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Study reveals the workings of nature’s own earthquake blocker

Seismogram
Representative Image: Seismogram

A new study finds a naturally occurring “earthquake gate” that decides which earthquakes are allowed to grow into magnitude 8 or greater.

Sometimes, the “gate” stops earthquakes in the magnitude 7 range, while ones that pass through the gate grow to magnitude 8 or greater, releasing over 32 times as much energy as a magnitude 7.

“An earthquake gate is like someone directing traffic at a one-lane construction zone. Sometimes you pull up and get a green ‘go’ sign, other times you have a red ‘stop’ sign until conditions change,” said UC Riverside geologist Nicolas Barth.

Researchers learned about this gate while studying New Zealand’s Alpine Fault, which they determined has about a 75 percent chance of producing a damaging earthquake within the next 50 years. The modeling also suggests this next earthquake has an 82 percent chance of rupturing through the gate and being magnitude 8 or greater. These insights are now published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Barth was part of an international research team including scientists from Victoria University of Wellington, GNS Science, the University of Otago, and the US Geological Survey.

Their work combined two approaches to studying earthquakes: evidence of past earthquakes collected by geologists and computer simulations run by geophysicists. Only by using both jointly were the researchers able to get new insight into the expected behavior of future earthquakes on the Alpine Fault.

“Big earthquakes cause serious shaking and landslides that carry debris down rivers and into lakes,” said lead author Jamie Howarth, Victoria University of Wellington geologist. “We can drill several meters through the lake sediments and recognize distinct patterns that indicate an earthquake shook the region nearby. By dating the sediments, we can precisely determine when the earthquake occurred.”

Sedimentary records collected at six sites along the Alpine Fault identified the extent of the last 20 significant earthquakes over the past 4,000 years, making it one of the most detailed earthquake records of its kind in the world.

The completeness of this earthquake record offered a rare opportunity for the researchers to compare their data against a 100,000-year record of computer-generated earthquakes. The research team used an earthquake simulation code developed by James Dieterich, distinguished professor emeritus at UC Riverside.

Only the model with the fault geometry matching the Alpine Fault was able to reproduce the earthquake data. “The simulations show that a smaller magnitude 6 to 7 earthquake at the earthquake gate can change the stress and break the streak of larger earthquakes,” Barth said. “We know the last three ruptures passed through the earthquake gate. In our best-fit model the next earthquake will also pass 82% of the time.”

Looking beyond New Zealand, earthquake gates are an important area of active research in California. The Southern California Earthquake Center, a consortium of over 100 institutions of which UCR is a core member, has made earthquake gates a research priority. In particular, researchers are targeting the Cajon Pass region near San Bernardino, where the interaction of the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults may cause earthquake gate behavior that could regulate the size of the next damaging earthquake there.

“We are starting to get to the point where our data and models are detailed enough that we can begin forecasting earthquake patterns. Not just how likely an earthquake is, but how big and how widespread it may be, which will help us better prepare,” Barth said.

Reference:
Jamie D. Howarth, Nicolas C. Barth, Sean J. Fitzsimons, Keith Richards-Dinger, Kate J. Clark, Glenn P. Biasi, Ursula A. Cochran, Robert M. Langridge, Kelvin R. Berryman, Rupert Sutherland. Spatiotemporal clustering of great earthquakes on a transform fault controlled by geometry. Nature Geoscience, 2021; DOI: 10.1038/s41561-021-00721-4

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of California – Riverside. Original written by Jules Bernstein.

Hidden magma pools pose eruption risks that we can’t yet detect

Viti Crater (formed in the 1724 event), where the Iceland Deep Drilling Project accidentally drilled into magma in 2009. They were drilling there originally to explore the potential for geothermal energy. Credit: Shane Rooyakkers.
Viti Crater (formed in the 1724 event), where the Iceland Deep Drilling Project accidentally drilled into magma in 2009. They were drilling there originally to explore the potential for geothermal energy. Credit: Shane Rooyakkers.

Volcanologists’ ability to estimate eruption risks is largely reliant on knowing where pools of magma are stored, deep in the Earth’s crust. But what happens if the magma can’t be spotted?

Shane Rooyakkers, a postdoctoral scholar at GNS Science in New Zealand, grew up in the shadow of Mount Taranaki on the country’s North Island, hiking on the island’s many volcanoes. Today, his research is revealing hidden dangers that may have been beneath his feet all along.

A new study, published yesterday in Geology, explores a threat volcanologists discovered only recently: surprisingly shallow magma pools that are too small to be detected with common volcano monitoring equipment. Such a magma body was discovered in Iceland in 2009, when scientists with the Iceland Deep Drilling Project accidentally drilled directly into the molten rock two kilometers shallower than the depths where magma had been detected before. Magma began to creep up the drill hole, reaching several meters before it was stopped with cold drilling fluids. The study adds a critical piece of information to the puzzle by linking the hidden magma to a centuries-old eruption.

