Quake changed Indian Ocean landscapes

The undersea earthquake that caused a tsunami in the Indian Ocean last month also permanently changed landscapes up to 930 miles away from the epicentre off the coast of Indonesia, scientists revealed today.

Researchers at Delft Technical University in the Netherlands based their measurements on satellite data.

They estimated that on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, closest to the epicentre of the earthquake, land shifted by more than three feet. The Thai island of Phuket, 460 miles away, moved 3.9 inches, while Singapore moved 0.8 of an inch.

Professor Ernst Schrama said the university has been studying land movements in the region since 1994, and the data was obtained with Global Positioning System, or GPS, receivers placed around the region by Dutch and local researchers.

“This system of measurement is similar to the GPS system people use in their cars, but the receivers are much more accurate – to within about a millimetre", Schrama said.

The earth’s crust at the underwater epicentre moved between 30 to 80 feet during the quake, he said.