Radiation exposure linked to aggressive thyroid cancers, researchers confirm for the first time

fukushima disaster

For the first time, researchers have found that exposure to radioactive iodine is associated with more aggressive forms of thyroid cancer, according to a careful study of nearly 12,000 people in Belarus who were exposed when they were children or adolescents to fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.

Researchers examined thyroid cancers diagnosed up to two decades after the Chernobyl accident and found that higher thyroid radiation doses estimated from measurements taken shortly after the accident were associated with more aggressive tumor features.

"Our group has previously shown that exposures to radioactive iodine significantly increase the risk of thyroid cancer in a dose-dependent manner. The new study shows that radiation exposures are also associated with distinct clinical features that are more aggressive," said the paper's first author, Lydia Zablotska, MD, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UC San Francisco (UCSF). The paper will be published online in the journal Cancer.

Zablotska said the findings have implications for those exposed to radioactive iodine fallout from the 2011 nuclear reactor incidents in Fukushima, Japan, after the reactors were damaged by an earthquake-induced tsunami.

"Those exposed as children or adolescents to the fallout are at highest risk and should probably be screened for thyroid cancer regularly, because these cancers are aggressive, and they can spread really fast," Zablotska said. "Clinicians should be aware of the aggressiveness of radiation-associated tumors and closely monitor those at high risk."

Chernobyl studies led by Zablotska also showed for the first time that exposures to the radioactive iodine after the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident are associated with a whole spectrum of thyroid diseases, from benign to malignant. Benign encapsulated tumors of the thyroid gland are called follicular adenomas, and are treated in the same way as thyroid cancer -- by removing the thyroid gland, then giving patients pills to replace the hormones that are lost. Lifelong hormone supplementation treatment is both costly and complicated for patients.

Thyroid cancer is ordinarily rare among children, with less than one new case per million diagnosed each year. Among adults, about 13 new cases will be diagnosed each year for every 100,000 people, according to the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). But in the Belarus cohort, the researchers diagnosed 158 thyroid cancers among 11,664 subjects during three rounds of screening. Those who had received higher radiation doses also were more likely to have solid or diffuse variants of thyroid cancer, as well as to have more aggressive tumor features, such as spread to lymphatic vessels and several simultaneous cancer lesions in the thyroid gland.

Source: University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)

The Studying magma formation beneath Mount St. Helens

Mount St. Helens as it appeared two years after its catastrophic eruption on May 18, 1980. Credit: U.S. Geological Survey

University and government scientists are embarking on a collaborative research expedition to improve volcanic eruption forecasting by learning more about how a deep-underground feeder system creates and supplies magma to Mount St. Helens.

They hope the research will produce science that will lead to better understanding of eruptions, which in turn could lead to greater public safety.

The Imaging Magma Under St. Helens project involves three distinct components: active-source seismic monitoring, passive-source seismic monitoring and magnetotelluric monitoring, using fluctuations in Earth's electromagnetic field to produce images of structures beneath the surface.
Researchers are beginning passive-source and magnetotelluric monitoring, while active-source monitoring -- measuring seismic waves generated by underground detonations -- will be conducted later.

Passive-source monitoring involves burying seismometers at 70 different sites throughout a 60-by-60-mile area centered on Mount St. Helens in southwestern Washington. The seismometers will record data from a variety of seismic events.

"We will record local earthquakes, as well as distant earthquakes. Patterns in the earthquake signatures will reveal in greater detail the geological structures beneath St. Helens," said John Vidale, director of the University of Washington-based Pacific Northwest Seismic Network.

Magnetotelluric monitoring will be done at 150 sites spread over an area running 125 miles north to south and 110 miles east to west, which includes both Mount Rainier and Mount Adams. Most of the sites will only be used for a day, with instruments recording electric and magnetic field signals that will produce images of subsurface structures.

Besides the UW, collaborating institutions are Oregon State University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, Rice University, Columbia University, the U.S. Geological Survey and ETH-Zurich in Switzerland. The work is being funded by the National Science Foundation.
Mount St. Helens has been the most active volcano in the Cascade Range during the last 2,000 years and has erupted twice in the last 35 years. It also is more accessible than most volcanoes for people and equipment, making it a prime target for scientists trying to better understand how volcanoes get their supply of magma.

