Taipei Times
Date: Jul 09, 2015
By: Wu Po-hsuan and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer
Working with researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, Taiwanese geology
University of Texas doctoral student Kaustubh Thirumalai, left, inspects faro coral near the Solomon Islands’ Ranongga Island in an undated photograph. Photo courtesy of National Taiwan University associate professor Shen Chuan-chou
professor Shen Chuan-chou (沈川洲) was part of a team that uncovered a history spanning millennia of seismic activity around the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific.
Until a devastating earthquake in 2007 proved otherwise, close to a century’s worth of seismic monitoring data going back to the British colonization of the area in the early 1900s had led to the belief that the region was free of large earthquakes.
The magnitude 8.1 quake in 2007 caused a subsequent tsunami that killed 52 people.
Coral reefs near beaches are “natural seismic activity recorders,” as they provide evidence of earthquakes, Shen said. m [FULL STORY]
