A geologists has a rare opportunity to be a first-hand witness to how some rocks in Chile’s Atacama Desert are sculpted into unusual shapes by brief periods of “earthquake abrasion”.
The Guardian website has a short video about the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimetre/Sub-millimetre Array) radio telescope being built high on a plateau in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
The world’s driest desert received four times its normal annual precipitation in a single storm. Mountains in Chile’s Atacama desert that usually receive no precipitation were blanketed with as much as three feet of snow.
Volcanic ash from the eruption at Chile’s Puyehue-Cordón Caulle Volcanic Complex covers the surface of Nahuel Huapi Lake in Argentina. A diver decides to brave the waves and the ash.
The eruption of the Cordon Caulle Volcano in Chile has produced an ash plume that has caused airlines to cancel their flights in New Zealand and Australia.
Earth Observatory has a satellite image that shows the ash plume from the Puyehue-Cordón Volcano Complex crossing the Andes then turning northeast over Argentina.
On June 3 and 4 an eruption at the Puyehuè – Cordón Caulle Volcanic Complex released a large plume of ash and sulfur dioxide that initially was carried south-eastwards by near-surface winds then was carried over the Atlantic Ocean by the upper-level westerlies. Video by European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites.
“After this image was taken, the ash quickly blew eastward towards Argentina. Over the border, near the town of Bariloc, a layer of ash at least 30 centimeters (12 inches) deep covered the ground.” Quoted from the Earth Observatory image release.
The Puyehue-Cordón Caulle Volcanic Complex is a cluster of volcanoes in the Andes Mountains of Chile. CNN has a small photo gallery of an eruption that began there on Saturday.
Three of the largest earthquakes since 1900 have occurred in the past six years (Indonesia, 2004; Chile, 2010; Japan, 2011). Another cluster of earthquakes occurred about 50 years ago (Kamchatka, 1952; Chile, 1960; Alaska, 1964). An article in Nature.com reports that several seismologists are intrigued with these clusters.
The shale gas boom that started in the United States has spread to countries worldwide. The Energy Information Administration has released a report that summarizes the shale gas resource for 14 regions outside of the United States.
“By studying seismographs from the earthquake that hit Chile last February, earth scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found a statistically significant increase of microearthquakes in central California in the first few hours after the main shock. The observation provides an additional support that seismic waves from distant earthquakes could also trigger seismic events on the other side of the earth.”
A magnitude 7.0 earthquake occurred near Concepcion, Chile on Friday, February 11 at about 5:05 PM local time. The USGS instrumental intensity map shows values of VI to VII near the epicenter.
A study by the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology reports that the magnitude-8.8 earthquake that occurred Chile in February 2010 did not reduce earthquake risk in that area by reducing seismic stress. In some locations risk might be higher after the earthquake.
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