The magma that eventually comes to the surface probably originates 60 to 70 miles deep beneath St. Helens, at the interface between the Juan de Fuca and North American tectonic plates. The plates first come into contact off the Pacific Northwest coast, where the Juan de Fuca plate subducts beneath the North American plate and reaches great depth under the Cascades. As the magma works its way upward, it likely accumulates as a mass several miles beneath the surface.

As the molten rock works its way toward the surface, it is possible that it gathers in a large chamber a few miles beneath the surface. The path from great depth to this chamber is almost completely unknown and is a main subject of the study. The project is expected to conclude in the summer of 2016.

Source: University of Washington

The New evidence for 'oceans' of water deep in Earth: Water bound in mantle rock alters view of Earth's composition

Schematic cross section of the Earth’s interior. The study by Steve Jacobsen and Brandon Schmandt used seismic waves to find magma generated at the base of the transition zone, around 410 miles deep. Dehydration melting at those conditions, also observed in the study’s high-pressure experiments, suggests the transition zone may contain oceans worth of H2O dissolved in high-pressure rock. The findings alter previous assumptions about the Earth’s composition.

Researchers from Northwestern University and the University of New Mexico report evidence for potentially oceans worth of water deep beneath the United States. Though not in the familiar liquid form -- the ingredients for water are bound up in rock deep in the Earth's mantle -- the discovery may represent the planet's largest water reservoir.

The presence of liquid water on the surface is what makes our "blue planet" habitable, and scientists have long been trying to figure out just how much water may be cycling between Earth's surface and interior reservoirs through plate tectonics.

Northwestern geophysicist Steve Jacobsen and University of New Mexico seismologist Brandon Schmandt have found deep pockets of magma located about 400 miles beneath North America, a likely signature of the presence of water at these depths. The discovery suggests water from the Earth's surface can be driven to such great depths by plate tectonics, eventually causing partial melting of the rocks found deep in the mantle.

The findings, to be published June 13 in the journal Science, will aid scientists in understanding how the Earth formed, what its current composition and inner workings are and how much water is trapped in mantle rock.

"Geological processes on the Earth's surface, such as earthquakes or erupting volcanoes, are an expression of what is going on inside the Earth, out of our sight," said Jacobsen, a co-author of the paper. "I think we are finally seeing evidence for a whole-Earth water cycle, which may help explain the vast amount of liquid water on the surface of our habitable planet. Scientists have been looking for this missing deep water for decades."

Scientists have long speculated that water is trapped in a rocky layer of the Earth's mantle located between the lower mantle and upper mantle, at depths between 250 miles and 410 miles. Jacobsen and Schmandt are the first to provide direct evidence that there may be water in this area of the mantle, known as the "transition zone," on a regional scale. The region extends across most of the interior of the United States.

Schmandt, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of New Mexico, uses seismic waves from earthquakes to investigate the structure of the deep crust and mantle. Jacobsen, an associate professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, uses observations in the laboratory to make predictions about geophysical processes occurring far beyond our direct observation.

The study combined Jacobsen's lab experiments in which he studies mantle rock under the simulated high pressures of 400 miles below the Earth's surface with Schmandt's observations using vast amounts of seismic data from the USArray, a dense network of more than 2,000 seismometers across the United States.

Jacobsen's and Schmandt's findings converged to produce evidence that melting may occur about 400 miles deep in the Earth. H2O stored in mantle rocks, such as those containing the mineral ringwoodite, likely is the key to the process, the researchers said.

"Melting of rock at this depth is remarkable because most melting in the mantle occurs much shallower, in the upper 50 miles," said Schmandt, a co-author of the paper. "If there is a substantial amount of H2O in the transition zone, then some melting should take place in areas where there is flow into the lower mantle, and that is consistent with what we found."

If just one percent of the weight of mantle rock located in the transition zone is H2O, that would be equivalent to nearly three times the amount of water in our oceans, the researchers said.

This water is not in a form familiar to us -- it is not liquid, ice or vapor. This fourth form is water trapped inside the molecular structure of the minerals in the mantle rock. The weight of 250 miles of solid rock creates such high pressure, along with temperatures above 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, that a water molecule splits to form a hydroxyl radical (OH), which can be bound into a mineral's crystal structure.

