretty well," Ingram said. "I can count the people who said no on my hands."

The duo took advantage of its being a joint project between the state's two major universities. When they came to a house with an Alabama flag, Ingram would approach the owners, and Taylor appealed to those flying an Auburn flag.

"The Alabama people all wanted to talk football," Ingram said.

Participating universities get the option to buy the seismic stations at cost – for $40,000 each – and keep them in place. UA hopes to keep a few of them in place when the network moves east in two years.

"We're trying to find the money," Goodliffe said.

– The Associated Press contributed to this report

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