PLANETARY TREMORS: 2.9 Magnitude Earthquake Recorded Near Mount St. Helens, Washington - USGS!

A 2.9-magnitude earthquake was recorded near Mount Saint Helens Monday morning. © MyNorthwest

February 9, 2016 - WASHINGTON STATE, UNITED STATES - A 2.9-magnitude earthquake hit just south of Mount St. Helens Monday morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The quake was recorded at 8:50 a.m.

The earthquake, according to the USGS, wasn't very strong. Only three people reported feeling it, as of 10:30 a.m.

It's the strongest earthquake in Washington in February. A 2.6-magnitude quake was reported Feb. 5 near Tacoma. - MyNorthwest.

GLOBAL VOLCANISM: Seismologists Watching Glacier Peak In Washington - After 4 Earthquakes In Just Under 4 Hours!

Two earthquakes - magnitude 3.1 and 3.5 - struck Wednesday afternoon near Glacier Peak within an hour of each other.
Two more smaller earthquakes struck just hours later. © Earthquake Tracker

November 27, 2015 - SEATTLE, UNITED STATES - Four earthquakes struck within hours of each other Wednesday afternoon near Glacier Peak in Washington.

The first two earthquakes registered at magnitudes 3.1 and 3.5. The first earthquake occurred at 12:11 p.m. The second registered roughly an hour later at 1:20 p.m. Then a third earthquake — a magnitude 1.6 — occurred at 2:33 p.m. And finally a fourth earthquake — a magnitude 1.4 — was registered at 3:44 p.m. All the quakes were recorded roughly 19-21 miles east-southeast of the town of Darrington.

Seth Moran, geophysicist at the University of Washington, tells KIRO Radio they're keeping a close eye on the area and continue to watch the seismic records. "Magnitude 3 earthquakes happen in Washington and Oregon a number of times per year," Moran said. "The one thing that makes these potentially interesting in a different way is they're somewhat close to Glacier Peak."

Glacier Peak (Photo: KING)

The quakes, about three miles from Glacier Peak, occurred where there haven't been a lot of magnitude 3 earthquakes in the past, according to Moran. "The last time there was a magnitude 3 in the vicinity was in 1991," Moran said.

However, there isn't a great network of seismic instruments in the area. There have been no reports of damage or injuries.


WATCH: Mount Rainier is considered the world's most dangerous volcano because of its size and how close it is to population centers, but there's another mountain you've probably never seen that's finally getting attention for the risks it poses.

According to the USGS, the last time Glacier Peak erupted was 1,100 years ago. Mount St. Helens and Glacier Peak are the only volcanoes in Washington state that have been explosive in the past 15,000 years. - My Northwest.

 

GLOBAL VOLCANISM: Could Mount St. Helens Erupt Again - Volcanic Tremors Hint Of Magma Being Injected?!

Earthquakes that occurred before the May 1980 eruption of Mount. St. Helens may have been caused by magma being injected from one chamber to another.
Researchers said more tremors were observed in the area, which could hint of potential eruption.  (Photo : Davgood Kirshot | Pixabay)

November 10, 2015 - PACIFIC NORTHWEST, UNITED STATES - The eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980 has claimed 57 lives and caused serious damage to homes and infrastructure.

Now, scientists have revealed that the volcano could possibly erupt again in the future based on findings of a pioneering $3 million study of the volcano's plumbing system.

Geologists who studied the volcano have found a second enormous chamber lying between seven to 23 miles beneath the surface.

This massive pool of molten rock was found connected to a smaller chamber lying directly beneath the volcano.

How these two chambers are connected is helping scientists understand the sequence of events prior to the 1980 eruption, whose strength of explosion destroyed the topmost peaks of the mountain.

Matching the newly discovered magma reservoirs with earthquake data also sheds light on how the deadliest eruption in U.S. history occurred.

The researchers said that the series of tremors that occurred in the months leading to the 1980 eruption may have been caused by magma pumping from the lower to the upper chamber of the volcano, which caused the pressure inside the upper chamber to dramatically increase resulting in the deadly explosion.

"We can only now understand that those earthquakes are connecting those magma reservoirs," said Rice University seismologist Eric Kiser. "They could be an indication that you have migration of fluid between the two bodies."

Reporting the findings of their study at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Baltimore, Maryland on Nov. 3, the researchers said that more tremors have been observed in the area suggesting that more magma is being injected.

"A cluster of low frequency events, typically associated with injection of magma, occurs at the northwestern boundary of this low Vp column," the researchers reported. "Much of the recorded seismicity between the shallow high Vp/Vs body and deep low Vp column took place in the months preceding and hours following the May 18, 1980 eruption. This may indicate a transient migration of magma between these two reservoirs associated with this eruption."

After the 1980 eruption, the volcano started to erupt again in 2004 but it fell silent in July 2008. Nonetheless, Mount St. Helens is still considered a high risk volcano and is closely monitored by the U.S. Geological Survey. The researchers said that their findings could offer a crucial early warning system of a potential eruption. - Tech Times.

