Our project will focus on the subduction zone off southern Alaska, which produces large and destructive earthquakes.
| Name | Title | Fields of interest | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kerry Key | Associate Professor | ||
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Terry A. Plank | Arthur D. Storke Memorial Professor | Geochemistry, Igneous Petrology |
| Joshua Calkins | Adjunct Associate Research Scientist | earthquake seismology, tectonics, lithospheric structure, subduction zones |
Tightly consolidated sediments along a portion of the Cascadia Subduction Zone contribute to locking of the fault along the plate boundary for long intervals, major earthquakes, and the potential for a large tsunami.
A huge earthquake may be building beneath Bangladesh, the most densely populated nation on earth. Scientists say they have new evidence of increasing strain there, where two tectonic plates underlie the world’s largest river delta. They estimate that at least 140 million people in the region could be affected if the boundary ruptures; the destruction could come not only from the direct results of shaking, but changes in the courses of great rivers, and in the level of land already perilously close to sea level.
Rarely a day goes by without earthquakes shaking the Alaska Peninsula, a string of volcanoes curving off the Alaska mainland into the Pacific. Just off shore, two tectonic plates are converging: The Pacific plate is bending under the North American plate and pushing deep into the Earth. Along this subduction zone, scientists have noticed something unusual. Two adjacent sections that appear almost identical in large-scale characteristics—temperature, angle of subduction, age of the rocks—are exhibiting very different earthquake behaviors over short spans of just tens of kilometers. One section is highly active with small earthquakes; the other is more quiet but has large earthquakes every 50 to 75 years. To get a closer look, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory’s research ship, the R/V Marcus G. Langseth, ran seismic surveys to map the ocean floor and the earth beneath it.
In the D’Entrecasteaux Islands off Papua New Guinea, the rocks are giving rise to new ideas about the ways in which mountain chains form. A new scientific model inspired by data from the islands shows how the seemingly opposite processes of tectonic compression and extension can take place in the same region. It also shows how sections of earth’s crust that have been pushed deep under the surface can reverse course and rise in what in the geological time scale would be an instant. The model has implications for the understanding of how many mountain belts form.
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Diet Affects Behavior: How Ingested Fluids and Sediments Influence Alaska Subduction Zone Earthquakes | |
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In Deep Water | New Insights into Subduction-Zone Fluids |
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Is the Ocean Shrinking? | The Earth's Biggest Water Cycle |
