seismologist have found that , obstinate to popular thought , seism in the central U.S. are not slowly sharpen off — instead the threat seems to be building .
A raw research work , published today inScienceby USGS seismologists Morgan Page and Susan Hough , depend at earthquake activity in the New Madrid Seismic Zone ( see the reddish dot hovering between the middle west and the south on the map above ) , which includes part of Arkansas , Illinois , Indiana , Kentucky , Mississippi , Missouri , and Tennessee .
Between 1811 – 1812 , the zone know a serial of four devastatingly powerful temblor in speedy succession . The protraction of smaller earthquakes along the web site was theorized by many scientists to be lingering aftershocks from the 19th - century quakes .
If that theory was correct , then the act of earthquake should be continuing to slowly taper off . Instead , when they tested this theory against a computer assume model of how aftershocks might be expected to work in the region , the investigator find that the number of seism actually come was greater than the number of earthquakes expected . This mean that stress along the zone is not decreasing , it is instead building , ramp up the earthquake terror storey in the field .
Top ikon : seism hazard map of the continental US /USGS
Bottom image : Earthquakes in the New Madrid Seismic zone from 1990 – 2008 , USGS
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