Taken into high orbit on a Soyuz rocket from Spaceport Europe in French Guiana, the stunning satellite captured surveillance satellite, the historic burst of a rare 5.6 magnitude Guyana earthquake on January 31 last.
In scarlet and vivid blue, the combined images produced over 12 days by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 in interferograms, or colorful wave-interference-based diagrams, were shared on Twitter, the popular microblogging service, by an international expert in earthquake geology and paleoseismology, Sotiris Valkaniotis.
Sentinel-1 is the short title for a European Radar Observatory, in the Global Monitoring for Environment and Safety satellite family, designed and developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and funded by the European Commission (EC) ). Copernicus missions comprising a pair of sophisticated space machines represent the contribution of the European Union (EU) to the Global Earth Observation Systems System (GEOSS). They are named after a great Renaissance mathematician, astronomer and scientist, Nicolaus Copernicus who created a model that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe.
A technique called Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) has similarly revolutionized our ability to study planetary events including earthquakes by allowing us to measure factors such as where, how far, and in what direction, they have caused the earth moves.
Because satellites observe huge chunks, they can quickly gather large amounts of data, proving invaluable in cases such as the remote Rupununi area and the sparsely populated population of Guyana where there is no very or very limited instrumentation in the wider continental region be monitored.
Dr. tweeted Sotiris on February 12, “Amazing M5.6 burst January 31 Guyana #earthquake. Copernicus # Sentinel1 interferogram. Possible complex surface remains of 6+ km with 20+ cm displacement, consistent with strike ~ NW-SE… ”musing,“ That’s a first (?) For the South American craton. ”
Ancient geological remains of the young Earth’s continental lithosphere, the massive Amazonian craton upon which Guyana and its sister states in South America rest, is known as the Guiana Shrine acting as a dense, usually dense defensive barrier by major earthquakes. There is no better story improving a hotter mantle like in the mid-ocean ridges or in a continental rift.
Aged well over a billion years, and in some sections two billion years, the strong craton is the continent’s oldest nucleus or Pre-Cambrian geological formation, divided by the Amazon drainage life basin into two parts, Tarian Guiana in the north, and the Guaporé or Central Brazil Shield in the south. The higher elevations on the shield are the Guiana Highlands, which include the famous mountain tops or tepuis, and magnificent waterfalls ranging from Kaieteur to Angel.
Dr Soitiris posted, the North West (NW) -South East (SE) strike “looks like a N110-120 grade reversal defect, mostly in accordance with the focal mechanisms (FMs). The pattern of rupture in detail is very complex – a very shallow intraplate thrust is expected. There are some interesting secondary WE (West-East) rips at the tips, ”he added.
A focal mechanism, or “beach ball” is a two-dimensional graphic shadow symbol indicating the type of slip and orientation of the fault, around the hypocenter, the location of the earthquake in the crust. If the rock mass above a sloping fault moves downward, the fault is called normal. If the rock moves upward, it is called an inversion, while a thrust fault is a reversing fault with a dip of 45 degrees or less.
In the past, surface ruptures have rarely been reported for M5 earthquakes or less, but this is changing with many seen, mainly due to InSAR images. In the past, without remote sensing such as InSAR, small surface breaks were usually not found, or were not directly related to fault rupture, and these may have been interpreted as secondary effects of shaking. With InSAR, the absolute location of a rupture and other earth disturbance can be set to an accuracy of about 1 meter, versus a standard earthquake location of distant seismograms with an accuracy of only 1 km or more, another expert, Dr Anthony Lomax told me. Dr Lomax is a highly regarded seismologist consultant, specializing in earthquake monitoring, location and analysis, real-time / early warning.
On February 1, Dr Lomax shared via Twitter, “very crisp seismograms at ~ 800km ENE in French Guiana, across the craton,” noting that the P and S waves arrived early – from the “cold,” upper mantle rigid, while the surface reached waves late due to the thick crust. See https://twitter.com/CPPGeophysics/status/1355973882738429953/photo/1
When seismic waves pass through cooler and rigid rock in a stable area like the craton, they remain sharp and crisp, like hearing a sound across an open space, rather than that in a cave, with many echoes and sounds overlapping, he said. he explained.
There are very few M5 and more earthquakes in stable craton areas of the world each year. In a sense, this one probably happened in Guyana on January 31, but it is not at all unexpected that such an earthquake would occur somewhere in the world in a craton area.
If the Guyana earthquake that has sparked debate among seismic experts is confirmed, as the first reported surface tear for the South American craton, it will join a unique group, since similar events have been reported on other old cages, such as in Australia and Africa. .
Following the January 31 earthquake, the Rupununi was shaken by over 20 earthquakes including 4 earthquakes between 4.0 and 5.0 magnitude, 10 earthquakes between 3.0 and 4.0M, and 5 earthquakes between 2.0 and 3.0M.
While we cannot predict earthquakes, almost anywhere on Earth can have one, the experts point out. With stress building up naturally, even if very slowly, an earthquake will eventually happen, and without the need for a human-induced trigger, which happened in Guyana on January 31. But for the most part of causes there is a major earthquake for which a particular region is decreasing in size and thankfully, at least in this, we are no different.
ID welcomes the tweet from one earthquake expert from Oxford University, suggesting, “can we make a fan club for weird little earthquakes that (or almost) rips the surface?”