Are large earthquakes increasing in frequency? + a growing COLLECTION of quake & volcano links

[Quix]

Here's a question for the geologists among us and those you know and have access to:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/#%7B%22autoUpdate%22%3A%5B%22autoUpdate%22%5D%2C%22basemap%22%3A%22street%22%2C%22feed%22%3A%2230day_m25%22%2C%22listFormat%22%3A%22default%22%2C%22mapposition%22%3A%5B%5B-73.12494524712693%2C-383.203125%5D%2C%5B68.13885164925573%2C38.3203125%5D%5D%2C%22overlays%22%3A%5B%22plates%22%5D%2C%22restrictListToMap%22%3A%5B%22restrictListToMap%22%5D%2C%22search%22%3A%7B%22id%22%3A%221483486480029%22%2C%22name%22%3A%22Search%20Results%22%2C%22isSearch%22%3Atrue%2C%22params%22%3A%7B%22starttime%22%3A%222016-12-27%2000%3A00%3A00%22%2C%22endtime%22%3A%222017-01-03%2023%3A59%3A59%22%2C%22minmagnitude%22%3A2.5%2C%22orderby%22%3A%22time%22%2C%22limit%22%3A1700%7D%7D%2C%22sort%22%3A%22newest%22%2C%22timezone%22%3A%22local%22%2C%22viewModes%22%3A%5B%22map%22%5D%2C%22event%22%3Anull%7D

At that link . . . you can see a string of quakes from about mid California up through Nevada to Yellowstone.

That phenomenon has been active as long as I've been watching quakes on the net. I've been on the net since about 1980-81. I don't recall when I first noticed it.

The question:

What are the implications of that line of quakes?

I don't think there's a known fault that keeps to that line, per se.

I would guess it's volcanic vs plate-techtonics related.

Is it more likely that new volcanoes would spring up along that line or that larger quakes or that visible earth ruptures would occur there?

IIRC, the Southern end of it takes off not far from the Southern end of the Lassen Volcanic field in California. Are there implications from that?

imho, it would take geologists gifted to think outside the box on this to come up with innovative conjectures on this. I don't think the conventional geological wisdom would say much about it--just my layman's guess on that score.

Is there anything else that such a line of quakes might indicate in terms of the not distant future?

Thanks in advance,
Qx


 --bigheadfred, please let me know if you get this ping. I noticed that when I copy to paste the ping list, your place first in line is on the left margin like all the other names. But after posting, it's been displaced one letter space worth. I've taken that space out. Will see if it makes a difference.
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ping list ping

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[Smokin Joe]

@Quix, if you look at that map, click the gear on the upper right, and scroll down, you can check the box in front of "US Faults" in the "map layers" portion of the menu. Doing so will plot the major faults in red, and you can see where those quakes, even though the dots seem to form a line, are actually on different fault trends. 

[Quix]

@Quix, if you look at that map, click the gear on the upper right, and scroll down, you can check the box in front of "US Faults" in the "map layers" portion of the menu. Doing so will plot the major faults in red, and you can see where those quakes, even though the dots seem to form a line, are actually on different fault trends. 

Thanks. WILCO.

[Quix]

I see that there are lots of faults between the ongoing swarm on the NEV/CA border and Yellowstone. However, there does not appear to be ANY that run even close to that direction in a line. The fault lines are all more or less NORTH/SOUTH.

I understand your point. I'd love to see--whatever the statistic calculation is--getting rusty . . . the line that results from calculating a ?least squares? . . . . something . . . kind of averaging the scatter plot into a single ?trend? line.

That characteristic of a string of quakes between that part of CA up to Yellowstone has been more or less consistent for decades, IIRC. At least 20 years or more, that I've been noticing it.

It seems to me that, if your point was the deciding factor--only--the fault lines would have a variety of quakes scattered all over that region instead of more or less a line of them enduring over a long period of time from CA to Yellowstone.

I wonder where I could get a map of all the quakes in that region for the last 30 years.

Curious. Interesting. Any geologists to chime in?

I see there's a new quake the last hour at roughly the same spot as the earlier swarm on the southern 1/3 of the Salton Sea. Hmmmm And Brawley to the SE of there is still having a sometimes populated swarm, imho.

@Quix, if you look at that map, click the gear on the upper right, and scroll down, you can check the box in front of "US Faults" in the "map layers" portion of the menu. Doing so will plot the major faults in red, and you can see where those quakes, even though the dots seem to form a line, are actually on different fault trends. 

[Smokin Joe]

I see that there are lots of faults between the ongoing swarm on the NEV/CA border and Yellowstone. However, there does not appear to be ANY that run even close to that direction in a line. The fault lines are all more or less NORTH/SOUTH.

I understand your point. I'd love to see--whatever the statistic calculation is--getting rusty . . . the line that results from calculating a ?least squares? . . . . something . . . kind of averaging the scatter plot into a single ?trend? line.

