January 31, 2010
The Missouri Department of Natural Resources is using an interactive kiosk to help highlight Earthquake Awareness Month in the state, according to the Kansas City infoZine.
The DNR's Ed Clark Museum of Missouri Geology is hosting an Active Earth Kiosk, an interactive kiosk that engages audiences by displaying information about plate tectonics, earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis for most of this year, thanks to The Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, a university consortium sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
Parts of Missouri lie in the New Madrid Seismic Zone, the nation's most active seismic zone east of the Rocky Mountains. The fault cuts across the Mississippi River in three places and the Ohio River in two places. More than 200 small earthquakes occur each year in the zone, located in southeastern Missouri, northeastern Arkansas, western Tennessee, western Kentucky and southern Illinois.