Earthquakes are caused by movement of the earth's crust, and researchers are finding ways to measure such movement with extreme precision using GPS technology. Such measurements, matched with historical data, plus growing experience with earth movement and seismic activity that happens before an earthquake, are holding out the promise of accurate prediction of earthquakes in the future.
In a dramatic example of the effectiveness of this technology, a team of Purdue University researchers led by geophysics professor Eric Calais accurately predicted that an earthquake would take place in Haiti, and that the quake would be greater than 7.0 magnitude. The Purdue team has studied the Enriquillo and Septentrional faults in Haiti and the Dominican Republic that caused the Haitian quake since the late 1990s. Haiti was of course tragically racked by an earthquake on January 12, 2010.
Calais's team didn't put a specific date on the Haitian quake in their July, 2008 paper published in the Geophysics Journal International, but they did state that "The model slip rate deficit, together with the dates of large historical earthquakes, indicates the potential for a large (magnitude 7.5 or greater) earthquake on the Septentrional fault in the Dominican Republic. Similarly, the Enriquillo fault in Haiti is currently capable of a magnitude 7.2 earthquake if the entire elastic strain accumulated since the last major earthquake was released in a single event today."
Even armed with this knowledge, there was little a poor nation such as Haiti could do in a few years to respond to an uncertain threat.
The Purdue study was funded by the National Science Foundation, and it maintains 30 GPS monitoring stations in the Caribbean such as the one shown in the photo.
In the case of the Haitian quake, the GPS monitoring system helped document rising stresses along a fault line which crosses southern Haiti, suggesting a large amount of force that could be released in a severe quake.