That characteristic of a string of quakes between that part of CA up to Yellowstone has been more or less consistent for decades, IIRC. At least 20 years or more, that I've been noticing it.

It seems to me that, if your point was the deciding factor--only--the fault lines would have a variety of quakes scattered all over that region instead of more or less a line of them enduring over a long period of time from CA to Yellowstone.

I wonder where I could get a map of all the quakes in that region for the last 30 years.

Curious. Interesting. Any geologists to chime in?

I see there's a new quake the last hour at roughly the same spot as the earlier swarm on the southern 1/3 of the Salton Sea. Hmmmm And Brawley to the SE of there is still having a sometimes populated swarm, imho.

I am a geologist. I have chimed in. Any other geologists present are welcome to contribute as well, or even disagree with me or, in the event I have made a statement in error, to  provide correction of that error.

The continent is not a homogenous mass, but is composed on sections which have been welded onto the continent during collisions with other continents or during periods of subduction. There have been a few of these periods, called orogenies. During these events, regional uplifting occurs, rock layers may be thrust onto younger rocks, faulting occurs-- low angle thrust faults during compressional episodes, tensional ("normal") faults during periods when the continents are separating, or the stresses are tensional. Faults can be more complex, but those are the basics. The valleys and mountain ranges of Nevada are a series of downfaulted valleys between uplifted blocks. You see something similar in Utah and Wyoming. The reason the faults trend the way they do is that they tend to parallel those old plate boundaries.

If you think of those layers of rock like pages of a book, it is possible to move them all in a row, but they are not on the same page, not in the same rock mass, and those stress points would not indicate a persistent rift cutting across all those lithic boundaries, but possibly the exertion of stress on different faults that persists throughout the Basin and Range.

At 17:30 in this video, the apparent string of earthquakes on entirely different fault lines is explained by tensional forces acting on the Great Basin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iTUAUmF-N4 These faults aren't connected, even though the same tensional forces are acting on all of them.

A shorter explanation of the formation of the continent is shown in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzqnUvE66HA, which also explains the tension in the Great Basin (Basin and Range) Province.

Here is an article on the Geology of North America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_North_America Which may help you envision how the different geological provinces are stacked onto the margins of the early continental crust.


Something that isn't mapped along with earthquakes, are the types of forces which cause the quakes: whether these are tensional forces, compressional forces, transform (slipping past each other) forces, or whether the earthquakes are directly related to activity in magma chambers.

Note in this map...
(from http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/top_states_maps.php

There is the apparent line you mentioned, but perhaps even more significant is the cluster of earthquakes trending roughly east/west along the track of the Yellowstone hotspot, as evidenced by past eruption scars http://yellowstone.net/geology/volcano/ Note, too, that the fault trends were obliterated by passage over the hotspot and past eruptions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_hotspot shows a longer historical perspective,

While the linearity of the quakes you noticed may be related via the tensional stresses placed on the Basin and Range by drag along the San Andreas Fault (and associated faults), those are on different faults and do not indicate a fault trend in and of themselves, only places on the different faults where stresses have been relieved.

[Quix]

@Smokin Joe,

WHAT A WONDERFULLY SUPER INFORMATIVE POST! THANKS TONS.

Good to know you're a geologist. BTW, those beach ball symbols . . . IIRC, the one that looks like a slice of an orange--that's compressive forces, right?

The one that looks like 4 triangles coming to a point more or less in the center--what does that one represent? I forget.

It will take me a while to digest all your great info. I think I get the drift, of it, though.

Sounds rather  logical, to me. 

So, would you say that the line that the map with the red quake dots--that I've noticed for so long--would you say that rough line is of no consequence? Is not a potential clue to anything? Is not likely to portend any particular event along  that line vs having nothing to do with that line?

Are there any maps that show any sort of boundary at any level,  roughly consistent with that rough line?

Your maps with the quake clusters show the underground Yellowstone magma chamber well. Thanks.

What do your own experienced hunches, speculations and inferences indicate to you about that rough line, if anything?

[Quix]

@Smokin Joe,

Another question . . .

IIRC . . . several years ago, I  read of a somewhat early (the last 60 years?) oil prospecting bloke who came up with a . . . how to put it . . . a

technology that he quickly discovered could and did CAUSE--at least trigger--quakes.

I think it was some sort of wave generating technology.  The oil prospecting aspect was to detect the returns coming back from the transmitted wave. The quake generating aspect was unexpected. IIRC, there were 2-4 quakes caused. There was NO DOUBT that the technology triggered the quakes.

I think it was quickly classified and hushed up, at that point.

IIRC, it may have been related to some of Tesla's findings.

Are you aware of what I'm talking about? What is your take on it?