Schmandt and Jacobsen's findings build on a discovery reported in March in the journal Nature in which scientists discovered a piece of the mineral ringwoodite inside a diamond brought up from a depth of 400 miles by a volcano in Brazil. That tiny piece of ringwoodite -- the only sample in existence from within the Earth -- contained a surprising amount of water bound in solid form in the mineral.
"Whether or not this unique sample is representative of the Earth's interior composition is not known, however," Jacobsen said. "Now we have found evidence for extensive melting beneath North America at the same depths corresponding to the dehydration of ringwoodite, which is exactly what has been happening in my experiments."

For years, Jacobsen has been synthesizing ringwoodite, colored sapphire-like blue, in his Northwestern lab by reacting the green mineral olivine with water at high-pressure conditions. (The Earth's upper mantle is rich in olivine.) He found that more than one percent of the weight of the ringwoodite's crystal structure can consist of water -- roughly the same amount of water as was found in the sample reported in the Nature paper.

"The ringwoodite is like a sponge, soaking up water," Jacobsen said. "There is something very special about the crystal structure of ringwoodite that allows it to attract hydrogen and trap water. This mineral can contain a lot of water under conditions of the deep mantle."

For the study reported in Science, Jacobsen subjected his synthesized ringwoodite to conditions around 400 miles below the Earth's surface and found it forms small amounts of partial melt when pushed to these conditions. He detected the melt in experiments conducted at the Advanced Photon Source of Argonne National Laboratory and at the National Synchrotron Light Source of Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Jacobsen uses small gem diamonds as hard anvils to compress minerals to deep-Earth conditions. "Because the diamond windows are transparent, we can look into the high-pressure device and watch reactions occurring at conditions of the deep mantle," he said. "We used intense beams of X-rays, electrons and infrared light to study the chemical reactions taking place in the diamond cell."

Jacobsen's findings produced the same evidence of partial melt, or magma, that Schmandt detected beneath North America using seismic waves. Because the deep mantle is beyond the direct observation of scientists, they use seismic waves -- sound waves at different speeds -- to image the interior of the Earth.

"Seismic data from the USArray are giving us a clearer picture than ever before of the Earth's internal structure beneath North America," Schmandt said. "The melting we see appears to be driven by subduction -- the downwelling of mantle material from the surface."

The melting the researchers have detected is called dehydration melting. Rocks in the transition zone can hold a lot of H2O, but rocks in the top of the lower mantle can hold almost none. The water contained within ringwoodite in the transition zone is forced out when it goes deeper (into the lower mantle) and forms a higher-pressure mineral called silicate perovskite, which cannot absorb the water. This causes the rock at the boundary between the transition zone and lower mantle to partially melt.

"When a rock with a lot of H2O moves from the transition zone to the lower mantle it needs to get rid of the H2O somehow, so it melts a little bit," Schmandt said. "This is called dehydration melting."

"Once the water is released, much of it may become trapped there in the transition zone," Jacobsen added.

Just a little bit of melt, about one percent, is detectible with the new array of seismometers aimed at this region of the mantle because the melt slows the speed of seismic waves, Schmandt said.

The USArray is part of EarthScope, a program of the National Science Foundation that deploys thousands of seismic, GPS and other geophysical instruments to study the structure and evolution of the North American continent and the processes the cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
The National Science Foundation (grants EAR-0748797 and EAR-1215720) and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation supported the research

Source: Northwestern University

More Earthquakes for Chile? Seismic gap has not been closed

GPS measurements of the displacement vectors. Credit: GFZ

After the strong earthquake that struck Chile on April 2 (CEST), numerous aftershocks, some of them of a considerable magnitude, have struck the region around Iquique. Seismologists from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences doubt that the strong earthquake closed the local seismic gap and decreased the risk of a large earthquake. On the contrary, initial studies of the rupture process and the aftershocks show that only about a third of the vulnerable zone broke.

This vulnerable area is referred to as the seismic gap of Iquique and a strong earthquake is expected to strike here. The Pacific Nazca plate meets the South American plate at South America's west coast. "In a subsea trench along the coast, the Pacific Ocean floor submerges beneath the continent building up tension that is released in earthquakes," explains Professor Onno Oncken of the GFZ. "In the course of about 150 years the entire plate boundary from Patagonia in the South to Panama in the North breaks completely with a segmented series of strong earthquakes." This cycle has been completed except for a last segment west of Iquique in northern Chile. As expected, the strong earthquake of April 2 took place exactly at this seismic gap.