GLOBAL VOLCANISM: Geologists - Hidden Cascades Volcano May Pose A Threat!

Glacier Peak (Photo: KING)

May 20, 2015 - SEATTLE, UNITED STATES - Monday marks the 35th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens that killed 57 people.

Mount Rainier is considered the world's most dangerous volcano because of its size and how close it is to the population centers of Tacoma and Seattle.

But there's another mountain you've probably never seen that's getting attention for the risks it poses to the Seattle area.

Unlike most of the volcanoes in the Cascade Mountains that are viewable from Interstate 5 or even Seattle, few people notice Glacier Peak. It lurks within in the northern Cascades in Snohomish County and has a record of violent, even extreme eruptions.

Jim Vallance a geologist at the Cascades Volcano Observatory, was a young field assistant on Mount St. Helens in the wake of the 1980 eruption. He remembers doing field work on St. Helens in 1979."It was quiet. You may remember if you were an old timer in the Northwest, that Spirit Lake was a blue body of water with cabins all around," said Vallance. "That all changed dramatically in 1980."

"As impressive as it was, Mount St. Helens was actually hundreds of feet shorter than Glacier Peak," Vallance points out. "The summit is right here."

Now his role at the observatory is dedicated to understanding Glacier Peak.

Every year's brief field season is on foot or with the help of pack mules to bring out more samples that lead to more understanding.

"I'm working on a giant four-dimensional puzzle. I'm trying to work out what happened in the past, when did it happen and how often," said Vallance.

When a volcano's glaciers melt during an eruption, it picks up massive amounts of fine dirt and debris. It becomes what's called a lahar.


WATCH: Mount Rainier is considered the world's most dangerous volcano because of its size and how close it is to population centers, but there's another mountain you've probably never seen that's finally getting attention for the risks it poses.

In the case of Glacier Peak, the geological record shows lahars reaching as far away as Mount Vernon, Burlington, Stanwood and Puget Sound by following the Skagit and Stillaguamish rivers.

But while some mountains, including St. Helens and Rainier, are heavily wired with sensors, there is but one lone seismometer on the west flank of Glacier Peak. That's about to change.

Next year, four boxes, each packed with a sensitive seismometer, global positioning antennas and other sensors, will be installed on Glacier Peak. The seismometers can tip off scientists to the first faint signals that magma is on the move.

"Most typical quakes around volcanoes are very small, very low magnitude," said Ben Pauk, a geophysicist who works with sensing technologies.

Then, as seen in the buildup to a 2004 eruption on Mount St. Helens, the quakes are constant.

"It's going to generate what's called volcanic tremor. So the ground is just constantly shaking," said Pauk. "And that gives us a really good indication of what type of eruption is going to occur."

Global positioning antennas measure when the mountain is actually starting to swell.

When could an eruption on Glacier Peak occur? There's no telling, said Vance, remembering that summer of 1979, when Mount St. Helens seemed so quiet.

"It could be this year or a thousand years," he said. - KSDK.

GLOBAL VOLCANISM: Eruption Like Mount St. Helens - "It Will Happen Again In Cascades"!

Plinian column from May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. Aerial view from southwest. Mount Adams is in the background (right).
Robert Krimmel photo May 18 1980

May 16, 2015 - U.S. PACIFIC NORTHWEST - Mount St. Helens caught science a little by surprise.

A volcano hadn't erupted on the United State mainland outside Alaska and Hawaii since California's Lassen Peak in early 20th Century.

And modern science had yet to witness an eruption quite like St. Helens.

"I think this was a turning point in the way people approached these kinds of potentially active, explosive volcanoes," said Mike Dungan, a volcanologist with an office at the University of Oregon.

St. Helens didn't just erupt: it blew up.

The force of the May 18, 1980, eruption wasn't just vertical; it was lateral, sending a side of the mountain rocketing down slope as a wall of boiling mud and rock.

The eruption killed 57 people - and put scientists and policy makers on notice.

"It's only a matter of a short time - decades or something - before another one of these things occurs," Dungan said. "A sector collapse eruption like Mount St. Helens - it will happen again in Cascades."

Research at the University of Oregon is shedding new light on the cause of the explosion.

Geologists like PhD student Kristina Walowski are conducting research into how ocean water seeps into offshore plates as they plunge deep into the earth.

"What's really interesting is that water is really important because it lowers the melting temperature of a rock and when that happens you can create magma," she said.

Mount St. Helens viewed aerially from the northeast before the 1980 eruptive activity. Dashed line marks boundary of area removed by the May 18 blast.

"The water is really the key thing that causes the expansion, just like when champagne comes jetting out of a bottle," said Paul Wallace, professor geological science at UO. "It's a foamy material because of the gas present in gas bubbles."

The May edition of Nature Geoscience published the findings by the Oregon team, funded by a National Science Foundation Grant.

"Ultimately the water that makes them so explosive is coming out of the ocean," Wallace said. "And eventually as the plate moves like a conveyor belt, it gets returned back down into the inside of the earth.."


WATCH: Eruption like Mount St. Helens - 'It will happen again in Cascades'.

