Talking about earthquakes and landslides with "Rosie on the House" this Saturday, April 30

I'm scheduled to be on the syndicated radio show "Rosie on the House" with host Rosie Romero, tomorrow morning, April 30, starting at about 7:10 a.m., to talk about the recent swarms of earthquakes in Arizona, and the AZGS project to identify all the landslides in the state.   [Right, map of known landslides in Arizona. Credit, AZGS]   

We will also talk about preparedness for natural hazards.  April 30 is National PreparAthon Day.

 

Rosie on the House is the most popular Saturday radio show in Arizona and is heard on 7 stations around the state.  The typical audience is 60-70,000 listeners at any given moment,  so it should be a great way to get info out about Arizona's natural hazards, how big a risk are they, and what we can to do be prepared.

Senate debate on Arizona geologist de-licensing bill set for today

Today, the Committee of the Whole in the state Senate discusses and votes on HB 2613, which eliminates licensing of geologists and other professions.

The hearing will be webcast live at http://azleg.granicus.com/Mediaplayer.php?publish_id=2

The hearing is expected to start between 1:00 and 1:30pm today, with HB2613 first on the agenda. 

A number of Arizona geological professional organizations and companies oppose the bill.

Bill to transfer AZGS is being heard in the Senate today

The Senate Appropriations Committee is meeting now to hear the dozen or so budget bills, including SB1530, Agency Consolidation, which transfers the duties of the Arizona Geological Survey to the University of Arizona. The hearing is being webcast at http://azleg.granicus.com/Mediaplayer.php?publish_id=5

The budget and budget bills were only released this morning.

The House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to hear their version of the consolidation bill, HB2699 tomorrow (Thursday).     But as of this posting, the bill has not been filed yet.

Bill filed to transfer AZGS to University of Arizona

The bill was filed today to transfer the duties of AZGS to the University of Arizona. Senate Bill B1530 includes a number of other agency consolidations.

AZGS statutes stay largely the same, except for an opening statement that the agency is established within the University of Arizona, and the duties to support the Oil & Gas Conservation Commission are transferred to the Dept. of Environmental Quality.  There are a few technical corrections to update statutory language, but otherwise all duties are transferred to the university to carry out.

Surprisingly, the bill retains the requirement that the Governor will appoint the State Geologist/Survey Director, who serves at the Governor's pleasure.   I am not aware of any other position in the university that is appointed by the Governor.

Budget bill transfers AZGS duties to University of Arizona

The budget bill negotiated between Governor Ducey and Legislative leaders leaves intact the Governor's original proposal to zero out funding for the Arizona Geological Survey as of June 30, and transfer the agency duties to the University of Arizona.

AZGS stakeholders, mostly in the private sector, have raised concerns about possibly losing AZGS services and products. In recent weeks, alternative proposals were floated including leaving us in state government, assigning the proposal to a legislative study committee for the next year, or transferring AZGS to the State Mine Inspector's office.  The latter was proposed by State Rep. Mark Finchem (R-Tucson).   

The University had raised concerns about diverting education funds to support the Survey's state service mission because in the original budget proposal from January, UA was slated for a total budget increase of $2 million (out of a total of $8 million for all three universities).  The AZGS state appropriation is $941,000 and we bring in another $800,00 - $1,000,000 annually in overhead in grant funds that are directed at our state mission.   (We also bring in many millions more in grants that are not necessarily tied to state statutory responsibilities.)    Thus, the total cost to maintain the current level of AZGS services is about $2 million per year.

The one difference now, is that the universities are reportedly set to receive an increase of $33 million.  We have not seen how much of that is targeted to UA, but the assumption is they will get substantially more than the original $2 million and thus will be able to absorb the costs of maintaining the Survey with the new funds.

The budget plan is not formally released and legislators still have to approve it.

update, 4-27-16, 09:51 - Senate Budget Plan posted online at  http://www.azleg.gov/jlbc/senateplanasintroduced042616.pdf

Quake swarm continues in northwest Arizona

The earthquake swarm continues in northwest Arizona near the Nevada border. There were more than a dozen events during the past week, with the largest being a magnitude 2.7 yesterday (Sunday) just after noon.  A magnitude 1.9 event just one minute later.   [Right, epicenters of last weeks quakes shown by yellow dots. The orange dots are from Sunday's quakes. Credit, USGS]

The swarm began on March 28 and more than 50 earthquakes have been recorded so far.   Swarms in other areas have lasted for months in some cases.

