A seismologist at Washington University in St. Louis has made the first 3-D model of seismic wave damping - diminishing - deep in the Earth's mantle and has revealed the existence of an underground water reservoir at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean.

Earthquakes in stable continental regions lack sufficient understanding to prepare local populations for future seismic activity, according to a paper published in the February issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA). Scientists provide a new hazard assessment for Peninsular India to highlight the urgent need to update design standards there in order to construct adequate and safe industrial facilities, dams, and community buildings.

New research findings may help refine the accepted models used by earth scientists over the past 30 years to describe the ways in which continents clash to form the Earth's landscape.

Earthquakes and volcanic activity occur when the tectonic plates that make up Earth's surface move apart or converge. While this activity is relatively easy to observe on land, it's more difficult to observe under the ocean, where most of it occurs.

Sediment folding may have added to the exceptionally large tsunami that struck Sumatra on Dec. 26, 2004, according to an international team of geologists. "Tsunami models consider the rebound of the plate during the earthquake, but do not include permanent deformation, like folding, of the upper plate." says Dr. Donald M. Fisher, professor of geosciences at Penn State.

From winter storms, to earthquakes, to terrorism -- when a disaster strikes a community, who fares better, a rural community or an urban one? A new study at the University of Illinois attempts to understand the differences in how rural and urban citizens across the US respond to disaster.

An earthquake that measured 6.0 magnitude rocked southern Kyrgyzstan on January 8 but did not cause large-scale damage or injuries.

The great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of 2004 is the best recorded large earthquake in history and has revealed the extent of study still necessary to understand such devastating events. New data overturn the commonly held view that great earthquakes only occur in fast, young subduction zones.

Earthquake early warning systems have the potential to benefit many active seismic areas of the world, if alert signals from dense seismic networks can be sent to urban settlements in advance of the arrival of destructive seismic waves.

The 17 July 2006 Java earthquake (Magnitude 7.2) involved thrust faulting near the Java trench and triggered a tsunami with run-ups between five and eight meters [20 and 30 feet] that killed more than 637 people along the southern coast of Java.

Much of Asia faces days of slow Internet connections and cut phone lines after a powerful earthquake in Taiwan disrupted telecommunications around the region. As VOA's Heda Bayron reports from Hong Kong, experts say it could take days before connections are fully restored.

Seismologists say a 7.1 magnitude earthquake has struck about 100 kilometers south of the coast of Taiwan.