2011 solid earth edition

8/12/2019 2011 Solid Earth Edition

1/28xx

2011

EDITION

06

COOPERATIVE INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES// CIRES

The Quakethat Shookthe PlanetCIRES scientist probesthe Japanese Earthquake

Satellites detect

looming water

shortages

Virtual rock collection

sheds light on

Americas past

Sniffing out earthquake

potential in Colorado

and New Mexico

sph res

SOLID

EARTH


2/28

Fellowship Focus:Delores Robinson

The Day theEarth MovedProbing the Japanese

earthquake

Until the WellRuns DrySatellites reveal global

groundwater depletion

How GRACE Works

How Risky is the Rift?Estimating earthquake po-

tential of the Rio Grande Rift

Eavesdropping onTsunamisUnderwater instruments

assist early-warning systems

12

8

4

10

16

5

12

17

13

18

6

714

20

2223

24

Background:Rocks stacked along the coast of the

Southern Island of New Zealand.Credit Anne Sheehan

On the cover:The wave from a tsunami crashes over a street

in Miyako City, Iwate Prefecture in northeastern Japan after

the magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck the area March 11,

2011. Picture taken March 11, 2011. REUTERS/Mainichi Shimbun

The Fist of DestructionFive causes of earthquake

fatalities

Mountains to MolehillsHow different climates sculpt

mountain ranges

Earthquake EssentialsThe what, when and hows of

earthquakes

X-ray throughthe EarthHow the planets layers

stack up

Monsoon MysteryInvestigating the forces that

drive the Indian Monsoon

Rocks GaloreVirtual rock collection

furthers insights into North

America evolution

The Trickle-Down EffectHow earthquakes impact rivers

Feeling the HeatRole of supraglacial lakes in

glacier melt

A Mw9 earthquakein Kashmir?New data reveal megaquake is

possible in western Himalayan

kingdom

The Birth of the RockiesNew theory sheds light on

the ranges creation

Earth GirthMelting ice is expanding

the planets waistline

My SphereCIRES science

spans the

continents

This issue


3/28

By Kristin Bjornsen

When CIRES Visiting FellowDelores Robinson does eldwork inNepal, one of the rst questions lo-cals ask her is Are you a doctor?Knowing they mean MD, not PhD,Robinson, who speaks Nepali,usually answers, No, were here tostudy dhungaa, Nepali for rocks.They often then ask, Is there goldor diamonds in them? Robinsonsaid. Its hard for people to under-

stand why wed be looking at rocksjust for science.

But rocks contain more thanprecious metalsthey also holda wealth of information on amountain belts age, history andseismic risks of a mountain belt.Robinson, an associate professor atthe University of Alabama, studieshow mountain belts form, evolvingfrom colliding tectonic plates intomature peaks and plateaus. Whileconducting her visiting fellowshipat CIRES, she is investigating therole erosion plays in that process.As rain, ice and rivers erode awaythe rock, they change the surfaceshape, Robinson said. Thisdrives formation and movementof the mountain belt because the

underlying plates want to maintaina particular, energetically favorableshape. The moving plates, in turn,create faults, fractures in the earthscrust that trigger earthquakes whenthey shift.

If you know where the faultsare, you know where the earth-quakes will be, Robinson said.By identifying fault location andactivity, we can help with earth-quake preparedness. Governmentleaders can know the key places toconcentrate resources and educatepeople about what to do during anearthquake.

FellowshipFocus:Dr. Delores Robinson

1

1.8 microsecondsHow much was shaved off the length of the 24-hour day by the JapaneseEarthquake. The intense tremblor accelerated the earths spin. To learn moreabout the earthquake and its accompanying tsunami see Page 2.

GRACE can

measure

changes in

total water

to about

1-centimeter

accuracy over

the scale of

the Missisippi

River Basin.

No other

method for

monitoring

groundwater

gives such

an accurate,

big-picture

view for a

whole

region.

CIRES Fellow JohnWahr on using GravityRecovery and ClimateExperiment (GRACE)satellites to measuregroundwater, Page 4.

Seat of WisdomThe ultimate throne for geologists to sit onand ponder their latest rock riddle. The chair,

which CIRES Fellow and former CIRES Director

Robert Sievers is sculpting, will reside in the

main CIRES building. The starting block of

Queen Anne Lace Marbleblack marble

with white marbling spread throughout

comes from Morocco and weighs more than

one ton. The design is inspired by the Lincoln

Memorial chair, and Sievers hopes it will

inspire all CIRES staff and students who sit on

it with a notion of judgment, wisdom and

knowledge, or failing those lofty goals, to

just think great thoughts.

3,960miles

The approximate distancefrom the surface of Earth to

its center. Seven miles is the

deepest humans have drilled

into the planet.

Since 1967, CIRES has

awarded more than 265 Visit-

ing Fellowships. Go to cires.colorado.edu/collaboration/

fellowships for more info.


4/2842

By Jane Palmer

A mere three days after an earthquake so powerful it

knocked the planet off its axisthe March 11 Honshu

quakeCIRES Fellow Roger Bilham gazed from the

safety of a helicopter at the attened towns and ooded

coastline of the Japanese island below.

Bilham, the rst geologist outside Japan to conduct

an aerial survey of the damage, had arrived in Japan to

learn about the nature and impact of the earthquake and

its accompanying tsunami. The extent of the damage

was truly amazing, said Bilham, the scientic memberof the NOVA team making the documentaryJapans

Killer Quake. The tsunami picked up everything in

its pathcars, houses, warehousesand just tumbled

them relentlessly inland on and on and on.

Although power, fuel and food shortages made

immediate access to the epicentral region difcult,

seismometers had diligently recorded every ripple of the

quake. GPS receivers also had pinpointed the islands

location as it shook, shuddered and ultimately shifted

permanently by as much as 5 meters toward the east in

response to the earths tremors. Never before have we

had such a surplus of data, Bilham said. There are no

mysteries in this earthquake.

Piecing together the cause of the quake didnt prove

difcult for scientists. Earths crust is made up of several

colossal slabs of rockknown as tectonic plates (see p.

13)and Japan lies on a boundary between two plates.

Each year the Pacic plate had driven farther underneath

the edge of the North America plate that Japan sits on,

compressing the edge and dragging downward the

North America

plate thereby

causing immense

stresses to build

up. The energy

that drove this

earthquake had

been building up for many hundreds of years, Bilhamsaid. Think of it as a giant elastic band that has been

wound up for a thousand years.

At 2:45 a.m. March 11, 2011, the tension reached

a breaking point. At a location 100 kilometers off the

coast of Japan, the edge of the compressed plate nally

sprung eastward tens of meters, initiating a magnitude

9.0 earthquake.

