Earth news

The East African Rift Valley Could Fill With Ocean Water Or Lava, We Don't Know

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Geologists confirm the East African Rift has opened up 28' during a recent earthquake. I wish to examine all the major rift valleys on earth and show, they are proof the nearly all continents are being torn apart along these seams. And some fill with ocean water and some with lava.

From Livescience, interesting pictures from satellites showing clearly huge cracks have developed in the center of the rift zone in Ethiopia.

Satellite images show that the Arabian tectonic plate and the African plate are moving away from each other, stretching the Earth's crust and widening the southern end of the Red Sea, scientists reported in this week's issue of journal Nature.

Last September, a series of earthquakes started splitting the planet's surface along a 37-mile section of the East African Rift in Afar, Ethiopia.

Using the images gathered by the European Space Agency's Envisat radar satellite, researchers looked at satellite data before and after these activities.

I drew two maps of the planet using very simplified lines. It is sometimes easier to see things in a schematic design rather than in great detail. One thing that has always puzzled me is how rift valleys form in the first place. Many people, thanks to the Leakey family's heroic research into the origins of humans, are aware of the East African Rift Valley. This famous valley has all the characteristics of rift valleys: it is lower than the sea in most places, it tends to have many different climate zones within the rift ecosystem, it is very long and it is splitting something nearly in two and the future of many rift zones look as if they will fill with ocean waters.

The East African Rift Valley, like the Dead Sea Rift Valley or California's Imperial Valley, has a long daisy-chain of increasingly rancid lakes. The deeper the rift valley, the saltier and more toxic the lake. The Dead Sea is famously salty. So is the equally aptly named Salton Sea in California.
The Eastern hemisphere shows Africa's east coast being sliced off as if Saudi Arabia were a cleaver, the point where it strikes Africa as right at the beginning of the great rift valley that connects all the lakes in East Africa as well as the headwaters of the Nile, the great river that flows north to the Mediterranean Sea. The section that is being sliced away from Africa is a larger version of Madagascar, the tropical island in the south. It is obvious that it once was part of the mainland, the jigsaw puzzle interface is quite clear as well as the flora and fauna are all African and our lemurian relatives still roam free there, protected when their part of the jungle became an island 20 million years ago.

If one looks across the Pacific Ocean, one can see Australia's Tasmanian Island separated the same way with Australia moving north while the island drags behind more and more as what was once a rift valley becomes connected at both ends by the ocean.

This is true of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and India: India moved ahead while the rift between both places widened until the ocean filled in.

Looking at the Western Hemisphere, one can clearly see California is a great rift zone, too. Only nothing is 'splitting' it like Africa and Arabia. Instead, it is tearing apart at the bottom and moving northwards. Baja California is already nearly surrounded by sea and in the not too distant future, all of the Central Valley will flood from the already deepening opening in the San Francisco Bay all the way down to the Gulf of California.

A very similar situation is developing, more belatedly, from Seattle, south. Vancouver Island already has separated. It is not unusual to see smaller fragments breaking off before great hunks peel away, it seems.

From the previous article:

Over a period of three weeks, the crust on the sides of the rift moved apart by 26 feet and magma—enough to fill a football stadium more than 2,000 times—was injected along a vertical crack, forming a new crust.

"We think that the crust and mantle melt slowly at depths greater than 10 kilometers [6 miles], where it is hotter, forming magma (molten rock)," said Tim J Wright, study co-author, a Royal Society University Research Fellow. "This magma rises through the crust because it is less dense than the surrounding rock.”

Ah, the magma rising issue! Yes, there is lurking just below the surface, this hot stuff that is very dangerous as well as life-giving. Many of the rift valleys have volcanoes who signal the destructive forces lurking just below. Unlike zones where the continents collide with other plates moving under and over each other, the 'Ring of Fire' situations that cause mountain-building, the rifting action is the earth sinking and tearing. This happens often very close to mountain-building.

For example, in California, the rifting is due to the northward movement of the Pacific Plate while the Atlantic deep ocean rift is driving the North American continent due west.

* Here is some scientists trying to see the future of the East African Rift:

Researchers from Britain, France, Italy and the U.S. have been observing the 37-mile long fissure since it split open in September in the Afar desert and estimate it will take a million years to fully form into an ocean, said Dereje Ayalew, who leads the team of 18 scientists studying the phenomenon.

The fissure, now 13 feet wide, formed in just three weeks after a Sept. 14 earthquake in a barren region called Boina, some 621 miles north east of the capital, Addis Ababa, said Dereje.

And indeed, they could be right. Smaller rifts that shave off lesser portions often fill with water! The Red Sea is such a rift. We suspect Africa is pushing into Europe but at the same time, we are troubled to see these several rift valleys forming, one right next to the other! For just to the east of the Red Sea is the Jordan Valley Rift! It has one of the deepest rifts on earth: the Dead Sea. This is, of course, also one of the hottest places on earth. This long, narrow rift valley is probably going to split the Middle East off and if it fills with ocean water, it will be a mirror of the Persian Sea and the Red Sea on either side.

Friends of Ethiopia ask some interesting questions:

Our aim is to understand one of the fundamental processes occurring on our Earth, namely the break-up of continents. But there are also immediate economic, environmental and cultural objectives. We hope to identify possible geothermal fields in the Rift. Oil and geothermal exploration geologists also need to know about the embryonic stages of continental break-up to work out how to discover and exploit reserves along other continental margins where plates have successfully rifted, e.g. the oilfields offshore west Africa. The Rift is environmentally hazardous and our studies will help in both earthquake and volcanic risk assessment. The region of Afar is an area closely linked to the development of Man. Anthropologists, archaeologists and geographers, in their studies of early Man and his interaction with the environment, need to know about the active processes of rifting; the type of faulting; the amount and timing of crustal subsidence and uplift; the distribution of volcanic centres and their associated volcanic rocks.

After thinking about all this for 40 years, I think I can venture some interesting thoughts about rift valleys: they are not only the harbors of life during terrible times of change, they are not only the cradle of most species that live on land (or in the sea rift valleys, ditto!). They are also nearly the death of all living things not once but repeatedly!

This is because the fate of rift valleys isn't so simple. They don't all fill with water, peacefully!

Here is the local volcano associated with the section of the East African Rift Valley that had that recent earthquake:

The Boina (Gambouli) fumarole field immediately north of Lake Abbe (also known as Lake Abhe) is located within Plio-Pleistocene basaltic rocks of the Afar stratoid series (CNR-CNRS, 1975). Boina was included in the Catalog of Active Volcanoes of the World (Richard and Neumann van Padang, 1957) based on its geothermal activity. The location listed by the Catalog of Active Volcanoes of the World is mislocated from a 1939 map. The fumaroles are located in a 7-m-deep funnel about 300 m above the surface of Lake Abbe and about 1 km NE of its shore; they are visible and audible from a distance.

Here is a description of how Madagascar sheared away from Africa:

Emmel, B.; Jacobs, J.:

Combined titanite and apatite FT data were used to calculate denudation rates. Samples from the paleo western margin of Madagascar along the N-S striking Pan-African Ejeda shear zone give above-average denudation rates (100-205 mMa-1) during Carboniferous times. The shear zone was probably reactivated during this times. In contrast the calculated denudation rates for samples from the interior of the island are moderate (25-120 mMa-1). Vitrinite reflectance data from the Sakoa coal area as well as titanite and apatite FT data imply that during the Permo-Triassic rifting, the areas along the paleo western margin that previously underwent fast denudation were buried by a sedimentary cover of up to ∼4.5 km. At this time, a graben developed further inland along the NW-SE striking transcontinental Bongolava-Ranotsara shear zone (BRSZ). Modelled time-temperature paths indicate that the area within the BRSZ remained cool and unaffected since Carboniferous times whereas the samples northeast and southwest of the BRSZ suggest phases of differential cooling during Permian-Triassic times. Seismic data from the Morondava basin indicate that during the Middle Jurassic drift between Madagascar and East-Africa a rift jump towards the west occurred.

I included this long quote because of the observation the rift 'jumped' to the west. Namely, these events happen sometimes in great jerks, not in just incremental inching along over long periods of time. One thing that literally gives a jolt are when large celestial objects come crashing into the earth, jangling the entire planet.

In an earlier article, I also noted how continents don't merely move but, like many things in nature, they rotate as they travel. This is probably due to convection paths in the mantle. The other force at work is the come together/split apart cycle the earth has shown over the eons. We are in the end staged of the 'coming apart at the seams' cycle which is why I propose that ALL the continents are continuing to come apart.

Namely, where the Mississippi, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Amazon, the Nile/East African Rift Valley, the Jordan Valley, the rivers between Uraguay and Argentina, these are one of many rift zones. Perhaps the Rhine valley is one, too!

&hearts Not only is there a rift valley in the St. Lawrence Seaway, there is a fair-sized meteorite crater!

