New Statewide System Monitors Where and Why Earthquakes Happen

The online catalogue lets you search for seismic activity near you.

By Laura RiceOctober 18, 2017 1:18 pm

North Texans and those in the Permian Basin have become accustomed to something that used to be pretty rare in Texas – earthquakes. A new statewide earthquake monitoring network known as TexNet is tracking the earthquakes to determine their cause and prevent them from happening in the future.

Peter Hennings, co-principal investigator for the Center for Integrated Seismicity Research at the University of Texas at Austin’s Bureau of Economic Geology, says that the goal of the program is to develop high quality data that can then be used to build better models of seismic activity.

What you’ll hear in this segment:

–How much the rate of small earthquakes in the southern mid-continent of the U.S. increased over the last decade, and why

–How many TexNet seismic stations will be set up in locations across Texas, and where

–How Texans can search their location if they think they’ve felt a seismic event (Hint: it might be near you.)

Written by Rachel Zein.