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Scientists Ponder Alaska's Volcanic Nature

Posted on: Tuesday, 14 October 2003, 06:00 CDT

ANCHORAGE (AP) -- Alaska has been ground zero for cataclysmic jolts such as earthquakes, volcanic blasts, landslides, tsunamis, floods and fires.

Rather than being carefully sculpted over eons, this state has been repeatedly blown apart like a series of epic Hollywood disasters.

"This is definitely where the action is," said volcanologist John Eichelberger, a scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute.

Hundreds of scientists gathered in Fairbanks last month to talk about the continuing impact of such extreme events during a conference organized by Eichelberger and others.

Eichelberger has spent years studying the 1912 eruption of Novarupta near Katmai, the biggest volcanic blast of the 20th century.

Over three days, people listened to 63 presentations by geologists, biologists, glaciologists, volcanologists, anthropologists and climate modelers about some of the biggest catastrophes ever to shake the planet.

Dozens of other researchers also presented papers on cold regions engineering, biology and earth science.

The immediate inspiration for the conference was the 7.9 earthquake that struck Alaska on Nov. 3. It was the world's most powerful quake in 2002 and the biggest slip-strike earthquake in North America in 150 years, said Eichelberger.

The quake ruptured 210 miles through the Alaska Range.

In a presentation by geologists Patricia Craw and Jeff Freymueller, the quake's extraordinary reach became apparent.

After beginning near a previously unknown fault by Susitna Glacier, the rupture unzipped glaciers, opened deep chasms in ice, buried glaciers with millions of cubic yards of rock, creased mountain ranges with visible lines, twisted individual trees into shreds.

The ground shifted up to 28 feet near Mentasta Lake by the Tok Cutoff and rose as much as 12 feet. The quake had other surprising effects such as easing seismic activity within the Veniaminof and Wrangell volcanoes, volcanologists John Sanchez and Steve McNutt said.

The conference included reports on warming climate and the predictions by models of a wetter and windier Arctic.

There was discussion of the appearance of thunderstorms in Barrow over the summer and intense low pressure building at sea.

Four recent coastal floods and damaging storms occurred when the sea ice edge had pulled back hundreds of miles, allowing winds to build, said John Lingaas, the warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Fairbanks.

Scientists had long tended to dismiss the notion that Earth was molded by sudden extreme events, relegating such "catastrophism" to superstition and religion.

But the discovery of an iridium layer in the 65-million-year-old ash deposits all over the globe jolted that old attitude, Eichelberger said.

Scientists eventually realized that a 6-mile-wide extraterrestrial object had struck Earth at the Yucatan Peninsula, causing the extinction of 70 percent of all life on the planet.

"I do think we are moving toward a more balanced view of how the world works, where extreme events play an unpredictable role," Eichelberger said.

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University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute

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