Alain Trembly

The St. Lawrence rift system (SLRS) is an active fault zone where reactivation of Iapetus-related structures is believed to occur. The rift faults fringe the contact between the Grenvillian basement to the NW and the St. Lawrence Lowlands to the SE. The SLRS trends NE-SW and forms a half-graben that links the Ottawa-Bonnechère and the Saguenay River grabens. Rift faults are NE- and NW-trending and marked by breccias and cataclasites. The paucity of isotopic age data and the absence of rock strata younger than the Ordovician make it difficult to constrain the timing of the different faulting increments. Field relations suggest that faulting is younger than the Charlevoix impact crater of probable Devonian age, whereas the isotopic signature of fault-related quartz-calcite veins is consistent with faulting during the Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous. Existing and new clay K-Ar and apatite fission tracks (FT) data are presented for the SLRS. K-Ar dating was performed on clay material <0,2µm-size fractions from fault gouges and breccias along the Montmorency Falls (MF) and St-Laurent (SL) faults. The results suggest a tectonic activity along the MF fault from ca. 465 to 445 Ma, whereas results from the SL fault are suggestive of Middle Ordovician (ca. 465 Ma) and Middle Devonian (ca. 390 Ma) faulting. Apatite FT ages are from transects in the Montréal, Québec city and Charlevoix areas. In the Montreal transect, the ages vary from 190 Ma to 175 Ma in the footwall of rift faults, and from 135 to 110 Ma in the Oka Intrusion and adjacent Grenvillian rocks, which is obviously related to Cretaceous magmatism. In the Québec city area, FT dating was performed on both Grenvillian and overlying Appalachian rocks. Except for an amphibolite of the MF fault yielding 120 Ma due to either local thermal heat-flow or fluid-assisted faulting, the FT ages vary from 155 and 135 Ma. Preliminary FT data from the footwall of the SL fault in the Charlevoix area yielded ages of ca. 200 Ma. FT age data need to be interpreted with caution until uncertainties due to paleo-heatflows or to unusual mineral compositions are resolved. They suggest, however, that rocks cooled through ca. 100oC in Jurassic to Early-Cretaceous times, possibly during reactivation of the SLRS, which would be consistent with far-field tectonic activity related to North-Atlantic rifting.

We can barely comprehend the violence meteorites can cause if they land anywhere near a major rift valley! The succeeding undulations and jolts could cause tremendous sudden changes!

&hearts The Amazon rift began in the Paleozoic era.

Peter Szatmari

Along the eastern segment of the Amazon Fault, a rift opened up at the start of the Paleozoic. Early Jurassic reactivation. The northeast-trending Pisco-Jurua Fault cuts across the continent from the Pacific to the Guyana-Surinam border. Mesozoic continuation of the North Atlantic Rift; its Guyanan end opened up as the North Atlantic Rift opened. The separation of North and South America caused northwestern South America to move southwest along the Pisco-Jurua Fault, creating the Tacutu Graben in the Guyanan Shield, the gently folded Jurua Zone across the Amazon Basin, and the Pisco-Abancay deflection in the Andes. Pliocene reactivation at the Pacific end of the fault sheared the subducted slab of the Nazca Plate and may have contributed to the formation of the Nazca Ridge.

That is, it formed at the very beginning of life on earth. Ever since then, it continues, a crack in the continent. Why hasn't it split it in two? I suppose, as South America rotates across this half of the planet, the pressure on the leading edge which built up the Andes, makes a nice backbone. The USA is split at a 90 degree angle to South America's rift which is west to east. The Mississippi is north to south.

Wikipedia explains:

The New Madrid Seismic Zone lies at the northern end of the embayment. It was the site of the large New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811 - 1812. The area is underlain by some anomalous geology. The Reelfoot Rift is an ancient failed continental rift which dates back to the Precambrian break-up of the supercontinent Rodinia. The relatively more recent opening of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico during late Paleozoic to early Mesozoic break-up of Pangea no doubt affected and may have partially re-activated the old rift.

Another very ancient rift that is still active and still puzzles us. Like the Amazon, it is above sea level most of the way though it does sag very close to sea level long before it reaches the Gulf of Mexico. Probably due to back-filling during the era of no plantlife and other eras of deposits of fine topsoil from Asia, for example, during the Ice Ages.

Surmising that all continents and subcontinents have a rift valley right down the center, I looked for them in Siberia and the subcontinent of India.

&hearts There isn't any but in the same exact location there is something very amazing: huge lava flows that fill the center of these places!

The Deccan Traps formed between 60 and 68 million years ago,[1][2] at the end of the Cretaceous period. The bulk of the volcanic eruption occurred at the Western Ghats (near Mumbai) some 66 million years ago. This series of eruptions may have lasted fewer than 30,000 years in total. The gases released in the process may have played a role in the K-T extinction event, which included the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Before the Deccan Traps region was reduced to its current size by erosion and continental drift, it is estimated that the original area covered by the lava flows was as large as 1.5 million km², approximately half the size of modern India. The present volume of directly observable lava flows is estimated to be around 512,000 km³.

As I have blogged in the past, I have visited the various volcanic events along the length of the New Mexican Rio Grande rift valley. One of the most recent lava non-volcanic flows on the continent occured in New Mexico and the crack in the ground simply spewed out miles and miles of lava that filled this valley as far as the eye could see! This happened very quickly, animals had to run swiftly to avoid being destroyed.

It is interesting that the great Deccan Traps event coincided yet again with a large celestial object hitting the earth! Some people believe one struck near India, in the ocean. It is possible. What is probable is, the center of India was dropping and India was splitting apart when the cracks went very deep into the earth and instead of ocean rushing in, lava came pouring out in prodigious amounts, suddenly and with great force. And not in a small way but across the entire rift valley like a coat being unzippered.

The University of New Mexico asks questions about this matter:

The goal of this project is to kinematically image extension in the Rio Grande Rift in order to address the following question: What controls extension within "narrow" continental rifts and how is it related to lithospheric heterogeneity?

Additional questions addressed by this research include: Is deformation steady or episodic? Do the observed Quaternary faults and geodetic strain rates agree? How is strain spatially accommodated? Is the Rio Grande Rift widening and propagating northward? What is the mantle rheology, and how is the style of deformation influenced by strain rate? How does the potential rift propagation manifest itself in the Neogene rotation of the Colorado Plateau?

I would say, 'Yes, it is propagating northwards in fits and starts!' The fits are usually meteorite-driven and quess what! The most recent great meteor event is obviously Meteor Crater which is nearby! And in the same timeframe as some of the volcanic events in New Mexico.

A similar rift suddenly belched up a tremendous amount of magma in Idaho/Washington/Oregon region.

The Great Rift system consists of a series of north-northwest-trending fractures, which extend 50 miles from the northern margin of the eastern Snake River Plain, southward to the Snake River. In 1968, the Great Rift was designated as a national landmark.

The system has been divided into four separate sets of fractures. These four sets from north to south include: (1) the Great Rift set which trends N. 35' W. and cuts across the Craters of the Moon National Monument; (2) the Open Crack rift set which trends N. 30' W. and apparently has not experienced extrusive activity; (3) the King's Bowl rift set which trends N. 10' W; and (4) the Wapi rift set which is believed to trend north-south, but is covered by the Wapi flow. The total rift system is 62 miles long and may be the longest known rift zone in the conterminous United States.

62 miles is short for a rift zone. Many are thousands of miles long. Defining rift zones is still an art and not a science, I think.

The entire western USA, pressed hard by the Pacific plate and other plates riding under the continent, has many rift zones. The only ones that will fill in with water will be the Californian and other coastal areas as the coasts move independently of the continent itself. These other rift valleys fill not with water but with LAVA.

And the huge Eurasian continent has no rift valley, it has this:

The Siberian Traps (Russian: Сибирские траппы) form a large igneous province in Siberia. The massive eruptive event spans the Permian-Triassic boundary, about 251 to 250 million years ago, and was essentially coincident with the Permian-Triassic extinction event in what was one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earth's geological history. The Siberian Traps are the largest known volcanic eruption ever to have occurred in the history of Earth. The term 'traps' is derived from the Swedish word for stairs (trappa, or sometimes trapp), referring to the step-like hills forming the landscape of the region.

When this rift valley collapsed and then opened up with giant cracks that were literally the Cracks of Doom, the massive lava flow, the biggest on earth, filled in the entire center of the Asian continental mass. This event coincided not incidentally with the destruction of 90% of the species on earth. Aside from utterly destroying all the living things in its huge path, we know from fossils associated with other much smaller events, even fast running mammals could not outrun the swiftly flowing lava.

Like the later lava events, a probable very large meteoroid struck where Antarctica, Australia and South America came together. If the Siberian rift valley was getting very deep and wide, it could have triggered a catastrophic lava belching event that lasted for a few thousand years, killing a tremendous number of animals in all ecosystems. Perhaps destroying most of the oxygen in the atmosphere!

So my point is, not only are all continents still breaking apart even as they shove parts ever higher with various mountain-building events, the disassembly of the mega-continents is still ongoing. The glue that is keeping the continents together is these gigantic lava flows that cover over and fill in, great rift zones.

So there is a 50% chance that the East African Rift Valley might end up like all these other lava-filled valleys. And this will, if it is big and it looks pretty big, be a very dangerous time for us if it happens.

We know these things happen with little warning. Humans have witnessed this happening in New Mexico, for example. The hot mudflow in Indonesia is a good reminder how these work.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Many Dams Are Built On Dangerous Karst Or Limestone Bedrock

Elaine Meinel Supkis

After writing about the looming disaster with the Wolf Creek Dam, I decided to look up the facts of many such mega-dams to see if any others were built on limestone and of course, this is the case with many huge dams such as the gigantic Three Gorges Dam in China, for example. And the 'repairs' on the Wolf Creek Dam turn out to be identical to a patch done in 1972.

&hearts First, here is a PDF I found using good old Google---a paper written about the Wolf Creek Dam's geology and why it was failing back in 1972.

