OU Geologists Gather Valuable Information from China Earthquake

By Charles Bassett, NEWS 9

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Geologist at the University of Oklahoma are paying close attention to this week's deadly earthquake in China.

For the past three years, OU geologists have been working with China to learn about the seismic activity there. The work they're doing could not have helped the people affected by Tuesday's quake, but they are hoping it will provide some benefit for future earthquakes.

The earthquake struck in the western part of China with a magnitude of 7.1. More than 500 people have died and at least 10,000 others have been injured. China is an area prone to geological activity due to shifting of the earth's tectonic plates.

"It's just this big collision of India hitting Asia about 50 million years ago, and that's an on-going geologic process," said Dr. Randy Keller, Oklahoma Geological Survey.

In 1556, an earthquake in the U.S. killed 830,000 people, and in 1976, 230,000 died in another quake. Now the Geophysics team from OU along with their Chinese colleagues have put out 500 portable seismographs in an area in the eastern part of the country with several fault lines.

"We're trying to better map those faults and see if we can see some sort of deeper aspects of the structure that might tell us how often an earthquake would occur," Keller said.

The team's goal is to help minimize loss of life and property.

Xiao Xu is a student from China helping with the project. He said he believes the recent quake will provide valuable data.

"We need to collect all the earthquake information to show the low crust because it's kind of a shallow earthquake there, so each of the earthquakes information is kind of important to us," Xu said.

The team is still going over the data and said it could be a couple of months before they know what they have.

Officials with the geological survey said the reason China has seen such deadly earthquakes is because of their large population, and people in rural areas often live in houses made of mud and sticks.

OU is also working with the University of Missouri on the project. It's funded with a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation.