Team led by Friedemann Freund from NASA and Rachel Grant from the UK's Open University offer hypothesis on earthquake prediction by animals

[Emily]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/15945014

1 December 2011 Last updated at 01:53

How animals predict earthquakes
By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC Nature

Animals may sense chemical changes in groundwater that occur when an earthquake is about to strike.

This, scientists say, could be the cause of bizarre earthquake-associated animal behaviour.

Researchers began to investigate these chemical effects after seeing a colony of toads abandon its pond in L'Aquila, Italy, in 2009 - days before a quake.

They suggest that animal behaviour could be incorporated into earthquake forecasting. ....

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...h-08-01936.pdf

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2011, 8, 1936-1956; doi:10.3390/ijerph8061936
International Journal of
Environmental Research and Public Health ISSN 1660-4601 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
Article
Ground Water Chemistry Changes before Major Earthquakes and Possible Effects on Animals
Rachel A. Grant 1, Tim Halliday 2, Werner P. Balderer 3, Fanny Leuenberger 4, Michelle Newcomer 5, Gary Cyr 6 and Friedemann T. Freund 5,6,7,*
1 Department of Life Sciences, The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK;
2 21 Farndon Rd, Oxford OX2 6RT, UK;
3 Swiss Geotechnical Commission, Department of Earth Sciences, ETH Zurich, NO FO 35, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
4 Department of Earth Sciences, Geological Institute, ETH Zurich, NO G39.1, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland;
5 Ames Research Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Earth Science Div. Code SGE, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA
6 Department of Physics, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192, USA
7 Carl Sagan Center, SETI Institute, 189 Bernardo Ave., Mountain View, CA 94043, USA
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; friedemann.t.freund at NASA (email at link)
Received: 13 April 2011; in revised form: 21 May 2011 / Accepted: 25 May 2011 /
Published: 1 June 2011

Abstract: Prior to major earthquakes many changes in the environment have been documented. Though often subtle and fleeting, these changes are noticeable at the land surface, in water, in the air, and in the ionosphere. Key to understanding these diverse pre-earthquake phenomena has been the discovery that, when tectonic stresses build up in the Earth?s crust, highly mobile electronic charge carriers are activated. These charge carriers are defect electrons on the oxygen anion sublattice of silicate minerals, known as positive holes, chemically equivalent to O? in a matrix of O2?. They are remarkable inasmuch as they can flow out of the stressed rock volume and spread into the surrounding unstressed rocks. Travelling fast and far the positive holes cause a range of follow-on reactions when they arrive at the Earth?s surface, where they cause air ionization, injecting massive amounts of primarily positive air ions into the lower atmosphere. When they arrive at the rock-water interface, they act as ?O radicals, oxidizing water to hydrogen peroxide. Other reactions at the rock-water interface include the oxidation or partial oxidation of dissolved organic compounds, leading to changes of their fluorescence spectra. Some compounds thus formed may be irritants or toxins to certain species of animals. Common toads, Bufo bufo, were observed to exhibit a highly unusual behavior prior to a M6.3 earthquake that hit L?Aquila, Italy, on April 06, 2009: a few days before the seismic event the toads suddenly disappeared from their breeding site in a small lake about 75 km from the epicenter and did not return until after the aftershock series. In this paper we discuss potential changes in groundwater chemistry prior to seismic events and their possible effects on animals.
Keywords: earthquakes; positive holes; reactive oxygen species; ROS; hydrogen peroxide; water chemistry; earthquake precursors; animal behavior; amphibians; toads; L?Aquila earthquake

Full text available at link. (Openaccess)

Drs. Grant's and Halliday's earlier paper (Full text in PDF format available):
http://image.sciencenet.cn/olddata/k...2142059220.pdf

Predicting the unpredictable; evidence of pre-seismic
anticipatory behaviour in the common toad
R. A. Grant1 & T. Halliday2
1 Department of Life Sciences, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
2 Oxford, UK
Received 3 December 2009; revised 17
January 2010; accepted 25 January 2010
doi:10.1111/
Abstract
The widespread belief that animals can anticipate earthquakes (EQs) is poorly supported by evidence, most of which consists of anecdotal post hoc recollections and relates to a very short period immediately before such events. In this study, a population of reproductively active common toads Bufo bufo were monitored over a period of 29 days, before, during and after the EQ (on day 10) at L?Aquila, Italy, in April 2009. Although our study site is 74km from L?Aquila, toads showed a dramatic change in behaviour 5 days before the EQ, abandoning spawning and not resuming normal behaviour until some days after the event. It is unclear what environmental stimuli the toads were responding to so far in advance of the EQ, but reduced toad activity coincides with pre-seismic perturbations in the ionosphere, detected by very low frequency (VLF) radio sounding. We compare the response of toads to the EQ with the reported responses to seismic activity of several other species.

Related flutrackers threads:

http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4345
Bright lights, big quake?

http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/sho...d.php?t=154755
Towards a Unified Theory for Pre-Earthquake Signals, Friedemann Freund, NASA Ames

[Emily]

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/273705423_Changes_in_Animal_Activity_Prior_to_a_Major_%28M7%29_Earthquake_in_the_Peruvian_Andes

Changes in Animal Activity Prior to a Major (M=7) Earthquake in the Peruvian Andes Rachel Grant, Jean Pierre Raulin, Friedemann Freund


Physics and Chemistry of the Earth Parts A/B/C (Impact Factor: 1.26). 03/2015; DOI: 10.1016/j.pce.2015.02.012
ABSTRACT During earthquake preparation geophysical processes occur over varying temporal and spatial scales, some leaving their mark on the surface environment, on various biota, and even affecting the ionosphere. Reports on pre-seismic changes in animal behaviour have been greeted with scepticism by the scientific community due to the necessarily anecdotal nature of much of the evidence and a lack of consensus over possible causal mechanisms. Here we present records of changes in the abundance of mammals and birds obtained over a 30 day period by motion-triggered cameras at the Yanachaga National Park, Peru, prior to the 2011 magnitude 7.0 Contamana earthquake. In addition we report on ionospheric perturbations derived from night-time very low frequency (VLF) phase data along a propagation paths passing over the epicentral region. Animal activity declined significantly over a 3-week period prior to the earthquake compared to periods of low seismic activity. Night-time ionospheric phase perturbations of the VLF signals above the epicentral area, fluctuating over the course of a few minutes, were observed, starting 2 weeks before the earthquake. The concurrent observation of two widely different and seemingly unconnected precursory phenomena is of interest because recently, it has been proposed that the multitude of reported pre-earthquake phenomena may arise from a single underlying physical process: the stress-activation of highly mobile electronic charge carriers in the Earth?s crust and their flow to the Earth?s surface. The flow of charge carriers through the rock column constitutes and electric current, which is expected to fluctuate and thereby emit electromagnetic radiation in the ultralow frequency (ULF) regime. The arrival of the charge carriers can lead to air ionization at the ground-to-air interface and the injection of massive amounts of positive airborne ions, known to be aversive to animals.

Full text is available for free at the link.