Dyer, Duane ; Fanning, Bill

Abstract : Severe foundation seepage problems led to the necessity of a permanent solution at Wolf Creek Dam after an emergency grouting problem was completed in 1972. A board of consultants was convened whose adopted recommendations were to install pile type concrete walls through the embankment of the dam and the area between the switch yard and the tailrace. Because the general nature of the work was relatively unknown to District personnel, and the extent of the specific scope of work was extreme even for experienced slurry wall contractors, a two-step bidding procedure was established and eventually awarded to ICOS Corporation of America. The construction was split into two phases, with approximately half the embankment wall and all of the switch yard wall in Phase I and the remainder in Phase II. The walls are comprised of 26 in. steelcased, tremie concreted caissons on 4.5 foot centers connected by concrete elements tremied through open excavation. All excavation was conducted through a full head at bentonite slurry. The wall reached a maximum depth of 278 foot. Construction was accomplished from 1975-80 under the administration of the Nashville District, Corps of Engineers. Wolf Creek Dam is located in Southcentral Kentucky. Wolf creek dam; Slurry walls; Concrete diaphragm wall; Geology; Two step bidding; Tremie concrete; Instrumentation; ICOS. (eg)

Some time ago, readers of this blog raked me over the coals for suggesting mega-structures didn't take in effect the geology upon which they are raised and this hubristic approach to engineering buildings is leading to some real potential mega-disasters like we saw on 9/11 when the sheer weight of the solid concrete floors of the WTC caused those two towers to suddenly pancake at the speed of a steel ball in free-fall. Mass matters. No building on earth had the square footage per floor so high as the WTC buildings. The sheer mass and weight were in a class of its own.

So it is with the mega-dams. The sheer amount of water they pen behind their facades are many times that of lesser dams. Sometimes, a dam lasts for 75+ years without incident if they are built in the right places like Hoover Dam which is not on a bed of limestone or karst. The weight of the water, the speed of the rivers feeding into the system matters but above all, the anchoring of these dams is of highest importance.

All my life, I have explained patiently to people, 'The foundation is the alpha and omega of a building. A bad foundation means the building will be nothing but headaches and suffering and maybe even killing people.' Jesus said, 'Do not build your house upon sand..' and I agree. The geology of where one builds must be carefully examined and taken into account.

Alas, with rivers, this is skipped because most rivers flow in very bad places for dams! The Wolf Creek Dam, for example, is a toad's hop from the epicenter of the greatest earthquake in American history: the dreaded New Madrid Fault! The Mississippi river even makes a nearly circular route around this danger zone!

We know that a similar event which, by the way, is INEVITABLE, will destroy this dam. Completely.

But back when this dam was built, the memory of that epic earthquake which the early settlers left clear, concise records about, was gone. Everyone still remembered the infamous Johnstown Flood in Pennsylvania! But even that didn't deter the builders of this dam who thought it wouldn't reproduce the catastrophe of that collapse.

We can see from this article above, the foundations for this dam had to be sunk almost 300 feet. This is how deep I drilled my well on this mountain! We had to go through 175' of hard shale to reach a level that had groundwater in it! Above the shale was glacial till. Water flows right down through this till which is why my mountain has many springs in the middle of fields and fens. Every hollow has a spring.

&hearts The water table behind this dangerous dam is huge and deep.

Normal pool levels are 723 feet in the summer and 690 feet in the winter. Dam safety experts will continually monitor conditions at Wolf Creek and further reductions may be necessary depending on the effect that lower lake levels have on the dam. Lowering the lake level will reduce the risk of dam failure by decreasing water pressure on the dam and reducing foundation seepage.

These changes are in concert with ongoing rehabilitation plans at Wolf Creek that address the problem of seepage through the foundation of the dam.

Because this is in the mountains, the dam could back up a huge amount of water that rolls out of the Appalachians. 700' is a lot of deep water! This means, if the dam fails, and the chances of this is better than 50% over the next several hundred years, an amazing wall of water will result. Running up the hillsides like the poor people in Johnstown did, won't avail much.

The other thing that amazed me, reading the stats on this dam, was the fact our government was trying the exact same 'fix' as in 1972: pumping in lots of grout. This 'repair' was coupled with re-enforcing the cement/earth dam's facade. But again, one can't fix a facade if the foundation is rotten. The more this dam is 'strengthened, ' the more the water will seek exit via the footings and water can and will and does dive very deep into the earth: this is how caves are carved in limestone that is hundreds of feet thick!

The water is constantly penetrating below, day in and day out. Any tiny hole or fissure is widened and drilled. Patiently, over time, the river's waters glide along the cold bottoms of the deep lake next to the dam and curls and pries away at the stones and dirt, always seeking a path downwards, down to the sea or deep into the earth.

&hearts Most of the dams I looked up are build on limestone!

The Three Gorges stretch upriver from the dam 118 miles towards Chongqing. Qutang Gorge is closest to Chongqing and at 5 miles is the shortest and most dramatic with 500 foot cliffs that have Mesozoic limestone peaks topping out at over 4,000 feet. The Wu Gorge is also noted for its sheer cliffs and 12 cloud-covered mountains. The third gorge and the one closest to the dam is the Xiling Gorge. It stretches over 41 miles and its cliffs looks much like an elegant Chinese painted scroll. Passengers on cruise ships usually leave their ships behind and board small sampans to tour the Lesser Three Gorges in one of the Yangtze's tributaries. The rising waters have made this area more accessible.

Yangtze River cruise ships such as the Viking River Cruises' Century Star leaving Chongqing usually stop in Fuling to allow passengers to ride a hydrofoil up the Wu River to see the beautiful Lotus Cave limestone rock formations. The river cruise ships also stop at Shibaozhai (the Stone Treasure Stockade) on the northern bank of the Yangtze. This stone temple is a 12-story wooden structure built on a huge rock bluff.

This dam, if and when (it is only a matter of time) it collapses, will wipe the entire floodplain clear of any and all things built by humans. Nothing will be left, not even the foundations of buildings. Here is an article worrying about the dam causing potential earthquakes when the karst is put under great pressure from the ever-deepening waters behind the dam.

&hearts A Chinese geologist worries about all of this plus the chances of an earthquake causing dam failure.

L. Chen, P. Talwani—A review of case histories of reservoir-induced seismicity (RIS) in China shows that it mainly occurs in granitic and karst terranes. Seismicity in granitic terranes is mainly associated with pore pressure diffusion whereas in karst terranes the chemical effect of water appears to play a major role in triggering RIS. In view of the characteristic features of RIS in China, we can expect moderate earthquakes to be induced by the construction of the Three Gorges Project on the Yangtze River.

A mild earthquake can open fissures under the new lake and this, over time can lead to water exploring the depths and finding interesting exits which hollow out the channels and creates caves. Karst landscapes are the home to many spectacular caves like the incredible Mammoth Cave that is many miles long! With towering ceilings hollowed out by flood waters over many centuries.

For when dams are built, they may stand for centuries during which the lands due to be flooded are built up by unsuspecting people. For example, one dam that stood for over a thousand years, collapsed suddenly:

Emperor Nero (AD 54-68) had a 40 m high, 13.5 m wide, and 80 m lonldam built for a pleasure lake near his villa at Subiaco, Italy. The dam was one of the earliest Roman dams and remained the highest the Romans ever built. Moreover, the Subiaco dam and two smaller dams nearby are the only Roman dams in Italy. Although the dam was to thin, it remained intact until it failed in 1305. Records blace the blame on two monks who took it upon themselves to remove stones from the dam, apparently in an attempt to lower the level of the lake which was flooding their fields.

I seriously doubt monks brought down that dam. The fact that it was flooding fields points to a flood problem and this probably caused the collapse as the water table rose too high for this old dam. It is astonishing to see one last so long. The Romans invented concrete which is probably why their dams lasted so long. They also were very particular about foundation work which is why so many of their constructions still stand today.

&hearts Here is the record of a dam built on limestone failing in Texas 100 years ago:

n the Friday morning of April 6, 1900, it began to rain at 4:30 A.M. It rained heavily for twenty-four hours. Shoal Creek overflowed its banks and washed away several homes. By dawn on April 7th the rain had subsided and people had gathered to watch water flow over the dam at a depth of eleven feet above the dams crest. At 11:20 A.M. the onlookers heard and felt an explosion. The flood broke through the dam and pushed two large sections about sixty feet downstream. The ensuing rush of water through the opening hit the adjacent powerhouse flooding the lower stories. Five workmen and three young boys were drowned. The flood swept downstream and inundated farms and houses in its path washing all away. Austin was left without water, power, or light. The private utility company that had competed with the dam was also shutdown by the flood. It took five weeks for water service to be resumed and five months for the electric streetcar service to be restored. The moon tower lights remained off until January of 1901. It was determined that the dam had collapsed due to "sliding". As water swept over the face it had eroded the limestone under the base of the dam on the downstream side. This continued until the water pressure behind the dam overcame the friction that bound the dam to its base.

Of course, the problem was, as nearly always, unusual rains coupled with the tendency of water to dissolve limestone. Rivers love limestone because it is easy to eat through. Given the choice of flowing through solid granite and limestone, rivers always vote to travel with the limestone. This is why it is so hard to avoid building dams on top of this limestone. The Grand Canyon is an exception, it being the result of a river running over landmass that slowly rises as the Pacific Plate is shoved under California. The river never changed course but continued to eat through the dense rock. A good place to anchor a dam...if the dam is very strong. Yet even that can be destroyed in an epic flood and we know that truly epic floods can and have hit Arizona and the states north of Arizona.

