Whoop

We just had a minor quake jolt the building. I'm guessing it was either a closely centered 2.0 or a more distant 3.0.

Time to go to CalTech and check.

Update: Here we go. It was a 4.7 seven miles SW of Lancaster AFB, in the Mojave. That's about 250 miles away, as the raven flies.

Second update: There were perhaps two earthquakes. The second epicenter was a 5.1 56 miles SW of Imperial Beach (out in the ocean). And that's about 100 miles away.

It's starting to look like the offshore one was the original quake; information about the one at the AFB has pretty much disappeared from the websites.

Comments

[yami]

Hmm, looks like there was a 4.7 in the Mojave and a 5.1 off the coast of Baja California within about two minutes of each other. Almost makes me wonder if the seismic net is feeling okay this afternoon.

For anyone who doesn't live in the kind of place where you'd have this bookmarkd: latest quakes in California-Nevada.

[Rana]

Hee. I was online looking for the quake before it even made the local PBS news. That's California seismic geekery for you.

Thanks for the link, yami -- it's good to have it here.

[Rana]

As I think back to where the motion came from (it was like something large hitting the building) the offshore one does seem more correct.

[yami]

BOOYA! The Mojave quake has vanished from the front page, and the offshore one has moved a little further north. Guess my education was good for something after all.

I didn't feel anything, so if it had been in the Mojave I would've been a bit hurt. I hate missing earthquakes - and don't get me started on seismic geekery, I used to run to the seismometer. ;)

Course, now that they have a better location, I'm starting to wonder if I should revise the seismic hazard section of this here report to include the San Clemente Fault... *sigh*

[Rana]

Ooh! You got to watch the seismometer in action? Too cool! /geek

My particular form of quake geekiness takes two dominant forms -- guessing the magnitude from the sensation (It was a 3 at my location! Bzzzow!) -- and playing Spot the Fault Line when I'm camping in the deserts and mountains around here.

And, it turns out the Mojave quake was the result of a computer error. Heh.

[LiL]

What I find eerie (just remembering how it was when I was 13 and lived in California) is how used one gets to these quakes. Sort of...

[DM]

Stupid question, I guess, but do we live in the same state?

I was just down in that area last week, having even driven though the Mojave region. Lancaster and Palmdale were among the many cities, whose sizes and ongoing construction shocked me. This is kind of a different subject, but growth in California has gone far past being really out of control. We just don't have the water (and that is not even factoring in the changes that will result from global warming) to deal with the approx. 15 million or so, who will become residents of this state in the next 25 years.

And to Lil, you get used to and can even enjoy the smaller ones. It's those quakes that are 6.5 and over that scare me. I've been through a few. 5 years ago or so, when I went ABD, I had quite a week. On Monday and Friday of that week, I wrote my major field exams. On the Wednesday of that week I had a birthday. The Saturday of that week, my area experience a 7.0 tremblor. Go figure!

[yami]

DM: Northern California isn't completely dessicated yet, though, innit?

What's disturbing to me is not the population increase, but the fact that per capita water use is also increasing (at least in a particular desert community for which my company had to do a study recently). Water resources are kinda like oil resources, though - there's an amount that is currently economically sensible to exploit, and then there's a larger amount that will make sense to exploit in the future as demand and prices rise. It'll be a bit of an economic balancing act, as thirsty industries leave the state for cheaper pipes, taking jobs with them and slowing growth while everyone else gets hit in the pocketbook for expensive water treatment systems; c'est la vie.

[Michelle]

Holy moly, well so much for quiet and puttering.

[DM]

Of course Northern California is not yet dessicated. Should we sit back and allow this to happen?

I'd be less concerned about our out-of-control growth if I could see any evidence of our adapting to the population influx. Instead I see suburbia sprawling across the state. Up here we have Tracy and surrounding areas; down there you have Palmdale, Lancaster, and, of course, the Inland Empire. It's not a pretty picture.

[Rana]

No, it's not. A pretty picture, that is. I've long felt -- and argued in my work -- that this state is aimed towards hell in a handbasket: too many people, too little water, too much sprawl, too much ignorance about the character and limits of the local ecoscape. And all of these feed back on each other. The people place demands on space, water, and food. The sprawl aggravates the waste of resources (NO ONE should have a watered lawn in this climate!) and overruns the areas needed to provide wildlife buffers and agricultural zones (not to mention that it encourages long commutes, overuse of petroleum resources, encourages obesity, increases air pollution, etc.). Agriculture in this area is also a joke; most of the water goes there, in order to grow cotton and iceberg lettuce in the semi-desert (and mostly on the taxpayers' dime, while it is the city that takes the blame for water over-consumption). Add in that the water formulae used to allocate resources are (a) out of date and (b) were inaccurate initially as well, and it's a recipe for disaster. Quakes are the least of California's worries.