The tsunami picked up

everythingcars, houses,

warehousesand just

tumbled them relentlessly

inland on and on and on.

2

Matthew Bradley


5/283

Probing the Japanese earthquake

The Day theEarth Moved

Probably a cubic

kilometer of water justsploshed landward and

kept going until it ran

out of steam.

iStock Photo

Shock waves radiated outwards through Earth, and

Japans detection systems picked them up instantly.

The billions Japan had invested in early-warning sys-

tems and earthquake engineering paid off as a combi-

nation of old and new technologiesincluding sirens

and email messagesalerted the citizens and kept

most of the cities structures standing, Bilham said. My

rst reaction on arrival in Tokyo was of admiration for

the seismologists and earthquake-engineering commu-

nity of Japan, he said. It was a success story given theenormity of the earthquake.

And then the tsunami struck.

The sudden upper ip of the compressed rock lifted

a six-kilometer mass of water upward to the surface of

the sea. As this same rock collapsed back, it propelled

immense waves across the ocean.

One side of the wave raced toward the coast of

Japan. As the speed of an ocean wave depends on the

water depth (a wave will

travel slower in shallow

water), in the deep ocean

the tsunami travelled at

more than 800 kilometers

per houras fast as a jet

aircraft. It took just min-

utes to reach the coast, and it raced ashore with heights

of 13 meters in places. Probably a cubic kilometer

of water just sploshed landward and kept going until it

ran out of steam, Bilham said.

Despite a death toll in the tens of thousands and a

recovery cost estimated to exceed $300 billion, worse

may still be to come. For decades, Japanese scientists

have anticipated a large earthquake to hit from the

south, caused by a slip of the Philippine plate relative

to the Eurasian plate. And sometimes a great earth-

quake, like the Honshu quake, can cause the next

patch of the plate boundary to slip, Bilham said. Con-

sequently, all eyes are on how the Honshu earthquake

has impacted the neighboring part of the plate bound-

ary, he said.

This whole region is in a very high state of stress,

and seismologists have been expecting it to go any min-

uteso this recent earthquake is going to have brought

that closer in time, Bilham said. The question is: how

much closer?

Japanese tsunami waveheight as it propagatedacross the Pacific.Credit: NOAA


6/284

By Kristin BjornsenImagine having a

bathroom scale that not only

told you how many pounds youve

gained or lost, but also told you exactly

where on your body that weight change occurreda

few ounces shed from your arms, two pounds added to

your midsection, one pound packed into the saddlebags.

Now imagine the scale did this with incredible sensitiv-

itya couple milligrams lost from pared ngernails, an

eyelash that uttered away.

While its debatable whether anyone would want

such precise measurements of their love handles, thats

what the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experi-

ment) satellites do for Earthmeasuring changes in mass

at any region on the planet. The data from GRACE have

proven invaluable for monitoring such phenomenon as

the melting of the polar ice caps, rise in sea level and

even changes in groundwater.

Until now, monitoring groundwater has been notori-

ously tricky. The traditional methodpoint readings of

individual wellsis laborious and unreliable, since asingle well may not be representative of the entire aquifer.

Using GRACE, however, CIRES Fellow John Wahr and his

colleagues are studying groundwater in ways never before

possible and are revolutionizing the eld of hydrology in

the process. For the rst time, scientists can reliably mea-

sure total changes in a regions groundwater.

The results have been eye-opening. Wahr and

colleagues, along with researchers at the University

of California, Goddard Space Flight Center and other

institutions, have discovered that in places like northern

India, North Africa and Californias Central Valley, hu-

mans are drawing out groundwater faster than its being

replenished. The disparity could have disastrous results

for the more than 1.5 billion people who depend on it

for drinking water.

Launched in 2002, GRACE consists of two twin

satellites, each about the size of a car, that travel in

identical orbits. As they circle the planet, they measure

subtle changes in Earths gravity eld (see How Grace

Works). This allows scientists to map regions of greater

and smaller massfor example, the Himalayas versus

the Mariana Trench, respectively. By comparing the

data month to month, they can determine how that

mass migrates with time.

Since 2002, the biggest mass changes recorded by

GRACE have been ice melt in Greenland, Antarctica

and Alaska. But another dramatic long-term mass

change weve seen is in northern India, Pakistan and

Bangladesh, Wahr says. Its a huge mass loss, and itsdue to farmers pumping water from the ground for their

elds. This area is the most heavily irrigated region

on Earth, with more than 75 percent of it irrigated. Ac-

cording to Wahr and his colleagues calculations, from

2002 to 2008 the region lost 44 million acre-feet of

water annuallyenough to submerge the entire state of

Oklahoma in a foot of water each year.

Researchers at the University of California have also

observed dramatic drawdown in Californias Sacra-

mento-San Joaquin Valley, where from 2003 to 2010,aquifers lost 25 million acre-feet of water. GRACE has

detected groundwater depletions in North Africa and

northeastern China as well. Its a serious problem,

Wahr said. In India, the wells are drying up, and some

people are having trouble getting enough to drink.

Wahrs results have garnered attention from policy mak-

ers, with Indian leaders even discussing the ndings on

the Parliament oor.

Nevertheless, many traditional hydrologists and wa-

ter managers have been skeptical of the satellite-based

ndings. Its a radical idea to think you can measure

1-centimeter changes in groundwater from spacethat

somehow the satellites up there can see water beneath

the soil, Wahr said. Even though Ive been involved

with GRACE from the beginning, its still staggering to

think about what you can accomplish. But once you

understand how GRACE works, you understand how

fantastic the methodology is.

Satellites reveal globalgroundwater depletion

Until the

Well Runs DryEarthsGravity field,measured by

GRACE.Credit: NASA


7/285

Twin satellitesspaced 220 kilometers

(137 miles) apartcircle Earth in identical

orbits, 483 kilometers (300 miles) above

the surface.

Global Positioning System (GPS) receiv-

ers on the satellites track their exact loca-

tion above the planet down to within 1

centimeter (.39 inches) or less.

By beaming microwaves between each

other, the two satellites measure the dis-

tance between one another to less than 1

percent of the width of a human hair.

As the leading satellite passes over a

region with greater massthe Andes in

South America or the Rocky Mountains in

North America, for examplethe stron-

ger gravity eld pulls on the rst satellite

with greater force, causing the satellite to

speed up and move farther ahead of the

trailing satellite. As the second satellite

moves over the more-massive region, it,

too, accelerates and catches up with the

rst satellite.

The crafts instruments use these small

changes in distance to calculate the mass

anomalies that caused them. To isolate the

contribution from groundwater, scientists

subtract out other factors, such as soil mois-

ture and surface water, using models and

observations.