&hearts Despite knowing all this about building dams on karst and limestone, the temptation to do this is tremendous!

Recent experience with the construction of nearby dams indicates that earthquakes and complex subsurface geology greatly increase the cost and risks associated with building dams in the region. Unfortunately, publicly available discharge records for the Rio Usumacinta at Boca del Cerro end in 1983 (Fig. 5) and geotechnical studies done in the 1980’s have not been made publicly available. Nevertheless, since these initial studies were completed there have been significant changes within the headwaters of the basin that are known to alter the quality, quantity, and timing of stream flow. These changes include, the construction of hydroelectric dams and water diversions, deforestation and urbanization. The impact of these changes on the quantity and quality of stream flow at Boca del Cero must be assessed before any dam or large hydraulic structure can be adequately designed or evaluated. Likewise, similar analysis must be done for the entire, integrated project that is being proposed (Fig. 1).

The site proposed for the Boca del Cerro dam is underlain by complex karsts topography of marl and limestone. The associated sinkholes and solution features are well known to affect the impounding capability of reservoirs and the structural integrity of the dam foundation. Recent experience with the Chixoy dam in Guatemala and the Zimapan and La Amistad dams of Mexico indicate the needs to conduct detailed geophysical investigations and subsurface preparations prior to dam construction. Similar studies need to be conducted and adequately reviewed before the recently proposed dam projects can be designed and evaluated.

All the 'safe' and many very 'unsafe' dams have been built. Now the last rivers must be dammed, Nature be damned. The rush to tap the energy and improve the landscape by creating lakes is very strong. We are like the legendary beaver in this regard. The economic pressure to overlook the dangers of building in places doomed to collapse overwhelms reason.

&hearts Here is another dam proposal with all the bad elements lined up, ready for action:

Vesuvius Dam sits in an area of unglaciated plateau in southern Ohio. The rugged topography of the dam site, with its limestone and sandstone cliffs, is primarily the result of stream erosion. The rock of the area is composed of sandstone and limestone with deposits of coal and low grade iron ore mixed in. The soils of the area are generally thin and cohesive. Core samples of the dam site taken in 1936 revealed about 15 feet of clay, sand, and slag that was waste material from the iron furnace.

Oh! Not only limestone but sandstone? Almost as weak! And mine till too? Oh boy.

I once owned a brownstone which is a muddy form of sandstone. The acid rain ate the front of my house which originally featured fancy carvings. They simply vanished. Marble is cooked limestone, heated immensely, and acid rain merrily eats it away, too! Every dam builder has to think ahead. All dams, once they are built, must be 'forever'. This is because failure means the death of everything and anything below. No walls, no animals, no cities or people can survive a mega-dam failure. The warning time 100 miles downstream is only minutes, not hours. No city on flatlands can be evacuated in one hour! It is physically impossible.

The two WTC buildings had huge floor spaces on each floor and were 100+ stories tall. I went in them a great number of times over the years! And with many staircases, it was still impossible to clear them of the poor workers there in time, and that was like a dam collapse: very sudden, little warning, difficulty in clearing out.

I suspect hydrologists and geologists are the last people who get heard when dam projects are instigated. And ecologists are completely suppressed. Not to mention representatives of all the families who will be displaced by dam builders. They all get swept aside as the grand plans progress.

I would, in the case of the Wolf Creek Dam, suggest they eliminate the dam entirely. If they wish to dam up this river, they should start from scratch and build where it is more sensible and frankly, over there, I don't see too many sensible places, off hand. Many smaller dams on the side streams would be the best solution but they won't generate mega-power and always, making money making energy is what this is really all about. Few dams are about flood control. Period.

Culture of Life News Main Page

The Continents Could Have Rotated A Lot Over The Last Billion Years

Elaine Meinel Supkis

I read a fair number of scientific papers online. While looking up information about hot springs like Geysers, California, I came across this interesting paper about inner planetary convection. Scientists try to summarize their work using all sorts of imagry and this time tickled my fancy: hot boiling water with things floating in it.

I googled information about convection theories, trying to understand how hot springs develop and what they mean, geologically speaking. I wanted to know if they could trigger rifting and splitting which could cause great volcanic eruptions. This paper amused me and I thought it would be fun to simplify it further for an article:

Carl Johnson,
Physicist, Physics Degree from University of Chicago

First Developed, Mar 1996,
First Published on the Web: Jun 22, 1997

This page - - The Mechanism Causing Plate Tectonic Movements - - is at This subject presentation was last updated on 12/31/2006 05:41:30

An analogy exists for the movements of Tectonic Plates upon the Mantle convective flows. It is a large kettle of water on a kitchen stove, with a variety of pieces of tissue paper floating on the water.

I love to mess around in my kitchen so I ran there and began seeking things I could use as models representing continents floating on the surface of the earth. Digging around in one of the drawers, I found some plastic cookie cutters I used for many years, baking sugar cookies for the kids. To my immense joy, they make perfect continents!

They had that bumpy/round shape, a star-shape or best of all, the classic 's' shape such as South America or Africa exhibit. On top of all this, they were shaped with a perimeter that made them float like little boats! I decided to use only three of these because if I used more than three, it was too crowded.

I then took out my turkey basting pan because it was both big, shallow and blue. I put in a thermometer to read the temperature and lit the fire.

Click on all pictures to enlarge

In the beginning, the three continents floated next to each other. This was the Pangaea stage. The picture at the top of this story shows clearly how the cookie cutters neatly tucked themselves next to each other with narrow rift valleys in between. Then, as the water grew warmer, they all floated as far from the hot source as possible, all of them going to the outer edge of the turkey basting pan.

&hearts Professor Johnson explains how the Core might interact with the outer surface of the planet:

The Core has a substantial Iron content, in a very viscous semi-liquid state. The heat from the centrally occurring radioactive fission must pass through this thick layer of Iron Core. Some of the heat is conducted through it, since Iron is a reasonably good conductor of heat. But the present premise suggests that a substantial part of that heat is carried by convective action.

This substantial heat represents a strong driving force which causes the formation and maintenance of a number of convection cells inside the Core. In some locations the Core material, including the Iron, rises (very slowly) toward the surface. When near the outer edge of the Core it moves laterally for some (random) distance as it gives up its convective heat (by conduction and radiation) to the Mantle above it and and the Core material therefore cools. Having cooled, it sinks back down toward the center of the Core to replace the heated material now convectively rising from there.

The result of this is an assortment of individual circulations of the Iron materials in the Core. Each of these circulations' flows are carrying Iron in a closed loop. At least some of those Iron atoms become charged by a variety of natural physical phenomena. The closed loop of circulating Iron has the effect of being like a loop of wire that is carrying electric current.These Core convective cells, therefore, represent a variety of separate very low voltage, VERY high current electric currents in the Core.Each of these loops has its own dynamics and its own orientation. Every circulating electric current creates a resultant magnetic field. The sum total of all these resultant magnetic fields is the magnetic field that we measure at the surface of the Earth.

&hearts I'm very familiar with low voltage and high currents:

Electric Arc Furnace - Since the second World War, this has been the standard furnace for melting steel in large quantities. Typical Capacities are 80 to 120 Tonnes. They were generally used as direct replacements for Siemens Open Hearth Furnaces.

Low Voltage, High Current electricity arcs between three large electrodes hung from the lid of the furnace and the metal on the furnace hearth. This produces very intense heating in the centre of the furnace, in a similar way to arc welding.

The heating can be very accurately controlled and as there are no 'products of combustion' (smoke and flame) within the furnace high quality steels are easily produced.

Not just arc welding, electric fences are this way, too. Once upon a time, due to having the largest ox team in the Northeast if not the world, we had to have electric fences or the boys would bust through. Even so, Sparky, our aptly named horse, would chase them through even the charged electric fence.

One day, we had a terrific lightning storm. A lightning bolt hit the mountainside and melted the electric fence and sent large segments of it up into the tree tops. It also melted the fence charger, of course.

Chip and Dale were under the oak tree and jumped so high, they left deep prints in the ground. Oh, and this same bolt of lightning hit me, of course. Right in the chest. Fun.

It doesn't surprise me to read this process is at work in the center of the earth. We also use an arc welder and this is the same principle. Very little electricity (relatively speaking, of course) can heat metal to a very high level and melt it. Thinking about the earth's core as some sort of giant arc welder or electric fence feeding current through channels is most interesting because of reports of 'lightning' during earthquakes at night!

There aren't many such, most people are in bed at night and electrical lights mask this but I was reading about the great New Madrid Earthquake which happened at night.

&hearts This site has testimony about the New Madrid quake 200 years ago:

At Knoxville, the quaking of the earth on the 16th was represented to have lasted more than three minutes. The rattling of the windows and furniture of the houses were such as to awaken almost every family. This was about two in the morning. It was followed, in half an hour, by another, which continued half a minute. Between sunrise and breakfast, three others were felt, of only a few seconds in duration. At the end of the first and longest shock, there were, in a direction due north, two flashes of light, at the interval of about a minute, very much like distant lightning.

A number of witnesses claimed they saw distant lightning. People in the quake zone itself were engulfed in a fine dust and mist which obscured their views but they reported an unearthly light during all this.

