Earthquakes in Kutch are due to the fact that it is in rift zone formed in Jurassic time 18 crore years back when dinosaurs ruled the Gondwana land. The earthquakes are along the geological fault lines formed during rifting, revealed scientists on day 1 and 2 of the International Symposium “Advances in earthquake Sciences” of ISR, Gandhinagar on January 22 and 23, several seismologists from India and United States explained their findings about why large earthquakes happen in Kutch. These seismologists are Prof. Pradeep Talwani from USA and also Dr. S. K. Biswas, Dr. B. K. Rastogi and Dr. Prantik Mandal.

They explained that the earthquakes in Kutch are due to the fact that it is in rift zone formed in Jurassic time 18 crore years back when dinosaurs ruled the Gondwana land. The earthquakes are along the geological fault lines formed during rifting.

After ISR has put large number of state of art digital seismographs, some new faults have been formed like the North Wagad Fault and Samkhyali Fault. Some known faults are found to be alive after 2001 like South Wagad Fault, Island Belt Fault, Gedi Fault and Banni Fault. However, it is not possible to say that these faults will result into large earthquakes in near future or not.

“The seismologists have found a deep plutonic body at depths of 10 to 40 km depth northwest of Bhachau in the epicentral zone of 2001 earthquakes. This plutonic body having higher density and seismic velocity concentrates the stress around it to cause earthquakes along different faults.” explained Dr B K rastogi, Director General of ISR, Gandhinagar.

ISR and ISRO scientists have found very small horizontal deformation and earthquakes are found to be generated by large vertical deformation as measured by GPS and INSAR measurements.

Earthquake Prediction Research: Status

Regarding earthquake prediction, the scientists in California are not observing any precursors because of special orientation of geological faults and nature of earthquakes. Because of this the US scientists are pessimistic about earthquake prediction research.

However, the scientists in Greece, Italy and China are observing many precursors which are helping in making models of earthquake predictions. The research in these countries gives hope that science may be developed in future for earthquake prediction.

In India at Koyna in Maharashtra and Kutch in Gujarat, earthquakes are occurring in known small areas. These zones are like natural labs for earthquake prediction research.

The ISR scientists have observed clustering of shocks of magnitude 2-3 in areas of 10 km radius and this looks promising for forecasting moderate earthquakes in Kutch.