No All-Clear
Initial analyses conducted by GFZ seismologists have shown that there is no sign that tension in the earth' crust has significantly decreased: "So far tension has been released only in the central section of this vulnerable zone," Oncken further explains. The series of earthquakes began on March 16 with a 6.7-magnitude earthquake. Although the main earthquake with a magnitude of 8.1 broke the central section of the seismic gap of a length of some 100 kilometres, two large segments further north and south remain intact, and these segments are able to cause strong earthquakes with a high risk of ground shaking and tsunamis.Oncken: "This means that the risk of one or even several earthquakes with a magnitude clearly above 8 still exists." Furthermore, the location and magnitude of the aftershocks suggest such a scenario.

Since the main quake struck, hundreds of aftershocks have been registered, the strongest that of April 2 (CEST) of a magnitude of 7.6. This earthquake struck about 100 kilometres south of the main earthquake's epicentre. Together with the its associated aftershocks, it forms a second rupture zone.

Scientists getting ready for a field trip
For such extreme events, the GFZ has a task force called HART (Hazard and Risk Team) that will travel to the area affected to conduct further studies. The assignment aims at gaining a better and more detailed understanding of the rupture process based on the aftershocks, and defining the rupture surface more precisely based on the distribution of the aftershocks. Currently 25 seismometers are being prepared for air transport. Early next week a team of eight GFZ scientists will fly to Chile. The 25 portable seismometers will be used to expand the existing observatory network IPOC (Integrated Plate Boundary Observatory Chile) in order to be able to determine the earthquake epicentres more precisely. In addition highly precise surface displacements will be measured at 50 GPS measuring points. Two new additional continuous GPS stations will be installed to determine how the earthquake has deformed the earth' crust.

The Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Geomar in Kiel intends to support the measuring campaign. Ocean floor seismometers will supplement land-based seismic data by providing measurements of the aftershocks on the seafloor.

The Plate Boundary Observatory IPOC in Chile
The GFZ initiated the setup of an observatory directly within the seismic gap in northern Chile in order to be able to precisely measure and capture tectonic processes before, during and after the expected strong earthquake. The observatory called Integrated Plate Boundary Observatory Chile (IPOC) is a European-American network of institutions and scientists. Together with several Chilean and German universities, German, French, Chilean and American non-university research institutions operate a decentralized instrumentation system located at Chile's convergent plate boundary to gather data on earthquakes, deformations, magmatism, and surface processes.

The mission succeeded in the case of the April 2 earthquake: "All our instruments survived the quake and aftershocks unscathed. We now have a set of data that is unique in the world," says GFZ seismologist Günter Asch with a smile, who was responsible for checking the instruments on site right after the earthquake and who is once again on his way to the region. "We believe that these data will help us understand the entire earthquake process -- from the phase that tension builds up to the actual rupture, and also during the post-seismic phase." This understanding will provide insights into earthquake risks in this part of the world as well as elsewhere.

The IPOC will further expand. To this day more than 20 multi-parameter stations have been set up. They comprise broadband seismographs, accelerometers, continuous GPS receivers, magneto-telluric probes, expansion measuring devices and climate sensors. Their data is transferred to Potsdam in real time. The European Southern Observatory on Cerro Paranal is now also part of the observatory network

Source: Helmholtz Centre Potsdam - GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences

How and When disaster strikes: Safeguarding networks

Safeguarding networks

Disasters both natural and human-caused can damage or destroy data and communications networks. Several presentations at the 2014 OFC Conference and Exposition, being held March 9-13 in San Francisco, Calif., USA will present new information on strategies that can mitigate the impacts of these disasters.

New Algorithm Finds Safe Refuge for Cloud Data
Much of our computing these days, from browsing websites and watching online videos to checking email and following social networks, relies on the cloud. The cloud lives in data centers -- massive warehouses filled with thousands of servers that run constantly. Disasters such as earthquakes, tornadoes, or even terrorist attacks, can damage the data centers and the communication links between them, causing massive losses in data and costly disruptions.

