The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : NGRI team to study shift in Andamans land mass

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jan 05, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

NGRI team to study shift in Andamans land mass

By Y. Mallikarjun

HYDERABAD, JAN. 4. The National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) will use its expertise to study the shift in the surface landmass in the Andaman and Nicobar islands towards the Indian coast caused by the December 26 Sumatra earthquake.

More teams

A team of four geophysicists from the NGRI will be leaving here for the islands on January 7 with five Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to record the horizontal and vertical movements of the land. The islands have been rocked regularly by aftershocks since the earthquake.

The GPS studies would indicate the extent to which the surface land mass has moved towards the Indian coast, the NGRI Director, V. P. Dimri, told The Hindu . He said three batches of NGRI scientists would leave here for the islands to carry out extensive studies of geophysical parameters and micro-seismicity of the region.

He said another batch of four seismologists would leave here on January 10 to study microseismicity with instruments, which could record even minor shocks. He said the seismological observatory on the NGRI campus here would record earthquakes and aftershocks only of the magnitude of five and above on the Richter scale.

Another three-member team would leave for the islands after January 13 to study the electrical conductivity of the region through magneto-telluric method.

Gravity meter

The institute would also install the only available absolute gravity meter in the region after a month to find out the movement of the gravity value which in turn would indicate the shift of the land mass.

"It will tell us whether the material is dense. This is needed for geodic studies," he added. The instrument is currently in Antarctica and would be sent to the Andamans after a month since it required a "stable location."

A two-member team comprising a seismologist and a geophysicist left here for Chennai on Monday to study the tsunami phenomenon and its after effects.

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