NASA Map Shows Ground Movement from California Quakes

The Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, created this map of the Ridgecrest area of Southern California following two strong earthquakes — a magnitude 6.4 on July 4 and a magnitude 7.1 on July 5, 2019. The map shows how much and in what direction the ground moved in various places, displayed in meters. The blue tones show that the ground west of the main fault rupture, which runs from the lower right to the upper left, moved toward the northwest by as much as 0.8 meters (2.7 feet) during the 7.1-magnitude quake. The ground in the red and pink areas moved southeast by as much as 0.6 meters (2 feet). Black lines show faults that were mapped before the 2019 earthquakes. The 6.4-magnitude quake moved a shorter fault that runs perpendicular to the main fault — shown slightly down and to the left of center on the map. The colors in this area show that the north side of the fault moved to the west (blue) and the south side moved to the east (pink). The green circles correspond to aftershocks of a magnitude of 3.0 or higher, which were detected along both faults, between July 4 and July 9. The larger the circle, the stronger the aftershock. The ARIA team used interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) analysis of data from the ALOS-2 satellite, operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to create the map. They used images captured before the quakes (on April 16, 2018) and after the quakes (on July 8, 2019) for this analysis. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA23351