Surprise! Megaquakes Caught Sinking Volcanoes
Surprise! Megaquakes Caught Sinking Volcanoes
Jun 30, 2013 01:00 PM ET // by Larry O'Hanlon
We already know that megaquakes can level cities and launch tsunamis, but they've now been implicated in the sinking of volcanoes in Chile and Japan as well.
Two teams of scientists working independently on volcanoes in Japan and Chile discovered that after mega earthquakes in 2011 and 2010, some nearby volcanoes dropped as much as 15 centimeters (6 inches). The two teams have published their findings in a pair of papers in the June 30 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience.
"The observations are so similar in both places," commented Matthew Pritchard of Cornell University, the lead author of one of the papers. "It's just a spectacular observation."
In both locations the scientists used satellite data to look for deforming ground around the volcanoes before and after the massive 2011 magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake in Japan and the 2010 magnitude 8.8 Maule earthquake in Chile. In the Maule case, Pritchard's team wasn't even looking for subsidence. They were on an entirely different search -- for any signs of increased volcanic activity -- when they stumbled onto the changes in the sinking volcanoes.
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http://news.discovery.com/earth/rocks-fossils/incredible-sinking-volcanoes-130630.htm#mkcpgn=rssnws1
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