Alaska faces earth-shaking loss as seismic monitoring stations shutter

The west coast of the United States will be significantly more at risk from maritime earthquakes and tsunamis after this month. Nine seismic monitoring stations along the Alaskan coast are set to go dark in the coming days in a shutdown that will hamper scientists’ ability to track and measure potential natural disasters in the depths of the Pacific. Crucially, the closures — which follow hundreds of thousands of dollars in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration funding cuts — not only leave the Alaskan coast that much more in the dark about what could be headed ashore from the ocean depths, but also threaten the American mainland as well.

The public should be ‘concerned’

“For decades,” the Alaska Earthquake Center has collected and passed along seismological data and recording