Citizen Scientists Help Geologists to Identify Earthquakes and Tectonic Tremors
upstart writes in with an IRC submission:
Citizen scientists help geologists to identify earthquakes and tectonic tremors:
It is not yet possible to predict earthquakes, but the analysis of different types of seismic data allows scientists to pinpoint where and when each type of earthquake originated, and hence better understand when and where tectonic slip might occur via damaging earthquakes. Tens of thousands of seismic stations around the world continuously record local seismic activity, with an output that is far beyond what scientists can process. Here, researchers from Northwestern University have called over 2,000 citizen scientists to the rescue for the crowd-based analysis of seismic recordings, rendered into audiovisual format, through the program Earthquake Detective on the Open-Science platform Zooniverse. They show that citizens are at least as accurate as machine learning, and can even identify tectonic tremors, which previously was only possible for trained professionals. The results are published today in Frontiers in Earth Science.
"My aim was to receive help with detections of these special seismic events because I felt overwhelmed by the rapidly growing mountain of data I was investigating for my Ph.D. research," says lead author Vivian Tang, a graduate student at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences of Northwestern University, Illlinois. "With Zooniverse and the Earthquake Detective team, we provide people everywhere with a simple and engaging way to help further scientific research."
[...] The authors conclude that citizen scientists can make a major contribution to seismology, allowing scientists to process much more data than they ever could on their own, thus helping them to better understand processes deep inside the Earth's crust and forecast earthquakes with greater precision. The citizens' ability to collectively identify tremors, which artificial intelligence can't yet do, will be especially valuable for the field.
Journal Reference:
Vivian Tang, Boris Rosler, Jordan Nelson, JaCoya Thompson, Suzan van der Lee, Kevin Chao and Michelle Paulsen. Citizen Scientists Help Detect and Classify Dynamically Triggered Seismic Activity in Alaska. Frontiers in Earth Science,https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2020.00321/full
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