By comparing data month to month,

scientists can determine how Earths mass

relocates over timefor example by ice

sheet melting, groundwater depletion, or

an earthquake heaving up chunks of rock.

Animated image of GRACE.Credit: NASA

How GRACE Works


8/286

By Jane PalmerWhile the impacts of the August 23, 2011, Colorado

earthquake at magnitude 5.3 paled in comparison withthose of the magnitude 5.8 earthquake that hit the EastCoast the same day, it showed the Rio Grande Riftthenorth-trending continental rift zone that extends fromColorados central Rocky Mountains to Mexicois byno means dead but seismically alive and kicking.

We dont expect to see a lot of earthquakes in thatregion, or big ones, but we will have some earth-quakes, said Anne Sheehan, CIRES Fellow and As-sociate Director of CIRES Solid Earth Sciences Division.

Sheehan, her team and colleagues from the Universityof New Mexico, have studied the rift zonethe chasmwhere Earths crust is being pulled apartfor the lastve years to assess the risk of earthquakes.

Colorado and New Mexico, with their mix of moun-tains and plains, sit mainly on the seismically stablepart of the nation where earthquakes are a rarity. TheRio Grand Rift region; however, presents an exceptionto this relative calm. Along the rift, spreading motion inthe crust has led to the rise of magma, the molten rockmaterial under Earths crust, to the surface, and the cre-ation of long, fault-bounded basins that are susceptibleto earthquakes.

Previously, geologists have estimated the rift is notspreading at all, or has spread apart by up to 5 millime-ters each year, but accurate measurements have provedproblematic, Sheehan said. The slow rates of motionin the region mean that any instruments must be ableto measure mere fractions of millimeters of movement,she said. Low-strain-rate regions have been notoriouslydifcult to get a real number for, Sheehan said. Themargins of error in previous estimates can be nearly asmuch as the estimates themselves.

To address this problem, the scientists installed semi-permanent Global Positioning System (GPS) instrumentsat 25 sites in Colorado and New Mexico to track therifts miniscule movements from 2006 to 2011. TheGPS has reduced the uncertainty dramatically, shesaid. We can actually resolve those tiny, tiny motionsI think it is amazing that it works.

The primary goal of the researchers was to assess

How Risky

is the Rift?Estimating earthquakepotential of the Rio

Grande Rift

the potential earthquake hazards posed by the rift andto better understand how the interiors of continents de-form. The high-precision instrumentation has providedunprecedented data about the volcanic activity in theregioninformation that will help give probabilities forthe likelihood of earthquakes, Sheehan said. The bigquestions we wanted to get at were Is the rift active?How is it deforming? Is it alive or dead? Is it opening ornot? she said.

The researchers also hope that the data will shedlight on the mystery of how continents deform awayfrom plate boundaries, Sheehan said. At plate boundar-ies scientists can observe what is going on pretty clearly,she said. Things move past each other and crash intoeach otherat active plate boundaries the rates of mo-tion detected by GPS can be centimeters per year, shesaid. Compare that with the fraction of a millimeter peryear that we have measured for the Rio Grande Rift.

The scientists will publish the studys results in thescientic journal Geologyin early 2012. Until then,Sheehan cannot talk about the details of their ndings;however, she will say what the recent earthquake hasshown so conclusively: The rift is denitely still active.

Credit Anne Sheehan.

TheScienceThe big questions

we wanted to get

at were Is the rift

active? How is it

deforming? Is italive or dead? Is it

opening or not?

Credit Anne Sheehan.

A GPS antenna, NorthernSummit County CO.

BOTTOM OF PAGE:Researchersare setting up one of manyGPS stations along the RioGrande Rift.


9/28

By Jane PalmerWhen Anne Sheehan retrieved her groups ocean

bottom seismometers (OBSs) offshore of New Zealand in2010, it wasnt only the recorded heaves and shudders ofve major earthquakes that caught her attention. It wasthe relatively faint ripples chronicled on the accompany-ing seaoor pressure gaugeswhich measured half-centimeter changes in wave height on the ocean surfacenearly 4,000 meters abovethat astounded her.

The seaoor pressure gauges had picked up a tsu-nami in the seas above.

Like land-based seismometers, OBSs record ground

motions, including the seismic waves of earthquakes, butseaoor pressure gauges capture seismic waves and alsochanges in the height of the water column above. It wasa big surprise, said CIRES Fellow Anne Sheehan and As-sociate Director of CIRES Solid Earth Sciences Division.We are used to getting seismic waves but the waterwaves? To be able to see those as they go over the sensorwas pretty amazing.

The potential use of these deft instruments struckSheehan immediately. When I saw the results, Ithought, Wow, we should see if we can use these to in-

form tsunami estimates and warning systems, she said.

CIRES at seaSheehan, CIRES Fellow Peter Molnar and their col-

leagues at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution andthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology had originallylaunched the OBSs and differential pressure gauges(DPGs)instruments designed to measure the differenc-es in pressureinto the ocean in 2009 with the goal oflearning more about the structure under New ZealandsAlpine Fault. It was a drop and pray approach, Shee-han said. Sometimes the instruments dont come back.

The scientists had surveyed the sea oor with sonarbefore choosing the sinking sites, Sheehan said. Nosteep slopes the instruments might tumble down, nosubmarine canyons, nor regions of heavy currents wherethe ocean noises might interfere with the signals. Wetry to put them in places where there is some sediment,some goopy stuff or some mud so they will sink into it,she said.

Anne SheehanAnne Sheehan

Eavesdropping on TsunamisUnderwater instruments assist early-warning systems

The scientists precautions paid off. One year later,the team successfully collected 29 of the 30 instruments.It was then they saw not just the roars of the seismicdata, but the relative whispers of the tsunami activity.To get that as a by-product of a seismic experiment wasvery interesting, Sheehan said. I had never seen thatdone with ocean-bottom seismometers before.

Predicting the unpredictableWhile earthquakes still cannot be predicted with cer-

tainty, in the last decade scientists have made strides in

issuing warnings, watches and evacuations for the tsu-namis that accompany them. NOAA launched its DART(Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis) re-cording buoys in 2008 to help provide real-time tsunamidetection as the waves travel across the deep-ocean.These instruments also use seaoor pressure gauges, butthey are sparsely spaced in the deep ocean, Sheehansaid, limiting their forecasting power. Following the2010 Chilean earthquake, for example, scientists over-estimated the tsunami threat to Hawaii and the westernPacic because it took three hours for the tsunami to hit

the closest DART buoy, delaying the time the scientistscould use real information to rene their models.The data from seaoor pressure gauges collected

as a byproduct of OBS experiments offer an excitingopportunity to measure tsunami waves, Sheehan said.The information gathered can help scientists recon-struct the entire process of tsunami propagation andtransformation from the open ocean through the con-tinental shelf, and also help them rene their forecast-ing models. In addition, the project has sparked andstrengthened international collaborations with otherresearch institutes, she said. People are pretty much

lining up to work with the data.

