Putting the pieces together

MIT researchers reconstruct Baja California's 2010 'Easter Earthquake.' - On April 4, 2010, the ground beneath the deserts of Baja California started to rumble, then rip apart, sending tremors throughout a region 40 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border. In the months that followed, the 7.2-magnitude quake ' the second-strongest ever recorded in Baja California ' triggered aftershocks that could be felt as far north as Los Angeles. The temblor has come to be known as the 'Easter Earthquake,' and has been of special interest to geologists for two reasons: It is one of the most data-rich quakes on record, having been monitored by ground-based, airborne and satellite sensors; and its proximity to Southern California suggests it may have stirred up the long-dormant San Andreas Fault. 'The southern San Andreas Fault has not had a major earthquake on it since the 1600s,' says Thomas Herring, professor of geophysics in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT. 'So every time there's an earthquake down in that region, everyone gets very worried that it's going to rupture northward and continue propagating up. That is a very reasonable fear.' Herring and a team of geologists recently mapped the earthquake's path in great detail, using a wealth of data including satellite images, GPS data, seismic recordings and laser altimetry.