Alaska earthquakes offer new insight into improving hazard assessment

The 2016 Iniskin earthquake (magnitude 7.1) that shook Anchorage, Alaska, was captured by the seismometers of the EarthScope Transportable Array. This data is helping Geoff Abers, a professor at Cornell University’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and Michael Mann, a graduate student in his group, explore answers to fill crucial gaps in understanding intra-slab earthquakes. Their work may provide insight into the November 30, 2018 magnitude 7.0 earthquake near Anchorage. It could also help improve earthquake hazard assessments in the future.