The town of St. Louis, in Louisiana, experienced a full proportion of the commotion. Mr. Riddick, being at St. Louis, near the Mississippi, observed to me, that the shocks were preceded by a remarkable calm. The atmosphere was of a dingy and lurid aspect, and gleams and flashes of light were frequently visible around the horizon, in different directions, generally ascending from the earth. Sometimes sounds were heard, like wind rustling thorugh the trees, but not resembling thunder.

Many of these people were quite careful to explain what they saw. Contrary to present beliefs, the attempt at being 'scientific' was very strong in 1800 as we saw with the attempts at rationalism by our own Founding Fathers, people tried hard to use the scientific method when describing natural events.

Being on horseback in Livingston County, Kentucky, Mr. Riddick, on the morning of the 8th of February, was sensible of the earthquake. His horse refused to proceed, and bracing himself on his legs, stood still. The atmosphere was remarkably luminous for some time prior to the shaking of the ground. There was no moonshine; and yet objects could be seen to a considerable distance. On this occasion the brightness was general and did not proceed from any point or spot in the heavens. It was broad and expanded, reaching from the zenith, on every side, toward the horizon. It exhibited no flashes, nor coruscations; but, as long as it lasted, was a diffused illumination of the atmosphere on all sides; but no noise was distinguished until the shaking of the earth began; then the usual rumbling sound was heard.

Closer to the great disruption of the New Madrid earthquake, lighting rising from the earth was witnessed but further afield, the sky was all 'aglow' with a strange light which was probably diffused by the fine dust and steam raised by this massive earthquake.

Very few 9 M earthquakes are witnessed at night on land. The most recent ones were either at sea or in places totally remote from most humans or during daylight. So it is most interesting to read that many witnesses to this event so long ago, report lightning from the earth and a general light illuminating the night which had no moon.

Here is my own experiment with the boiling water, the mist is now so dense, one can barely see the 'continents' moving about. They would clash and then move rapidly away from each other only to bounce back again. The other thing that interested me a lot was the rotation: they didn't move in straight lines but turned around.

Looking at the shape of the continents, one can see this at work which is why so many of them have a shape perfect for rotating. The 's' shape of the isthmus connecting North and South America are echoed by the exact same 's' shape dragged away from South America and Antarctica.

Since the tectonic plates are dragged most efficiently by their extensions sticking down into the Mantle, they are most subject to variations in the flow in those vicinities. Consider a continental plate, which sticks down somewhat to start with. Say that the continent is physically large enough to be above at least two of the inner Mantle convection cells. Say it has two main mountain chains, like North America. Say that the convection cell(s) beneath one of those mountain ranges reverses lateral direction. This would cause an opposite drag on that one chain, which could cause the whole continental plate to rotate (or tear apart, as under the Mid-Atlantic Ridge). In a few thousand years, the continent could be turned completely north to south. This action could also affect adjacent oceanic plates, pushing them around to change their motions. Subduction and the other phenomena associated with Plate Tectonics are well explained by this current premise. This phenomenon, in combination with conventional continental drift, can explain tropical fossils in Antarctica and Alaska, without having to have the Earth do anything that violates Newton's Laws. The Crust of the Earth, or the entire Earth, or the entire Core, doesn't need to reverse rotation or suddenly flip upside down, as some previous theories have implied. It can also explain some geologically and biological evolutionarily rapid changes that traditional theories have trouble with.

I happen to agree with Professor Johnson on this matter: the continents all rotated due to the way convection works. Their queer shapes are often more like the galaxies we see around us. The shape of South America and Africa can be easily explained if one is looking at them as organic entities, spinning in the morass of the upper mantle. Europe and Asia have been warped by crashing into each other so we can't deduce much from their present shape. I would bet India was shaped like Africa or South America before crashing into Asia.

I am betting Australia will gain a more spiral shape as it rotates into Asia. Some geologists think it will move to Alaska but that presumes a straight line and I think Mother Nature hates straight lines, she prefers curves, being female (ahem). The convection that roils underfoot is less potent than a billion years ago, of course. We can see from the recent discovery of deep sea vents, the cracks in the earth's crust lead straight down to some extremely hot and very active zones.

&hearts And this might very well be where life on earth first hatched.

The unexpected discovery 25 years ago of abundant life in the freezing, pitch-black waters of the deep ocean dramatically changed how we think about the requirements for life, said Jim Yoder, director of the Division of Ocean Sciences at the National Science Foundation. "Here was an entire food web that depended on chemical energy from the earth rather than energy from the sun." Yoder said that this is one of the most significant discoveries in oceanography in the last 50 years.

Vents occur where there is volcanic activity. The cracks in the seafloor allow water to percolate through the ocean crust where it is heated by nearby chambers of magma. The super hot water—sometimes 750ºF (400ºC)—dissolves metals and salts as it travels through rocks, eventually rising and gushing out of the hydrothermal vents. These searing vent cocktails are responsible for the chemistry of the world's oceans.

The atmosphere up on the surface of the planet a billion years ago was uninhabitable. The discovery of these vents rewrote the possible history of life on earth. Aside from the nutrients and the heat, the fact that this is closer to the low voltage/high current electricity meant evolution could happen since electricity can jolt shifts in the chemistry of various cells, changes in the RNA sequences, etc. Instead of lightning raining down upon the diffuse surface of the oceans, life took shape perhaps in these close to the mantle zones where the inner electrical processes interacted with the outgassing of various minerals under great pressure and heat.

Throughout the history of geology, the anarchists talking about everything being very fluid would always clash with the conservatives who like a more static model of the earth. But I would suggest, the more one goes back in time, the greater the chaos. Unlike the experiment whereby I heated water to see the 'continents' rotate and glide around the tub of hot water, it was the reverse here: things are cooling off and the continents are not moving with the speed they moved in the past.

And that alone could explain some of the other extinctions we see in the geological record: if a continent rotates too much, the unwary animals would be delivered into a totally different climate! And if things moved faster than today, this could happen with relative suddenness! One day, warm and wet and just a few million years later, an ice sheet!

We can only guess. The general rule is, things get less dynamic over time due to loss of energy. The earth is remarkably active even though it is billions of years old. This alone should give us pause to amaze at such a wonder.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Kuril Islands Have Major Earthquake

Elaine Meinel Supkis

We just had yet another major earthquake, this time in the Kuril Islands. The shaking of the earth after the mega-quake Boxing Day Quake off Sumatra is still at work. The memory of that quake still causes fear of tsunamis but this latest one didn't cause much of any tsunamis. California's micro-earthquakes along the Hayward fault as well as the north and south ends of the San Andreas fault suddenly are very active. In the north, this started with the sudden cluster of 4 mag earthquakes in Berkeley. Time to talk some more about rifting.

&hearts Since the Kuril islands are barely inhabited, no one really noticed this lastest jolt.

The quake struck at 1324 (0424 GMT) near the Kuril Trench which lies between northern Japan and Russia, the meteorological agency said.

During the last week, a series of earthquakes started in the eastern end of the Aleutian islands, step by step, these shakes moved west until they went all the way down to the southern end of Russia's Kuril Island chain where there was a a good-sized blow-out. I suppose the Pacific plate, being shoved by the Australian plate, shifted further north and west. Earthquakes in Alaska affect volcanic activity and hot spring activity thousands of miles away to the south and east.

In addition to being a major quake, it is interesting to me that this quake is at the 10 km depth. I have noted over the years how this depth seems to be a very favorite place for earthquakes. One really wonders what is different from that level vs the layer below. Is there some sort of very defined layering here? And what does this have to do with subduction or volcanoes?

Click on pictures to enlarge

This particular series of quakes moved to the west, not the east. But in the past, they have had a very strong effect to the east. Usually these are quakes along the Pacific coast where the edge of the continent is sliding rapidly northwards, slithering sideways up the continental shelf. This is where considerable rifting and pulling is occuring. Even though the fringe lands moving north are running on a different conveyor belt compared to the mainlands, events along this long strip can trigger very strong side effects far to the east.

&hearts Here is some interesting news about just such an effect from five years ago.

November 4, 2002 -- A major, magnitude-7.9 earthquake that rocked Alaska on Sunday apparently triggered scores of earthquakes some 2,000 miles away at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.

By 8:30 a.m. MST Monday Nov. 4 - about 17 hours after the Alaskan quake - more than 200 small earthquakes had been detected occurring in clusters throughout the Yellowstone area. The quakes were recorded by the Yellowstone seismic network operated by the University of Utah Seismograph Stations.

The smallest events were of magnitude less than 0 and the largest of about magnitude 2.5. National Park Service rangers at Old Faithful and Canyon Village reported feeling some of the earthquakes.

While the data are preliminary, they suggest that the Yellowstone earthquakes may have been triggered by the passage of large seismic waves generated by the Alaskan earthquake more than 3,200 kilometers (almost 2,000 miles) from the park. The apparent triggering is suggested by the fact the Yellowstone activity began within a half hour of the Alaska earthquake, which hit at 3:12 p.m. MST Nov. 3 (1:12 p.m. local time in Alaska).

The depth of a quake, the direction of the quake's movement, the speed of the fracturing, the position of the sun and moon all affect the intensity of the quake's influence far away. The mega-quake in 2005 affected the entire planet in many unseen as well as obvious ways.

The 2002 quake in Alaska that preceded that one in Sumatra was along the Denali mountain's fault which is in a straight line for a long distance It was only 4.9 km deep which is quite shallow for such a violent event. Again, because this took place in a virtually unihabited region, it was barely noticed.