TheScience

Seaoor

instrumentation

can pick up half-

centimeter changes

in wave height on

the ocean surface

4,000 meters above.

Funding for this research was provided in part

by a CIRES Innovative Research Program (IRP)

award, which is designed to stimulate a collab-

orative research environment. Learn more athttp://cires.colorado.edu/science/pro/irp/.


10/288

Deciphering thecauses behind

earthquakefatalities

By Jane Palmer

The Fist of Destruction

Earthquake damagein Port-au-Prince.

Credit Marcello Casal


11/289

Haiti, 2010:Magnitude 7 earthquake,death toll 230,000

New Zealand 2010:Magnitude 7 earthquake,death toll 0

Can this staggering difference in death tolls be attrib-uted solely to the relative poverty in Haiti, where poorly-constructed structures collapsed killing thousands, andinsufcient resources hampered the disaster response,killing legions more?

Not true, says CIRES Fellow Roger Bilham. Povertyis only one of ve factorsthe ve ngers in the st ofdestruction, Bilham calls themthat affect the number

of casualties suffered in a major earthquake. While pov-erty and its evil twin ignorance meaning inhabitantsand even governments often dont know how to preparefor potential earthquakesplay their part, in 2010Bilham and Nicholas Ambraseys of Imperial College inLondon uncovered one previously unidentied culprit inearthquake fatalities: corruption in the building industry.

Corruption in this sector frequently takes the form ofcorner-cutting on materials, poor building practices aswell as bribes to subvert inspection, Bilham said. Thequestion is: how to prove it?

While the impacts of poverty and corruption arehighly similar, the scientists attempted to tease apart theinuence of both ngers on earthquake death tolls.The rst stage of their analysis compared the data on acountrys relative wealth with a Corruption PerceptionsIndex (CPI)a measure of the frequency and extent ofbribes paid within various countries compiled by Trans-

parency Internationala global civic society based inBerlin. The scientists found a direct correlation betweenthe two variables. What this says is that if a country isrich, it is not generally corrupt; if it is poor, it is very cor-rupt, Bilham said.

Some anomalies did exist to this simple relationship,however. Italy, Turkey and Haiti were more corruptthan they should be on the basis of their wealth,whereas India, New Zealand and China were less cor-rupt than expected.

To determine how many earthquake deaths due tobuilding collapses happened in the anomalously corruptcountries, the researchers then analyzed all the compiledearthquake fatality data for the last 30 years. Their nd-ing was staggering: 83 percent of the earthquake deathsoccurred in the more corrupt than expected nations.That is not exactly proving anything, but it is a solidresult, Bilham said.

While corruption primarily impacts those living incities, the fourth nger of destruction impacts those liv-ing in rural communities, Bilham said. In most nations,engineers build structures in the civic centers with fullknowledge of earthquake preparedness, Bilham said.But the villages dont hear anything about it. We knowhow to build for earthquakes but we dont get the mes-

sage to the people whoneed itthe guy whois going to die in theearthquake, he said.

For the fth ngerthe opposing thumb inthe problem of globalearthquake fatalitiesBilham points at seis-mologists themselves.

Certain limitationsin data and accepted

practices can make assessing the potential for earth-quakes in a region difcult. Researchers, for example,cannot determine the history of earthquakes in regionswhere there is no historical record, and since some

earthquakes happen well below the earths surface,traditional methods of estimating seismic activityare inadequate, Bilham said,and geodetic methodsfor assessing the strain rates in earthquakes zonescan be misleading.

Before the 8.0 Chengdu earthquake, for instance,which killed 68,000 people in 2008, the stressesmeasured in the earths crustthe strain ratewereonly three times more than those currently measuredin Colorado.

Could this mean a magnitude 8.0 earthquake could

happen in Colorado?It is not implausible, Bilham said. If an earthquakehappened tomorrow, people would do these calcula-tions and say, We should have seen this coming.

In this st of destruction, there are all these factors,Bilham said. But the biggest one is the danger ofseismologists being too conservative in a region wherethey dont have sufcient information to say, Youcannot have an earthquake.

We know how to

build for earthquakes

but we dont get themessage to the people

who need itthe guy

who is going to die in

the earthquake.


12/2810

By Jane PalmerA harsh climate can wear anyone

down, and mountains are no exception.But when it comes to certain mountainranges, bad weather has done more thanerode the surface slopesits changedthe shape of the mountains altogether,

said CIRES Fellow Greg Tucker.It is amazing, Tucker, a geologist in

CIRES Solid Earth Sciences Division, said.The power of climate shows up in theshape of a hillslope.

Mountains toMolehillsHow dierent climates

sculpt mountain ranges

Photos taken of theApennines in Italy.

Credit Greg Tucker


13/2811

Tuckers fascination with the topic started with hisrst visit to the Italian Central Apennines ten yearsago. There, the gentle, rubble-covered mountaintopsperched on incongruously steep, intact bases caughthis attention. The change in slope dated from the lastice age, Tucker learned, but why would the changein climate cause such a radical shift in mountaintopography?

How did those mountains get there?This notable change in mountain slope exists

in locations where Earths crust is being stretched,Tucker said. Large blocks slide relative to oneanother under the crust and mountains form whenone block slides up and out of the ground, he said.

Mountains are a little likeescalators, he said. Eachearthquake is like one stepon the escalator because it

raises the mountain up andshifts it to one side.

Once a mountain sectionor step emerges from the

ground, winds, rain, sun and snow set to work, wearingdown the surface slopes. The higher older slopes, orsteps, have seen more of this weathering than the lowerslopes, Tucker said. But unlike steps on an escalator,rocks break down and erode.

If weather erosion is not high in comparisonthe rate of the mountain uplift the mountain slope

remains similar to the angle of the fault plain, Tuckersaid. But if the erosion is relatively substantial itwears down the slope, he said. So the slope of amountain depends on the relative power of tectonicsversus erosion, he said.

Tucker and his team hypothesized that the changesin the slope of the mountain front might have a reallysimple explanation. If the slope has changed in olderand younger parts of the slope, it suggests the speedof erosion has changed, Tucker said. So the older,upper parts of the mountain may have seen a differentclimate than the recent one, he said.

