Seismic risks can loom over a region for long periods of time before striking. In April, longstanding fears about Kathmandu’s susceptibility to earthquakes were realized when the shaking of a magnitude 7.8 Himalayan quake killed more than 8,000 people. A pair of new studies published this week piece together what happened along the fault that moved, and they tell us where the risk is highest for the next big earthquake in the area.
The mighty Himalayas have been driven up into the sky by the collision of Eurasia and India, which has migrated north like a tectonic rocket over the last 100 million years. The Indian plate is being crammed beneath the crumpled Himalayan rocks along a dangerous fault that ramps downward to the north.
Lots of GPS sensors and seismometers have been deployed in the area to help seismologists study earthquakes here. Combined with precise satellite measurements of surface elevation changes, researchers have the means to work out where the movement on the fault must have occurred.
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