Monday’s massive earthquake in Japan rightly demands that we pause to reflect on many things, not the least of which is the frailty of human life. So far technology hasn’t advanced enough to enable avoiding such large-scale destruction and loss of life in the future. But geologists, engineers and roughnecks are working on that.

The threat is global, of course. In the United States, for instance, this seems more important than ever because if the Pacific tectonic plate moves on its western side, might it not also move on its eastern side — the western edge of California to compensate in some way?

Elsewhere in the world, could a better job be done, technologically speaking?

A passage from a book called A Crack in the Edge of the World recently reminded me of a project called the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD), a component of EarthScope, which will investigate the structure and evolution of the North American continent and the physical processes controlling earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. EarthScope is funded by the National Science Foundation and conducted in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey.

According to New Scientist:

The seeds of SAFOD were sown by earthquake experts in the 1980s, when a report by the U.S. National Resource Council argued that researchers would need to dig to the very heart of earthquake zones if they were to unravel the big questions. Yet despite this huge potential pay-off, funding agencies refused to open their pockets until a few years ago.

The author of A Crack in the Edge of the World, Simon Winchester, explains that this “experiment” began in 2002.

Geologists are using a large oil rig and employing a team of tool pushers and roughnecks to force a hole 2.5 miles into the fault. By drilling directly into the fault, the team will be able to observe the chemistry and physics of what happens before, during and after quakes as never before. SAFOD should reveal what drives the engine of earthquakes, what keeps them going and why they stop.

“All manner of physical data from within the deep will be measured: the stress, the pressure of fluids, the temperature, the heat flow, the chemistry of the fluids, the rocks and any gases — and, of course, seismicity,” noted the author.

Winchester writes in his book:

Scores of instruments have been placed at the bottom of the hole, and an array of branching tubes has been drilled out from the main shaft — and it is with these that the scientists examining what happens at the depth at which all of the fault’s movements are known to originate [in Parkfield, Calif., roughly between Los Angeles and San Francisco] in the Pacific Plate. He continues that “at first it was drilled entirely vertically but later bent eastward so that it runs through the fault and right out into the North American Plate.

Considering that the book was published in 2005, it made sense to see what’s going on with SAFOD. (You can learn more at the International Continental Drilling Program’s Web site, which has near-daily updates of the project.)

The rotary drilled section for core “hole 1″ was completed successfully last week (July 11), according to the scientists:

This hole parallels the main hole drilled in 2005 and is offset by approximately 10 meters. After tripping out, a reaming assembly will be run in the hole in preparation for installation of the 5 inch casing needed to support the coring system.

And more recently, efforts are underway to deploy a 5-inch casing — used to support the coring rods — to the bottom of the hole, the ICDP reported on Monday.

This progress couldn’t have come at a better time. Yet we wonder if only one deep hole along a 750-mile-long fault will be enough to enable the scientists to predict the coming of a quake…

“By drilling a hole into the hypocentral zone of an active fault and observing earthquakes in their near-field environment, SAFOD represents a major advance in pursuit of a rigorous scientific basis for earthquake hazard reduction,” the SAFOD Web site claims.

The deep hole is not the only technology helping scientists understand earthquake science.

For instance, University NAVSTAR Consortium notes an array of sensors that help greatly. Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO) crews from the California offices have spent the last two weeks working hard to install a total of five emergency response GPS stations in Parkfield. Speed is of the essence in order to obtain data from the period of time immediately following the slip event. Collected using the highest precision GPS instruments, these data are essential to extending the science community’s understanding of what’s happening to our earth and predicting future fault activity.”

These stations are being installed to expand the network of instrumentation surrounding the portion of the San Andreas Fault that ruptured during the Parkfield earthquake. In fact, this initiative comes in response to the recent magnitude 6.0 earthquake at Parkfield.

Californians are not the only ones at risk in the U.S., either: history shows that there have been significant earthquakes in Charleston and Summerville, S.C.; New Madrid, Mo.; and Wappingers Falls and Annsville, N.Y.

Earlier: GPS: For Hikers, Boaters, Tourists and…Tsunami Targets?

Resources

Earthquake Shakes Japan’s Northwest Coast
by Norimitsu Onishi
The New York Times, July 17, 2007

A Crack in the Edge of the World
by Simon Winchester
Harper Perennial, 2005

SAFOD Main Hole
International Continental Scientific Drilling Program
last updated: July 16, 2007

San Andreas Fault Zone Observatory at Depth
International Continental Scientific Drilling Program

PBO Sends Emergency Response Teams to Parkfield Earthquake
UNAVCO Plate Boundary Observatory EarthScope, Oct. 8, 2004

Journey to the Centre of a Quake
by Philip Cohen
New Scientist, Feb. 5, 2005