Is it time for a joint scientific observatory in Piura?

It doesn’t only rain, the soil also shakes – what physical place gathers that information for taking better decisions?

 

 

By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo

 

SULLANA, Peru – The quake of October 5^th, 2022 in Miguel Checa District must face us a reality we maybe have dismissed or ignored: Piura is a seismic zone. It’s the second time in 15 months that a same hypocenter actives violently, the same magnitude (6.1), the same intensity (VI).

Since 2022-mid, Peru’s Geophysical Institute(IGP, as its initials in Spanish)   is already on the field, between the towns of Sojo (Miguel Checa District) and Mallarés (Marcavelica District), investigating how it’s,how this piece of Earth crust behaves. The information will be useful for planning the urban growth, like Sullana Metropolitan Area, that trends to expand toward the west.

Upon IGP historic facts, there are other hypocenters those regularly feature seismic activity:

• Talara: In a course starting seemingly at the Mancora Bank, Pacific Ocean, entering inland through Fernandez Creek, the border of Departments of Piura and Tumbés.
• Sechura: Between the entrance of Sechura Bay and a spot under the sea bottom in front of Illescas Peninsula.

In the first hand, there is corroborated information, already. The question is, aside IGP, where inside Piura Department it is properly stored and categorized for the authorities, entrepreneurs,and the people can check it out so fast, allowing them to take decisions at the planning time.

 

 

The theory of muju

The summers at Piura Department are usually linked to heat and heavy rains, in some cases. It’s a scientific consensus that Pre-Hispanic fishers noticed the sea water trended to become less dense,and muju (Spondylus) started to appear, once upon a year. This is a usual mollusk in Equatorial water, especially at Galapagos islands (677 miles to the west of Guayaquil, Ecuador).

Weeks later, intense showers fell over the coast of actual Peruvian Northern and Ecuadorian Southern.

When the Spanish came in with their Gregorian calendar in 1532, they noticed that manifestation, which they met probably in 1570 for the first time,used to happen in December-ending and around Christmas. That’s why they named the event as El Niño  (The Child). They had proven it in 1616, maybe the first massive flood suffered by San Miguel del Villar,the actual Piura City.

At least, the muju theory is what National geographic Society handles for explaining why El Niño is called so in every world’s language,although with a more sophisticated term – South Pacific Oscillation or ENSO. Today, Callao-based Peru’s National Survey of El Niño Phenomenon knows if the sea of Piura becomes warmer, more transparent,loses salinity,it’s probable to rain heavy. It happened so in 2017.

 

 

Knowledge to integrate

What happens underground and above us faces to understand we live in a land that has to develop including the natural events to happen. But it also leads us to understand the existent information is messy at all, we don’t have it gathered in one only place that categorizes, feeds,uses it timely for knowing how to respond when it happens again… because it will happen again, no doubt.

Only speaking about rains, there are five meteorological stations in Piura City, at least: Concha Iberico Airport (PIU), Chira-Piura Special Project, National Service of Hydrology and Meteorology, University of Piura, and National University of Piura. They all release worthy data,but are they interconnected?

Now, let’s add the underground issue. IGP has already seismologic stations in Piura, we have a School of engineering which graduates geologists. And if we add the other schools of the same kind, we have specialists in soil dynamics,hydraulics, systems, informatics, anyway. Said and perceived all this,isn’t it a Good time to think about a joint scientific observatory that investigates, reports, educates, helps to plan in our department?

 

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