To mitigate such potential damage, researchers from the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), Sakarya University in Turkey, and Politecnico de Milano in Italy, first analyzed the risk that a disaster may pose to a communications network, based on the possible damage of a data center or the links that connect them to users. Then, they created an algorithm that keeps data safe by moving or copying the data from data centers in peril to more secure locations away from the disaster. The algorithm assesses the risks for damage and users' demands on the network to determine, in real-time, which locations would provide the safest refuge from a disaster.

"Our content placement solution can be implemented with some modifications on any existing settings of data centers and it is adaptable to different dynamic disaster scenarios," said researcher Sifat Ferdousi of UC Davis. "This can highly benefit the network providers in designing disaster-resilient cloud networks."

Integrating Wireless with Fiber for Temporary Emergency Networks
Earthquakes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters can sever the optical fibers that carry data across long distances, leaving telecommunications networks useless. If fiber-optic cables are down, wireless communication can fill the void and be part of a temporary, emergency network. But for such a system to work, wireless technology would have to be integrated with the fiber-optic network that transports data around the world.

Such an integrated wireless optical system would combine the speed and bandwidth of fiber optics with the mobility and range of a wireless network. This system could also be applied in home networks, in which data is sent via optical cables to the home then broadcasted wirelessly.

One big challenge of an integrated system, however, is to develop the wireless links that can handle the speed and capacity of optical cables. Researchers from Fudan University in Shanghai and ZTE (TX), Inc. in Morristown, N.J., USA have now developed a new antenna architecture that allows for a simple and high-speed integrated wireless optical system. The design relies on two pairs of antennas, explains Jianjun Yu of ZTE. Because each pair is polarized differently and isolated, there's no interference between the two pairs, allowing for a simpler structure and a larger transmission capacity. The new system achieves a data-transmission rate of 146 gigabits per second (Gb/s), which is the highest bit-rate-per-channel in a wireless signal shown so far, Yu says.

Source: The Optical Society
Summary: Disasters both natural and human-caused can damage or destroy data and communications networks. New information on strategies that can mitigate the impacts of these disasters.

The Mine landslide triggered earthquakes: Record-breaking slide would bury Central Park 66 feet deep

The April 10, 2013, landslide at Rio Tinto-Kennecott Utah Copper's Bingham Canyon mine contains enough debris to bury New York City's Central ... Image Credit: Kennecott Utah Copper

Last year's gigantic landslide at a Utah copper mine probably was the biggest nonvolcanic slide in North America's modern history, and included two rock avalanches that happened 90 minutes apart and surprisingly triggered 16 small earthquakes, University of Utah scientists discovered.

The landslide -- which moved at an average of almost 70 mph and reached estimated speeds of at least 100 mph -- left a deposit so large it "would cover New York's Central Park with about 20 meters (66 feet) of debris," the researchers report in the January 2014 cover study in the Geological Society of America magazine GSA Today.

While earthquakes regularly trigger landslides, the gigantic landslide the night of April 10, 2013, is the first known to have triggered quakes. The slide occurred in the form of two huge rock avalanches at 9:30 p.m. and 11:05 p.m. MDT at Rio Tinto-Kennecott Utah Copper's open-pit Bingham Canyon Mine, 20 miles southwest of downtown Salt Lake City. Each rock avalanche lasted about 90 seconds.
While the slides were not quakes, they were measured by seismic scales as having magnitudes up to 5.1 and 4.9, respectively. The subsequent real quakes were smaller.

Kennecott officials closely monitor movements in the 107-year-old mine -- which produces 25 percent of the copper used in the United States -- and they recognized signs of increasing instability in the months before the slide, closing and removing a visitor center on the south edge of the 2.8-mile-wide, 3,182-foot-deep open pit, which the company claims is the world's largest humanmade excavation.
Landslides -- including those at open-pit mines but excluding quake-triggered slides -- killed more than 32,000 people during 2004-2011, the researchers say. But no one was hurt or died in the Bingham Canyon slide. The slide damaged or destroyed 14 haul trucks and three shovels and closed the mine's main access ramp until November.

"This is really a geotechnical monitoring success story," says the new study's first author, Kris Pankow, associate director of the University of Utah Seismograph Stations and a research associate professor of geology and geophysics. "No one was killed, and yet now we have this rich dataset to learn more about landslides."

There have been much bigger human-caused landslides on other continents, and much bigger prehistoric slides in North America, including one about five times larger than Bingham Canyon some 8,000 years ago at the mouth of Utah's Zion Canyon.