"It's not like you're pouring cups of water into the interior of the earth, right?" Walowski said. "There's a complicated set of reactions and breakdowns where these rocks are changing shape, and releasing water little by little by little."

So which of the Cascade volcanoes is next in line to erupt?

It's difficult to predict, but geologists are watching.

"We're really in the midst of a technology explosion when it comes to monitoring volcanoes, using all kinds of things using remote sensing instruments on satellites," Wallace said.

"Mount St. Helens is still the most frequent in the Cascades," Walowski said, "and based on that, it may be the most likely to go again." - KVAL.

GLOBAL VOLCANISM: USGS - Magma Rising In Washington State's Mount St. Helens Volcano!

May 01, 2014 - SEATTLE, UNITED STATES - Magma levels are slowly rebuilding inside Mount St. Helens, a volcano in Washington state that erupted in 1980 and killed 57 people, although there was no sign of an impending eruption, U.S. scientists said.

Visitors to the Coldwater Ridge Center look up at Mount St. Helens venting steam October 11, 2004.
REUTERS/Andy Clark

The roughly 8,300-foot volcano erupted in an explosion of hot ash and gas on May 18, 1980, spewing debris over some 230 square miles and causing more than a billion dollars in property damage. Entire forests were crushed and river systems altered in the blast, which began with a 5.2 magnitude earthquake.

"The magma reservoir beneath Mount St. Helens has been slowly re-pressurizing since 2008," the U.S. Geological Survey said in a statement on Wednesday. "It is likely that re-pressurization is caused by (the) arrival of a small amount of additional magma 4 to 8 km (2.5 to 5 miles) beneath the surface."

The USGS said this is to be expected with an active volcano and does not indicate "the volcano is likely to erupt anytime soon."

The USGS, and the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network at University of Washington, closely monitor ground deformation and seismicity at the volcano. This summer, they will also measure its released gases and gravity field, measurements that can be used to monitor subsurface magma and forecast eruptions. - Yahoo.

MASS BIRD DIE-OFF: "This Is Unprecedented" - Thousands Of Swallows Die From "Bad Weather" In Oregon, Stunning Wildlife Experts!

October 07, 2013 - UNITED STATES - The storms that have thrashed Oregon have taken a big toll on swallows, killing thousands from St. Helens to Junction City.

Residents have reported groups ranging from 10 to 200 dead or dying barn and violet-green swallows in barns and around other structures where they perch. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said the dieoffs appear to be worst close to rivers and standing water where the birds tend to gather.

Thousands of barn and violet-green swallows have died amid harsh weather in Oregon.
(Bill Monroe/The Oregonian)

The toll, estimated in the thousands, has stunned Fish and Wildlife specialists. “This type of mortality event is unprecedented and considered a rare and unusual event,” said Colin Gillin, wildlife veterinarian for the agency. “The effect on bird populations is unknown.”

Pathologists at the Oregon State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory who examined carcasses said their bodies were emaciated, indicating that the birds had not eaten during the recent harsh weather. They suspect that consecutive days of pounding rain and strong winds had prevented the swallows from feeding at a time when they normally would be bulking up in preparation for their winter migration to Central and South America.

The swallows feed on insects while flying. Severe weather can prevent young or weaker birds from consuming enough food to sustain them in flight. The swallows come to Oregon in summer and return south in winter.

People should not try to help sick or injured birds or other wildlife. Rather report them and dead creatures to Fish and Wildlife’s health lab at 866-968-2600. - Oregon Live.

PLANETARY TREMORS: Mini-Earthquake Swarm Continues Near Mount St. Helens - Geologists Says Not Directly Related To Nearby Volcano!

August 23, 2013 - UNITED STATES - Three earthquakes rattled an area northwest of Mount St. Helens on Friday, continuing what geologists say is a mini-swarm of earthquakes not related to the nearby volcano.

U.S. Geological Survey map shows location of the three quakes.

The latest quakes, on Friday, were a 3.7-magnitude quake at 2:38 p.m. Friday, followed by a 3.4 at 6:08 and a 3.1 at 6:12 p.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

A report from the USGS on Friday said the quakes have been centered about 13 miles northwest of Mount St. Helens at a depth of about 8 miles. They were described as tectonic in origin and not directly related to the volcano.

The report said such earthquakes are common in areas around Mount St. Helens and Mount Hood. It said another mini-swarm of earthquakes also occurred about six miles southwest of Mount Hood.

Volcano-related seismic activity at the two volcanoes themselves were at normal background levels, the USGS said. - The Columbian.

PLANETARY TREMORS: Unshaken Complacency - North America Unprepared For A Cascadia Mega-Quake!

