Three RAPID grants have been awarded

May 4, 2010 08:51 GMT  ·  By
A severely damaged building in Concepcion shows the effects of the latest Chilean earthquake
   A severely damaged building in Concepcion shows the effects of the latest Chilean earthquake

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) announces that it has just awarded three important Rapid Response Research (RAPID) grants, so that researchers can study the causes and aftermath of the massive, magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck Chile on February 27. The data that the new studies will collect will hopefully be of some use in the future, either for predicting when an earthquake might happen, or for figuring out how to build better structures that can endure more shaking. The Chile tremor was the fifth largest in recorded history.

Geologists and seismologists add that, since modern measuring equipment were developed, this was the second largest earthquake to ever be measured directly. “The new deployments will provide valuable data to help scientists understand earthquakes not only in Chile, but around the world. NSF is stimulating important advances in basic earthquake science, rapid-response geophysical and data communications technology, and international collaboration and data sharing,” explains the NSF Division of Earth Sciences program director, Russ Kelz. The data that the teams will collect during the investigation will be made freely available to the public immediately after the researches end.

The NSF reports that two of the RAPID grants were awarded to a collaboration of research institutions, universities and companies. The consortium includes the Ohio State University, the University of Hawaii, the University of Memphis, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the Boulder, Colorado-based UNAVCO Inc. The money will cover the installation of 25 continuously operating global positioning system (CGPS) stations in Chile. The installations will be in direct contact with satellites in orbit and will relay data to a central command post nearly in real-time.

The third RAPID grant funded the delivery of an additional 60 seismic stations. The instruments were transported from the Socorro, New Mexico-based Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) Program for Array Seismic Studies of the Continental Lithosphere (PASSCAL) Instrument Center. The institution, which is supported by the NSF, transported the stations to Santiago, Chile, where experts from the University of Florida, the University of Arizona, and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) installed them at their designated positions.