Images show never-before-seen fault lines – plus cows, trees
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers have completed the most meticulous
survey ever made of the San Andreas Fault, and they've found
detailed features that nobody could have seen before. Michael
Bevis, Ohio Eminent Scholar in geodynamics and professor of
civil and environmental engineering and geodetic science at Ohio
State University, unveiled the first images from the ambitious
new survey Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting
in San Francisco. His team will spend the next year processing
the rest of the survey data, which they gathered using ultra-
high-resolution global positioning system (GPS) technology and a
radar-like system called lidar. Short for "light detection and
ranging," lidar measures the time it takes for light to reflect
off the surface of an object. The combined GPS and lidar
technologies enabled the researchers to map the surface of the
San Andreas Fault with 5-centimeter (1.97 inches) vertical
resolution. The researchers du