December 23, 2012 - UNITED STATES - People often remember the calm, the quiet, how normal everything seemed before a disaster.  In Clark County, they might remember grabbing a cup of coffee at Starbucks by Esther Short Park, hanging out on the patio at Beaches by the waterfront, taking a bike ride along the Salmon Creek Trail -- before the shaking started.  During the long seconds of a magnitude 9.0 Cascadia earthquake, the soft loose soils along the Columbia River could quickly convert to the consistency of liquid or quicksand.  Beaches, Who Song & Larry's, Joe's Crab Shack and other establishments could jiggle, shift and sink lopsided into the ground by a few inches or a few feet.  Buried water mains and sewer lines could crack, separate, or float to the surface, spilling their contents across roads, landscapes and waterways. Downtown, older brick-and-mortar buildings could shift and shake, shedding bricks and rooftops in piles of debris.  In the flash of a few minutes, pretty much all of Clark County would be likely to find itself without power, without reliable roads and without safe water. And it could stay that way for months.  On a normal late fall day in Vancouver, such devastation might seem unreal. But it's happened before -- across the globe, and also right here.

Then-Gov. Gary Locke inspects a fissure in Deschutes Parkway in Olympia after the magnitude 6.8 Nisqually quake in 2001. Worse damage is likely the next time the Cascadia fault ruptures off the Pacific coast -- the last Cascadia earthquake was a magnitude 9.0, more than 100 times as powerful as the Nisqually quake. Files/Associated Press.

What is a Cascadia quake? 
Just off the Pacific coast -- about 50 miles out to sea, and stretching from Northern California to British Columbia -- a 700-mile fault marks where the Juan de Fuca geologic plate is sliding under the North America plate. The process, which started about 20 million years ago, is pushing North America over Juan de Fuca at a rate of about 1.5 inches a year.  Rock from the dipping, or subducting, plate melts as it moves under the continent, feeding the volcanic arc that includes Mount St. Helens, Mount Hood and Mount Rainier.  Pressure also builds up along the fault. The plates don't move smoothly but tend to stick and lock against one another, resisting movement until the fault suddenly slips, creating deep and potentially very deadly earthquakes.  There's no way to predict exactly when the fault will move again. The last time it happened was just over 300 years ago -- when the entire 700-mile stretch slipped in the span of about five minutes, creating a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and a massive tsunami recorded in Japanese history as occurring Jan. 26, 1700.  Geologists have uncovered evidence of similarly sized quakes in the region in 1310 AD, 810 AD, 400 AD, 170 BC and 600 BC. There may have been more, but it can be hard to find evidence of earthquakes in the rock record.  Because of that, scientists continue to debate how often the fault ruptures. Some think it happens about every 500 years; others think it's more like every 250 years.  "Nothing is for sure," said Tim Walsh, chief hazard geologist at the Washington State Department of Natural Resources. "But we've gone past that 250-year time scale already."

Potential for earthquake damage across Clark County.

The risks 
The Clark County Hazard Identification Vulnerability Analysis, put out by Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency, called the threat of a dangerous earthquake "the hazard of greatest risk to Clark County," more threatening than a flood, wildfire or volcanic eruption.  The analysis ranks the 25-year probability, vulnerability and risk rating for a strong quake -- if not a full 9.0 Cascadia quake -- as high.  There are three categories of earthquakes, all of which occur here.  • Shallow or crustal quakes happen along faults near the surface, up to about 10 miles deep. Such faults include the Mount St. Helens Seismic Zone, the Lacamas Creek Fault and the Portland Hills Fault. Shallow faults can trigger by themselves, or could be triggered by deeper earthquakes created through plate tectonics.  • Interplate quakes happen when one geologic plate affects another, such as parts of Juan de Fuca melting and scraping beneath the North America plate. Those quakes tend to be deeper, perhaps 30 miles below Earth's surface.  • Subduction zone earthquakes happen when plates stick and then suddenly slip against one another at plate boundaries, such as the Cascadia fault.  Every year, the Pacific Northwest Seismograph Network records about 2,000 earthquakes in Washington and Oregon. Most are shallow quakes with magnitudes of less than 3.0.  Larger shallow quakes are far less frequent but can be dangerous. The strongest shallow quake recorded since white settlers came to the region was an estimated magnitude 7.4 back in 1872. It was felt in Oregon, Idaho and Washington. More recently, the "Spring Break Quake" on March 25, 1993 -- a shallow magnitude 5.6 centered southeast of Portland -- caused $28 million in damage.  Interplate quakes can cause even more damage. On Feb. 28, 2001, the magnitude 6.8 Nisqually earthquake centered 32 miles beneath the Puget Sound region killed one and injured 700, creating between $1 billion and $4 billion in damage.  Scientists think both of those types of earthquakes happen at a rate of about one per 50 years in the Pacific Northwest.  Then there's a Cascadia quake, which would be a subduction zone earthquake. It's hard to tell how much damage a 9.0 quake like that would cause, but a report by the Department of Natural Resources suggests the damage could go well into billions of dollars and injure or possibly kill thousands of people.  "Big picture for a Cascadia (earthquake) … we're definitely looking at years before we're made whole again," said John Wheeler, emergency management coordinator at CRESA. "If you look at (Hurricanes) Katrina and Sandy, at the Japanese earthquake -- the damage from those is very similar to what we could experience in the Pacific Northwest." - The Columbian.

