Earthquakes over the last century near Managua, Nicaragua's capital city, have killed thousands, injured tens of thousands, and destroyed countless buildings. Nicaragua sits on a complex and hazardous system of faults that enables a piece of the continental plate to move laterally along the convergent boundary. A chain of volcanoes caused by fluids from the subducting plate weakens the upper plate crust, causing unique patterns of faulting. Knowing the locations of these faults is essential to mitigating the effects of future earthquakes. To better understand this hazardous and fascinating region, I gathered and analyzed data from the April 10, 2014 earthquake in Lake Managua, and its foreshocks and aftershocks. I relocated these earthquakes to find a more accurate location for the fault on which they occurred.
This work is licensed under a All rights reserved license
Citation
Izenberg, Zev,
"Finding Seismic Faults Beneath Nicaragua"
(2019).
Summer Research Symposium.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.26300/c73z-p929
Each year, Brown University showcases the research of its undergraduates at the Summer Research Symposium. More than half of the student-researchers are UTRA recipients, while others receive funding from a variety of Brown-administered and national programs and fellowships and go …