Oregon Sea Grant video cover wins Silver Award

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Rick Cooper

The cover for Oregon Sea Grant’s video Preparing for Coastal Climate Change: What Oregonians Are Asking has won a Silver Award in the “Best Cover—Print/Other” category of the 2011 Magnum Opus Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Custom Media. There were 560 entries in this year’s competition, and the Silver Award was the top award given in the “Best Cover” category.

According to Magnum Opus, professors from the Missouri School of Journalism, along with leading custom-publishing professionals, judge the awards based on “informational and entertainment value, quality of writing and display copy, creative use of imagery and typography, and consistency of color palette and style.”

David Murray, director of the awards competition and editor-in-chief of ContentWise, said, “Your entry shone bright among an incredibly competitive field and bested the work submitted by your peers in the practice of marketing communications from around the globe. You should be proud.”

The jacket and label for Preparing for Coastal Climate Change were designed by Patricia Andersson of Oregon Sea Grant. The video was produced by Joe Cone, assistant director of Oregon Sea Grant; edited by Stevon Roberts; and supported in part by a grant from the NOAA Climate Program Office.

Copies of the video are available for $3 each plus shipping and handling from Oregon Sea Grant, 541-737-4849; or through Oregon Sea Grant’s e-commerce site at marketplace.oregonstate.edu. You may also view excerpts of the video on Sea Grant’s website.

Sea Grant’s Jeff Feldner on seafood and Fukushima radiation

Posted on June 15, 2011 by kightp

Oregon Sea Grant Extension fisheries specialist Jeff Felder is interviewed by Russia’s RIANOVOSTI news about US concerns for seafood safety in the aftermath of the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactors. Jeff’s assessment: While it’s likely detectable increases in seafood radiation levels will eventually show up in Pacific Northwest waters, it’s too early to tell how soon it will happen or how high the levels will be. The research he’s seen suggests the radition is unlikely to reach levels dangerous to consumers.

Watch the interview:

Tsunami preparedness brochure available online

Posted on May 19, 2011 by kightp

“Three Things You Need to Know About Tsunamis,” a new, easy-to-use brochure designed for Oregon coast residents and visitors, is available online from Oregon Sea Grant.

Written by Patrick Corcoran, Sea Grant Extension’s coastal hazards specialist, the handy, printable brochure covers three essential facts about preparing for a tsunami:

The difference between local and distant tsunamis, and what that means to people trying to escape the potentially devastating inundation
Which coastal areas are likely to be unsafe should a tsunami strike
What people can do in advance to be prepared

Marine scientists say the Oregon Coast is overdue for the sort of high-magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami that struck Japan in March. Even if “the Big One” doesn’t strike, many coastal areas are vulnerable to tsunamis generated by distant quakes in other parts of the Pacific Rim.

Corcoran, based in Astoria, works with coastal communities and state and federal agencies to increase public awareness of the risks, and make people better prepared to deal with disaster when it strikes.

The new brochure carries the same message as his community talks and a previously released Sea Grant video on the subject: It’s not a matter of “if,” but “when.”

The largest earthquakes on earth happen along the Cascadia subduction zone, at regular geologic intervals.” As Corcoran writes, “The last Big One was in 1700 AD. Given historic averages, we are about due. We need to prepare for this inevitability.”

Designed by Sea Grant artist Patricia Andersson, the new brochure is intended for wide distribution. Coastal families can use them, along with maps of local evacuation routes, to develop their own tsunami preparedness and evacuation plans. Motels, visitor attractions and other coastal businesses can make them available to visitors. And local emergency preparedness groups can use them as guides for community presentations.

The brochure is available for free download from Oregon Sea Grant, both as a full-color, printable .pdf and in an accessible plain-text version.

Information about single-copy and bulk orders of the brochure will be added soon to the Sea Grant Web site. In the meantime, queries can be sent to sea.grant.communications@oregonstate.edu

More information: Watch the three-minute video, The Three Things You Need To Know (Flash required)

Oregon tsunami preparedness work hits NOAA spotlight

Posted on May 13, 2011 by kightp

This month’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s “Research Spotlight” features the tsunami preparedness research and public outreach efforts of Oregon Sea Grant, along with its sister programs in Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

The article notes that “hazard resilient coastal communities” is a major focus area for NOAA Sea Grant, which has university-based research and outreach programs in 32 ocean and Great Lakes states.

Oregon is cited for its ongoing efforts to prepare the state’s coastal communities for the inevitability of an earthquake and/or tsunami. The state’s coastline is on the Cascadia subduction zone – a 600 mile long fault line similar to the one whose fracture in March caused a devastating earthquake and tsunami.

With scientists saying the Pacific Northwest is overdue for a high-magnitude quake, Oregon Sea Grant has worked for years with state agencies and local communities on everything from developing inundation maps, evacuation routes and signs to teaching people easy-to-remember steps for disaster preparation.

Read the NOAA Spotlight article …

NOAA researchers in Newport record sounds of March 11 earthquake

Posted on April 27, 2011 by kightp

NEWPORT – Earthquakes are felt more often than heard, but Oregon scientists say the sound of the March 11 Japan earthquake alone could help improve our ability to detect earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in the deep ocean.

