FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) – Researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks are working on a new way to forecast seismic activity in central Alaska by examining low-frequency earthquakes.

The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports professor Carl Tape and his colleagues have been examining earthquakes that have energy waves occurring at much lower frequencies in an effort to better understand what leads up to the seismic activity.

Tape says their study gives researchers a better idea of how the earth slips and how earthquakes begin, which could lead to predicting when an earthquake might occur.

The National Science Foundation’s Division of Earth Science supported the project. Division program director Luciana Astiz says the study’s first observations show a process that moves into an earthquake, which is “something previously observed only in laboratory experiments.”

Information from: Fairbanks (Alaska) Daily News-Miner, http://www.newsminer.com

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