But the Bingham Canyon Mine slide "is probably the largest nonvolcanic landslide in modern North American history," said study co-author Jeff Moore, an assistant professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah.

There have been numerous larger, mostly prehistoric slides -- some hundreds of times larger. Even the landslide portion of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption was 57 times larger than the Bingham Canyon slide.

News reports initially put the landslide cost at close to $1 billion, but that may end up lower because Kennecott has gotten the mine back in operation faster than expected.

Until now, the most expensive U.S. landslide was the 1983 Thistle slide in Utah, which cost an estimated $460 million to $940 million because the town of Thistle was abandoned, train tracks and highways were relocated and a drainage tunnel built.

Pankow and Moore conducted the study with several colleagues from the university's College of Mines and Earth Sciences: J. Mark Hale, an information specialist at the Seismograph Stations; Keith Koper, director of the Seismograph Stations; Tex Kubacki, a graduate student in mining engineering; Katherine Whidden, a research seismologist; and Michael K. McCarter, professor of mining engineering.
The study was funded by state of Utah support of the University of Utah Seismograph Stations and by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Rockslides Measured up to 5.1 and 4.9 in Magnitude, but Felt Smaller
The University of Utah researchers say the Bingham Canyon slide was among the best-recorded in history, making it a treasure trove of data for studying slides.

Kennecott has estimated the landslide weighed 165 million tons. The new study estimated the slide came from a volume of rock roughly 55 million cubic meters (1.9 billion cubic feet). Rock in a landslide breaks up and expands, so Moore estimated the landslide deposit had a volume of 65 million cubic meters (2.3 billion cubic feet).

Moore calculated that not only would bury Central Park 66 feet deep, but also is equivalent to the amount of material in 21 of Egypt's great pyramids of Giza.

The landslide's two rock avalanches were not earthquakes but, like mine collapses and nuclear explosions, they were recorded on seismographs and had magnitudes that were calculated on three different scales:

• The first slide at 9:30 p.m. MDT measured 5.1 in surface-wave magnitude, 2.5 in local or Richter magnitude, and 4.2 in duration or "coda" magnitude.

• The second slide at 11:05 p.m. MDT measured 4.9 in surface-wave magnitude, 2.4 in Richter magnitude and 3.5 in coda magnitude.

Pankow says the larger magnitudes more accurately reflect the energy released by the rock avalanches, but the smaller Richter magnitudes better reflect what people felt -- or didn't feel, since the Seismograph Stations didn't receive any such reports. That's because the larger surface-wave magnitudes record low-frequency energy, while Richter and coda magnitudes are based on high-frequency seismic waves that people usually feel during real quakes.

So in terms of ground movements people might feel, the rock avalanches "felt like 2.5," Pankow says. "If this was a normal tectonic earthquake of magnitude 5, all three magnitude scales would give us similar answers."

The slides were detected throughout the Utah seismic network, including its most distant station some 250 miles south on the Utah-Arizona border, Pankow says.

The Landslide Triggered 16 Tremors
The second rock avalanche was followed immediately by a real earthquake measuring 2.5 in Richter magnitude and 3.0 in coda magnitude, then three smaller quakes -- all less than one-half mile below the bottom of the mine pit.

The Utah researchers sped up recorded seismic data by 30 times to create an audio file in which the second part of the slide is heard as a deep rumbling, followed by sharp gunshot-like bangs from three of the subsequent quakes.

Later analysis revealed another 12 tiny quakes -- measuring from 0.5 to minus 0.8 Richter magnitude. (A minus 1 magnitude has one-tenth the power of a hand grenade.) Six of these tiny tremors occurred between the two parts of the landslide, five happened during the two days after the slide, and one was detected 10 days later, on April 20. No quakes were detected during the 10 days before the double landslide.

"We don't know of any case until now where landslides have been shown to trigger earthquakes," Moore says. "It's quite commonly the reverse."

A Long, Fast Landslide Runout
The landslide, from top to bottom, fell 2,790 vertical feet, but its runout -- the distance the slide traveled -- was almost 10,072 feet, or just less than two miles.

"It was a bedrock landslide that had a characteristically fast and long runout -- much longer than we would see for smaller rockfalls and rockslides," Moore says.