Probing the mountainmorphology mystery

To estimate how long-term weather patterns mightsculpt mountain ranges, the scientists designed aninnovative geometric model using the Apennines asa test case. Although they expected colder, harsherconditions to cause slightly more erosion, using thismethodology they found that the freezing tempera-tures in near-glacial climatesperiglacial climatescan erode mountain ranges 10 times faster than

temperate ones and result in radical shape changesto the mountains.In the Apennines, for instance, it really looks

like the upper parts of the slopes got almost blastedaway, Tucker said.

The explanation for this result lies in the fact thatdifferent climates can vary greatly in their power toerode, Tucker said. At the height of the last ice age,the upper ground level lay in a temperature regime

TheScience

The slope of an Apennine

mountain is decided by

opposing forces: weather

erosion and how fast the

hillside is emerging from

the ground.

The power of

climate shows up

in the shape of a

hillslope.

called the frost-cracking window, Tucker said. Attemperatures of about 5 degrees Celsius, ice crystalsform in the rock; these crystals then grow as thin lmsof liquid water migrate toward them, he said.

The burgeoning crystals pressurize the rocks fromwithin eventually creating holes and cracks. In thelast ice age, this internal freezing effect broke upthe rocks and crumbled the hillsides to form gentlemounds of rubble, Tucker said. The current, warmerclimate has no such effect, however. As the rocksslide up from underground, they hardly get touchedby erosion at all, he said. So they are almost a mir-ror image of the fault plane. The result of the differ-ent climatic conditions is broken-up, potholed rocksup high and sheer, intact rock below.

Another unforeseen application for the scientistsnovel new model also exists. Using information aboutthe shape of the hill slope and the speed at which thefault is moving, researchers can now determine howfast the current climatic conditions are eroding therock in certain types of mountain ranges, Tucker said,which is really cool because until now scientistshavent had many numbers for how fast the rock isweathering.

Greg Tucker


14/28

X-ray Through the Earth

Inner Core1200km

Outer Core2300km

COR

E

MAN

TLE

CRUST

Lower Mantle

Upper Mantle

Earths Crust 5-70km

2900km

3500km

12

THE CRUST

The crust comprises thecontinents and the oceanbasins. It has variablethickness, being 35-70kmthick in the continents and5-10km thick in the oceanbasins.

THE MANTLEThe mantle is separated

into the lower and uppermantle and totals about2900km thick. This iswhere most of the internalheat of the earth is located.The crust and the solid

portion of the upper mantlemake up the lithosphere.The lithosphere is divided

into the many tectonicplates that move around inrelation to each other (seeopposite page).

THE CORE

This layer is separated intothe liquid outer core andthe solid inner core. Theouter core is 2300km thick

and composed of a nickel-iron alloy and the innercore is 1200km thick andcomposed almost entirelyof iron.

There is about one

magnitude 7 earth-

quake per month,

which is the size of

the earthquake that

devastated Haiti

in 2010. However,

most magnitude 7

earthquakes go un-

noticed by the media

because they happen

in unpopulated re-

gions and cause little

to no destruction to

human settlements.

The earth consists of several distinct layers,each with their own properties.


15/2813

Earthquake EssentialsBy Celia Schiffman, CIRES graduate student in theGeological Sciences Department at CU Boulder

What is an earthquake?An earthquake is what happens when two blocks

of the earth suddenly slip past one another causingground shaking and seismic waves.

The surface where they slip is called the fault or faultplane. This fault movement can be everything from arapid, massive shaking that results in a great earthquake,to a slow creep that is undetectable to humans and canonly be recorded by sensitive instruments.

Where do most earthquakes occur?The biggest earthquakes generally occur on the

largest faults, which are found where tectonic platesmeet. These tectonic plates are large plates of rock thatmake up the surface of Earth. If the planet were an egg,the cracked shell would be the tectonic plates.

A Map of

the planetstectonic

plates

Volcano HazardsTeam/USGS

Earthquakes by the numbers:a common occurrence

Earthquakes are very common, and chances areone has happened while you have been reading this there are more than one million of them per yearthroughout the world.

Average earthquakes per year Magnitude 8+: 1 Magnitude 7-7.9: 15 Magnitude 6-6.9: 134 Magnitude 5-5.9: 1,319 Magnitude 4-4.9: 13,000 Magnitude 3-3.9: 130,000 Magnitude 2-2.9: 1,300,000


16/2814

By Kristin BjornsenGetting demoted from Batman to the Boy Wonder,

Robin, isnt fun, but that may be the ignoble fate thatawaits the Tibetan Plateau. For decades, meteorolo-gists and geologists have thought the 5,000-meter-high plateauthe worlds highestand largestplayed a crucialrole in the South Asian Monsoon(aka Indian Monsoon), but newresearch might relegate it to side-kick status.

Theres a big controversyabout whether the Tibetan Plateau is important or notin driving the Indian Monsoon, CIRES Fellow PeterMolnar said. The classic view is that the plateau hasa large part in strengthening the monsoon, while thenew view gives it a smaller, mostly mechanical role.Were trying to gure out what its role is, he said.

Monsoon MysteryInvestigatingthe forcesthat drivethe IndianMonsoon

Theres a big controversy

about whether the Tibetan

Plateau is important or not in

driving the Indian Monsoon.

Its not an academic question since millions ofpeople depend on the Indian monsoon, which candeliver more than 400 inches of rain to regions, fordrinking water, hydropower and agriculture. Under-standing the mechanisms behind it is key to predict-

ing its intensity and uctuationsyear to year.

From the Arabic word mausimfor seasons, monsoons aremarked by seasonally reversingwind systems. From about Juneto September, the sun bakes the

land in India; air heats up and rises, creating a low-pressure area. Wind rushes in from the southwest,carrying water from the Indian Ocean. In October,the land cools and the winds reverse, blowing backtoward the ocean to the southwest.

The Tibetan Plateau, the roof of the world, was

Tibetan Heritage Fund


17/2815

thought to help fuel this process by further heating theair and driving atmospheric convection (rapid ascentof warm, moist air). The sun warms the plateaus sur-face, making air at that altitude hotter than it wouldbe without the plateau, Molnar said. Consequentlyunder the traditional theorythe high, hot plateauacts sort of like an air pump, creating a low-pressurezone that sucks in moist, rain-bearing air from the Bayof Bengal.

But some of Molnars colleagues noticed somethingstrange. The hottest summer temperatures in the uppertroposphere (about 10 kilometer high) werent over theentire Tibetan Plateau, as youd expect, but over itssouthern edge and the northern Himalaya. Most of theTibetan Plateau wasnt playing much of a part.

