Friday, December 2, 2011

Re: [Geology2] Wild Geology News

Hi Lin, thanks for sharing.

Luckily 2012 looks like it will be just an ordinary year, (despite all the hype, lol).

Mark.

From: Lin Kerns <linkerns@gmail.com>
To: Geology2 <geology2@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, 2 December 2011, 13:10
Subject: [Geology2] Wild Geology News

CNN Video: Florida Mastadon found in Daytona Beach

'San Andreas: 3D' -- a '2012' for 2012?

December 1, 2011 |

EXCLUSIVE: Maybe it's the wind that's been rattling the windows here in Los Angeles, but when we heard about the new earthquake disaster movie "San Andreas: 3D," it seemed … prescient. But hopefully not too prescient.

Written by the veteran Hollywood screenwriter Allan Loeb ("Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," "21"), the heretofore unreported project is about the Big One: that mother of all rollers that stretches from California to Nevada first along the fault line of its title and then beyond, leaving plenty of destruction behind.

The movie is being produced by Beau Flynn, the man behind sweeping action movies like "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and the upcoming "Red Dawn" remake. New Line is developing the film, which is currently seeking directors, according to a person who was briefed on the movie but not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The 40-ish Loeb has a lot of scripts under his belt –- he's written broad comedies ("Just Go With It") musicals ("Rock of Ages") and big action movies, like the development-snagged "Escape From New York" remake.

Although he's never written a disaster film, there's a lot of escape in this new movie - -the hero is forced to go on the road to reconcile with his children and his estranged wife, who's moved away and taken up with another man a la John Cusack's character in "2012." (According to a person who's read the script, the "San Andreas" hero makes the trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco using some rather, er, unconventional transportation.)

Though they don't exactly win Oscars, disaster movies are a timeless staple ands big global earners ("2012" made more than $750 million around the world, enough to support an entire Mayan civilization). And this one, of course, could be in 3-D.

Centuries ago some people believed gale-force winds could foretell earthquakes. Here's hoping the winds foretell only earthquake movies.

-- Steven Zeitchik

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Fukushima Earthquake Moved Seafloor Half a Football Field

The massive shift, laterally and upward, caused the epic March 2011 tsunami

By Mark Fischetti | December 1, 2011

The March 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake that decimated Japan and its Fukushima nuclear reactors with a monster tsunami altered the seafloor off the country's eastern coast much more than scientists had thought. Analysis released today in the journal Science indicates the ocean bed moved as much as 50 meters laterally and 16 meters vertically. The magnitude 9.0 quake occurred close to the nearby Japan Trench that runs north to south in the Pacific Ocean (dark blue line on the map below).

The trench exists because the oceanic Pacific Plate (dark blue on map below) is moving westward, hitting and bending down under the continental Okhotsk Plate (light blue) from which Japan rises (green, brown). This "subduction" action creates tension within the tectonic plates, which is occasionally released in the form of earthquakes.

Although measurements from satellites and seismic ground sensors had indicated the Okhotsk Plate moved after the 9.0 temblor on March 11, the extent of the movement was not clear. Researchers at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology compared new seafloor maps made of the region this year with maps made in 1999 and were surprised by the extent of motion. For example, data along one transect (yellow marker, below) near the quake's epicenter (black "x" on the map) indicated that the Okhotsk plate moved 50 meters east-southeast toward the trench.

Comparison of depth data showed that the earthquake itself lifted the Okhotsk plate 10 meters where the plate dives deep toward the trench (yellow to purple color, at center, below). The plate's lateral shift also caused it to tip up another four to six meters there. "We think that the additional uplift contributed to the generation of the pulsating pattern of tsunami waves," Toshiya Fujiwara, one of the lead researchers, wrote in an email.

So if the Okhotsk plate shifted 50 meters at the trench, what happened at Japan's eastern shore? According to Fujiwara, data from various Japanese agencies and universities shows that the seafloor at the Tohoku shore moved 5 meters seaward. Offshore, the plate shifted from 15 to 31 meters in the same east-southeast direction, and close to the trench it moved 50 meters. The gradually increasing displacement suggests that the plate was actually stretched from the shore toward the trench, changing local stress patterns along the way. The many large aftershocks that occurred (red circles, below; yellow is the quake epicenter) are evidence of the stretching, Fujiwara noted.

Map credits (top to bottom): Captain Blood and Wikimedia Atlas of the World (Japan and Asia); NOAA (plates); Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (trench map and horizontal displacement graphic); ZENRIN and Google Maps (aftershocks).

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