Mike Davis' Ecology of Fear and Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert were regular entries on my syllabi -- good, if chilling, reads.

And all of this really pisses me off, because I like California in all its cranky, arid glory, and I strongly believe in adapting to those conditions, instead of wasting money and technology trying to convince ourselves that they don't exist or are insignificant. Rargh!

[Melise]

In reference to getting used to quakes--I am a So. Cal. native, and usually don't even feel most quakes (does that mean I have my California legs? And as soon as I leave the state I begin to feel like you do when you take off roller skates?). Anyway, during the Whittier Narrows quake, I was in the office, talking on the telephone with a friend of mine. We were only a couple of miles apart, and so we felt the quake at the same time. We both said "Hang on", climbed under our desks, and got back on the phone and continued to chat. Talk about blase!

[DM]

While this is probably not possible in the cities - or maybe it could be - out here where I live, we use treated waste water to water almost everything. Our berries, potatoes and such are excluded, of course, but even the tomatoes, corn, and other vegetables that rely on a drip system get gray water.

I had obviously known about our pending disaster for a long time. Last week, I drove around much of the state, and actually saw this runaway growth. Cutting over from I-5, you can actually see the widening cities, whose lights are the only things noticeable from our state's major artery. Driving over to US99, you can pass through, for example, the widening city of Merced. You can drive south through some very large cities, like Fresno. Over on the coast, you can see the San Luis Obispo area, including the town of Cambria, as it spreads.

I love this state; in spite of its many troubles, it is my home. I wish we could finally deal with our serious problems.

[yami]

Sorry, shoulda put a little winkie-dude on that dig at the North; I don't actually want to see an Owens Lake II.

Rana, which water formulae are you talking about here? I haven't done much with surface water, but have worked on several ground water safe yield studies and haven't seen much reason to doubt the accuracy of those estimates - they're wildly imprecise, of course, but that's the fun of incomplete data...

I do see many local agencies staring down the barrel of upcoming shortages and the deteriorating quality of imported water; they're the same people who come crying to us to find a magic underground water supply rather than ask their constituents and customers to conserve. The problem comes when there is demonstrably zero magic water (where "magic" here can be read as either "available" or "cheap", usually "cheap") but some yahoo gets himself elected to the water board with a platform of "there is too magic water and I've got junk science to prove it!"... but lunch is over and I probably shouldn't bill the Inland Empire for time spent jumping up and down on a soap box. Though I'm sure they deserve it.

Anyways, am I the only one interested in lengthy technical cross-blog soapboxing on the matter of just how far up Poo Canyon Creek we might be, and how we could make our way back downstream if we are in fact as paddleless as it appears?

[Rana]

I'm interested -- but I'll probably fall behind if the discussion gets too technical; my training's in the area of history and cultural change, while all the science is stuff I've picked up in bits and pieces over the years.

On the inaccurate formulae -- I was specifically thinking of the Colorado River Compact, which was geared around readings that were faulty to an optimistic degree (both because they were taken in a wet cycle and because engineers couldn't measure the flow as accurately as they can today) and completely failed to anticipate the growth of areas like Las Vegas. They were thinking irrigation and power, not sprawl, if I recall correctly. Nor did they take into account the needs of non-human animals and habitats. Things are more accurate, but it's an accuracy of stringently; there's less to go around so more eyes are keeping track of their share and are quick to call foul if someone goofs up.

Of course, given the global climate shifts currently under way, I doubt that even the most accurate assessments today will be useful a decade or two down the line, even if nothing else changes.

The thing is, though, I can't completely throw up my hands and declare us doomed. We _can_ learn to adapt to this place (and to others), but it's not easy. My own work focused on the ways people understood their relationship in the ecological networks they inhabited, with an eye to shifting the structures we use to think about those relationships towards structures that reinforce adaptive, connective behaviors while making it harder to imagine destructive behaviors. Yeah, it's a bit Orwellian, potentially, but we literally cannot go as we are and survive.

I even think that we can undo a lot of the damage, but it will take time and money and technology, and most importantly, will. The first three are available, but currently directed toward non-productive or destructive ends. It's the will that's most critical. For example, we could require that all new homes in California be built with either green roofs or solar power generating roofs (and fund retrofitting programs for existing residences), and that all communities be served by light rail -- but then people start whining about "the expense" or "the inconvenience" -- as if shipping our water from out of state, giving wads of cash to companies like Enron, and sitting for hours in traffic while burning increasingly expensive fuel were preferable alternatives.

As I say, you've got to work on the will -- otherwise all the resources can't do squat.