What's Shaking? New Online Map Shows Texans Where Earthquakes Strike

The next time North Texans feel a jolt, they’ll have a new way of finding out whether they experienced an earthquake and where it struck. Was it 5 miles away, or beneath the local park?A new website run by the University of Texas at Austin’s Bureau of Economic Geology provides the most precise near real-time information available about earthquakes across Texas.It uses data from TexNet, the state-funded seismic network that Gov. Greg Abbott and the Legislature authorized in June 2015 with $4.47 million in state funding. It also incorporates data from monitors operated by the U.S. Geological Survey and Southern Methodist University. TexNet’s broader mission is to track earthquake hazards across the state and to help scientists understand why the state’s quake rate has grown sixfold since 2008.Dallas-Fort Worth, which felt no earthquakes before 2008, has experienced more than 200 small- to moderate-sized ones since then, though its earthquake rate fell after 2015.  Continue reading...