Then there’s the prolonged effect from the mantle flowing back upwards under the vacated space.” “There’s what’s called the ‘elastic effect,’ which is when the earth instantly springs back up after an ice mass is removed. “There are two components to the uplift,” said Chris Rollins, the study’s lead author who conducted the research while at the Geophysical Institute. The ice’s weight causes the land beneath it to sink, and, when a glacier melts, the ground springs back like a sponge. In Alaska, this pattern has been harder to detect, as earthquakes are common in the southern part of the state.Īlaska has some of the world’s largest glaciers, which can be thousands of feet thick and cover hundreds of square miles. Scientists have known for decades that melting glaciers have caused earthquakes in otherwise tectonically stable regions, such as Canada’s interior and Scandinavia. In a recently published research article, scientists with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute found that ice loss near Glacier Bay National Park has influenced the timing and location of earthquakes with a magnitude of 5.0 or greater in the area during the past century. Researchers now think the region’s widespread loss of glacier ice helped set the stage for the quake. ![]() In 1958, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake triggered a rockslide into Southeast Alaska’s Lituya Bay, creating a tsunami that ran 1,700 feet up a mountainside before racing out to sea.
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