What this means is that the high temperature wasdue more to latent heating [heat released when watercondenses], Molnar said. Essentially, the Himalayaforces up moist air from the ocean, he said. As the

air rises, it cools and water condenses, releasingrain and latent heat. The latent heat makes the airhotter, which makes it rise higher to the top of thetroposphere (bottom of the stratosphere). This cyclecontinues, leading to the high temperature seen aloftover the southern edge. So the monsoon rains arebeing driven not so much by the plateau, but simplybecause you have a wall of mountains mechanicallyforcing the air up, Molnar said.

The Himalaya strengthens the monsoon in anotherway: They prevent Indias warm, moist air from mix-ing with the cold, dry air from China and Europe.Without that barrier, everything would dissipateaway, and youd get rain but not a strong monsoon.So even with no Tibetan Plateau, you should still getmonsoons.

Nevertheless, even if the Himalayan/southern edgebarrier is the dominant playermechanically strength-ening the monsoonthat doesnt mean the plateauhas no effect. It could still act as a thermal pump, in-tensifying the monsoon to some degree, which is whatMolnar is investigating. Id like to know whetherTibets thermal effect matters or if its purely mechani-cal. To answer that, hes looking at the plateaus geo-logic history (when and how it became high) and theareas climate history (when the monsoon was strongand weak), to see whether one affects the other.

But dont write off the Tibetan Plateau yet. Even if

it turns out to have a minor role, that could spell thedifference between a strong and weak monsoon. Astrong monsoon is dened as 10 percent more rainthan average and a weak monsoon as 10 percent less.Thats a small range, but as far as Indian civilizationis concerned, if you dropped its rainfall by 10 percent,it would be a different world, Molnar said. So the Ti-betan Plateau doesnt have to make a big contributionto have a big effect.

NASA

LEFT: Farms on theTibetan Plateau.

Credit Tibetan Heritage Fund

RIGHT: Tibetan Plateauand Himalayas taken

by Astronauts aboardthe international

space station.Credit NASA.


18/2816

Rocks, Rocks and

Yet More RocksVirtual rock collection furthers insights into North America evolution

TheScience

Scientists use volcanic rocks to understand

the evolution of America. More rocks equals

more knowledge.

By Jane PalmerIn a geologists universe, CIRES Fellow Lang Farmer

justiably earns the lauded title as The Great Dane ofall rockhounds.

For the last eight years, Farmer who is also Chair ofGeological Sciences Department, along with colleaguesfrom the University of Kansas and the University ofNorth Carolina, have amassed the mother of all rockcollections, currently totaling 64,985 rock samples butgrowing by the day. Even though the collection is avirtual oneeach rock is stored in an online data-baseeach entry represents a real individual rock, dugor retrieved from the ground, cleaned off, inspected andwritten about.

The database, called the North American Volcanicand Intrusive Rock Database (NAVDAT) provides a

web-accessible repository for the age and chemicalcompositions of western North America volcanic rocks.It supplies an unprecedented resource for researchers,educators and even the general public, Farmer said.Most notably, researchers can mine the databaseto learn more about the geological history of NorthAmerica. We are using it to look at the geologicalevolution of an entire continent over a hundred millionyears, he said.

Volcanic rocks are gems of historical information,Farmer said. These rocks derive from magmasbod-ies of molten rock located below Earths surfaceand,if geologists can nd them on the surface, they canreconstruct how the continent has evolved throughtime, he said. People have been using volcanic rock

datawhether it is age or composition or petrologytoreconstruct the history of continents for 50 years.

Over the past thirty years, new geological techniquesthat yield geochemical, geochronological, and geo-spatial analyses of these volcanic rocks have producedunprecedented amounts of data, Farmer said. The con-struction of an online database therefore saves the re-search community countless hours of searching throughthe literature and collating previous results, he said.

To this end, the inter-university team created theNAVDAT database culling the information from previ-ously published literature, doctoral theses and recordsfrom the United States Geological Survey. The research-ers also add new information as it is discovered. It is aliving database, Farmer said.

Powerful map interfaces allow users to quickly plot

sample locations on satellite images, and hyperlinkedgeochemical plots allow users to rapidly investigatespace-time patterns in the compositions of rocks.These tools allow users of the database to addressa wide variety of issues concerning the geologicevolution and present volcanic state of western NorthAmerica. The database is also a tool for lecturers andstudents across the USA, Farmer said. It has realeducational value, he said.

Farmer has used the database to look at the evolutionof Colorado over the last 80 million years. Specically,he searched the database to investigate why the south-ern Rocky Mountain area has seen so much volcanicaction when it lies so far inland from a continentalmargin. He has shown that much of this activity, knownas magmatism, stems from an episode some 60 millionyears ago when the oceanic lithosphere moved underwestern North America.

He credits this surprising discovery to the large quan-tities of data at his disposal in the database. When youconsider 10,000 analyses all at the same time, much ofthe sampling bias goes away, Farmer said. A discov-ery is not based on a couple of analysesit is based on

everything.Credit Anne Sheehan

Credit Anne Sheehan


19/2817

How earthquakes impact rivers

The Trickle-DownEffectBy Jane Palmer

Falling buildings, landslides and tsunamis jump tomind as the most immediate consequences of an earth-quake. But waterfalls? To investigate how earthquakesaffect river systems and subsequently how they shapethe landscape decades after the event, CIRES FellowGreg Tucker and former CIRES graduate student BrianYanites travelled to Taiwan, which experienced a majorearthquake in 1999.

What was the immediate impact

of the 1999 earthquake?There was a series of rivers crossing the Chelungpufault, which when it ruptured pushed up one side of thefault over another creating sharp drops. Instantly, in amatter of seconds to minutes, the earthquake created aset of brand-new waterfalls, some of which were up tosix meters high.

When the water plunges over like that, it will carveout the rock beneath. In Taiwan, the rivers are powerfulbecause they are fed by typhoons. Also, the rocks arerelatively soft and so the erosion at the base of the wa-terfall is phenomenal. As the base erodes, the waterfall

essentially moves back. So today, 10 years later, thewaterfalls have moved upstream as much as a mile or so.

Researchers expected the formation of waterfalls,but were there any surprises in this study?

When Brian looked far upstream of the fault, henoticed that many of the segments of the rivers wereabsolutely choked in sand and gravel with no bed-rock in sight. What we think is happening here is theearthquake essentially shook loose a lot of sedimenton the hill slopes. The earthquake was accompanied

by thousands and thousands of landslides.

So it looks like the big earth-quake of 1999 had a dual role.Where the rivers were sitting justupstream of the fault, it created awaterfall that turned the river onhigh speed, it just sliced like a buzzsaw. But further upstream the riverwas just cloaked with dirt that hadbeen shaken loose on the hillsides.The dirt basically shields the chan-

nel bedrock from erosion, and willcontinue to do so until it is washedaway again. Brian Yanites calcula-tion suggests that this could take upto hundreds of years in some places.