While no one was present to measure the speed, rock avalanches typically move about 70 mph to 110 mph, while the fastest moved a quickly as 220 mph.

So at Bingham Canyon, "we can safely say the material was probably traveling at least 100 mph as it fell down the steepest part of the slope," Moore says.

The researchers don't know why the slide happened as two rock avalanches instead of one, but Moore says, "A huge volume like this can fail in one episode or in 10 episodes over hours."
The Seismograph Stations also recorded infrasound waves from the landslide, which Pankow says are "sound waves traveling through the atmosphere that we don't hear" because their frequencies are so low.

Both seismic and infrasound recordings detected differences between the landslide's two rock avalanches. For example, the first avalanche had stronger peak energy at the end that was lacking in the second slide, Pankow says.

"We'd like to be able to use data like this to understand the physics of these large landslides," Moore says.

The seismic and infrasound recordings suggest the two rock avalanches were similar in volume, but photos indicate the first slide contained more bedrock, while the second slide contained a higher proportion of mined waste rock -- although both avalanches were predominantly bedrock

Source: University of Utah

Summary: Last year's gigantic landslide at a Utah copper mine probably was the biggest nonvolcanic slide in North America's modern history, and included two rock avalanches that happened 90 minutes apart and surprisingly triggered 16 small earthquakes, scientists discovered.

The Longmanshen fault zone still hazardous

Longmanshen fault zone

The 60-kilometer segment of the fault northeast of the 2013 Lushan rupture is the place in the region to watch for the next major earthquake, according to research published in Seismological Research Letters (SRL). Research papers published in this special section of SRL suggest the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake triggered the magnitude 6.6 Lushan quake.

Guest edited by Huajian Yao, professor of geophysics at the University of Science and Technology of China, the special section includes eight articles that present current data, description and preliminary analysis of the Lushan event and discuss the potential of future earthquakes in the region.

More than 87,000 people were killed or went missing as a result of the 2008 magnitude 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake in China's Sichuan province, the largest quake to hit China since 1950. In 2013, the Lushan quake occurred ~90 km to the south and caused 203 deaths, injured 11,492 and affected more than 1.5 million people.

"After the 2008 magnitude 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake along the Longmenshan fault zone in western Sichuan of China, researchers in China and elsewhere have paid particular attention to this region, seeking to understand how the seismic hazard potential changed in the southern segment of the fault and nearby faults," said Yao. "Yet the occurrence of this magnitude 6.6 Lushan event surprised many. The challenge of understanding where and when the next big quake will occur after a devastating seismic event continues after this Lushan event, although we now have gained much more information about this area."

Preliminary rupture details
The southern part of the Longmenshan fault zone is complex and still only moderately understood. Similar to the central segment where the 2008 Wenchuan event occurred, the southern segment, which generated the Lushan rupture, includes the Wenchuan-Maoxian fault, Beichuan-Yingxiu fault, the Pengxian-Guanxian fault and Dayi faults, a series of sub-parallel secondary faults.

Although the Lushan earthquake's mainshock did not break to the surface, the strong shaking still caused significant damage and casualties in the epicentral region. Three papers detail the rupture process of the Lushan quake. Libo Han from the China Earthquake Administration and colleagues provide a preliminary analysis of the Lushan mainshock and two large aftershocks, which appear to have occurred in the upper crust and terminated at a depth of approximately 8 km. While the Lushan earthquake cannot be associated with any identified surface faults, Han and colleagues suggest the quake may have occurred on a blind thrust fault subparallel to the Dayi fault, which lies at and partly defines the edge of the Chengdu basin. Based on observations from extensive trenching and mapping of fault activity after both the Wenchuan and Lushan earthquakes, Chen Lichun and colleagues from the China Earthquake Administration suggest the Lushan quake spread in a "piggyback fashion" toward the Sichuan basin, but with weaker activity and lower seismogenic potential than the Wenchuan quake. And Junju Xie, from the China Earthquake Administration and Beijing University of Technology, and colleagues examined the vertical and horizontal near-source strong motion from the Mw 6.8 Lushan earthquake. The vertical ground motion is relatively weak for this event, likely due to the fact that seismic energy dissipated at the depth of 12-25 km and the rupture did not break through the ground surface.

