Ground in Kumamoto City moves 84 centimetres in Japan quake
The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan said Yatsushiro ground moved 87 centimetres following Tuesday's strong earthquake.
The institution has set GPS-based control stations at around 1,300 locations nationwide to monitor crustal movements. During powerful earthquakes that struck the same prefecture in April 2016, the ground in the village of Minamiaso moved about 97 centimetres.
Following Tuesday's temblor, which registered a maximum intensity of 7, the highest level on the Japanese seismic scale, a control station in Yatsushiro recorded a ground shift of 87 centimetres and sank around 32 centimetres.
Another station in the city moved south by about 17 centimetres, and a station in the city of Kumamoto, the capital of the prefecture, moved about 43 centimetres to the north.
Calculations based on ground movements at such observation points showed that the fault at which the quake occurred is estimated to be about 32 kilometres long and 7.9 km wide, and believed to have moved approximately 2.2 metres.
Analysis of radar images taken by the Daichi-2 observation satellite of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, showed movements of up to 50 centimetres in the northwestern part of the Hinagu fault zone, located near the focus of the quake, and up to 10 centimetres in the southeastern part.
[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