Why is it important to understand this?There are issues of preparedness in seismically active

areas. The levels of erosion in places like Taiwan are sofast that they can have a very real effect on communitiesand infrastructure. For example, in Taiwan there was ahydrodam not far upstream from one of the fault struc-

tures. When that waterfall started retreating it posed athreat to that dam.

It is imperative as a community that we developthe tools to at least estimate, if not to forecast, whatmight happen in response to any kind of managementaction. What is going to happen to something com-plicated like a river system if you build a dam, if youcut down the trees, if you change the hydrology? Thatis why we need to be able to understand the physicsof landscape processes, and to understand the physicswe need to nd natural experiments like Taiwan and

use them to rene our models.

Credit Brian Yanites

CIRES FELLOW

Greg Tucker


20/28

By Jane PalmerDangling in thin air above a Himalayan glacier,

Ulyana Horodyskyj drills holes into a vertical cliff tomount one of her three round-the-clock spies: solar-powered cameras poised to capture the hourly risesand sometimes-spectacular falls of the lakes below.

On one occasion the rst camera showed a drain-age of 3 meters, said Horodyskyj, a CIRES graduatestudent advised by CIRES Fellow Roger Bilham and arecipient of a CIRES Graduate Student Research Fel-lowship. Overnight! I could see the water lineit wasincredible.

Horodyskyj studies how supraglacial lakeswhichsit atop the surfaces of glaciersform and evolve inthe Himalaya. She hopes her research will unveil newinsights into the demise of glaciers in the area andhelp forecast hazards like ooding. When people

think about glaciers, they think in terms of advancesand retreats, but glaciers are also shrinking vertically,Horodyskyj said. We aim to understand the physicsbehind this process.

The supraglacial lakes most likely act as catalystsfor this vertical ice loss, Horodyskyj said. To investi-gate this hypothesis she spent a month on Ngozumpa,Nepals largest glacier, with a local Sherpa, Ang Phula,to set up her experiment.

18

Feelingthe Heat

Once there, Horodyskyj rappelled down theglaciers lateral moraine to set up the three cameras,each one focused on a different region. The camerastook hourly snapshots of three supraglacial lakes,and Horodyskyj recorded the water-level changes in

one particular lake during the month of her eld trip.She also measured the rate of melting on the north-and south-facing ice walls of the lake, using a laserrangender, as well as the incoming and outgoing solarirradiation. This is a way to really quantify what ishappening, she said.

During her stay, Horodyskyj watched the waterrise by a total of 28 centimeters, which is 9 metersdeep at its center. Two major icefalls, only a week

apart, contributed 6and 8 centimeters

respectively to thisoverall water rise.It was like being ina shooting gallerywhen you are nearthese lakesthings

are collapsing everywhere, Horodyskyj said. Itdoesnt matter whether your wall is facing east, west,north or souththey are all collapsing.

Investigating supraglaciallakes role in glacier melt

It was like being in a

shooting gallery whenyou are near these lakes

things are collapsing

everywhere,


21/2819

One camera also captured the 3 centimeters over-night drainage in a larger lake, further upglacier, Horo-dyskyj said. The theory is that as the glacier moves,crevasses open up, she said. Once there is a conduitbetween the lake and the base of the glacier, the water

drains through it. You can just hear the water ush-ing, she said.

The third camera, focused on the smallest lake nearthe end of the glacier, showed that lake to have changedfrom milky blue to brown during the eld season andalso to have doubled in size due to the monsoon rains.These initial results reveal that these lakes can undergosubstantial changes in a very short amount of time, saidHorodyskyj. The big-picture question is guring out justhow fast these changes happen, she said, and what thatmeans to the overall health of the glacier and how much

time it has left.Insights from the study might also help with planning

for natural disasters, Horodyskyj said. Flooding from gla-ciers will become a big problem for local villages if meltand drainage of these lakes continues on the fast-track,as the initial results show. Being able to predict when,and how large, any water surges would be, is invaluable,she said. So there is basically a big human impact storyto the science.

CIRES oers graduate student fellowships.

Learn more at cires.colorado.edu/education.

TheScience

Lakes perched atop glaciers may play a majorpart in vertical glacial ice loss.

Ulyana Horodoyskyj stands

next to a supraglacial lake

Credit Ulyana Horodyskyj


22/2820

By Jane Palmer and Kristin BjornsenWhile the 2005 7.6 Kashmir earthquake caused

75,000 deaths and immeasurable damage to the livesof survivors, its devastating impacts could be a paleshadow of what is to come, cautions CIRES FellowRoger Bilham.

A magnitude 9.0 earthquake, though unexpected,is possible in Kashmir, said Bilham, whose team ofCIRES scientists, along with researchers from India andPakistan, have studied rates of crustal deformationtell-tale measurements of earthquake susceptibilityin the

region for the past eight years.The studys results constitute the rst comprehen-sive predictions of seismic activity in the area basedon GPS measurements, and the collected data identifyan area between the Kashmir Valley and the Pir PanjalRange where accumulating strain could potentiallygenerate a megaquake.

This region, which is in the western end of theHimalaya in northern India and eastern Pakistan,

lies along a collisional tectonic boundary, where theIndian continental plate is smashing into the Eurasianplate, thrusting up the Himalaya. By measuring howfast points in the mountain ranges to the northeast and

southeast of theKashmir Valley areconverging, the re-searchers identiedthe locked regionof the Kashmir

Himalaya, north ofwhich the rocks arebeing compressed.As the strain builds,

the rocks will eventually reach a breaking point andallow the Himalaya to slide over the Indian plate.

In the past several hundred years small patches ofthe locked region have slipped in damaging but lessextreme earthquakes than the maximum possible event

New data reveal

megaquake is possiblein western Himalayankingdom

A Mw9earthquakeinKashmir?

We are NOT forecasting

a Mw=9 earthquake in

Kashmir. We have merely

determined that earth-

quakes of this severity are

possible.

Investigating temples in Kashmir givesinsights into previous earthquake eventsCredit Roger Billham


23/28

Fields of Flowers that growin the Kashmir Valley.Credit Majeed Wani.

20

now identied by geodetic data, Bilham said. If a 9.0earthquake were to occur in Kashmir, he estimates therupture would extend from the 2005 earthquake zonenear Muzafferabad, Pakistan, to the Kangra 1905 earth-quake zone in northern Indiaa distance of about 480kilometers (300 miles)and from the Zanskar Range tosouth of the Pir Panjal rangea distance of about 190kilometers (120 miles).