Scientists with the NOAA Vents Program at Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory captured the sounds of the earthquake using an underwater microphone near the Aleutian Islands – 900 miles from the quake epicenter.

“The Japan earthquake was the largest source of ocean sound ever recorded on our hydrophone arrays. This unique record gives us insight into the physics behind how sound is transmitted from the Earth’s crust into the ocean and then propagates through the Pacific Ocean basin,” says Robert Dziak, Ph.D., a scientist with the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Marine Resource Studies (CIMRS). CIMRS is a partnership between NOAA and Oregon State University. Dziak is also the principal investigator of the Ocean Acoustic Project in the NOAA Vents Program, based in Newport.

Dziak’s team is one of many research projects taking advantage of a vast network of underwater acoustic devices (developed by the US Navy for surveillance purposes) to listen in on what’s going on deep beneath the surface of the sea. OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute has used the system, for instance, to record the voices of migrating whales as they travel around the Pacific.

Can warning systems save lives in near-shore tsunamis?

Posted on April 14, 2011 by kightp

Oregon State University’s Chris Goldfinger has doubts. “The earthquake is the warning,” said Goldfinger, a marine quake expert who happened to be in Japan when last month’s devastating quake and the ensuing tsunami struck.

But physicist Jörn Lauterjung, who has been working on such systems since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, believes Japan’s history of seismic preparedness – including warning systems – prevented even more lives from being lost.

Near-shore quakes pose very different risks than distant ones, and the March 11 disaster illustrated the point. Despite tsunami warnings that went out within three minutes of the quake, coastal Japanese had only about 10 minutes to get to higher ground – and in some cases, that wasn’t high enough to escape the onrushing water. Coastal Oregonians, by contrast, had hours after being warned to evacuate, and by the time the wave made its way across the Pacific, it was small enough to do damage only to selected harbors.

Reverse the situation, though, and the US coast could have as little time to react as did the Japanese. Tsunami preparedness educators emphasize that point: If you’re on the coast and the ground shakes, don’t wait for a warning – or anything else – before moving to higher ground.

Read more about the issues and technology in Scientific American: Make Or Breaker: Can a Tsunami Warning System Save Lives During An Earthquake?

Tsunami-proof building plans raise questions, stir debate

Posted on March 31, 2011 by kightp

CANNON BEACH, Ore. – It would cost twice as much and there’s no precedent anywhere in the United States for how to fund such a structure. Everyone agrees it would save lives. There’s not much doubt about that. And in light of the tragedy unfolding in Japan, it seems to make perfect sense.

It would be a new city hall, a very rugged building on concrete stilts. But it still hasn’t been built.

This debate and quandary raises awkward questions, such as how many people would die in a tsunami, how much it would cost to prevent that, what approaches would work best and who should pay for them. The debate centers on what would be the nation’s first structure designed to survive a tsunami and serve as a refuge people could run to on short notice, to get above the deadly waves.

Some would be local residents in Cannon Beach, Ore. Many others saved might be tourists from all over the nation who flock to its scenic beauty – in the recent Chilean earthquake and tsunami many of those who died were tourists.

And researchers at Oregon State University say they hope the events now taking place across the Pacific Ocean will raise new awareness about these issues and help point the way to a solution.

“We’ve been struggling with this for several years now,” said Harry Yeh, a professor of coastal engineering at OSU, international expert on tsunamis and one of the people helping community leaders in Cannon Beach to make progress toward this new building. It’s a concept that, once created, might form a model for many more such structures from Northern California to British Columbia.

Harry Yeh’s current Sea Grant-supported tsunami research

Woods Hole fact-checks ocean radiation

Posted on March 28, 2011 by kightp

The ongoing Japanese struggle to repair nuclear reactors damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami has people across the Pacific concerned about the potential damage to the ocean from leaking radiation.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, one of the nation’s top ocean research labs, has put together an online fact sheet about ocean radiation issues related to the Japanese disaster.

The Web site discusses different types of radiation from naturally ocurring and manmade sources, the potential for circulation by air and water, and what is known so far about the Japanese radiation releases, as well as likely effects on seafood. The page will be updated as more information becomes available.

More tsunami preparedness resources

Posted on March 11, 2011 by kightp

In a news conference this morning, Oregon State Geologist Vicki McConnell pointed out that tsunamis generated by earthquakes on the other side of the Pacific give Oregonians plenty of time to evacuate – but a similar quake off the Oregon coast, which geologists believe is inevitable, might come with as little as 15 minutes’ warning.

Nonetheless, McConnell said, coastal response to today’s devastating Japanese earthquake provides communities and emergency preparedness officials with a valuable rehearsal for something worse. Generally, officials said, warnings and evacuation went well on the coast; in the few cases where automatic warning sirens failed to trigger, emergency officials were able to manually trigger them immediately.

McConnell’s agency, the Department Of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI), has some great online resources for learning about, and preparing for, coastal earthquakes and tsunamis.

Breaking Waves

Oregon Sea Grant: Coastal science serving Oregon

Category Archives: coastal hazards