Earthquakes, Plate Tectonics and Volcanism

[Jag]

Yellowstone domes rising at 'really pronounced' pace

By MIKE STARK
Of The Gazette Staff

Friday, December 15, 2006

Parts of the collapsed, restless volcano in Yellowstone National Park are swelling faster than has ever been recorded.

Geologists from the University of Utah say two domes inside the Yellowstone caldera have steadily inflated at two to three times the rate as some of the most rapid movements recorded between 1923 and 1984.

"We've gone to this really pronounced, and I would say unprecedented, uplift of the caldera," said Bob Smith, a Utah geologist and one of the leading researchers into Yellowstone's busy volcanic life.

Smith presented some of the new findings Wednesday to the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Today, Smith is scheduled to present new information about the vast, fiery hot spot that has fueled Yellowstone for millions of years. One finding is that the tilting plume extends at least 390 miles below the surface.

The new research, including discussion of the origin and evolution of the Yellowstone hot spot, may help put an end to several years of debate about what kind of plume underlies the park.

Like a piece of paper moving over a candle, the Earth's crust has drifted over the hot spot for millions of years, destroying mountains and leaving a 300-mile-wide valley known as the Snake River Plain in Idaho.

The activity had a significant role in shaping landscapes in the West, from drainages and valleys to seismic drama playing out beneath the surface.

"It's had a really profound effect over a much larger area than just Yellowstone," Smith said.

Yellowstone's geology was a hot topic at the AGU meeting. More than 60 presentations touched on the park, whether it was looking at the diet of ancient wolves or activities of helium isotopes.

In recent years, much attention has been focused on so-called "huffing and puffing" of the Yellowstone caldera, the huge collapsed volcano that stretches across the park's middle.

The caldera has been rising and falling for at least 15,000 years, sometimes swinging more than 10 feet.

Portions of the caldera rose more than 3 feet between 1923 and 1984 and then dropped nearly 8 inches from 1985 to 1995. Measurements in 1995 and 1996 showed it rising again before starting to fall in 1997.

The latest upward motion has been unusual for its speed.

Using data collected on the ground and from satellites, scientists say the Mallard Lake Dome, west of Yellowstone Lake's West Thumb, has inflated by 4 centimeters a year since the middle of 2004, while the Sour Creek Dome north of Fishing Bridge has increased by about 6 centimeters a year. (One inch is 2.54 centimeters.)

Smith said the activity may be spurred by an infusion of magma from below that's heating up fluids and causing the ground to bulge.

"It's like inflating the balloon but the balloon is capped," Smith said. "Eventually that fluid's got to go somewhere."

While most of the caldera has been inflating, another nearby area has been falling.

A newly discovered bulge just outside the caldera, near Norris Geyser Basin, has fallen by about an inch since 2004.

But in the preceding six years - from 1997 to 2003 - the dome grew by about 5 inches and may have triggered some of the unusual activity at Norris, including a sudden rise in temperatures, the formation of explosive new steam vents and the reawakening of Steamboat geyser, the world's tallest.

When the dome, called the North Rim Uplift, began deflating again, temperatures at Norris dropped, Steamboat stopped erupting and the steaming vents at nearby Nymph Lake died down.

The below-ground connections between the ups and downs at Norris and domes inside the caldera are still unknown.

And what it all adds up to in the big picture is also unclear - except that Yellowstone continues to be geologically active and few things stay static for long.

In recent years, the possibility of a large volcanic eruption has been a popular media topic, but Smith said the scenario seems overhyped. A more likely possibility would be a large earthquake, he said, noting that the most powerful quake in the interior Western United States happened at Hebgen Lake on Aug. 17, 1959.

"It's a much higher risk," he said.

