News by Subject Earth Science

To better understand subsurface processes associated with earthquakes and eruptions of Mount Aso, Kyushu University researchers investigated a very long period (VLP) seismicity dataset collected over two years. A new technique was developed to locate VLP events, and two clusters of such events were detected. Changes in the locations of VLP events were closely associated with earthquake and eruption occurrences. This method advances understanding of seismic and volcanic processes and could contribute to disaster mitigation.

When Earth's species were rapidly diversifying nearly 500 million years ago, that evolution was driven by complex factors including global cooling, more oxygen in the atmosphere, and more nutrients in the oceans. But it took a combination of many global environmental and tectonic changes occurring simultaneously and combining like building blocks to produce rapid diversification into new species, according to a new study by Dr. Alycia Stigall, Professor of Geological Sciences at Ohio University.

An international team of subsurface explorers from the University of Adelaide in Australia and the University of Aberdeen in Scotland have uncovered a previously undescribed 'Jurassic World' of around 100 ancient volcanoes buried deep within the Cooper-Eromanga Basins of central Australia.

In addition to 10 years of data on the flow of heat in the Arctic ocean seafloor, the USGS and Geological Survey of Canada have published an analysis of that data using modern seismic data.

Some volcanoes take their time--experiencing protracted, years-long periods of unrest before eventually erupting. This makes it difficult to forecast when they pose a danger to their surrounding areas, but Carnegie's Diana Roman and Penn State's Peter LaFemina are trying to change that.

Eleonora Rivalta and her team from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, together with colleagues from the University Roma Tre and the Vesuvius Observatory of the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia in Naples have devised a new method to forecast volcanic vent locations. The study is published in the journal Science Advances.

Numerical simulations have pinpointed the source of acoustic signals emitted by stressed faults in laboratory earthquake machines. The work further unpacks the physics driving geologic faults, knowledge that could one day enable accurately predicting earthquakes.

An international scientific team led by Russian geochemists have established that the huge reserves of water present in the Earth's mantle, which exceed the weight of the world ocean, emerged over 3.3 billion years ago due to the immersion of seawater-rich oceanic crust into the depth of the Earth's interior. The results were published in Nature.