[Smokin Joe]

@Smokin Joe,

WHAT A WONDERFULLY SUPER INFORMATIVE POST! THANKS TONS.

Good to know you're a geologist. BTW, those beach ball symbols . . . IIRC, the one that looks like a slice of an orange--that's compressive forces, right?

The one that looks like 4 triangles coming to a point more or less in the center--what does that one represent? I forget.

If you could post examples of those symbols, I'd be happy to sort them out for you.

It will take me a while to digest all your great info. I think I get the drift, of it, though.

Sounds rather  logical, to me. 

So, would you say that the line that the map with the red quake dots--that I've noticed for so long--would you say that rough line is of no consequence? Is not a potential clue to anything? Is not likely to portend any particular event along  that line vs having nothing to do with that line?

Not necessarily of no consequence, but not along a shared geological fault or feature. The consequence is that they may establish a trend of strain on the continent, relieved along different fault trends at different places. Of course, that may be just an indicator of where stress has been relieved, that being stress placed on the craton by the subducting San Juan de Fuca plate remnant (US Pacific NW) pushing East, and the San Andreas pulling west, like the pages of a paperback sliding against one another if you bent it.

Are there any maps that show any sort of boundary at any level,  roughly consistent with that rough line?

Not that I am aware of.

Your maps with the quake clusters show the underground Yellowstone magma chamber well. Thanks.

What do your own experienced hunches, speculations and inferences indicate to you about that rough line, if anything?

That rotational force (in map view) is being exerted, clockwise, on the western half of the US by the plate motions described above. In some areas that will cause compression, and continued activity in the Cascade Volcano Belt. In other places there will be tensional faulting and some subsidance of select blocks of crust, likely in the Basin and Range Province. Note, please, that these events may occur over 100s of thousands of years, given the present rate of things. Overall, the continent will continue to be pushed westward, so while the western part is under that tendency to rotate, the general relative movement will be toward Asia, with the Pacific Basin becoming a little narrower every year (current rate of closure is about 7 cm/year, so that will take a while). Across the Pacific, the Island arcs will continue to have eruptions, and from New Zealand, through Indonesia, and up past Japan, there will be continued seismic activity and volcanic activity (as in the Aleutians and Alaska).

That should carry events well past my lifetime.

[Smokin Joe]

@Smokin Joe,

Another question . . .

IIRC . . . several years ago, I  read of a somewhat early (the last 60 years?) oil prospecting bloke who came up with a . . . how to put it . . . a

technology that he quickly discovered could and did CAUSE--at least trigger--quakes.

I think it was some sort of wave generating technology.  The oil prospecting aspect was to detect the returns coming back from the transmitted wave. The quake generating aspect was unexpected. IIRC, there were 2-4 quakes caused. There was NO DOUBT that the technology triggered the quakes.

I think it was quickly classified and hushed up, at that point.

IIRC, it may have been related to some of Tesla's findings.

Are you aware of what I'm talking about? What is your take on it?

Any technology which could reliably cause earthquakes would likely be hushed up, and fast. While its utility as a weapon of war would likely be limited to areas with pent up seismic stresses and developed fault lines, it would be as or more effective as a nuke, potentially. Consider the Boxing Day Earthquake and related Tsunamis killed over a quarter million people, more than all atomic weapons used in warfare, and a few 'big ones' could be incredibly destructive--far beyond just the country of an enemy.
Some genies shouldn't be let out of the bottle, provided they exist.

Something is used in 'seismic' exploration, either the detonation of charges set at a known depth, or the generation of a compression wave using truck mounted vibration generators or a pneumatic ram which strikes a plate sending a single pulse through the ground. These pulses and reflections over time from different rock layers are read by either tools suspended in wellbores or surface geophones in order to determine the structure of the rock layers below. This is also done in a marine environment, like a very loud sonar pulse, to gain a picture of the rock layers below, their relative thicknesses and configuration.
This seismic data acquisition is not uncommon and the methods of interpretation have become very sophisticated--which provides a much better success rate for drilling wildcat wells.

As for causing earthquakes, those pulses (shockwaves) could be considered very low magnitude earthquakes, and while I suppose it might be possible to trigger a larger quake along a fault, I do not know of that ever happening.

[Quix]

Any technology which could reliably cause earthquakes would likely be hushed up, and fast. While its utility as a weapon of war would likely be limited to areas with pent up seismic stresses and developed fault lines, it would be as or more effective as a nuke, potentially. Consider the Boxing Day Earthquake and related Tsunamis killed over a quarter million people, more than all atomic weapons used in warfare, and a few 'big ones' could be incredibly destructive--far beyond just the country of an enemy.
Some genies shouldn't be let out of the bottle, provided they exist.

