Indian scientists will start drilling deep into the earth at Koyna in Maharashtra in October this year, under a project taken up by the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) to study and possibly predict earthquakes.
Shailesh Nayak, Secretary, MoES, said here on Tuesday that preparatory activities for the scientific deep drilling investigation project over the last two years had succeeded in identifying the site for the boreholes. Talking to The Hindu on the sidelines of a national workshop held at the National Centre for Earth Science Studies (NCESS), he said the purpose of the project was to understand the physics of the earthquakes occurring in the region noted for seismic activity.
The process
“Right now, all the measurements are being done from the surface; so the signal gets modified by the time it reaches there. The idea is to go a depth of 4 to 7 km from the surface where the earthquake occurs and carry out measurements there,” he said. The drilling for the pilot borehole is expected to commence by October. “We hope to complete the work in three to six months. After that we will place the instruments there. It will take about a year to analyse the core samples,” Mr. Nayak said.
The deep drilling project is also expected to provide insights into Deccan volcanism and mass extinction and geothermal record of climate change in the region.
Earlier, inaugurating a workshop on ‘Continental Crust and Cover Sequences in the Evolution of the Indian Subcontinent’, Dr. Nayak said the MoES was strengthening its network of seismic observation platforms in the Bay of Bengal region stations and GPS platforms in India, Nepal and Myanmar, under a long-term programme to monitor and generate data on earthquakes and understand solid earth. T.M.Madhavan, former director, Atomic Minerals Directorate, and N.P. Kurian NCESS director, were also present.
- Drilling work to start in October