Earthquake swarm in NW Arizona up to 42 events, largest is magnitude 3.7

AZGS put out a news release today on the earthquake swarm in northwest Arizona that reported 42 earthquakes have been detected since March 28.  That was out of date very quickly. There was another event just before midnight on the 18th (ML=1.3) and a ML=2.3 just after noon today.  Our colleagues at the Nevada Seismic Laboratory who are providing key data on earthquake locations say this appears to be an unusual event, rather than something that happens regularly but just had not been detected before.  They indicate the instrument network should have been able to detect such events for the past couple of years at least.

Here is the AZGS release from earlier today:

A magnitude (ML) 3.7 earthquake shook northwestern Arizona south of Littlefield, Arizona, at 9:06 pm on 17 April 2016. This event is part of a swarm of more than 42 small magnitude earthquakes that began on 28 March with an ML > 2.1 event located approximately 29 miles SSE of Littlefield, Arizona. The most recent event, ML 1.3, occurred at 4:58 pm (MST) on 18 April.

The ML 3.7 event was the largest earthquake yet and was felt in Littlefield and Mesquite, Nevada, along the remote Arizona-Nevada border. The earthquake sequence includes 2 events >ML 3.0, 8 events >ML 2.0 with the remainder below ML 2.0. The depths of the earthquakes range from near-surface to approximately 14 km.

The earthquake swarm is situated along the physiographic boundary between the Colorado Plateau and the Basin and Range Province, an area of active crustal extension and seismicity.

We anticipate additional small magnitude aftershocks in the wake of the ML 3.7 event.

This apparent increase in earthquake activity of northwestern Arizona may be the result of efforts by the Nevada Seismological Laboratory (NSL) to capture and record small magnitude events along the Nevada-Arizona border. The Arizona Geological Survey’s broadband seismic network, comprising 8 seismometers, is unable to record small magnitude events in northwestern Arizona.

AZGS operates the seismic network without any state or federal funding so continues to look for ways to maintain the system and to increase statewide coverage of currently undetected earthquakes.

For additional information on the more than 3,000 historical earthquakes and active faults in Arizona, see the Natural Hazard in Arizona Viewer. 

Below is the list of the first 40 earthquakes recorded in the swarm.  We are continually updating it with new events.

No.	DATE	ML	LAT	LONG	Depth (km)
1	4/18/2016	2.1	36.4730	-113.9650	0
2	4/18/2016	1.6	36.4920	-113.9950	1.2
3	4/17/2016	0.9	36.4870	-113.8830	0
4	4/17/2016	1.3	36.5020	-114.0000	8.2
5	4/17/2016	1	36.4970	-114.0040	0
6	4/17/2016	1.6	36.4930	-113.9890	0
7	4/17/2016	1.7	36.4800	-113.9920	2.4
8	4/17/2016	2.3	36.4820	-113.9830	2.1
9	4/17/2016	1.8	36.4710	-113.9710	0
10	4/17/2016	3.7	36.4720	-113.9740	4.8
11	4/15/2016	2	36.8670	-113.4470	13.7
12	4/14/2016	1.3	36.5050	-114.0090	6.6
13	4/11/2016	0.6	36.5020	-113.9310	0
14	4/11/2016	0.6	36.5540	-113.9200	8.3
15	4/9/2016	0.4	36.5340	-113.9680	8.7
16	4/9/2016	0.6	36.4990	-114.2000	7.2
17	4/9/2016	0.9	36.4880	-114.0050	0.5
18	4/8/2016	3.4	36.4975	-113.4372	22
19	4/7/2016	2.7	36.4860	-113.9970	7.8
20	4/6/2016	2.4	36.4950	-114.0070	7.9
21	4/4/2016	1	36.4890	-113.9890	6.3
22	4/3/2016	1.1	36.5140	-114.0240	0
23	4/3/2016	2.6	36.4560	-113.9790	6.1
24	4/3/2016	0.7	36.5210	-114.0310	0
25	4/3/2016	1.1	36.4810	-113.9710	0
26	4/3/2016	1.1	36.4890	-113.9710	10.9
27	4/3/2016	1	36.4890	-113.9890	6.3
28	4/2/2016	1.2	36.4880	-113.9870	10.5
29	4/2/2016	1	36.4730	-113.9790	10.7
30	4/2/2016	1.7	36.4920	-113.9980	5.8
31	4/1/2016	1.5	36.4930	-114.0020	9.8
32	4/1/2016	2	36.4980	-113.9920	0
33	3/31/2016	1.6	36.4860	-113.9220	3.1
34	3/30/2016	1	36.5240	-114.0140	8.8
35	3/30/2016	1.7	36.4390	-113.9690	0
36	3/29/2016	1.6	36.5060	-114.0040	0.9
37	3/29/2016	1.8	34.4950	-113.9800	13.2
38	3/29/2016	0.8	36.4830	-114.0040	3.8
39	3/29/2016	2.3	36.5400	-114.0130	15
40	3/28/2016	2.1	36.5380	-114.0110	0