But the echoes in the most dangerous caldera region in this hemisphere should make us sit up and take notice! We just saw the damage caused by Mt. St. Helens blowing up, the uneasy situation in Yellowstone is much more destabilized. And as the Pacific plate gets shoved north, stresses on Yellowstone as well as the long rift valley complex in California, destabilizes further.

&hearts The Denali quake changed the hydrolics of Yellowstone's many geysers and hot springs.

May 27, 2004 -- A powerful earthquake that rocked Alaska in 2002 not only triggered small earthquakes almost 2,000 miles away at Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park – as was reported at the time – but also changed the timing and behavior of some of Yellowstone’s geysers and hot springs, a new study says.

“We did not expect to see these prolonged changes in the hydrothermal system,” says University of Utah seismologist Robert B. Smith, a co-author of the study in the June issue of the journal Geology.

While other large quakes have been known to alter the activity of nearby geysers and hot springs, the Denali fault earthquake of Nov. 3, 2002, is the first known to have changed the behavior of such hydrothermal features at great distances, according to Smith and his colleagues. They say the magnitude-7.9 quake was one of the strongest of its type in North America in the past 150 years.

Smith conducted the study with Stephan Husen, a University of Utah adjunct assistant professor of geophysics who works at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology; Ralph Taylor, an engineer who designs geyser monitoring equipment at Yellowstone National Park; and Henry Heasler, Yellowstone National Park’s geologist.

It seems that the entire complex of hot springs, volcanoes, rifts and calderas are intertwined in ways we barely understand. When looking at the activity below the 10 km level, we are only guessing at what is going on. I like to think of this 10 km layer as if it is a blanket thrown upon the earth.Is it all the layer put down billions of years ago when the continents first congealed upon this molten planet's surface? Before the oceans cooled and the layer of hot gas condensened into our present seas?

&hearts The effects of the similar quake in Denali were much, much greater than the Kuril quake was on Asia's more distant lands.

The Denali quake also generated noticeable water waves in Seattle’s Lake Union, Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain and in swimming pools on the East Coast. It also triggered small quakes in California’s Geysers geothermal area, which is north of San Francisco, and in eastern California’s Long Valley, which, like Yellowstone, is a caldera, or giant volcanic crater created by cataclysmic prehistoric volcanic eruptions.

The Denali quake also triggered a few small quakes in Utah, and Smith says it is possible some of those quakes occurred near little-known hot springs along the Wasatch fault at the base of the Wasatch Range.

It was noted after the Denali quake, how the Geysers in California began to have micro-earthquakes. Just this last two weeks, it has been shaking nearly continuously. I did a photoshot of the United States Geological Survey's California quake map page.

Last month, the Hayward fault was very quiet. The Geysers which are in the north just above the Bay Area, was shaking as it has since 2002 but when a series of jolts shook Berkeley, the entire sector from Parkfield north has been very active. The midsection of the San Andreas has been dangerously quiet but the southern half running through Palm Springs has been as active as the north is now.

Before the Boxing Day Quake in Sumatra, I was watching that sector very closely because the small quakes were gathering strength, they were all at the same depth, mostly 10 km, and they were nearly rhythmic in their pulsing. It was very much like before a volcanic eruption only it was the unzipping of a great rift.

California has several rifts, the biggest being the Central Valley farm lands which runs right down the center of the state. The most dangerous rift right now is the Mammoth Lake rift which is right to the east of Death Valley. Across the deserts of California, Arizona and New Mexico, there are many large and small rift valleys.

For example, there is the Rio Grande rift. The picture at the top of this article shows the devastation caused by the sudden rifting in southern New Mexico: as far as the eye can see, a flat plain of turbulent lava, only 2,000 years ago or less, even today, the plain is so little worn down by rain, it is extremely difficult to walk through. In the distance, you can see purple mountains to the west. There are no big volcanoes. Many of such rifts can spew out tremendous amounts of lava without any volcanic action. This is a sign the earth is being pulled apart, not shoved together.

&hearts Click here for information for visitors to the Valley of Fires Recreation Area in New Mexico.

&hearts

The Valley of Fires Recreation Area is an interesting diversion on the long, sometimes tedious cross-state journey on US 54 - from El Paso to Santa Rosa on I-40 is 350 miles, along a route which passes much barren scenery of grassy prairie, stark mountains and sandy desert. The Valley has many square miles of buckled, twisted lava, part of an extensive flow up to 50 meters thick and over 45 miles long that originated from several volcanoes, including one vent now known as Little Black Peak, 9 miles northwest of the dusty, windswept town of Carrizozo. The lava is called the Malpais (Spanish for 'badlands'), a name also given to several other flows in New Mexico, including the even larger deposits of the El Malpais National Monument.

This picture shows me standing on a high point in this vast field of lava. Note the sharpness of the rocks below. These sorts of lava fields move very fast when there is an eruption. Humans lived here and were just beginning to farm these lands when this terrible event destroyed the entire place for miles around.

The center of New Mexico is being pulled apart which is why a major river flows down this deepening valley. When we last were visiting that interesting state, we climbed into tiny volcanic fumeroles as well as visiting the caves of fire and ice while it was still privately owned by a rancher who has since then, sold it to the government.

&hearts Click here to see pictures of volcanic rifts in Hawaii. Rifting actions in the not too distant past have caused many interesting events such as the lava flood that covered almost all of Washington State, during the age of mammals, the rift slit open and poured out and covered the land with over 170,000 km of lava. This event happened with such speed, it overtook and killed much of the wildlife which tried to flee from it. The outline of a wooly rhino has been discovered in this lava field, its body outline clearly showing where it fell. Even though this was around 6 million years ago, the one in New Mexico is a lot more recent.

Indeed, rifts are not viewed as nearly as dangerous as volcanoes, yet many of the world's most dangerous and amazing lava flow events came from them rather than volcanoes. The fact that these rifts are in action in recent times means they are something we better watch as closely as the volcanoes. When scientists warned people building golf courses and very expensive houses right smack in the middle of the Long Valley rift zone, often on top of the rift itself, they were warned to not alarm people with scary stories and the sales of these fatal property lots went on unabated.

Now there are many, many more houses there and unlike a volcano which often rumbles and smokes before unleashing themselves, these rifts open nearly silently.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Civilizations Rise And Fall Due To Unstable Climates

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The earth's climate has a long history of instability versus stability. Scientists know there have been 'flips' that switch between very warm to very cold. This is obviously a concern for humans because we desire as much stability as possible. Yet many of our actions are destabilizing the planet. Climate change has caused the collapse of past civilizations and past extinctions. Variations in atmospheric chemistry and sun activity can mean great oscillations in amounts of ice versus water.

&hearts 300 million years ago when plants evolved and began to colonize the fast-eroding landmasses, this caused tremendous changes that triggered severe oscillations between ice ages and warm ages.

By Robert Lee Hotz, Times Staff Writer
January 5, 2007

Foreshadowing potential climate chaos to come, early global warming caused unexpectedly severe and erratic temperature swings as rising levels of greenhouse gases helped transform Earth, a team led by researchers at UC Davis said Thursday.

The global transition from ice age to greenhouse 300 million years ago was marked by repeated dips and rises in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and wild swings in temperature, with drastic effects on forests and vegetation, the researchers reported in the journal Science.

"It was a real yo-yo," said UC Davis geochemist Isabel Montanez, who led researchers from five universities and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in a project funded by the National Science Foundation. "Should we expect similar but faster climate behavior in the future? One has to question whether that is where we are headed."

We have to keep our eyes on the balls here: the earth's climate is again going through a 'yo-yo' for rather a while and far from humans creating this, we were created by this! If the warm cycle that created the Garden of Eden of early apes continued unchanged, we probably wouldn't exist as humans. Happily shambling about, naked, eating fruits and insects, we would be barely different from other species of our kind.

But this gentle climate so perfect for naked apes ended rather abruptly. The earth was thrown into a cycle of ice age/warm age waves that caused gross shifts in the height of the oceans, the amount of rain falling and where it fell and temperatures.

Each of these cycles had a common feature: they began and ended with amazing abruptness. The awareness of these sudden changes has only been truly appreciated in the last 50 years. The more geologists examine the actual evidence as they collect and collate data, the more obvious it is: our earth's climate is prone to severe, sudden switches.

Astronomers are wondering if this is all the fault of the earth's wobble and the sun's levels of activity or inactivity. It is hard to sort out all the influences because there is no rhythm over 3 billion years, there are long periods of stability just as there are long periods of instability.

On top of this, sorting out the influence of tectonic plate shifting makes things even more difficult. We are also not seeing things in real time but are making suppositions based on the slender amount of clues left behind in the geological records. On top of all this, the difference between a naked earth at the mercy of wind and water, is different from an earth clothed in a mantle of living things which alter the chemistry of the air, the water and the soil.

We know that every time living things burst into a new ecological niche, this changes the climate. What is interesting about the 300 million year milestone is a series of ice age/warm age cycles began, wildly, at the exact same time plants began to colonize the barren rocky lands.

&hearts We are in an unusual warm cycle right now.

BEIJING, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Glaciers on the roof of the world -- China's Qinghai-Tibet Plateau -- are beating a dramatic retreat. In the past three decades, they have shrunk by 131.4 square kilometers annually, according to the latest report from the China Geological Survey Bureau.

What that means is that an area of glacier equivalent to twice the size of the Beijing downtown area disappears every year.

