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Earthquake Research Exchange Between China and the University of Kentucky Renewed

An international exchange of researchers and information between a Chinese earthquake research institute and the Kentucky Geological Survey at the University of Kentucky will continue for a 13th year, under a memorandum of agreement signed last weekend in Lanzhou, China. State Geologist and KGS Director Bill Haneberg signed the memorandum with Lanmin Wang, director of the Lanzhou Institute of Seismology, China Earthquake Administration. Haneberg and KGS Geologic Hazards Section Head Zhenming Wang were visiting several locations in China, presenting technical lectures about landslide and earthquake hazard assessment to Chinese researchers.

During the exchange program, which has included several institutes of China’s Earthquake Administration, KGS researchers and UK faculty and students have visited China, and Chinese researchers have come to UK, to collect and exchange seismic data, assist with field work, maintain seismic instruments, and participate in seminars on earthquake issues.

During the past year, Chinese researchers involved in the exchange also wrote papers accepted for publication in the Journal of Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering and the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

Both UK and the Chinese institutes have seen benefits from the program. Early in the exchange, UK seismic researchers and students travelled to China to help staff at the Lanzhou Institute acquire their first quality seismic-reflection profiles of active faults, using both UK equipment and the Chinese hosts' seismic instruments.

Using data from a 7.9-magnitude earthquake in Wenchuan, China, that occurred in 2008, Chinese researchers visiting UK participated in investigations that may help predict ground motions that could result from larger earthquakes in the central United States. The Wenchuan region and the central United States are both far from tectonic plate boundaries, but intraplate (midplate) earthquakes have occurred in both places. Exchange researchers Jiwei Feng and Shanyou Li, from the Institute of Engineering Mechanics in Harbin, China, assisted in the research and co-authored a study published by KGS that concluded that “the ground-motion data set obtained from the Wenchuan earthquake can be used to develop a GMPE [ground motion prediction equation] for the central and eastern United States.” (The 2015 publication, "Comparison of the Ground-Motion Attenuation Relationship Between the Wenchuan, China, Area and the Central and Eastern United States,"can be found here.)

In 2013, UK graduate student Alice Orton, of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, visited China to evaluate building code, emergency planning, and other information for her master’s degree thesis. She is one of several UK students who have travelled to China to do work for their graduate degrees.

The new memorandum between KGS and the Lanzhou Institute calls for continued exchange of researchers, joint research on slope stability in locations where earthquakes can cause landslides, development of hazard maps for regions in China, and development of joint research papers for publication.

Lanzhou Institute of Seismology Director Lanmin Wang and KGS Director Bill Haneberg
sign the new memorandum of agreement during Haneberg’s recent visit to China.

Ed Woolery, professor and director of graduate studies at UK’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences,
helps students and staff at the Lanzhou Institute of Seismology collect seismic images
across a potential active fault during a visit to China in 2005.

 

A Chinese delegation participating in the exchange program leaves the state capitol,
along with KGS staff, after a visit with the governor in October 2006.