By Maria Altman, KWMU
St. Louis, MO – The New Madrid fault may not pose the earthquake threat many have feared.
Missouri's bootheel experienced big earthquakes in 1811 and 1812. Since then the region has waited for the "big one" to return. But new research has found Midwestern faults may not work that way.
Purdue professor Eric Calais led a team that measured movement on the New Madrid using GPS technology over eight years.
"We found that the ground is not moving at all or it's moving at a rate that's indistinguishable from zero," he said.
Calais says that supports a theory that Midwestern faults are different than those on the West Coast, where faults appear to accumulate energy over the years that is released in frequent quakes. Instead of building energy over and over for a cycle of earthquakes, faults in the middle of the country may emit a cluster of earthquakes then shut down.
The research is published in the current edition of Science magazine.