InfoBeat News - Morning Coffee Edition - 7/9/2001

Date:    Mon, 09 Jul 2001 06:32:25 MDT


LOS ANGELES (AP) - Seismologists have completed a decade-long task
of installing a satellite-based network to track tiny creeps of the
Earth's crust with unprecedented accuracy.

By measuring the subtle movements, scientists can determine how much
strain is building up along faults in the crust. That, in turn, can 
be used to assess the risk of earthquakes.

The last of 250 Global Positioning System monitors - dull gray domes
perched on spindly legs - was placed Monday in Joshua Tree National
Park. A $20 million array of stations now peppers Southern California
and Mexico's Baja California peninsula. The monitors, expected to 
last 50 years or more, sit on private property, alongside freeways, 
atop dams and, in at least one case, on an oil drilling platform. The
network employs the same orbiting set of satellites that hikers, 
motorists and U.S. soldiers use to pinpoint their location anywhere
around the globe. It can record as little as .04 inches of ground 
distortion or movement along a fault.

http://www.infobeat.com

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