Jag

[samizdat]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061228/...hina_snakes_dc

I have a hunch this is real and good info. I've read various tales about how dogs "go off" before a quake. This monitoring, albeit atheistic or perhaps psuedo scientific is likely reliable.
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has come up with an earthquake prediction system which relies on the behavior of snakes, state media said on Thursday, two days after two quakes struck off neighboring Taiwan.
The earthquake bureau in Nanning, capital of the Guangxi autonomous region in southern China, had developed its system using a combination of natural instinct and modern technology, the China Daily newspaper said.
Experts at the bureau monitor snakes at local snake farms via video cameras linked to a broadband Internet connection. The video feed runs 24 hours per day.
"Of all the creatures on Earth, snakes are perhaps the most sensitive to earthquakes," bureau director Jiang Weisong was quoted as saying.
Jiang said snakes, a popular restaurant dish in the south in the winter, could sense an earthquake from 120 km (70 miles) away, three to five days before it happens. They respond by behaving strangely.
"When an earthquake is about to occur, snakes will move out of their nests, even in the cold of winter," Jiang was quoted as saying.
"If the earthquake is a big one, the snakes will even smash into walls while trying to escape."
China is struck by frequent earthquakes, with most hitting remote rural areas.
Two people were killed and 42 injured on Tuesday when three buildings collapsed in earthquakes that shook southern Taiwan.
While a tsunami warning came to nothing, the quake damaged undersea telecommunication cables, affecting users across Asia.

[Jag]

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/0...19-502-ak-0000


2004 Quake Wounded Earth's Crust

Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News

April 23, 2007 — Deep water may be healing the portion of Earth's crust ruptured by the deadly 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, say Japanese scientists who have detected changes deep in the quake zone with orbiting, gravity-measuring spacecrafts.

The researchers propose that moving water in Earth's mantle — below the crust — explains the relatively quick fading of a "dent" in Earth's gravity caused by the rare mega-thrust earthquake that launched the terrible 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. If so, it means water plays a surprisingly big role in the dynamics of Earth's mantle.

A "dent" in gravity is really a change in the geoid, the invisible global contour map of the lumpy variations in gravitational force. Those variations are caused by differences in the mass of the planet in different places.

Even on a big planet, massive objects like chunks of crust or mountains can still exert their own measurable local gravity, however small compared to cumulative gravity of the entire Earth. This can now be measured from space using the two Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites.

A mountain range, for instance, positions more mass closer to Earth's surface, and so it has a different gravitational tug than a spot in the middle of the ocean, where Earth's crust is thin and all the gravity-making mass is far below.

In the case of the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, the downward lurch of one crustal plate under another caused the gigantic quake.

"Geoid changes are due to the vertical movement of mass," explained geoscientist Kosuke Heki of the University of Hokkaido in Japan. He and his colleagues published their study on the changes at Sumatra-Andaman rupture zone in the latest issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

That alone is a pretty remarkable thing," said geophysicist Paul Segall of Stanford University in California, commenting on the detection of the gravity change, and the subsequent geoid rebound. "It's a real achievement. The data looks pretty good."

As for whether it's really the shifting of mantle water that accounts for the rebound, Heki suspects it is, comparing the phenomenon to the way a body responds to injury.

"A bruise in the human body is often associated with swelling caused by internal bleeding," Heki explained.

In the Earth, the "bruise is caused by the quake, the swelling is like the change in the geoid," he said and the internal bleeding is the movement of water freed from rocks by the injury.

"Although it may take longer time for the scar itself to heal, swellings (the geoid) may heal earlier," Heki added.

The quick changes the Japanese team are seeing are indeed unusual, said Segall. However, the healing of the geoid could also be from silent slippages in the crust after the giant quake.

"I have to say that in many cases it's been very difficult to untangle" the possibilities, Segall told Discovery News. That said, he's not ready to rule out water.

"It's thought-provoking," said Segall. "It will be interesting to see what happens with more time."

expand

Damage Done

Jag

[American Patriot]

Yellowstone's Ancient Supervolcano: Molten Plume Of Material Cooler Than Expected
Science Daily ^ | August 28th, 2008

The geysers of Yellowstone National Park owe their existence to the "Yellowstone hotspot"--a region of molten rock buried deep beneath Yellowstone, geologists have found... But how hot is this "hotspot," and what's causing it?