GEOLOGICAL UPHEAVAL: Scientists Find Violent And Weird Underwater Volcano Near Baja, California - Tectonic Forces Are Tearing the Earth's Crust Apart, Creating A Long Rift Where Magma Oozes Toward The Surface!

December 14, 2012 – CALIFORNIA , UNITED STATES - Scientists have discovered one of the world's weirdest volcanoes on the seafloor near the tip of Baja, Mexico. The petite dome — about 165 feet tall (50 meters) and 4,000 feet long by 1,640 feet wide (1,200 m by 500 m) — lies along the Alarcón Rise, a seafloor-spreading center. Tectonic forces are tearing the Earth's crust apart at the spreading center, creating a long rift where magma oozes toward the surface, cools and forms new ocean crust. Circling the planet like baseball seams, seafloor-spreading centers (also called mid-ocean ridges) produce copious amounts of basalt, a low-silica content lava rock that makes up the ocean crust.

These maps show the location of the Alarcón Rise, a 31-mile-long (50 kilometer) spreading center at
the mouth of the Gulf of California. Along ocean spreading ridges like the Alarcón Rise, the
seafloor is splitting apart as lava wells up from underneath. CREDIT: (c) 2012 MBARI.

But samples from the newly discovered volcano are strangely rhyolite lava, and have the highest silica content (up to 77 percent) of any rocks collected from a mid-ocean ridge, said Brian Dreyer, a geochemist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The results were presented last week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Researchers with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) discovered the volcano this spring, during a three-month expedition to the Gulf of California, the warm stretch of water that separates Baja from mainland Mexico. A remote-control vehicle explored the volcano, which is 7,800 feet (2,375 m) below the surface, and brought samples back to the ship. “When we picked up the rocks and got them back on the ship, we immediately noticed that they were very low density, and they were very light, glassy and gray.

 The high-resolution seafloor map above was compiled using data from MBARI's mapping AUV.
The red box outlines the position of the rhyolite dome. CREDIT: (c) 2012 MBARI.

They were not the usual dark, black, shiny basalts,” Dreyer told OurAmazingPlanet. “So we immediately knew that something was unusual.” The volcano is primarily rhyolite and a silicic lava called dacite, said MBARI geologist Jennifer Paduan. “To find this along a mid-ocean ridge is a total surprise,” she told OurAmazingPlanet. Boulders and blocks the size of cars and small houses littered the steep slopes of the dome, the robot's video camera showed. Of more concern is the evidence for explosive volcanism, which is typical of rhyolite volcanoes, Paduan said. “It's only 100 kilometers [60 miles] from land. When the sun is setting, you can see Cabo,” she said. Both the Baja Peninsula and mainland Mexico near Alarcón Rise have cities and luxury resorts. The Gulf of California is also home to endangered sea life. Rhyolite lava carries more gas and volatiles (things that are likely to cause explosions) than basalt, and when magma meets water, it vaporizes instantly, driving an even more explosive eruption.

“There's definitely explosive deposits there, and that is of extreme concern, given that the ridge is so close to land and the tsunami potential of a big explosion there,” Paduan said. “We don't know how explosive, and that is something we are definitely trying to figure out.” Rhyolites have been found on spreading centers, but only above hot spots, such as in Iceland and the Galapagos Islands, Dreyer said. Hot spots are plumes that bring magma to the surface from deep within Earth's mantle. There is no hot spot under the Alarcón Rise, he said. Rhyolite lava typically occurs only on continents, such as in Mount St. Helen's growing dome in Washington. One possible explanation for the bizarre composition of the Alarcón dome is that continental crust snuck into the molten rock below — the spreading center is young, and continental crust lies close by. But tests of different isotopes (versions of elements with differing numbers of neutrons in the cores) in the lava samples revealed no evidence of contamination by continental crust, Dreyer said. - Our Amazing Planet.

GLOBAL VOLCANISM: The Uturuncu Volcano in Bolivia - A New Supervolcano Awakening?

Much media attention has recently been given to speculations about a a "new supervolcano", Uturuncu, a dormant stratovolcano in SW Bolivia, where signs of unrest have been detected by deformation and seismic measurements.

Small holes, known as fumaroles, release extremely hot sulfuric gases into the air near the Uturuncu volcano
in Bolivia. Measurements show the volcano in the Andes has been growing more than half an inch a year
or 20 years — an unprecedented rate, researchers say.

According to scientists around geologist Dr. Shan de Silva from Oregon State University, the ground beneath the volcano is inflating and the magma chamber might be filling. Along with thousands of microquakes, this could indicate a future eruption. A study published in 2008 revealed that between 1992 and 2006, geodetic satellite measurements recorded an ongoing 70 km wide deformation field with a central uplift rate of 1 to 2 cm/yr. This uplift, could be explained by an average magma influx of 1 cubic meters per second from a source at 17-30 km depth into a shallow reservoir. Sediment and stratigraphic studies suggest that the uplift might actually have started at the time, which would mean that the volcano has just started to be at unrest. Persistent seismic activity adds to indications of a possible future awakening of the volcano, which has last erupted 270,000 years ago. The study revealed that there are on average 2.6 earthquakes per hour, with a maximum of 14 per hour, recorded at about 4 km depth below the center of the uplift, 4 km SW of the volcano's summit.

