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Near-real-time aftershock hazard maps

Nature Geoscience volume 2, pages 154–155 (2009)Cite this article

To the Editor

On 28 October 2008, an earthquake of magnitude 6.4 shook the villages and small settlements in the Ziarat district along the Pakistan–Afghanistan border just after 04:00 (local time) LT. The quake killed several hundred people and caused widespread devastation as some mud houses collapsed and others were engulfed by triggered landslides. Less than 12 h later a second event, also of magnitude 6.4, occurred 20 km to the southeast causing further loss of life. This sequence, and others like it, poses two crucial questions for earthquake researchers. Could the second event have been forecast and could useful information on the forecast have been made available to help in planning the first hours of post-earthquake emergency response?

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Figure 1: Preliminary stress perturbation map (calculated at 10 km depth) overlain on the Satellite Radar Topographic Mission digital elevation model of the earthquake source region.

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Acknowledgements

We thank I. Main, C. Mitchell, G. McMullan, S. Coulthard and S. McDowell for commenting on an early version of the manuscript and R. Stein and E. Kirby for constructive reviews. This work was supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) under research grants NE/F01161X/1and NE/C00I32X/1.

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  1. School of Environmental Sciences, University of Ulster, Coleraine, County Derry, BT52 1SA, UK

    John McCloskey & Suleyman S. Nalbant

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  1. John McCloskey
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  2. Suleyman S. Nalbant
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McCloskey, J., Nalbant, S. Near-real-time aftershock hazard maps. Nature Geosci 2, 154–155 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo449

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