Abstract
Nepal, located above the convergent India-Eurasia plate boundary, has repeatedly experienced devastating earthquakes. During the 2015 magnitude 7.8 Gorkha earthquake, an often-reported experience was that people were not aware of the threatening seismic hazard and have insufficient level of preparedness. An important source of the problem is that earthquake-related topics are not part of the school curriculum. Earthquake education reaching a broad group of the population early in their lives is therefore strongly needed. We established an initiative in Nepal to introduce seismology in schools, with focus on education and citizen seismology. We have prepared educational materials adapted to the Nepali school system, which we distributed and also share on our program’s website: http://seismoschoolnp.org. In selected schools, we also installed a low-cost seismometer to record seismicity and to allow learning-by-doing classroom activities. Our approach was very well received and we hope it will help making earthquake-safe communities across Nepal. The seismic sensor installed in schools is a Raspberry Shake 1D (RS1D), selected based on performance in laboratory tests and adequacy to field conditions. At a test site in Switzerland we were able to record magnitude 1.0 events up to 50 km distance with a RS1D. In Nepal, 22 such seismometers installed in schools create the Nepal School Seismology Network providing online data openly. The seismometer in each school allows students to be informed of earthquakes, visualize the respective waveforms, and estimate distance and magnitude of the event. For significant local and regional events, we provide record sections and network instrumental intensity maps on our program’s website. In 6 months of network operation, more than 194 local and teleseismic earthquakes of M≥4 have been recorded. From a local and a global catalogue, complemented with our own visual identifications, we provide an earthquake wave detectability graph in distance—magnitude space. Based on our observations, we calibrate a new magnitude equation for Nepal, related to the epicentral distance D[km] and to the observed peak ground velocity PGVv[µm/s]. The calibration is done to best fit local catalogue magnitudes, and yields the following result: M = 1.05log10(PGVv) + 1.08log10(D) + 0.75
Highlights
Nepal is located above the Himalayan convergent plate boundary between the Indian and Eurasian plates (Aitchison et al, 2007), and in the heart of the most active continental seismic hazard zone
To increase the frequency and efficiency of learning, we organized a workshop primarily for school teachers at the beginning of the implementation phase, and in the center of the study area, Pokhara. This event was very important both for knowledge transfer and for crossing the language boundaries: international experts presented their knowledge in English to 96 local participants, who are able to disseminate this in the Nepali language to their respective audiences
“I am more interested in Earth sciences after this workshop” said one teacher after the conference; a school principal expressed his gratitude because we were more worried about their earthquake safety than they were
Summary
Nepal is located above the Himalayan convergent plate boundary between the Indian and Eurasian plates (Aitchison et al, 2007), and in the heart of the most active continental seismic hazard zone. To increase the frequency and efficiency of learning, we organized a workshop primarily for school teachers at the beginning of the implementation phase, and in the center of the study area, Pokhara This event was very important both for knowledge transfer and for crossing the language boundaries: international experts presented their knowledge in English to 96 local participants, who are able to disseminate this in the Nepali language to their respective audiences. The presence of many journalists from different media had a high impact regarding earthquake awareness, as the workshop and the program featured in 23 articles in national and regional newspapers, and in an extended live interview on the most widely watched Nepali television station This increases the attention of people toward earthquakes and education of related themes. We hope that the ideas will spread to other regions of the country as well, and we will seek opportunities in this direction
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