In their paper, Sparks et al (2008) write: "The current unrest, together with geophysical anomalies and 270 ka of dormancy, indicate that the magmatic system is in a prolonged period of intrusion. Such circumstances might eventually lead to eruption of large volumes of intruded magma with potential for caldera formation." In fact, there are some other calderas near Uturuncu, showing that the magmatic systems here have been able to produce large explosive eruptions in the past, which confirms such potential for future eruptions. And if such an eruption is large enough, on the magnitude referred to as super-volcano eruptions, and releases tens to thousands of cubic km of magma, it would have catastrophic effects. However, such scenario needs to be taken with caution. The likelyhood of a supervolcano eruption from Uturuncu in a near future, in our lifetime is probably more than very remote. It is not even known with certainty whether the volcano will erupt at all again, nor whether what is causing the current changes is actually caused by rising magma, nor is it really well understood how supervolcanoes behave; a possibility is that magma cools underneath the volcano and continues to form a plutonic body. If indeed an eruption is to be expected at Uturuncu, it seems unlikely it is going to be in a near future: after 270,000 years, it could as well take and wait a few more 1000 years, until it is ready. - Volcano Discovery.

GLOBAL VOLCANISM: Birth of a New Super-Volcano - Unprecedented Geological Anomalies, Inflation, Uplift and Bulging Detected at the Uturuncu Volcano in Bolivia?!

The broad hill at the base of Uturuncu is unassuming. Its gentle arc fades naturally into the Andean landscape. But the 43-mile-long stretch of rocky soil is now an object of international scientific fascination. Satellite measurements show that the hill has been rising more than half an inch a year for almost 20 years, suggesting that the volcano, which last erupted more than 300,000 years ago, is steadily inflating.
“The size and longevity of the uplift is unprecedented,” said Shanaka de Silva, a geologist at Oregon State University who has been studying Uturuncu since 2006.

Small holes, known as fumaroles, release extremely hot sulfuric gases into the air near the Uturuncu volcano
in Bolivia. Measurements show the volcano in the Andes has been growing more than half an inch a year
or 20 years — an unprecedented rate, researchers say.

Taken together with other new research, he continued, the inflation means “we could be witnessing the development of a new supervolcano.” Such a volcano could produce an eruption of ash, rock and pumice 1,000 times the strength of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state, the worst volcanic event in modern American history, and 10,000 times that of the Icelandic eruptions in 2010 that paralyzed global air traffic for weeks. Luckily, while the planet has 30 to 40 supervolcanoes — 10 of them potentially active — supereruptions occur only every 100,000 years or so. The last one, that of the Toba Volcano in Sumatra about 74,000 years ago, is thought to have spewed enough ash to cause a 6- to 10-year “volcanic winter,” a 1,000-year global cooling period and a loss of life so vast that it may have changed the course of human evolution.

“We see no evidence for an imminent supervolcanic eruption anywhere on Earth,” said Jacob Lowenstern, a research geologist and geochemist with the United States Geological Survey, who specializes in one of the best-known of the world’s supervolcanoes — Yellowstone, in Wyoming. About Uturuncu, he said that while “its rise over 20 years is certainly significant,” there wasn’t enough evidence to call it a supervolcano in the making. Other researchers agree. But they say Uturuncu’s steady inflation makes it fertile ground for study. “It’s like a tumor growing within the earth,” de Silva said, “and we have to understand whether it is benign or malignant.” In 2009, with funds from the United States’ National Science Foundation, an international team of seismologists, geologists, geophysicists and other experts and students formed a project called Plutons to study Uturuncu and Lazufre, a volcano on the border of Chile and Argentina. (The project’s name is an acronym for the volcanoes and the researchers’ institutions.)

Uturuncu was already considered potentially active. Eighteen thousand feet up its slopes (it peaks at 19,711 feet above sea level), small holes in the ground called fumaroles leak scorching sulfur gases. These may date 10,000 years and are evidence of a heat source close to the surface. Also telling is the white soil near the summit (from a distance it looks deceptively like snow) that results from thermal changes below. Martyn Unsworth, a geophysicist at the University of Alberta in Canada and a member of the Plutons team, studied data from 20 days of fieldwork in November using magnetotellurics, a remote radio-wave-sensing method similar to CT scanning in the human body. The findings suggested a zone of low electrical resistance far below the surface “that is likely a magma chamber,” he said. University of Alaska geophysicists note a region where sound waves travel more slowly than normal, a characteristic of partly molten rock. And Noah Finnegan, a geomorphologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has concluded that the magma chamber is growing by one cubic meter (35 cubic feet) per second, though its total volume is not known.