Possible link between Lushan and Wenchuan earthquakes
Were the Lushan and Wenchuan earthquakes related? And if so, what is the relationship? Some researchers consider the Lushan quake to be a strong aftershock of the Wenchuan quake, while others see them as independent events. In this special section, researchers tackled the question from various perspectives.

To discover whether the Lushan earthquake was truly independent from the Wenchuan quake, researchers need to have an accurate picture of where the Lushan quake originated. Yong Zhang from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and the China Earthquake Administration and colleagues begin this process by confirming a new hypocenter for Lushan. To find this place where the fault first began to rupture, the researchers analyze near-fault strong-motion data (movements that took place at a distance of up to a few tens of kilometers away from the fault) as well as long distance (thousands of kilometers ) teleseismic data.

Using their newly calculated location for the hypocenter, Zhang and colleagues now agree with earlier studies that suggest the initial Lushan rupture was a circular rupture event with no predominant direction. But they note that their calculations place the major slip area in the Lushan quake about 40 to 50 kilometers apart from the southwest end of the Wenchuan quake fault. This "gap" between the two faults may hold increased seismic hazards, caution Zhang and colleagues.

Ke Jia of Beijing University and colleagues explore the relationship of the two quakes with a statistical analysis of aftershocks in the region as well as the evolution of shear stress in the lower crust and upper mantle in the broader quake region. Their analyses suggest that the Wenchuan quake did affect the Lushan quake in an immediate sense by changing the overall background seismicity in the region. If these changes in background seismicity are taken into account, the researchers calculate a 62 percent probability that Lushan is a strong aftershock of Wenchuan.

Similarly, Yanzhao Wang from the China Earthquake Administration and colleagues quantified the stress loading of area faults due to the Wenchuan quake and suggest the change in stress may have caused the Lushan quake to rupture approximately 28.4 to 59.3 years earlier than expected. They conclude that the Lushan earthquake is at least 85 percent of a delayed aftershock of the Wenchuan earthquake, rather than due solely to long-term tectonic loading.

After the Wenchuan quake, researchers immediately began calculating stress changes on the major faults surrounding the rupture zone, in part to identify where dangerous aftershocks might occur and to test how well these stress change calculations might work to predict new earthquakes. As part of these analyses, Tom Parsons of the U.S. Geological Survey and Margarita Segou of GeoAzur compared data collected from the Wenchuan and Lushan quakes with data on aftershocks and stress change in four other major earthquakes, including the M 7.4 Landers and Izmit quakes in California and Turkey, respectively, and the M 7.9 Denali quake in Alaska and the M 7.1 Canterbury quake in New Zealand.
Their comparisons reveal that strong aftershocks similar to Lushan are likely to occur where there is highest overall aftershock activity, where stress change is the greatest and on well-developed fault zones. But they also note that by these criteria, the Lushan quake would only have been predicted by stress changes, and not the clustering of aftershocks following the 2008 Wenchuan event.

Future earthquakes in this region
After Wenchuan and Lushan, where should seismologists and other look for the next big quake in the region? After the 2008 Wenchuan quake, seismologists were primed with data to help predict where and when the next rupture might be in the region. The data suggested that the Wenchuan event would increase seismic stress in the southern Longmenshan fault that was the site of the 2013 Lushan quake. But that information alone could not predict that the southern Longmenshan fault would be the next to rupture after Wenchuan, say Mian Liu of the University of Missouri and colleagues, because the Wenchuan earthquake also increased the stress on numerous others faults in the region

Additional insights can be gained from seismic moment studies, according to Liu and colleagues. Moment balancing compares how much seismic strain energy is accumulated along a fault over a certain period with the amount of strain energy released over the same period. In the case of the Longmenshan fault, there had been a slow accumulation of strain energy without release by a major seismic event for more than a millennium. After the Wenchuan quake, the southern part of the Longmenshan fault became the fault with the greatest potential for a quake. And now, after Lushan, Liu and colleagues say that the 60 kilometer-long segment of the fault northeast of the Lushan rupture is the place in the region to watch for the next major earthquake.



Source: Seismological Society of America

Summary: The 60-kilometer segment of the fault northeast of the 2013 Lushan rupture is the place in the region to watch for the next major earthquake, according to research. Recent research papers suggest the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake triggered the magnitude 6.6 Lushan quake.