In an effort to find out, Derek Schutt of Colorado State University and Ken Dueker of the University of Wyoming took the hotspot's temperature They found that the hotspot is "only" 50 to 200 degrees Celsius hotter than its surroundings.

"Although Yellowstone sits above a plume of hot material coming up from deep with the Earth, it's a remarkably 'lukewarm' plume," said Schutt, comparing Yellowstone to other plumes.

(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...

[samizdat]

This site appears to formulate a linguistic algorothim from scanning reports from esp/diviners and prophets and the following combines a fema warning on earthquakes. They claim and appear to have predicted 911, the recent Chinese earthquake and various sundry items such as the econ collapse- their forte.

http://www.urbansurvival.com/week.htm

Two Quakes in Three Weeks...
I had a chance to talk with my colleague Cliff of www.halfpasthuman.com about the major earthquakes that show up in his predictive linguistics work for the window around December 10-12 for a first major earthquake and then a couple of days later, perhaps as late at the 15th for a second large quake.

I know, I know, you come here for the insightful commentary on the financial markets, so what is this earthquake stuff all about? Well, Cliff's built a rickety time machine - that works by sampling huge numbers of posts on the internet, and then looking at the change in language which seems to have pretty good predictive powers in terms of spotting what's coming.

I wanted to scribble down (in public, no less), as much as I could because earthquakes are an area of archetypes that are pretty darned clear in the language-shift work. Not only did we pick up the Banda Aceh quake five months before-the-fact, but more recently, earlier this year, we had very good insight into the Chinese earthquake (7.8-8.1, depending on which source you cite).
And, when I say 'good insight" I'm not kidding. Just go back at read the posts that we put up three days before that event by clicking here.
---
The 'details' on this kind of thing are always sketchy; sorry we can't get down to the specific city. At the moment, however, it looks like at least one of the two quakes will be inside the band 32 to 36-degrees latitude and that one of the quakes will be noticed as having 5 pretty distinct/large aftershocks of some consequence.

Moreover, one of the quakes (the first?) will be associated with fertile plains where things are grow, while the second will be associated with "dancing mountains" although not sure (again, this is a new science) which of these will come first. Seems Pacific Ring of Fire, in one case, too.

One of the quakes will also be noted for causing "isolation" to the point that other countries will be sending aid - and it's possible that the quake with the isolation could be U.S. centered.

There are several competing scenarios that seem to fall out of interpretation of modelspace. The main feature is that first one quake, then the other within a few days later. There's also something of a hyperdimensional physics relationship. Such that wherever the first quake is, the second one will happen in antipodal fashion, but not necessarily antipodal in a strict plain/ball geometry kind of way; rather it seems to be the kind that advance hyperdimensional physics would lay out.

If you click over to a short explanation of Icosahedrons in geometry, look at the drawing, and picture sticking the round earth inside of it, it's like the antipodal quake is likely two happen near one of the vertices nearest antipodal, but it may not be the precise singular antepod, it could be one of the other nearest it.

Now, some of the possibilities, just to give you a sense of how it could play out...

Could be something in North America, Hawaii, or Alaska for #1 (with a lesser chance of the Pacific Northwest) In this case, the antipode might be India/Pakistan. Less chance: Back to China for another big one.

Another possibility would be the first quake being in Indonesia, in which case antipodes of California, (or in the band Texas over to New Madrid's southern reaches) Mexico, or Ecuador might fit.

Or, it might be something like Chile for one, then China. Or, it might be China first, then in one of the 'Stans.