A further 13,000 square kilometers of glacier -- nearly 28 percent of the total glacier area and equivalent to twice the area of Shanghai Municipality -- will disappear by 2050 if no protective measures are taken, the report said.

The problem with us humans is, we are a major life-form, we are physically on the large size. We are not chipmunks. Our first forays in expansion began almost instantly to change the landscape because of our hunting/gathering efforts became very thorough due to the ability to make tools. With our large brains we also began to alter the evolution of animals by making certain species dependent on us for life rather than subjecting them to the rigors of Mother Nature's brutal evolutionary rule.

As our distant ancestors realized and put into the heart of nearly all our religions, the ability to make and control fires made us into gods. This also gave us increasing power to change the entire planet in ways we little understood at that time. Yet even 100,000 years ago, the early humans realized this gave them tremendous power which is why it is considered the rupture point between being 'animals' and becoming 'gods.'

Now this ability to make fire out of the most amazing things, to generate energy that shines, we have harnessed long-dead life-forms, ancient pre-life rocks, air, wind and water as well as present life-forms. This multi-level creation of fire is of course, altering the climate of the earth just like other revolutions have in the past.

This still doesn't explain the end of the long warm period that characterized the age of mammals that followed the disastrous collapse of much of the biosphere when a meteorite struck 63 million years ago.

&hearts The early signs of a possible collapse of our ecosystem is showing up in the world's rivers and oceans.

BEIJING, Jan. 5 (Xinhuanet) -- Recently completed research reveals warmer oceans caused by global warming is making it more difficult for eelpouts to breath and survive.

Biologists have known for years declining fish stocks are connected to global warming, but a new study of eelpouts -- big-headed fish that resemble eels -- is the first to go deeper and see how warmer seas are connected to how fishes take in oxygen.

Scientists at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany studied the relationship between sea temperature and eelpouts counts in the Southern North Sea, combining data from the field with lab investigations of eelpout physiology.

The researchers not only found the oxygen levels in the waters of the North and Baltic seas have dropped because of increasing temperatures over the past 50 years -- a factor that reduces fish populations -- they also discovered eelpouts need more oxygen in warmer waters, a second factor that is reducing their numbers.

From the very beginning of life on earth, every time evolution created a revolutionary new life-form, this altered the entire biosphere. The composition of each of our cells in our bodies reflects many strange events in the furthest past as various groups of molecules tried to protect themselves from ongoing chemical changes which made survival as a free agent impossible.

As the solutions to survival created increasingly complex organisms, each of these changes altered the world outside of the organisms. If there was no change there would be no evolution. When the earth made various climatic flips, this caused evolution to jump tremendously. Namely, evolution doesn't happen because of x-rays from stars (including our own) or other cosmic rays hit the earth and cause deformations in the DNA, this is a factor giving more possibility for change, what really fuels evolution is climate change.

It is a brutal process: the creatures with the chance DNA that makes survival possible are the ones who reproduce successfully and they multiply...the others die. Today, thanks to humans, we are seeing a species die-off of historic proportions. Because of our ability to shepherd along various 'weak' species, plants and animals we have deliberately encouraged to be weaker than wild nature, we have supplanted the plants and animals which evolved within the ice age/warm age cycles of the last 2.5 million years and a terrible uniformity is now sweeping nature. This is why people aren't alarmed, really. We hear about the 'die-off' while seeing nothing odd around us. The grass is green, there are various animals about, what is wrong?

We can see it in various ways such as the uncertain weather. In the past, civilizations rose and fell on the whims of the weather.

&hearts A number of civilizations have fallen thanks to droughts, for example.

NEW research suggests that climate change led to the collapse of the most splendid imperial dynasty in China’s history and to the extinction of the Maya civilisation in Central America more than 1,000 years ago.

There has never been a satisfactory explanation for the decline and fall of the Tang emperors, whose era is viewed as a highpoint of Chinese civilisation, while the disappearance of the Maya world perplexes scholars.

Now a team of scientists has found evidence that a shift in monsoons led to drought and famine in the final century of Tang power. The weather pattern may also have spelt doom for the Maya in faraway Mexico at about the same time, they say.

Both ruling hierarchies at the start of the 10th century were victims of poor rainfall and starvation among their peoples when harvests failed.

Mass migrations are also probably due to climatic change. From the very beginning, humans began to move about the planet, seeking new lands due to the fact we hate each other and try to avoid each other even as we are also attracted to each other which is why we evolved wars and complex marriage/clan rules. The Mayan and Tang cultures were able to sweep away (kill) or submerge all other clans thanks usually to some sort of war/agricultural innovation.

Then the climate changes and these innovations can become liabilities. The great migrations in the past usually were launched by climate change such as the Dark Ages, for example. The Norse sweeping out of the Scandinavian lands, for example, on raids was probably triggered by the earth cooling off only a small bit, one to three degrees!

Droughts in Northern Asia could have launched the Mongol invasions. Certainly a series of seemingly small changes in military thinking within the Mongol community, probably spurred on by the whip of climate change, allowed Ghengis Khan to rally his people into storming south, east and west seeking pasturelands and loot.

The sweeping conquests of the Europeans in the 1600's coincides with terrible climatic changes in Europe due to the Little Ice Age. Unlike trade conquests, these featured the outflow of many European farmers seeking farmlands.

&hearts But unlike the previous uncertainty in the weather, the present situation has some dangerous possibilities.

Compiled by John Stokes

A recent scientific theory called the "hydrate hypothesis" says that historical global warming cycles have been caused by a feedback loop, where melting permafrost methane clathrates (also known as "hydrates") spur local global warming, leading to further melting of clathrates and bacterial growth.

In other words, like western Siberia, the 400 billion tons of methane in permafrost hydrate will gradually melt, and the released methane will speed the melting. The effect of even a couple of billion tons of methane being emitted into the atmosphere each year would be catastrophic.

The "hydrate hypothesis" (if validated) spells the rapid onset of runaway catastrophic global warming. In fact, you should remember this moment when you learned about this feedback loop-it is an existencial turning point in your life.

I remember when people became excited about harvesting energy from these same deposits in the deep oceans. Back in the seventies, we didn't realize the release of these deposits might change the chemistry of the atmosphere in disastrous ways. Today we realize, this is yet another thing we have to worry about.

I would suggest that as our continents shifted around the planet over the eons, as the ocean floor is squeezed between continents as they collide, the ocean floor is uplifted and this causes a disastrous release of hydrates. Since collisions usually also feature intense volcanic action, this means the world's complex climate will inevitably have such moments when the hydrates stored in the seas suddenly are released.

This still doesn't explain everything. For the sun is always and will always remain, the most important player in this game. This is why studying the Little Ice Age is so important and why so many astronomers remain very interested in that short time period. We do wonder if the gradual end to that period was not human at all but due to the sun. Just like this latest warm episode here in the north may have been due to some very strong sun spot activity during the last month.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Tectonic Plate Movements In Far Future: Many Possible Variations

The winter rainbow yesterday
Elaine Meinel Supkis

I draw galaxies and the planet earth quite a bit and one day I noticed that when I greatly simplify the shape of the continents, they look an awful lot like galaxies. Since I believe Mother Nature loves curvature (being a female) I thought maybe continental drift likes to have a certain amount of rotation.

&hearts As I was assembling all this for an article, along comes this New York Times piece:

By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: January 9, 2007

Kiss the Mediterranean goodbye. Ditto the Red Sea and its wonderland of coral reefs and exotic sea life. And prepare for the day when San Francisco has a gritty new suburb: Los Angeles. Indeed, much of Southern California, including the Baja Peninsula, will eventually migrate up the west coast to make Alaska even more gargantuan.
Geologists have long prided themselves on their ability to peer into the distant past and discern the slow movements of land and sea that have continuously revised the planet’s face over eons. Now, drawing on new insights, theories, measurements and technologies — and perhaps a bit of scientific bravado — they are forecasting the shape of terra firma in the distant future.

The maps and animations by these scientists are helping explain core principles of geology to increasingly wide audiences. Schools, textbooks, museums, Web sites and television shows now routinely feature images of what the forecasters say the planet will look like eons from now. And geologists are using the forecasts to deepen their own investigations of plate tectonics.

CLICK ON ALL IMAGES TO ENLARGE
&hearts Click here to see the New York Times interactive maps.
Here is the NYT conception of what the earth looked like in the past. The mega-continental mass was breaking apart for some reason we still can't fathom. Note the raw appearance of the continents: already, they are assuming a shape that many rotating objects take on when moving in some direction.

Here is the way they think the earth might look in the future. Of course, this is all raw guesswork. I have looked at 'past/future' maps all my life, they amuse me greatly. I also like jigsaw puzzles and I was a child when the concept of tectonic plate movement was first being developed.

Because my father worked closely with geologists to find good mountains for telescopes, we got to know quite a few. When I was young, one of my dearest friend's father, Dr. Damon of the University of Arizona, was kind enough to share the exciting developments within this field with us as professors debated the data.

As an avid puzzle player, I noticed quite early on how the earth is shaped like a puzzle that had been pulled apart...and ROTATED. Namely, the pieces didn't fly away from each other, they rotated away.

Here is a diagram I drew showing the various subduction zones in red lines and my conception of how the planet will look in the future.

&hearts Click here to see Dr. Scotese's conception of how tectonic plate movement works.

