MUMBAI, April 22 � To beef up further monitoring of earthquake prone areas of Andaman islands and the Himalayan belt, the Government has decided to establish two more observatories, officials said.
Multi-parametric Geophysical Observatories (MGPOs) are being established in Andaman islands and Shillong, Meghalaya, by Union Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) in collaboration with the city-based Indian Institute of Geomagnetism-IIG), a unit of Department of Science and Technology (DST).
These facilities would assist in understanding the earthquake precursory phenomena in the regions and provide real time data to the scientists for quick analysis, MoES Secretary Shailesh Nayak told PTI.
The observatories will have seismographs and accelerographs to measure ground vibrations and radon gas measurements, Prof Shobana Alex of the IIG said.
The MGPO at Port Blair, being set up in forests, is likely to start functioning by the year-end. The one at Shillong will be housed in IIG�s magnetic observatory there and become operational by 2010-end, Alex said.
An MGPO has already come up at Ghuttu, Uttarakhand.
The Seismicity Programme of DST aims at understanding the earthquake processes and mechanisms related to the Indian lithosphere, their recurrence interval and manifestation on the surface for developing techniques for hazard mitigation.
In the last few years, efforts have been intensified to take up seismological, geological and geophysical studies in selected regions for generating a comprehensive database, DST scientists said.
On March 30, Andaman islands experienced an earthquake of 6.7 magnitude followed by 7.7 in Sumatra on April 6. In between these two dates, there were several temblers of magnitude varying from 4.5 and 6.5, according to geologists at Department of Earth Sciences, IIT-Bombay.
A power failure in Port Blair added to the woes of the local people and kept them awake throughout the night. As the islands are prone to frequent earthquakes, they should be provided power round the clock, IIT scientists said.
These observatories will be useful in alerting the people in the earthquake-prone areas, they said.
India installed Tsunami Warning Systems in Bay of Bengal after the December 2004 tsunami. �The systems seemed to be working well as evident from the records and messages sent by them after the Andaman earthquake,� the scientists said.
However, what is alarming is that according to a recent study, all the recent earthquakes around Andaman islands are related to a fault system, said seismologist and volcanologist D Chnadrasekharam of IIT-Bombay.
�If it is so, a detailed investigation is necessary to know whether these tremors are forerunners to a major event in the near future.� � PTI
