MONUMENTAL GEOLOGICAL UPHEAVALS: Massive 2015 Alaskan Landslide That Triggered A Mega-Tsunami Is Estimated To Be The BIGGEST NON-VOLCANIC Landslide In North American History - Over 200 MILLION METRIC TONS Of Rock Landed On The Tyndall Glacier!

The site of an October landslide in Taan Fiord, within Icy Bay, Alaska.
© Chris Larsen

April 11, 2016 - ALASKA - After a period of heavy rains, about 200 million metric tons of rock tumbled down a remote Southeast Alaska mountain. The massive landslide, lasting about 60 seconds, occurred on October 17, 2015, and landed on the toe of Tyndall Glacier and into Taan Fiord in Icy Bay, Alaska.

The event generated a local megatsunami that sheared trees more than 152.4 meters (500 feet) up on a peninsula within the fiord. It was big enough to register at the nearest tidal gauge 155 km (96.3 miles) away. For comparison, the 2011 tsunami in Japan reached about 39.6 meters (130 feet) above sea level.

This event, now estimated as the biggest nonvolcanic landslide, by volume, in North America's written history, was registered by special seismograms monitored by the Global CMT Project at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory whose seismologists Göran Ekström and Colin Stark have invented a new technique that uses seismic waves to detect landslides in remote areas where they might otherwise go unrecorded.

Spruce trees shaved off a peninsula within Taan Fiord by a landslide-generated wave last October.© Chris Larsen

Since winter snows hid the damage generated by the tsunami it took several months to see the extent of the damage. Upon hearing a report from a pilot colleague that the landslide area of Icy Bay was free of snow, glaciologist Chris Larsen of the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute flew there in his Cessna 180. Larsen used a camera system mounted in his plane to make a high-resolution map of the landslide and the path of the megatsunami.

"It almost blows away everything in the historical record except for Lituya Bay," Larsen said. "It's really a unique event to have a tsunami 100 meters (328 feet) high. If it was September or any time in the summer, the wave could have gotten a fishing boat or two.

"The Lituya Bay landslide, Larsen referred to, occurred in 1958 after a powerful M8.0 earthquake. The wave that followed ripped spruce from 518 m (1 700 feet) up a mountain slope and left trimlines in the bay that are visible today.

Icy Bay and places like it will have more landslides as time goes on, Larsen said. Warmer temperatures melt more glacial ice that buttress hillsides. When the ice melts, oversteepened slopes will fail. Sometimes it takes a big rain or an earthquake to shake them down.

"These megatsunamis are infrequent in the historical record but will most likely increase," Larsen added. - The Watchers.

PLANETARY TREMORS: Excessive Groundwater Pumping In California Can Stress The San Andreas Fault - Potentially Increasing The Risk of Future Earthquakes!

May 15, 2014 - CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES - Excessive groundwater pumping for irrigation in California's agricultural belt can stress the San Andreas Fault, potentially increasing the risk of future small earthquakes, a new study suggests.

FILE - This 2007 aerial file photo provided by United States Geological Survey,
shows a view looking southeast along the surface trace of the San Andreas fault
in the Carrizo Plain area of California. A study released Wednesday, May 14, 2014
by the journal Nature suggests excessive groundwater pumping for irrigation in
California's agricultural belt can stress the San Andreas Fault, potentially
creating future earthquakes. USGS, Scott Haefner / AP Photo

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/14/4116664/groundwater-removal-may-stress.html#storylink=cpy

GPS readings found parts of the San Joaquin Valley floor have been sinking for decades through gradual depletion of the aquifer while the surrounding mountains are being uplifted. This motion produces slight stress changes on the San Andreas and neighboring faults.

"The magnitude of these stress changes is exceedingly small compared to the stresses relieved during a large earthquake," lead researcher Colin Amos, a geologist at Western Washington University, said in an email.

The findings were released Wednesday by the journal Nature.

The study suggests that human activities "can cause significant unclamping of the nearby San Andreas Fault system" through flexing of the Earth's crust and upper mantle, Paul Lundgren of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote in an accompanying editorial. Lundgren had no role in the research.

In the past century, the amount of groundwater drawn from the Central Valley for crop irrigation is equal to the volume of Lake Tahoe. The ongoing drought is expected to exacerbate the problem as communities tap groundwater faster than it can be replenished. As the valley subsides, this change in load causes the Sierra Nevada and Coast ranges to rise, according to GSP measurements taken between 2007 and 2010.

Since the San Andreas runs parallel to the valley, scientists said this upward flexing of the surrounding land can trigger small quakes. However, it's unclear whether long-term stresses from groundwater extraction have any bearing on future large earthquakes on the fault.

"These earthquakes are likely to occur no matter what humans do," Amos said.