Uturuncu is nestled in one of the planet’s largest supervolcanic regions, which has six supervolcanoes across Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. Though it was long thought to be separate from those supervolcanoes, new Plutons findings reveal that magma from Uturuncu’s last eruption is more similar to the supervolcanoes’ than to that of the region’s more common volcanoes. For Mayel Sunagua, a Bolivian government geologist and member of the Plutons team, this is an exciting time — “the first broad international effort dedicated to investigating our volcanoes.” Bolivia has 198 recognized volcanoes; 18 are considered potentially active. The country’s last volcanic eruption was 10,000 years ago. The flurry of activity here does lead some to wonder: Why focus on a potential hazard perhaps tens of thousands of years away, when other volcanic dangers are much more imminent? “I ask myself that same question,” Unsworth acknowledged. But he added that the research would broaden scientists’ knowledge about volcanoes in general. De Silva agrees. With its odd bulge and its other unusual signals, Uturuncu has an appealing air of mystery, he said — and besides, “it’s kind of fun.” - Bend Bulletin.

MYSTERY: Symbols of an Alien Sky, Man-Made or Natural Phenomena - The Latest UFO Sightings And Aerial Anomalies Around the World?!

Here are several of the latest unidentified flying objects (UFOs) seen recently across the globe.

This bright disc-shaped UFO was seen and recorded in the night sky above Aveley in Essex, United Kingdom in early February, 2012.

WATCH: UFO over Aveley.

TV report about the UFO phenomenon in a small Ural town in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. This happened in late January 2012.

WATCH: Strange UFO over Chelyabinsk.

This slow unidentified flying object was flying across the night sky over Midlothian in Scotland on Monday, the 6th of February, 2012 at 6:47 pm.

WATCH: UFO flying across the Midlothian.

This strange unknown object was filmed over Thames Estuary in London, UK on Sunday, the 5th of February, 2012.

WATCH: Strange UFO over London.

Large UFO was recorded with infrared camera over Minto in New South Wales, Australia on the 5th of February, 2012 at 10:45 am.

WATCH: Huge UFO flying above the plane over Minto.

Some strange bright object was seen and recorded in the night sky above Northern Illinois on the 5th of February, 2012.

WATCH: UFO over Northern Illinois.

This strange unknown object was seen and recorded in the night sky over Santa Ana in Californa on the 28th of January, 2012 between 7 pm and 10 pm.

WATCH: UFO activity over Santa Ana.

This huge fireball was recorded over Tokyo, Japan on Thursday, the 2nd of February 2012. The video includes clips from different cameras.

WATCH: Huge fireball over Tokyo.

This footage of UFO activity was filmed over St Helens in the United Kingdom on Wednesday, the 1st of February, 2012.

WATCH: UFO over St Helens.

PLANETARY TREMORS: Magnitude 3.4 Earthquake Delivers Warning Shot Just North of Mount St. Helens!

A magnitude 3.4 earthquake occurred at Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 10:51:30 UTC, and was located at 46.340°N, 122.236°W, about 10 miles north of Mount St. Helens.

The tremor had a depth of 8.9 km (5.5 miles) with an epicentre at a distance of 28 km (18 miles) southeast (138°) from Mossyrock and 84 km (52 miles) northeast (20°) from Vancouver.

The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network reports mild shaking was felt in Longview, Castle Rock and Morton. The University of Washington reports the quake was followed by a half-dozen small aftershocks in the next hour. Small quakes are common in the area around the volcano in southwest Washington.

GLOBAL VOLCANISM: ST. HELENS - The Corps of Engineers Plans to Raise Toutle Volcano Sediment Dam by 10 Feet to Prevent Runoff?!

The Corps of Engineers plans to raise the sediment dam on the Toutle River near Mount St. Helens to prevent volcanic runoff from filling the Cowlitz River bed downstream and increasing the flood danger.

If Congress goes along, the Army Corps of Engineers says it will raise the sediment-retaining dam on the north fork of the Toutle River next summer. Raising the spillway 10 feet would restore the 25-year-old structure's ability to trap volcanic sediment and prevent it from flowing into the Cowlitz River. Tim Kuhn, the corps' Cowlitz-Toutle coordinator, said raising the spillway would cost "several million dollars." The addition would be built of roller-compacted concrete. Instead of being poured into forms, the concrete is spread out and rolled in layers. So the raised portion of the spillway would look like a mounded speed hump instead of a sheer wall, Kuhn explained. The raised spillway would have a low-flow channel built into it so salmon easily can pass downstream, he added.

The project would be funded under $6.5 million for ongoing Mount St. Helens monitoring and response that President Barack Obama has requested for fiscal year 2012. Congress has yet to act on the spending bill yet, Kuhn said Friday. Adding 10 feet to the existing spillway is considered a stopgap measure while the corps completes its long-range plan for handling the tons of Mount St. Helens debris that the Toutle continues to wash downriver. Raising the spillway is cheaper than periodically dredging the Cowlitz, Kuhn said. Left unchecked, the flow of silt out gradually will raise the bed of the Cowlitz and increase flooding odds, according to corps and other hydrologists. Over the last year, the silt flow has raised the Cowlitz' bottom several inches on average from Castle Rock to its mouth, but the corps won't know for several more weeks how that additional debris has boosted flooding odds, Kuhn said.

