Melting Glaciers Contribute to Alaska Earthquakes, Cause Land to Rise at 1.5 Inches per Year

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Yakutat Glacier

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Glaciers such as the Yakutat in Southeast Alaska, revealed here, have actually been melting given that completion of the Little Ice Age, affecting earthquakes in the area. Credit: Photo by Sam Herreid

In 1958, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake activated a rockslide into Southeast Alaska’s Lituya Bay, developing a tsunami that ran 1,700 feet up a mountainside prior to racing out to sea.

Researchers now believe the area’s extensive loss of glacier ice assisted set the phase for the quake.

In a just recently released research study short article, researchers with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute discovered that ice loss near Glacier Bay National Park has actually affected the timing and area of earthquakes with a magnitude of 5.0 or higher in the location throughout the previous century.

Scientists have actually understood for years that melting glaciers have actually triggered earthquakes in otherwise tectonically steady areas, such as Canada’s interior and Scandinavia. In Alaska, this pattern has actually been more difficult to identify, as earthquakes prevail in the southern part of the state.

Alaska has a few of the world’s biggest glaciers, which can be countless feet thick and cover numerous square miles. The ice’s weight triggers the land underneath it to sink, and, when a glacier melts, the ground bounces back like a sponge.

Lituya Bay 1958

An earthquake-triggered tsunami removed plants from the hills and mountains above Lituya Bay in 1958. The treeless locations show up as lighter ground surrounding the bay in this picture taken soon after the occasion. Credit: Photo by Donald Miller, U.S. Geological Survey

“There are two components to the uplift,” stated Chris Rollins, the research study’s lead author who carried out the research study while at the Geophysical Institute. “There’s what’s called the ‘elastic effect,’ which is when the earth instantly springs back up after an ice mass is removed. Then there’s the prolonged effect from the mantle flowing back upwards under the vacated space.”

In the research study, scientists connect the broadening motion of the mantle with big earthquakes throughout Southeast Alaska, where glaciers have actually been melting for over 200 years. More than 1,200 cubic miles of ice have actually been lost.

Southern Alaska sits at the border in between the continental North American plate and the Pacific Plate. They grind past each other at about 2 inches each year — approximately two times the rate of the San Andreas fault in California — leading to regular earthquakes.

The disappearance of glaciers, nevertheless, has actually likewise triggered Southeast Alaska’s land to increase at about 1.5 inches each year.

Rollins ran designs of earth motion and ice loss given that 1770, discovering a subtle however apparent connection in between earthquakes and earth rebound.

When they integrated their maps of ice loss and shear tension with seismic records back to 1920, they discovered that the majority of big quakes were associated with the tension from long-lasting earth rebound.

Unexpectedly, the best quantity of tension from ice loss took place near the specific center of the 1958 quake that triggered the Lituya Bay tsunami.

While the melting of glaciers is not the direct reason for earthquakes, it likely regulates both the timing and seriousness of seismic occasions.

When the earth rebounds following a glacier’s retreat, it does so just like bread increasing in an oven, spreading out in all instructions. This efficiently unclamps strike-slip faults, such as the Fairweather in Southeast Alaska, and makes it simpler for the 2 sides to slip previous one another.

In the case of the 1958 quake, the postglacial rebound torqued the crust around the fault in a manner that increased tension near the center also. Both this and the unclamping result brought the fault better to failure.

“The movement of plates is the main driver of seismicity, uplift and deformation in the area,” stated Rollins. “But postglacial rebound adds to it, sort of like the de-icing on the cake. It makes it more likely for faults that are in the red zone to hit their stress limit and slip in an earthquake.”

Reference: “Stress Promotion of the 1958 Mw∼7.8 Fairweather Fault Earthquake and Others in Southeast Alaska by Glacial Isostatic Adjustment and Inter‐earthquake Stress Transfer” by Chris Rollins, Jeffrey T. Freymueller and Jeanne M. Sauber, 11 December 2020, JGR Solid Earth.
DOI: 10.1029/2020JB020411