Entire Himalayan arc can produce major earthquakes: study
October 27, 2016  18:07
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The Himalayas can likely generate destructive, major earthquakes along its entire length of 2,400 kilometres -- even in Bhutan, a country sandwiched between India and China, which was thought to have little history of major seismological events, a new study has found.
Combining historical documents with new geologic data, the study shows the previously unstudied portion of the fault in the country Bhutan is capable of producing a large earthquake and did so in 1714.
"We are able for the first time to say, yes, Bhutan is really seismogenic, and not a quiet place in the Himalayas," said lead author Gyorgy Hetenyi, from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
The Himalayas have produced some of the world's largest earthquakes, like the April 2015 Gorkha earthquake that devastated Nepal.
However, scientists had not been able to prove whether every region along the 2,400-kilometre arc was seismogenic, or capable of producing quakes.
Bhutan was one of the last open gaps along the mountain chain: the country had no records of recent major earthquakes and no major seismological work had been done there.
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