A Huge Earthquake Is Brewing Under Bangladesh

New geological evidence suggests a huge earthquake is building underneath Bangladesh — one of the world’s most densely populated nations.

Researchers have detected mounting strain on two huge tectonic plates in the area. It’s creating a potentially dangerous subduction zone where one plate starts sliding under the other. When enough pressure builds up it can trigger an earthquake. In this case, the quake could reach a magnitude of nine.

The red line in the image below outlines about 24,000 square miles that could move during the earthquake, which would affect an estimated 140 million people or more between Bangladesh and North-East India, according to the research. The destruction could come not only from the direct results of shaking, but changes in the courses of great rivers, and in the level of land already perilously close to sea level.

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Normally subduction zones like this happen underneath the ocean. This is the first one scientists have discovered that’s completely land-based, and it’s in a less-than-ideal location.

“Bangladesh is overpopulated everywhere,” co-author Syed Humayun Akhter said in the statement. “All the natural gas fields, heavy industries and electric power plants are located close to potential earthquakes, and they are likely to be destroyed. In Dhaka, the catastrophic picture will be beyond our imagination, and could even lead to abandonment of the city.”

The good news is if the subduction zone is really there, we have time to prepare.

“We don’t know how long it will take to build up steam, because we don’t know how long it was since the last one,” lead author Michael Steckler said in a statement. “We can’t say it’s coming in 1 year or in another 500 years. But we can definitely see it building.”

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Starting in 2003, U.S. and Bangladeshi researchers set up about two dozen ground-positioning (GPS) instruments linked to satellites, capable of tracking tiny ground motions. Ten years of data now show that eastern Bangladesh and a bit of eastern India are pushing diagonally into western Myanmar at a rapid clip—46 millimeters per year, or about 1.8 inches. Combined with existing GPS data from India and Myanmar, the measurements show that much of the resulting strain has been taken up by several known, slowly moving surface faults in Myanmar and India. But the rest of the movement—about 17 millimeters, or two-thirds of an inch per year—is shortening the distance from Myanmar to Bangladesh. This has been going on for a long time, and the results are clearly visible: neatly parallel north-south ranges of mountains draping the landscape, like a carpet being shoved against a wall. The researchers interpret the shortening pattern to mean that subduction is taking place below, and that a huge zone—about 250 kilometers by 250 kilometers, more than 24,000 square miles–is locked and building pressure, just a few miles below the surface. The zone includes Bangladesh’s densely packed capital of Dhaka, a megalopolis of more than 15 million.

Bangladesh large map

Scientists in Bangladesh and the surrounding area will continue to study the terrain and determine if there really is a dangerous subduction zone developing. There are plans to deploy 70 seismometers in the area next year.

Source: Science.Mic

Columbia University

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