The other day, I was talking to a geologist in our area, and I live near the San Andreas Fault in California. We talked about the challenges with liquefaction because there is quite a bit of sand around here with groundwater underneath. It could be quite problematic if there were a 10.0 earthquake. It is doubtful that the entire San Andreas Fault would go all at once, but the fault is long enough to produce a magnitude 9 earthquake.
That’s scary stuff when you think about it. Now then, I have a non sequitur, and thought I’d like to share with you today if you have a few moments.
Since trains produce vibrational energy which can be viewed on a Richter scale, often in the neighborhood of 1.2 to 2 magnitude, then essentially that is creating lots of little earthquakes, let’s call them swarms of earthquakes every time the train goes by. The train runs up and down the San Andreas Fault in California in some parts. In doing so it jiggles the Earth, and allows the sand to settle. As the sand settles it becomes more compacted with less space in between the granulars, over time this would cause the ground elevation to lower. Interestingly enough many of the cities near where I live are around 10 feet less in elevation than they were 30 years ago.
There are probably two reasons for this, one is that there are lots of golf courses around here and they’ve been taking the groundwater out to water the golf courses, therefore lowering the water table, but also I believe some is due to the earthquakes that we get now and again, the small ones, along with the vibrational energy from the trains which go by every day.
Do trains also help relieve stress from earthquake faults?
They very well might, or in some cases they will increase the stress. This of course, depending on what type of fault it is, and which way the surface waves from the motion of the train are spreading outward. Some might say that the net difference is so little, that it doesn’t matter. Ah but over time, it does matter, and it would change the overall dynamics of the fault and the stress, just as it changes the dynamics of the soil compaction and the settling of the Earth and soil of the terrain.
It does matter, and yet perhaps to protect the railroad industry, I’ve never found or read any solid research, nor can I find anyone that has the knowledge or empirical proof to answer this question. Therefore I’m putting it out to you on the Internet and hopefully you will contact me if you have some information on this topic. You may e-mail me if you have comments, concerns, questions, or other theories of your own along the subject matter.
Source: EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lance_Winslow