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Fritz
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Unusual Indian Ocean earthquakes hint at tectonic breakup
« on: 2012-09-27 19:46:09 » |
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So putting all our manufacturing in one area in the future, may not be the best solution.
Cheers
Fritz
April 2012 quakes occurred away from plate edges, suggesting formation of a new boundary.
Source: Nature
Author: Helen Shen
Date: 2012.09.26
At least four faults within the Indo-Australian plate ruptured simultaneously in April 2012, resulting in two magnitude-8 earthquakes within two hours. (Red stars indicate the epicentres.) Keith Koper, University of Utah Seismograph Stations
A pair of massive earthquakes that rocked the Indian Ocean on 11 April 2012 may signal the latest step in the formation of a new plate boundary within Earth’s surface.
Geological stresses rending the Indo-Australian plate apart are likely to have caused the magnitude-8.6 and magnitude-8.2 quakes, which broke along numerous faults and unleashed aftershocks for 6 days afterwards, according to three papers published online today in Nature1–3.
Seismologists have suspected since the 1980s4 that the Indo-Australian plate may be breaking up. But the 11 April earthquakes represent “the most spectacular example” of that process in action, says Matthias Delescluse, a geophysicist at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and lead author of the first paper1. Worldwide, “it’s the clearest example of newly formed plate boundaries,” he says.
According to prevailing theories of plate tectonics, the Indo-Australian plate began to deform internally about 10 million years ago. As the plate moved northwards, the region near India crunched against the Eurasian plate, thrusting the Himalayas up and slowing India down. Most scientists think that the Australian portion forged ahead, creating twisting tensions that are splitting the plate apart in the Indian Ocean.
Delescluse and his team inferred the presence of these seismic stresses by modelling stress changes from shortly before the 2012 earthquakes. They found that two earlier earthquakes along the eastern plate boundary — the magnitude-9.1 tremor in 2004 that unleashed a massive tsunami across the Indian Ocean, and another quake in 2005 — probably triggered the 2012 event by adding to pent-up stresses in the plate’s middle region.
Gregory Beroza, a seismologist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, says that the model is a likely explanation. “The 2004 and 2005 earthquakes by themselves would not have caused this other earthquake. There had to be other stresses,” he says.
Slip-sliding away
Most large earthquakes occur when two plates collide at their boundaries, and one plate slides beneath the other. By contrast, when plates or portions of plates slip horizontally along a fault line, this usually results in smaller, 'strike-slip' earthquakes.
However, the first 11 April event defied expectations as the largest strike-slip earthquake on record, and one of the strongest to occur away from any conventional plate boundaries.
In the second study2, researchers found that the accumulated stresses spread over the plate’s interior broke free in the first 11 April event, resulting in one of the most complex fault patterns ever observed. Unlike most earthquakes that shake along a single fault, this one ruptured along four faults, one of which slipped as much as 20–30 metres.
“This earthquake, it was a ‘gee whiz’,” says study author Thorne Lay, a seismologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Previous work had already identified multiple strike-slip faults for the magnitude-8.6 earthquake5, but no other study had analysed the slip amounts in such detail. Beroza says that Lay and his team “do a splendid job of picking apart this very important earthquake” in their paper.
Lasting impressions
Although much attention has focused on how the earthquakes played out, some researchers are also studying the after-effects of the giant tremor. In a third study3, scientists found that for six days following the event, earthquakes of magnitude 5.5 and greater occurred at almost five times their normal rate all around the world.
“Aftershocks are usually restricted to the immediate vicinity of a main shock,” says lead author Fred Pollitz, a geophysicist at the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. He says that the 11 April example should challenge conventional definitions of how soon and how close aftershocks can occur to large earthquakes.
“Every earthquake is important to study, but this earthquake is rather unique,” says Hiroo Kanamori, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. With so many unusual characteristics to examine, the 11 April earthquake sequence may continue for some time to expand researchers’ ideas of how earthquakes can occur.
Nature
doi:10.1038/nature.2012.11487
References
Delescluse, M. et al. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature11520 (2012).
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Yue, H., Lay, T. & Koper, K. D. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature11492 (2012).
Show context
Pollitz, F. F., Stein, R. S., Sevilgen, V. & Bürgmann, R. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature11504 (2012).
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Wiens, D. A., Stein, S. Demets, C., Gordon, R. G. & Stein, C. Tectonophysics 132, 37–48 (1986).
Article
ISI
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Meng, L. et al. Science 337, 724–726 (2012).
Article
PubMed
ISI
ChemPort
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Fritz
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Re:Unusual Indian Ocean earthquakes hint at tectonic breakup
« Reply #1 on: 2012-10-23 10:05:00 » |
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I wonder as the water table drops in central North America and the 'Fracking' sucks the gas out of the ground if similar consequences with ensue for us.