Sorry, until we get to within 3-days, the quakes are still in the 'firming up' in modelspace mode for now. Sometimes, once we get inside 3-days, things get much firmer, so please drop by around December 8-9-10, and let's see if the resolution gets better.
---
Meantime, we found it perhaps significant that the US Government's FEMA folks are waning of a potentially catastrophic earthquake over a similar kind of range (!). Called the "NMSZ" - for New Madrid Seismic Zone" the timing, because of proximity to Cliff's work, is a little worrisome to say the least. Here's the FEMA press release out Thursday:

"Areas nearest NMSZ would experience widespread and catastrophic physical damage, negative social impacts and economic losses; states include Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) today released a report, Impact of Earthquakes on the Central USA, which presents the findings of a two-year study on the impact of a 7.7 magnitude earthquake on states in the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ). The study was conducted for FEMA by the Mid-America Earthquake (MAE) Center at the University of Illinois in partnership with the Central United States Earthquake Consortium (CUSEC), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and George Washington University's Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management.
The study, the first of its kind to be conducted on such a large scale, is part of FEMA's NMSZ Catastrophic Earthquake Disaster Response Planning Initiative. It is primarily intended to provide scientific data upon which to base response and recovery planning for the devastating earthquakes that have long been predicted for the New Madrid region, which includes areas of Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee. The study is available for download at www.mae.ce.uiuc.edu, click on the second small screen on the left or wait for and click on the headline "New Comprehensive Report on Earthquakes in the Central USA."
According to the study, areas within the NMSZ would experience widespread and catastrophic physical damage, negative social impacts, and economic losses. Three different earthquake events were considered, one for each segment of the New Madrid Fault - northeast, central and southwest. For example, an earthquake event that occurs in the southwestern part of the seismic zone would cause significant damage in northeast Arkansas, northwest Mississippi, western Tennessee and portions of western Kentucky, and is likely to cause damage to the greatest number of homes and affect the largest number of people. The study notes that the total economic impact of a series of NMSZ earthquakes is likely to constitute the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States.
The report provides state-specific information, including damage levels specific to building and occupancy type; essential facilities; highway bridges; electric power, potable water, waste water and communications facilities; and pipeline damage where appropriate. It also identifies the counties that could be expected to sustain the most damage in each state and provides information on potential interruptions of utility services and impacts on essential facilities, such as hospitals, schools, emergency operations centers, and police and fire stations.
The assessments provided in the study have been used to facilitate earthquake response operations planning sessions in 30 FEMA-supported workshops, conducted with the 747 counties and the eight states in the NMSZ. The workshops were designed to support the development of integrated state and local plans for response and recovery operations following a catastrophic earthquake. Participants included more than 3,800 representatives of federal, state, tribal, local and county emergency management and responder organizations, as well as the private sector.

We find it quite curious that while the linguistics have been pointing at the Dec 10-12 window for almost a year, that FEMA's issuing impact studies.

Oh yeah: Two other items. Double-check your food/water plans so that you have at least a month of supplies. Apparently, wherever at least one of these things pops, there will be foreign aid - and even hints in the data that the area where the isolation is greatest seems to be inside the USA and that we (the US) will be receiving offers of aid from other countries.

The other thing to do is to read up on the so-called "Triangle of Life" debate. Click over to the "American Rescue Team International" web site and you can find out more about it. A little history of ARTI here - seeing as it was formed by Doug Copp in the aftermath of the Mexico City quake in 1985.

Since, linguistically anyway, something that big (or damaging) is in the cards for next month, a little review seems in order.

Not everyone agrees with the "triangle of life" including apparently the USGS which asserts on its site that:

"Drop, cover, and hold under a table or desk is still the best recommendation, according to the American Red Cross. "

Which side do I take in this? Well, after about 5-minutes with some 2-by 4's in the shop, I'm a triangles guy. Four-sided 'boxes' were not as stable as a triangle when you throw a lot of weight on top of them. My opinion, so don't send me 8-gazillion emails on this, please!
---
Oh and we do hope to be completely wrong on this!

[samizdat]

[samizdat]

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.php

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081230/ap_on_sc/yellowstone_quakes

Scientists eye unusual swarm of Yellowstone quakes

[American Patriot]

Here it comes.....

Nuclear war in the Middle East and the Yellowstone Caldera explodes....