Above and near this zone, structural damage wouldbe severe, Bilham said. Moreover, landslides mayblock various rivers, resulting in temporary lakes andsubsequent catastrophic oods downstream outside theKashmir Valley in the Punjab region of India, he cautions.The worst-case scenario would be a repeat of the 883AD ood, which blocked the Jhelum River Gorge,resulting in the creation of a 15-meter-deep lake thatooded most of the Kashmir Valley. The ood alonewould displace more than a million people and resultin catastrophic interruption to food production, he said.

The death toll, both directly from the earthquakecasualties and indirectly through ooding and food

shortages, could be unprecedented, Bilham said.About 6 million people would be affected due tothe collapse of buildings and civic structures, heestimated.

Despite highlighting these dire consequences, how-ever, Bilham asserts, We are NOT forecasting a Mw=9earthquake in Kashmir. We have merely determinedthat earthquakes of this severity are possible.

So why draw attention to the potential for earth-quakes in this region?

Bilham believes that although currently Indiasbuilding codes are adequate to protect its popula-tion, they are unevenly implemented. Advising civicleaders about the possibility of a major earthquakeand enforcing building codes more strictlyespeciallyfor villages and affordable housing in citieswouldmitigate more severe consequences.

Science has a duty to alert the regions inhabitantsof what may occur, Bilham said. That these mega-quakes seldom occur does not mean we should ignorethem, he said.


24/2822

By Jane PalmerJust how the Rocky Mountains formed in Colorado

has always puzzled scientists. Some 1,000 kilometers(600 miles) inland and far removed from the nearesttectonic plate, the only comparable inland mountainrange is the Himalaya, which scientists deduced wereformed by the collision of the Indian plate with theEurasian plate.

But there really was no India slamming into NorthAmerica, said CIRES Fellow Craig Jones. So how thecentral Rockies have formed is an enigma.

Geologists have some understanding of how thesouthern and northern portions of the Rocky MountainRange, one of the longest mountain chains on Earth,have formed, but have previous explanations of thecreation of the mountain range in Colorado and NewMexico have proved problematic, Jones said.

Jones and his team; however, have proposed a newmodel that may give valuable insights into the long-standing riddle. Not only could their research explainthe origin of the Rockies, it could also elucidate othergeological phenomena: why a swath of gold, silver andother precious metal deposits stretches across Colo-rado, and why a marine basin deepened in the states ofColorado and Wyoming just before the Rockies rose.The sediments of this marine basin are the Pierre Shale,a layer of shale lying along the Front Range of Colorado.Pierre Shale has nasty tendencies to bow up peoplesbasements, Jones said. Why more than a mile of thisstuff was dumped into this area has been puzzling.

Previously scientists believed that the oceanic plate

subducting, or moving under, North America rose fromthe mantle to rub against the continents bottom all theway from the ocean to Colorado. The theory was thisaction as it moved eastwards pushed the landmass intomountains much like a rug piles up underfoot, said

Jones. But the hypothesis just doesnt explain the facts,he said. That model predicted removal of material thatis still found to lie underneath California and Arizona,he said. That in and of itself was unsatisfying.

The new model hinges on an unusually thick litho-

spherethe stiff part of the earths surface that make upthe tectonic platesunder Wyoming. As the oceanicslab slipped underneath the Wyoming section, calledthe Wyoming craton, friction between the underlyingslab and craton sucked part of the Southern Wyomingand Colorado downwards to form a basin, Jones said.

This basin in which Pierre Shale built up, ampliedmountain-building forces far inland and forced the for-mation of the Rockies, he said. A huge basin developsand all of a sudden these mountains come rocketing outof it, Jones said. We end up with the counter-intuitivevisage of mountains rising up out of a hole.

The hypothesis, if conrmed, could not only unravelthe geological origin of the Rockies, but could alsoilluminate the mechanisms that have led to mountainranges worldwide. We are adding a new collection ofprocesses that can control how mountain belts developthat previously havent really been appreciated, Jonessaid. Considering these processes might explain otherpuzzling mountain belts.

Credit David Oonk

New theory sheds lighton the ranges creation

The Birth of the

Rockies


25/28

Melting ice isexpanding theplanets waistline

Earth Girth

TheScience

Ice loss from

Greenland and

Antarctica sends

more water into the

oceans leading to a

fatter Earth.

23

The GreenlandIce Sheet.Credit Konrad Steffen


26/2824

MySphereWhere in the world do CIRES researchers work?

ColoradoR

ockyMountains:H

owdid

theseform?

P.22

GreenlandIceSheet:Measuringicelossfromspace.P.23

ForelandArchesinWyomin

g:

Whatcreatedtheseunusua

lfeatures?

RioGrandeRift:Willearthquakesshake

ColoradoandNewMexico?P.6

Haiti:Didcorruptionincreasethedeath

toll?P.8


27/2825

Design Credit: Kiki Holl, David OonkPhoto credits (clockwise from top left):Kiki Holl, Anne Sheehan, Konrad Steffen,Greg Tucker, Roger Billham, Brian Yanites,iStockphoto, uncredited, Anne Sheehan

ItalianAppenines:Whatm

akesthemthatshape?P.

10

Himalayas:Dolakesatopglaciersaccelerateiceloss?P.18

Taiwan:Howearthquakescreate

giantwaterfalls.P.17

Kashmir:Isamegaquakelooming?Howbigcouldaquakegetthere?P.20


28/28

DONATE TO CIRESInvest in the future of our planet.The Earth is changing at anunprecedented rate. To ensure the planets sustainability and biodiversity,it is vital to understand and anticipate these changes. CIRES has beenat the forefront of environmental research for more than 40 yearsdelivering the knowledge critical for decision making.

CIRES researchers are working to understand the origins, and impacts ofearthquakes and tsunamis to help warn and prepare communities acrossthe globe. Find out how you can make a difference athttp://cires.colorado.edu/donate/.

The Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences is a

research institute dedicated to better understanding the Earth system. Our

research is essential for understanding the processes and feedbacks in many

Earth science disciplines, and to foster cross-disciplinary understanding of

the cryosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, geosphere, and hydrosphere. CIRES

scientists are identifying and quantifying changes in a warming climate,

providing baseline data against which to measure change, and informing

the public and the policy makers about these changes.

CIRES is a cooperative institute of the University of Colorado at Boulder and

the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Konrad Steffen, Ph.D., Director William M. Lewis, Ph.D.,CIRES Associate Director

Suzanne Van Drunick, Ph.D., Associate Director for Science

([email protected])

http://cires.colorado.edu twitter.com/theCIRESwire

Contact CIRES communications:[email protected]

2011 solid earth edition

Documents