EarthquakesUSGS awards $2 million grant to Center for Earthquake Research and Information

Published 1 December 2014

The U.S. Geological Survey has awarded the Center for Earthquake Research and Information (CERI) at the University of Memphis $2 million over the next three years to continue monitoring earthquakes in the central and southeastern United States. The CERI seismic network includes 140 seismographs in nine states. It integrates data in real-time from an additional 160 stations to process about forty gigabytes of data each day and processes information from about 500 earthquakes each year.

The U.S. Geological Survey has awarded the Center for Earthquake Research and Information (CERI) at the University of Memphis $2 million over the next three years to continue monitoring earthquakes in the central and southeastern United States.

A University of Memphis release reports that the CERI seismic network includes 140 seismographs in nine states. It integrates data in real-time from an additional 160 stations to process about forty gigabytes of data each day and processes information from about 500 earthquakes each year.

CERI’s expertise in seismic monitoring has led it to become a Tier 1 partner in the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS). “CERI has received nearly $9 million for seismic monitoring grants from the U.S. Geological Survey since 1997,” said CERI director Chuck Langston. With this grant, CERI is responsible for monitoring earthquakes from the Arkansas-Oklahoma border to the Potomac River, which includes the New Madrid, Wabash, East Tennessee, Charleston and Central Virginia seismic zones.

CERI coordinates its seismic monitoring efforts with the USGS National Earthquake Information Center, the National Science Foundation, and academic partners across the region. Other ANSS Tier 1 facilities include the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, the University of Washington-Seattle, the University of California-Berkeley, Caltech, the University of Utah-Salt Lake City, and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.