No news gets in, no news gets out. lol


I really need to get my boat in the water. hahaha

[Malsua]

Yellowstone isn't going to blow. If it does...well, I guess the economy doesn't mean much.

[Ryan Ruck]

Fears of Explosive Volcano Eruption Closes Kamchatka Airport

Predictions, that the Koryak Volcano located about 13nm north-north-east of Petropavlosvk-Kamchatsky Airport (Russia) on the Kamchatka peninsula might burst into an explosive eruption, have closed the Petropavlosvk-Kamchatsky Airport.

The Volcano has increased its eruptions in the recent days. Now collapses at the north-western slope of the 3456 meter high volcano at a height of about 3100 meters triggered fears, the volcano might burst into an explosive eruption. The volcano's last significant eruption was estimated about 3500 year ago, the last minor eruption was in 1957.

[American Patriot]

Yellowstone isn't going to blow. If it does...well, I guess the economy doesn't mean much.

I disagree Mal, Yellowstone IS going to blow. Eventually. Maybe not next Thursday, but in the next thousand years for sure. It is past due.

Other evidence indicates that the magma is rising rapidly in the caldera in just the least five or six years (since I visited there about eight years ago a significant change in the lakes have occurred).

You're right, if it blows, economy won't matter - there will be none but a barter economy for the next couple of hundred years, at least among those LEFT behind.

On the other hand, me getting my boat in the water has nothing to do with this... it was an offhanded comment

[American Patriot]

Just as an "aside" (ok, not really... but related)... Fox just announced "Over 200 earthquakes at Yellowstone in the last couple of days.... scientists state this is a 'sign of great danger'."

[Ryan Ruck]

I don't know a whole lot about tectonics and the like but my concern has been increasing about Yellowstone. According to things I've read, the quakes are still occurring with a high and even increasing frequency. There is also some thought that the type of quakes that are being seen are called "harmonic tremors" which indicates magma on the move. I've also read that while small earthquakes are a good thing along a fault line (because they slowly release built up stresses rather than one big boom), they are a BAD thing around volcanoes for the aforementioned magma movement reason. Similar "harmonic tremors" were seen at Mount St. Helens before it blew.

[samizdat]

How fast does magma flow?

[Ryan Ruck]

From what I've been reading, there are magmas of different viscosities that flow at different rates based on their mineral content.

[PsycoJoe]

Isn't there supposed to be a regular volcano at Yellowstone?

[Ryan Ruck]

Yellowstone IS a volcano...



According to historic record, Yellowstone has had a major eruption about every 600,000 years. The last having been 640,000 years ago so some say it is overdue for another major eruption. Yellowstone has had other much smaller eruptions with the most recent having been 70,000 years ago and, non-volcanic steam eruptions that happen every so often.

[PsycoJoe]

This I am aware. I can remember watching a program on Yellowstone a few months ago and, if I'm remembering correctly, they mentioned a minor eruption during the 30's or 40's.

[American Patriot]

There are always "minor tremors" there, and they range from about .nothing on the scale to around 2 usually. Most aren't even felt. The ones lately are being felt and they are very frequent.

Ryan is right about harmonic quakes being associated with magma flows. The movement of magma causes a "rumble" as it goes.

Sami asked how fast, and that too is correct, depends on the temps and viscosity. The higher the temperature (meaning the deeper it was to begin with) the quicker it will flow. The faster it flows however, the more pressure from below. The more pressure below the more the ground will swell above.

This is where things get scary...

There have been at least three (I might be wrong, might be four) caldera explosions, each occurring about ever 600,000 years. The last one was about 640,000 years ago roughly. The next one is "due about now".

No one knows what really happens toward the build up exactly, but they can guess pretty well and think that the caldera is filling now. I believe I have another thread running on the specifics of Yellowstone, lemme bump that with some updates this morning.

Rick

[American Patriot]

Guess this was the thread. I thought I had one dedicated specifically to Yellowstone. Oh well.