The San Andreas is the most significant fault crisscrossing California. Nearly 800 miles long, it stretches from a peninsula north of San Francisco to the Salton Sea near the U.S.-Mexico border. The fault is responsible for some of the most devastating seismic disasters in state history including the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that reduced much of the city to rubble.

Scientists have said a magnitude-7.8 event on the southern San Andreas — a so-called Big One — could kill 1,800 people and cause $200 billion in damage.

For the past several years, the state has held preparedness drills designed to help residents cope with strong shaking. - Miami Herald.

MONUMENTAL GEOLOGICAL UPHEAVAL: NASA Satellite Detects Massive Landslide In Southeastern Alaska - Involved The Displacement Of 68 MILLION METRON TONS Of Material; The Largest Known Landslide On Earth Since 2010!

February 25, 2014 - ALASKA - Using imagery from the Landsat 8 satellite, scientists have confirmed that a large landslide occurred in southeastern Alaska on February 16, 2014. Preliminary estimates suggest the landslide on the flanks of Mount La Perouse involved 68 million metric tons (75 million short tons) of material, which would make it the largest known landslide on Earth since 2010.

The Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8 acquired this image on February 23, 2014. The avalanche debris appears light brown compared to the snow-covered surroundings. The sediment slid in a southeasterly direction, stretching across 4.8 kilometers (2.9 miles) and mixing with ice and snow in the process. The slide was triggered by the collapse of a near-vertical mountain face at an elevation of 3,000 meters (10,000 feet), according to David Petley, a geologist at Durham University.

Columbia University scientists Göran Ekström and Colin Stark realized that a landslide may have occurred when they saw evidence in data collected by a global earthquake monitoring network. The earthquake sensors detect seismic waves—vibrations that radiate through Earth’s crust because of sudden movements of rock, ice, magma, or debris.

While earthquake sensors are tuned to detect intense, “short-period” seismic waves produced by sudden slips along faults, Ekström and Stark found evidence of the slide by analyzing “long-period” waves produced by landslides. However, Ekström and Stark could not pinpoint the exact location of the slide based on the seismic data alone; they could only say that it had occurred within a 25 square-kilometer (10 square-mile) area.

To pinpoint the location, the scientists needed observations from either aircraft or a satellite. In this case, the first confirmation of the slide came on February 22, 2014, when helicopter pilot Drake Olson flew over and photographed landslide debris at 58.542 degrees North and 137.01 West. - Earth Observatory.

MONUMENTAL WEATHER ANOMALIES: The New Breed Of Tremors - Earthquakes In New Zealand Weakened Earth's Crust; Even More Unusual Than First Thought?!

November 26, 2013 - NEW ZEALAND - The Canterbury earthquakes were even more unusual than first thought and unlikely to occur anywhere else in the world, new research reveals.

The research, led by seismologist Martin Reyners of GNS Science, showed the unusual rock structure of the region meant the Canterbury earthquakes produced some of the strongest vertical ground accelerations ever seen in an earthquake.

The makeup of this unique dense and thick slab of rock could have implications for other regions around the lower South Island.

''There will be few other places in the world where a similar earthquake sequence might occur," Reyners said.

The research, published in Nature Geoscience showed that the strong quakes in Canterbury also could cause widespread cracking and weakening of the earth's crust - challenging the common assumption that the strength of the crust was constant.

Normally rocks become hot and ''plastic'' at depths of about 10km. However, the researchers found that strong, brittle rocks continued to a depth of about 30km under Canterbury.

''Strong rocks store and release strain differently to weak rocks," Reyners said.

This unusually thick and dense slab of rock helps to explain the long and energetic aftershock sequence in Canterbury, he said.

Seismic energy would have dissipated more quickly in softer rock.The researchers were now focussed on determining how widespread this strong rock unit is in the lower half of the South Island.

"This is important for defining the earthquake hazard for people living between mid-Canterbury and Southland," Reyners said.

The researchers had initially set out to determine the three-dimensional structure of the crust under Canterbury by using a technique called seismic tomography - similar to a medical CAT scan or ultrasound.

This helps to get more accurate aftershock locations and better define the many smaller faults that ruptured in the earthquakes.

Instead, researchers found that rock properties had changed significantly over a wide area around the Greendale Fault, which ruptured on 4 September 2010 producing a magnitude 7.1 quake.

"This finding was entirely unexpected, but it explains why the main shock released so much energy," Reyners said.

Most of the quakes in the two-year-long Canterbury sequence released abnormally high levels of energy - this was consistent with the ruptures occurring on very strong faults that store energy slowly and gradually and are hard to break.

The Canterbury quakes had their genesis 100 million years ago when very strong rocks became emplaced under Canterbury, he said.