The corps' long-term plan will involve a combination of raising the spillway — perhaps as much as 30 feet — periodically dredging the Cowlitz and building wooden weirs along the upper Toutle to trap silt. Release of the final plan has been delayed until late 2012, Kuhn said, because of a new requirement that corps plans be subjected to review by outside experts, Kuhn said. Raising the spillway 10 feet next summer would buy some time before the long-term plan can be put into effect, Kuhn said. The corps built the 125-foot-tall sediment retaining dam in the mid 1980s amid some criticism that it was not necessary, but the flow of silt quickly filled the vast storage area behind the structure. Sediment now passes largely unchecked over the dam. - The Daily News.

GLOBAL VOLCANISM: Magma Rising in Uturuncu Volcano!

Several weeks ago, I told you that a group of scientists in Bolivia are currently studying the mysterious and rapidly inflating Uturuncu volcano,  today the following news report reveals that magma is rising as it continues to inflate at an astonishing speed.

Magma is rising in a Bolivian volcano that last erupted 300,000 years ago, a U.S. research team monitoring the mountain says. Researchers from Cornell University, part of an international team studying the Uturuncu volcano, say the magma is uplifting rapidly. "Uturuncu -- a volcano in the Bolivian Andes Mountains -- was thought to be inactive," Cornell geologist Matt Pritchard said in a university release Tuesday. "The region is populated by 'supervolcanoes' that erupted between 1 (million) and 10 million years ago.

"Now the Uturuncu magma is accumulating in the crust and we're observing whether it is moving upward toward the surface," said Pritchard, who is accompanied in the research by Cornell graduate students Jennifer Jay and Scott Henderson. "Right now, we have no reason to think that an eruption is imminent," he said. "The area at Uturuncu has had hundreds of shallow earthquakes per year, but the rate of earthquakes increased briefly due to last year's tremors in Chile," Pritchard said. "These characteristics are unusual for a volcano that has not erupted in 300,000 years." - UPI.

GLOBAL VOLCANISM: GEOLOGICAL UPHEAVAL of Uturuncu Volcano - Rapidly Inflating Volcano Creates Growing Mystery in SW Bolivia?!

"It's one of the fastest uplifting volcanic areas on Earth,... what we're trying to do is understand why there is this rapid inflation... these eruptions are thought to have not only a local and regional impact, but potentially a global impact..."

Should anyone ever decide to make a show called "CSI: Geology," a group of scientists studying a mysterious and rapidly inflating South American volcano have got the perfect storyline. Researchers from several universities are essentially working as geological detectives, using a suite of tools to piece together the restive peak's past in order to understand what it is doing now, and better diagnose what may lie ahead. It's a mystery they've yet to solve. Uturuncu is a nearly 20,000-foot-high (6,000 meters) volcano in southwest Bolivia. Scientists recently discovered the volcano is inflating with astonishing speed.

"I call this 'volcano forensics,' because we're using so many different techniques to understand this phenomenon," said Oregon State University professor Shan de Silva, a volcanologist on the research team. Researchers realized about five years ago that the area below and around Uturuncu is steadily rising — blowing up like a giant balloon under a wide disc of land some 43 miles (70 kilometers) across. Satellite data revealed the region was inflating by 1 to 2 centimeters (less than an inch) per year and had been doing so for at least 20 years, when satellite observations began. "It's one of the fastest uplifting volcanic areas on Earth," de Silva told OurAmazingPlanet."What we're trying to do is understand why there is this rapid inflation, and from there we'll try to understand what it's going to lead to."

The  peak is perched like a party hat at the center of the inflating area. "It's very circular. It's like a big bull's-eye," said Jonathan Perkins, a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who recently presented work on the mountain at this year's Geological Society of America meeting  in Minneapolis. Scientists figured out from the inflation rate that the pocket of magma beneath the volcano was growing by about 27 cubic feet (1 cubic meter) per second. "That's about 10 times faster than the standard rate of magma chamber growth you see for large volcanic systems," Perkins told OurAmazingPlanet. However, no need to flee just yet, the scientists said. "It's not a volcano that we think is going to erupt at any moment, but it certainly is interesting, because the area was thought to be essentially dead," de Silva said.

Uturuncu is surrounded by one of the most dense concentrations of supervolcanoes on the planet, all of which fell silent some 1 million years ago. Supervolcanoes get their name because they erupt with such power that they typically spew out 1,000 times more material, in sheer volume, than a volcano like Mount St. Helens. Modern human civilization has never witnessed such an event. The planet's most recent supervolcanic eruption happened about 74,000 years ago in Indonesia. "These eruptions are thought to have not only a local and regional impact, but potentially a global impact," de Silva said. Uturuncu itself is in the same class as Mount St. Helens in Washington state, but its aggressive rise could indicate that a new supervolcano is on the way. Or not. De Silva said it appears that local volcanoes hoard magma for about 300,000 years before they blow — and Uturuncu last erupted about 300,000 years ago. "So that's why it's important to know how long this has been going on," he said. To find an answer, scientists needed data that stretch back thousands of years — but they had only 20 years of satellite data. - Our Amazing Planet.