Word: geophysicist
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...scientists, the great quake and its aftershocks were not surprising. Karen McNally, a geophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, had warned in 1981 that substantial seismic activity was likely in the area. "Everything we had seen," she says, "could not allow us to exclude the possibility of a major earthquake...
...composed of a dozen large plates and several smaller ones, ranging in thickness from 20 to 150 miles. The plates are in constant motion, riding on the molten mantle below and normally traveling at the pace of a millimeter a week, equivalent to the growth rate of a fingernail. Geophysicist Bill Spence of the U.S. Geological Survey in Colorado says, "They're just like a mobile jigsaw puzzle." The plates' travels result in continental drift, the formation of mountains, volcanoes--and earthquakes...
...occur is another matter. Geologists are still restricted to long-term predictions, parceled out by the year or decade rather than the month or day. But by closely monitoring quake zones, they hope to find subtle clues that will lead to more precise and reliable forecasts. Keiiti Aki, a geophysicist at the University of Southern California, has designed a detailed computer model that combines such varied earthquake signposts as seismic anomalies, strange animal behavior, changes in the water table and peculiar bulges along the terrain...
Some scientists remain unconvinced, pointing out that the Alaskan climate may have been milder 65 million years ago. Alternatively, northern dinosaurs may have migrated to more temperate climes or lapsed into a kind of hibernation every winter. Says David Stone, a geophysicist at the University of Alaska: "This is a very limited number of dinosaurs we're talking about. It doesn't have much to say about the adaptability of dinosaurs around the world to sudden darkness...
...predictions for less bucolic places raises rockier questions. Should officials curtail construction and thus discourage new business? What if this kills a community's economy and the quake never comes? The USGS insists that these are decisions for state and local authorities. Besides, the science is still shaky. Says Geophysicist Allan Lindh: "Studying great quakes 150 years apart is like trying to pick horse races from watching one furlong and not even knowing which furlong you're watching." Betting a community's future on such evidence could be quite a gamble--one almost as big as ignoring the evidence...