Cheers
Fritz
Scientists link deep wells to deadly Spanish quake
Source: CTV News
Author: The Associated Press
Date: 2012.10.21
MADRID -- Farmers drilling ever deeper wells over decades to water their crops likely contributed to a deadly earthquake in southern Spain last year, a new study suggests. The findings may add to concerns about the effects of new energy extraction and waste disposal technologies.
Nine people died and nearly 300 were injured when an unusually shallow magnitude-5.1 quake hit the town of Lorca on May 11, 2011. It was the country's worst quake in more than 50 years, causing millions of euros in damage to a region with an already fragile economy.
Using satellite images, scientists from Canada, Italy and Spain found the quake ruptured a fault running near a basin that had been weakened by 50 years of groundwater extraction in the area.
During this period, the water table dropped by 250 metres as farmers bored ever deeper wells to help produce the fruit, vegetables and meat that are exported from Lorca to the rest of Europe. In other words, the industry that propped up the local economy in southern Spain may have undermined the very ground on which Lorca is built.
The researchers noted that even without the strain caused by water extraction, a quake would likely have occurred at some point.
But the extra stress of pumping vast amounts of water from a nearby aquifer may have been enough to trigger a quake at that particular time and place, said lead researcher Pablo J. Gonzalez of the University of Western Ontario, Canada.
Miguel de las Doblas Lavigne, a geologist with Spain's National Natural Science Museum who has worked on the same theory but was not involved in the study, said the Lorca quake was in the cards.
"This has been going on for years in the Mediterranean areas, all very famous for their agriculture and plastic greenhouses. They are just sucking all the water out of the aquifers, drying them out," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "From Lorca to (the regional capital of) Murcia you can find a very depleted water level."
De las Doblas said it was "no coincidence that all the aftershocks were located on the exact position of maximum depletion."
"The reason is clearly related to the farming, it's like a sponge you drain the water from; the weight of the rocks makes the terrain subside and any small variation near a very active fault like the Alhama de Murcia may be the straw that breaks the camels back, which is what happened," he said.
He said excess water extraction was common in Spain.
"Everybody digs their own well, they don't care about anything," he said. "I think in Lorca you may find that some 80 percent of wells are illegal."
Lorca town hall environment chief Melchor Morales said the problem dates back to the 1960s when the region opted to step up its agriculture production and when underground water was considered private property. A 1986 law has reduced the amount of well pumping, he said.
Not everyone agreed with the conclusion of the study, which was published online Sunday in Nature Geoscience.
"There have been earthquakes of similar intensity and similar damage caused in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries when there was no excess water extraction," said Jose Martinez Diez, a professor in geodynamics at Madrid's Complutense University who has also published a paper on the quake.
Still, it isn't the first time that earthquakes have been blamed on human activity, and scientists say the incident points to the need to investigate more closely how such quakes are triggered and how to prevent them.
The biggest man-made quakes are associated with the construction of large dams, which trap massive amounts of water that put heavy pressure on surrounding rock.
The 1967 Koynanagar earthquake in India, which killed more than 150 people, is one such case, said Marco Bohnhoff, a geologist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam who wasn't involved in the Lorca study.
Bohnhoff said smaller man-made quakes can also occur when liquid is pumped into the ground.
A pioneering geothermal power project in the Swiss city of Basel was abandoned in 2009 after it caused a series of earthquakes. Nobody was injured, but the tremors caused by injecting cold water into hot rocks to produce steam resulted in millions of Swiss francs damage to buildings.
Earlier this year, a report by the National Research Council in the United States found the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas was not a huge source of man-made earthquakes. However, the related practice of shooting large amounts of wastewater from "fracking" or other drilling activities into deep underground storage wells has been linked with some small earthquakes.
In an editorial accompanying the Lorca study, geologist Jean-Philippe Avouac of the California Institute of Technology said it was unclear whether human activity merely induces quakes that would have happened anyway at a later date. He noted that the strength of the quake appeared to have been greater than the stress caused by removing the groundwater.
"The earthquake therefore cannot have been caused entirely by water extraction," wrote Avouac. "Instead, it must have built up over several centuries."
Still, pumping out the water may have affected how the stress was released, and similar processes such as fracking or injecting carbon dioxide into the ground - an idea that has been suggested to reduce the greenhouse effect - could theoretically do the same, he said.
Once the process is fully understood, "we might dream of one day being able to tame natural faults with geo-engineering," Avouac said.
Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/scientists-link-deep-wells-to-deadly-spanish-quake-1.1004512#ixzz2A88mRi6y
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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