Aleutian Subduction Zone
Tuesday, 11. August 2009, 17:28:48
” What is MARGINS?
Continental margins are the Earth's principal loci for producing hydrocarbon and metal resources, for earthquake, landslide, volcanic and climatic hazards, and for the greatest population density. Despite the societal and economic importance of margins, many of the mechanical, fluid, chemical and biological processes that shape them are poorly understood. Progress is hindered by the sheer scope of the problems and by the space and time scales as well as the complexities of the processes. To overcome these obstacles, the earth science community has identified the outstanding scientific problems in continental margins research and the MARGINS Program is promoting research strategies that redirect traditional approaches to margin studies. In particular, the MARGINS Program will focus on the coordinated, interdisciplinary investigation of four fundamental initiatives; the Seismogenic Zone Experiment, the Subduction Factory, Rupturing Continental Lithosphere, and Sediment Dynamics and Strata Formation (Source to Sink). Each initiative is associated with two focus sites, research locations selected by the community to address the complete range of field, experimental and theoretical studies, over the full range of spatial and temporal scales needed to address fundamental questions associated with each initiative. The MARGINS Focus Sites are shown on this web page. The MARGINS Program is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and is driven by input from, and interaction with the earth science community:“
MARGINS publishes a newsletter bi-annually. Their Newsletter No. 22 (Spring 2009) included a science article on the Aleutian Subduction. The Newsletter can be downloaded from their Newsletters site.
Below an illustration from this newsletter:
and a quote from their poetic introduction to this article:
“Among the most beautifully geometric features of Planet Earth is the string of volcanoes and parallel subduction furrow draped between the facing nations of Russia and the United States. This beauty, carpeted in emerald-green tundra, is both mysterious and dangerous: the Aleutian arc is among the most seismically and volcanically active but poorly understood regions of the two countries. Indeed, the American segment was the site of the world’s largest eruption and second largest earthquake in the 20th century.”
- Note 1: The largest volcanic eruption in the world in the 20th century occurred in 1912 at Novarupta (see map above), and I featured it in this post.
- Note 2: The great 1964 Alaskan earthquake. The 1964 Alaskan earthquake – the second biggest recorded in history with a magnitude of 9.2 – triggered a series of massive tsunami waves with run up heights of as much as 12.7 metres in the Alaskan Gulf region and 52 metres in the Shoup Bay submarine slide in Valdez Arm. This an other very strong earthquakes are marked by a yellow star on the map above.
I featured tsunami threats like the tsunami triggered by the 1964 Alaskan earthquake in my post on Great Pacific Tsunami Threat.
WIDGETIZE