The delay between the September 2010 and Feburary 2011 quakes also may have been caused by a ''strength recovery'' required for the crust following the cracking following the September quake, the research said.The research involved analysing the seismic waves produced by 11,500 aftershocks in Canterbury.

This enabled the team to build a 3D picture of rock structure to a depth of about 35km below the surface.

Reyners said post-quake analysis such as this research was important as it helps to understand how strain builds up in thecrust and how it is released during earthquakes.

"But to do that accurately, we need to understand the types of rocks that exist at depth.''  - Stuff.

GLOBAL VOLCANISM: "Giant, Big, Horrific Silicic Volcanic Eruptions" - Maine Volcanoes (Yes, Maine) Among World's Biggest?!

November 04, 2013 - UNITED STATES - Maine has supervolcanoes. Wait, Maine has volcanoes? Yes, and their eruptions could have been among the biggest ever on Earth, geoscientist Sheila Seaman reported Tuesday at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting.

"Long before there were these things called supervolcanoes, we've known about giant, big, horrific silicic volcanic eruptions," said Seaman, of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The most massive of these blasts in recent history was Toba, which blew up an island in Indonesia 2.5 million years ago. The explosion heaved 700 cubic miles of magma out of the Earth's crust.

Mount Desert Island in Maine's Acadia National Park as seen from across the Mount Desert Narrows.
(Edwin Chase)

Around 420 million years ago, a series of super-eruptions dropped thick piles of ash and lava fragments along the proto-East Coast. There are at least four volcanoes spread out along 100 miles of Maine's coast, Seaman said. [Countdown: History's Most Destructive Volcanoes]

The huge volcanic rock piles are consistent with caldera-forming eruptions, Seaman said. These explosions empty a magma chamber, leaving a gaping wound in the Earth think Yellowstone National Park, or the San Juan volcanic field in Colorado.

Since they formed, the ancient volcanic layers have been tilted up by tectonic forces, providing a top-to-bottom slice through a supervolcano. For example, Isle au Haut, part of Acadia National Park, exposes the heart of a volcano. "The whole magma chamber is lying on its side," Seaman said.

Building on years of geologic mapping and tectonic reconstructions by other researchers, Seaman has traced a direct connection between the cooled and crystallized magma chambers, called plutons, and their enormous ash deposits.

Volcanic rock layers on Maine's Cranberry Island have a 2,300-foot-thick  layer of welded tuff, a rock formed from volcanic ash. The welded tuff from Toba's most recent blowout is 2,000 feet thick, Seaman said. On the remote Isle au Haut, part of Acadia National Park, the volcanic rocks are more than 3 miles thick, Seaman said. They're capped by an immense ash flow, more than 3,200 feet thick.

Seaman estimates the caldera at Mount Desert Island would have been about 15 miles long and 15 miles wide. For comparison, Toba's caldera is 62 miles long and 18 miles wide.

"The coast is so serene and so beautiful and has such a terrible, violent past," Seaman told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

Seaman thinks the super-eruptions struck between 424 million to 419 million years ago, in the Silurian period, after islands the size of Japan slammed into the eastern edge of Laurentia, the continental core of North America. Afterward, tectonic forces stretched and tore Earth's crust behind the collision zone, making space for magma to rise from the mantle, the layer beneath the crust.

She plans further work to better understand the conditions that caused the super-eruptions, such as mixing of different kinds of magma. - FOX News.

GEOLOGICAL UPHEAVAL: Astonishing 30 Meter Deep Sinkhole Opens Up in Erzincan Doruksaray, Turkey?!

Ilic, Haydar Kaya village of the town of Erzincan Doruksaray 5 meters in diameter and 30 feet deep in the field of the earth's crust oluştu.

Erzincan collapse sinkholes in a 120, 8 kilometers away from the town of Ilic Doruksaray Haydar Kaya village in a crash last year in the field of occurred. 5 meters in diameter in the middle of the land as a result of the crash, occurred in a pit 30 meters deep.  Haydar Kaya pit plantation owner of the land could not because of the field.  Haydar Kaya event was heard upon the application of farmers' Ilic governor's office.  Governor started the investigation about the pothole, the wire mesh around the decided to translate. 

Governer's also a technical committee of experts to investigate the pit, Erzincan University, wanted the appointment. As a result of investigations made by the tribunal last week, around the pit to take precautions to prevent loss of life and property was decided.  District, the village community of the pit around the wire mesh, barbed wire and cement aid, to be translated. Field collapse that occurred shepherds owner Haydar Kaya news Recalling that, "I did not believe before. Then go to the pit looked up and was surprised to see. the field ekemiyoruz our fear," he said. - Haberler [Translated].

WATCH: Massive Turkey sinkhole.