Something is used in 'seismic' exploration, either the detonation of charges set at a known depth, or the generation of a compression wave using truck mounted vibration generators or a pneumatic ram which strikes a plate sending a single pulse through the ground. These pulses and reflections over time from different rock layers are read by either tools suspended in wellbores or surface geophones in order to determine the structure of the rock layers below. This is also done in a marine environment, like a very loud sonar pulse, to gain a picture of the rock layers below, their relative thicknesses and configuration.
This seismic data acquisition is not uncommon and the methods of interpretation have become very sophisticated--which provides a much better success rate for drilling wildcat wells.

As for causing earthquakes, those pulses (shockwaves) could be considered very low magnitude earthquakes, and while I suppose it might be possible to trigger a larger quake along a fault, I do not know of that ever happening.

Understand. Thanks.

If I come across the info, again, I'll plan to post it here.

I think it may have been in a book. I don't think (99.9999% sure it was not) it was the sub-detecting tech--though it may have been the same fellow. The guy in charge and his team were shocked at the effect and didn't believe it until they did some further tests--which panned out every time--i.e. clearly triggering significant quakes precisely right on cue. Yeah, I think it would have to be in a fault/stressed zone.

[Quix]

@Victoria33,

 Does your geologist loved one recall anything like the following?

@Smokin Joe,

Another question . . .

IIRC . . . several years ago, I  read of a somewhat early (the last 60 years?) oil prospecting bloke who came up with a . . . how to put it . . . a

technology that he quickly discovered could and did CAUSE--at least trigger--quakes.

I think it was some sort of wave generating technology.  The oil prospecting aspect was to detect the returns coming back from the transmitted wave. The quake generating aspect was unexpected. IIRC, there were 2-4 quakes caused. There was NO DOUBT that the technology triggered the quakes.

I think it was quickly classified and hushed up, at that point.

IIRC, it may have been related to some of Tesla's findings.

Are you aware of what I'm talking about? What is your take on it?

[Ghost Bear]

My spouse pointed me at this story last night:

One of Earth's Most Dangerous Supervolcanoes Is Rumbling

Excerpt:

A long-quiet yet huge supervolcano that lies under 500,000 people in Italy may be waking up and approaching a "critical state," scientists report this week in the journal Nature Communications.

Based on physical measurements and computer modeling, "we propose that magma could be approaching the CDP [critical degassing pressure] at Campi Flegrei, a volcano in the metropolitan area of Naples, one of the most densely inhabited areas in the world, and where accelerating deformation and heating are currently being observed," wrote the scientists—who are led by Giovanni Chiodini of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics in Rome.

More at the link: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/12/supervolcano-campi-flegrei-stirs-under-naples-italy/

Here in the U.S. we tend to look at Yellowstone and the Ring of Fire as the major threats, but if this supervolcano in Italy really lets loose, it could wipe out large parts of Europe... 

[Quix]

My spouse pointed me at this story last night:

One of Earth's Most Dangerous Supervolcanoes Is Rumbling

Excerpt:

A long-quiet yet huge supervolcano that lies under 500,000 people in Italy may be waking up and approaching a "critical state," scientists report this week in the journal Nature Communications.

Based on physical measurements and computer modeling, "we propose that magma could be approaching the CDP [critical degassing pressure] at Campi Flegrei, a volcano in the metropolitan area of Naples, one of the most densely inhabited areas in the world, and where accelerating deformation and heating are currently being observed," wrote the scientists—who are led by Giovanni Chiodini of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics in Rome.

More at the link: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/12/supervolcano-campi-flegrei-stirs-under-naples-italy/

Here in the U.S. we tend to look at Yellowstone and the Ring of Fire as the major threats, but if this supervolcano in Italy really lets loose, it could wipe out large parts of Europe... 

INDEED.

And, IIRC, Italy was where some scientists went to jail for not warning of impending quakes in another part of Italy.

Increasingly it looks like a

"Buckle your seat-belts--this is an 'E-Ticket Ride.' " situation globally.

[Quix]

.
Purported email with quake stuff kept secret re Yellowstone . . .
.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym95f8qqzYY
.
Tom Lupshu Youtube
.
= = =
.
FWIW dept:
.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Usgwq7nBFQM
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Wyoming woman claims Yellowstone will erupt . . . native Am eastern type mysticism warning ...
.

[Smokin Joe]

I find it interesting how FEMA is going to declare Martial Law and come get our guns in so many of these predictive videos. At least in this neck of the woods, FEMA and even the Military are going to have plenty to do without going after some farmer's guns. Maybe in refugee centers and the like, but the object is to avoid those if at all possible.

[Quix]

I find it interesting how FEMA is going to declare Martial Law and come get our guns in so many of these predictive videos. At least in this neck of the woods, FEMA and even the Military are going to have plenty to do without going after some farmer's guns. Maybe in refugee centers and the like, but the object is to avoid those if at all possible.

Good points, imho.

I think the complexities and chaos will be great . . . and rapidly changing in most places.