UF professor to help gauge future earthquake possibilities

March 10, 2010

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A University of Florida geophysics professor will help to deploy and operate up to 100 high-sensitivity earthquake recorders into the Chile earthquake zone for the next six months.

Ray Russo and Steve Roecker, a seismologist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, will lead a team representing the IRIS Consortium, a group of about 200 U.S. universities and research institutions. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the team expects to leave later this month.

The team hopes to determine the extent and nature of the fault that slipped on Feb. 27 to gain insight into how adjacent segments of the Nazca-South America plate boundary might behave in the next few decades, UF’s Russo said. Many seismologists believe the recent earthquake increases the likelihood of a large-magnitude earthquake either to the north or south of the recent rupture, he added.

“Studying the earthquake rupture zone is of paramount importance because earthquakes along the western coast of South America tend to repeatedly rupture the same areas at intervals of decades or even centuries, and it is unclear why the ruptures occur only on segments of the fault during a given quake, rather than the whole fault slipping at the same time,” he said.

Russo, who has a doctorate in seismology and geophysics from Northwestern University, has been an assistant professor of geophysics in UF’s department of geological sciences since 2004. He studies the flow of the Earth’s mantle and its relation to global surface tectonics.

Russo can be reached at 352-392-6766 or 352-377-8448, or at rrusso@ufl.edu.