Seismologists find “boredom” a new hobby: keeping track of silence

If you notice more chirping than birds and more frog singing, then this is probably not your imagination.

According to a new analysis by researchers at Methodist University, Methods made by humans, such as the movement of cars and trucks, eased nearly 30 percent between late March, when Governor Greg Abbott closed schools and restaurants across Texas and early May.

“There has been a big change in some areas,” said Stephen Arosmith, a seismologist at SMU University, who took over the project with a class of undergraduate and graduate students this spring.

Arosmith and his students looked at data from dozens of seismometers across North Texas, including Irving, Dallas, Farmers Branch, Richardson and Fort Worth. Seismometers are used to detect earthquakes, but they are sensitive to everything that causes the earth to shake, such as strong winds, ocean waves, transit trains, construction and traffic.

Each tool has a small spring weight. As the Earth moves, the weight stays in place, allowing the seismometer to measure the amount of movement in relation to the weight.

Scientists usually avoid setting seismometers in cities, because the human activity racket makes it difficult to detect earthquake signals. But North Texas is an exception.

Scientists at SMU and the University of Texas at the Office of Economic Geology in Austin have developed seismometers in the Dallas Fort Worth area after Texas witnessed small to medium-sized earthquakes starting in 2013. Many stations are now part of the state’s TexNet Seismic Program. The researchers linked North Texas earthquakes, which peaked in 2015 before fading, with oil and gas activity.

Arrowsmith and his students experienced a range of noise reductions at various stations. The biggest changes, perhaps not surprisingly, occurred on campus. On the campus of the University of Texas at Dallas in Richardson, the seismic station at TexNet recorded students’ attendance and stage as classes started and ended every day of the week.

Arosmith said: “After the close, it just disappears, and the background noise decreases a lot.”

He said that stations in Irving also recorded a significant reduction in noise, probably due to the low number of cars and trucks on the roads.

However, a seismic station in a fire near the farmers’ branch recorded no change in noise levels, possibly because first responders remained active throughout the epidemic.

“Each station tells you about local things going on near that station,” Arosmith said. “So you need a good network of stations to fully understand the impact of the closure on the city as a whole.”

The idea of ​​using seismometers to track urban noise gained popularity in March when the Belgian seismologist Thomas Lococ published some urban noise data from Brussels on Twitter.

Lecocq, from the Royal Observatory in Belgium, received an overwhelming response from scientists that he launched the “Lockdown Seismology” group on the Slack communications platform. “It is the place where seismologists bored all over the world,” Arrowsmith joked.

Lecocq wrote in an email to The News that he wanted to document noise levels to show how small changes in personal behavior can make an international impact.

Lococ said cities have experienced a wide range of noise reductions ranging from 20 percent to 90 percent. Arosmith, who attributed it to Europe’s stricter closings, said Dallas had seen among the smaller cuts.

It works to link noise levels to mobility data from companies that use cell phone signals to track the distance people travel and how they interact with each other.

Arosmith said: Now that Texas has loosened restrictions and companies have begun to reopen them, noise levels have risen but have not yet reached pre-closing levels.

He hopes his findings will contribute to a growing list of creative methods researchers use for seismometers. Arrowsmith teaches students in the forensic seismology course in the spring how earthquake stations can help investigators solve crimes such as terrorist bombings, or help scientists track nuclear tests in countries like North Korea, or help inspectors investigate accidents like space shuttle explosions and chemical plant explosions .

Recently, researchers have begun to use seismic stations to track storms over the ocean, because large crash waves are recorded on instruments as well.

Arrowsmith said that seismometers clearly record sounds from the Atlantic, even in Dallas.

One potential application of his research is to better understand the shallow layers of Earth under cities. He said: “This can be useful in places where there is a real seismic risk like San Francisco or Los Angeles, where just knowing what this shallow structure tells you a lot about how it reacts in a major earthquake.”

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