&hearts Click here to see yet a different examination of this same data leading to a radically different outcome compared to the NYT article or the U of W website. I will note how everyone has Australia going in all sorts of directions. This is significant because the fastest moving continent right now is good old Australia. The pad it is riding on protects it from damage as it plows merrily north but all around it is very, very geologically active with volcanic islands springing up and the world's nastiest volcanoes and rifts creating havoc.

The way I look at it, the fact that the most active mountain building going on is the long chain of islands of Indonesia and the Guineas along with the Philippines. Perhaps the resistance of the Asian landmass is causing the Australian plate which is much larger than the continent which is why Australia itself sees virtually no earthquakes or volcanoes, is forcing the outer shelf of the continent to rotate away even as it moves north. Because there is little in the way of the east wing of this big, mostly underwater plate, this means the east edge will move faster than the west edge and thus, the continent will rotate until northern Australia faces totally west and the east is facing Alaska. The massive mountain building along the east face of Asia will accelerate and mountains higher than the Himalayas will rise where Japan now sits.

The idea that the Australian continent will glide up to Alaska is wrong. And the idea that it will shove into Indonesia is wrong. Indonesia will curl around what is the west side of Australia today, it will be the south side in 100 million years.

Since the earth is a big puzzle that gets shaken about a bit, I cut out some very simplified shapes of the various continental masses and laid them on a towel and rotated them about as if they were moving around the earth. This being flat meant it is all very distorted, of course. But this sequence shows yet another possible future for the geography of the earth.

Earth 300 million years ago was a super-continent with lots of shallow seas and a number of spectacular rift valleys which demark the coming breaking lines of the individual continents.

After the Permian extinction and the comet/meteorite strike on Antarctica, the continents sped away from each other.

Rotating, the sharp edges began to strike each other so instead of being snug up against each other with long rift valleys snaking along their joints, the tips hit each other.

This is the earth in the future: scientists think everything will rejoin in new directions. This example I used show North America curling around to the north and restriking Europe from a different angle as before. South America crunches the Gulf of Mexico and shoves North America further north.

And this is the result, 100+ million years into the future.

I didn't deal with the rift valleys in this model, for example, because it is very simplified. But I do notice none of the professional models make any notice of them, either! For example, it is pretty obvious that Saudi Arabia is acting like a big knife on Africa's northeast corner and it is peeling away a large hunk of that continent which is moving eastwards, away from the bulk of Africa which is moving into the Mediterranean. The sharp rock-hard point of Spain prevents Africa from moving north easily so it is tending to rotate into Saudi Arabia which is why it is being split asunder.

The world's greatest rift valley is where we humans evolved.

The smaller but still very big rift valley in California is often ignored, I suspect for psycholgical reasons. LA is NOT going to move to San Francisco, it is going to split off from the continent to become a long island chain that will glide northwards. The real question here is, will North America continue to move westards? If we do, we slam into Asia. If we do this, we will rotate clockwise until the west coast is facing northwest and Florida ends up around where Hawaii now resides. This is just as possible as the other choices, especially if Australia curls around and hits Asia, too. Then Australia's west coast will end up facing north to our southwest facing them! Kangaroos in Texas, yahoo.

If South America also continues west, it will snug up against Australia. The Andes will be even bigger and denser by then and Australia will cease being stable and will probably tilt upwars, sort of like Tibet.

All our our guesses about the far future should take into account the lack of certainty since we are only guessing as to what dynamos deep in the earth are doing this to us. Why is Australia taking off and moving rapidly while Antarctica is so relatively stationary? Or is it?

The great quakes along the Antarctic plate may be a sign, it too is ready to travel north. Perhaps the giant ice sheet pinned it down for a long time and is now releasing it? Is this what is propelling Australia north with such unseemly haste? Is Antarctica shoving South America to the west? This would mean it intends to move north towards India. Penguins in New Delhi.

This is why the ecosystem constantly changes. Aside from human meddling and astronomical space junk wrecking things.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Avalanche Sweeps Away Traffic In Colorado

Elaine Meinel Supkis

In order to make money, ski resorts in Colorado are staying open despite tremendous amounts of snow falling. Of course, an avalanche has now exploded across a major highway to a resort and unknown numbers of people have been killed. Time to talk about mountains and snow.

&hearts Unlike snow that piles up a little at a time, major snow storms are notoriously unstable when piled up on steep mountains.

DENVER -- A huge avalanche buried several cars and sent others over the edge Saturday on U.S. 40 near 11,307-foot-high Berthoud Pass, Colorado highway officials said.

"Our crews said it was the largest they have ever seen. It took three paths," said Stacey Stegman, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Transportation.

Crews had rescued at least six people at the site some 60 miles west of Denver, she said. Rescuers were probing the area for other survivors.

St. Bernard dogs were bred by monks manning the dangerous passes in the Alps connecting northern Europe with Rome. Snow-bound mountains were always considered to be as dangerous as thunderstorms or tsunamis. Best to be avoided. We recently saw the discovery of a Stone Age man trapped in a blizzard or an avalanche, he was frozen and then 5,300 years later, the ice melted enough for us to find him. During the Little Ice Age, in Switzerland, a number of mountain communities were lost to creeping glaciers and destroyed by avalanches.

Today, we go off to these same places for fun. Also, thanks to the warm climate today, many ice-bound places are easier to live in. I grew up in mountains, some of them very tall, where the oxygen supply was so poor, it is amazing I still have a brain, heh. Anyway, several things about big mountains: due to said lack of oxygen, people don't think so clearly there. Most don't notice it but if one is a visitor rather than a native, it is noticeable to the natives.

Many people live in the lowlands and go off into the wilderness to party. Lots of people make money off of people doing this. Therefore, we see increasingly reckless behavior, a near-total refusal to take in account, Mother Nature and her dangerous moods.

There is no way Colorado or any other place depending on skiers, will close roads. They keep them open no matter what. In steep mountain country, this means taking huge chances. As we see today.

Avalanches are as dangerous as tsunamis. One might call them 'frozen water tsunamis.' They tend to happen when there is a tremendous amount of snow falling. This builds up huge snow banks that become easily destabilized. &hearts Here is a little film clip showing how reckless snowboarders create avalanches.

If you look closely, in some of the clips, the snowboarders don't make it out of the avalanche. There is a growing movement for doing dangerous stunts in the outback during winter. Indeed, since the advent of cell-phones, all sorts of people wander around in the winter in extremely dangerous places. We see them in the news an awful lot. And lots and lots of people have to endanger themselves to save these people.

In the Victorian era, people didn't go into the Rockies in winter. Indeed, it could lead to cannibalism and other ugliness. People would have to wait until the snows melted before venturing over these great mountains. Today, we expect to pass up and over and through no matter what.

&hearts Here is the Denver Post telling people to go enjoy themselves in this fatal place:

Berthoud Pass' fine trails
By Dave Cooper
Special to
The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 12/30/2006 11:03:28 PM MST

The area around Berthoud Pass always seems to be favored with more than its fair share of early-season snow. This year is no exception.

There are several excellent ski/snowshoe tours on both sides of the pass. Three prominent drainages on the north side of the pass offer short but fun half-day tours in the shadow of the Continental Divide.
As you drive north on U.S. 40 from the top of Berthoud Pass, the first of these drainages is Current Creek, followed by Second Creek and finally First Creek. Second Creek offers perhaps the most moderate terrain of the three, and also provides access, when conditions permit, to the Continental Divide itself. Friends and I have enjoyed extended tours all the way to Parsenn Bowl at Winter Park.

When I was a child living at the observatory in Texas, the road going to the top where I lived wound around and had many hairpin turns. A truck carrying supplies was swept off of the road and lay in a ravine down below and as we passed it, I would lean over to take a good look at it. This was in 1955. In 1965, we went there again and the truck was still lying there in the ravine. At Kitt Peak, the first road went straight up the south side. A lot of fun. When they built the main road on the north face, a big boulder came bouncing down the mountainside and crushed the big Caterpillar grader. We scrambled all over the path the boulder carved in the mountainside.

One thing we all learned at a fairly young age was to avoid going up or down the ravines. The safest place was the ridges. This is because sudden floods and avalanches invariably follow the ravines. I have witnessed these things, the roaring is like a thousand angry lions, the ground literally quakes.

&hearts We still don't know all the dynamics of avalanches.

At present, few measurements of avalanche velocity, dynamic pressures, densities, flow dimensions or length of travel (runout distance) have been made. Such data are difficult to obtain for obvious reasons, but are gradually being accumulated through efforts of the U. S. Forest Service, the National Research Council of Canada, and the Center of Snow Studies in France. Because of this paucity of data, the present discussion does not advocate a particular model of avalanche flow. Rather, it summarizes existing information and presents some basic ideas about the forces operating within avalanche as related to snow type. Further research and data collection is necessary for understanding of the basic principals because any theoretical treatment of the phenomenon, regardless of its complexity, can produce misleading results if the analytical manipulations are based on unrealistic assumptions.

I used to do search and rescue. No one had to look for me in the mountains because I am a mountain person. But we had to do many a search for flatlanders. Even if someone visits many mountains and does various tricks there, this isn't the same as being a mountain person. One has to grow up in the steep mountains like the people in Nepal, for example. You become aware of many hidden clues and signals if one grows up in the midst of these beautiful but deadly deities.

&hearts Here is one story I remember about a Swiss avalanche.

Winter of 1999: Avalanche buries houses in Alps, killing 4 people. The 660-foot-wide avalanche, which hit shortly after 2:30 p.m. (8:30 a.m. EST) was the largest to strike the Mont B