Rooyakkers, who is lead author on the study and completed the work while at McGill University, compared the composition of the quenched magma, which had formed smooth volcanic glass, with rocks from an eruption from that same volcano, Krafla, in 1724. Before his study, scientists thought the shallow magma they’d drilled into had been emplaced after a series of eruptions in the 1980s. No one expected the hidden magma to be related to the 1724 eruption, so what Rooyakkers found was a surprise.

“When we looked at the compositions from 1724, we found an almost perfect match for what was sampled during the drilling,” Rooyakkers says. “That suggests that actually, this magma body has been there since 1724 and has previously been involved in an eruption at Krafla. So that raises the question of, ‘Why did geophysics not pick it up?'”

The answer is size. Most magma detection relies on seismic imaging, like oil companies use to detect reserves deep under the seafloor. When there’s an earthquake, the instruments detect how long it takes for sound waves to travel through the crust. Depending on the density of the rocks, the soundwaves return at different times. So if there’s water, oil, or magma stored underground, the soundwaves should reflect it. But these hidden magma chambers are too small for these instruments, as well as other detection tools, to find.

“In traditional approaches to volcano monitoring, a lot of emphasis is placed on knowing where magma is and which magma bodies are active,” says Rooyakkers. “Krafla is one of the most intensely-monitored and instrumented volcanoes in the world. They’ve thrown everything but the kitchen sink at it in terms of geophysics. And yet we still didn’t know there was this rhyolitic magma body sitting at just two kilometers’ depth that’s capable of producing a hazardous eruption.”

Studies like Rooyakkers’ suggest that smaller, more widely-distributed magma bodies might be more common than previously thought, challenging the conventional view that most eruptions are fed from larger and deeper magma chambers that can be reliably detected.

Beyond not being able to monitor magmatic activity, planning for eruptions and estimating risks becomes more difficult if scientists suspect that hidden magma bodies could be present. For example, the Krafla volcano is usually dominated by basalt, a type of magma that tends to erupt passively (like the recent eruption at Fagradallsfjall in Iceland) rather than in an explosion. But the hidden magma body at Krafla is made of rhyolite, a magma type that often creates violent explosions when it erupts.

“So the concern in this case would be that you have a shallow rhyolitic magma that you don’t know about, so it hasn’t been considered in hazards planning,” Rooyakkers explains. “If it’s hit by new magma moving up, you might have a much more explosive eruption than you were anticipating.”

As volcanologists become aware of the hazards associated with these shallow, distributed magma systems, they can work on improving monitoring, trying to capture these hidden magma pools. Covering a volcanic area in more detectors may be costly, but by improving the resolution of magma imaging, scientists may save a community or company far more than the cost of the study. The risks vary from volcano to volcano, but in general, as we learn more about these magma systems, scientists concerned with estimating hazards can be aware of the possibility of hidden magma.

Despite the risks he’s uncovering, will Rooyakkers still live around volcanoes?

“Oh yeah, for sure,” he says with a laugh. “I mean, there’s risk with anything, isn’t there?”

Reference:
Shane M. Rooyakkers ; John Stix ; Kim Berlo ; Maurizio Petrelli ; Freysteinn Sigmundsson. Eruption risks from covert silicic magma bodies. Geology, 2021 DOI: 10.1130/G48697.1/596166

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Geological Society of America.

A new look at evolution in the oceans

The Xiamaling Formation in China, which contains fossilised algae from primeval times. Credit: © Don E. Canfield
The Xiamaling Formation in China, which contains fossilised algae from primeval times. Credit: © Don E. Canfield

The first photosynthetic oxygen-producing organisms on Earth were cyanobacteria. Their evolution dramatically changed the Earth allowing oxygen to accumulate into the atmosphere for the first time and further allowing the evolution of oxygen-utilizing organisms including eukaryotes. Eukaryotes include animals, but also algae, a broad group of photosynthetic oxygen-producing organisms that now dominate photosynthesis in the modern oceans. When, however, did algae begin to occupy marine ecosystems and compete with cyanobacteria as important phototrophic organisms?

In a new study Zhang et al use the molecular remains of ancient algae (so-called biomarkers) to show that algae occupied an important role in marine ecosystems 1400 million years ago, some 600 million years earlier than previously recognized.

The specific biomarkers explored by Zhang et al are a group of sterane molecules derived from sterols that are prominent components of cell membranes in eukaryotic organisms. A particular difficulty in analyzing for ancient steranes is that samples are easily contaminated with steranes from other sources. The sources of contamination range from steranes introduced during the sampling, transport and processing of the samples, to geological contamination of steranes as fluids have flow through the rocks.

Zhang et al carefully controlled for each of the sources of contamination and found, as have others, that no steranes were liberated when using standard protocols to extract biomarkers from such ancient rocks, in this case the 1400 million-year-old Xiamaling Formation in North China.

However, Shuichang Zhang, the lead author of the study speculated that “There is some fossil evidence for eukaryotic algae 1400 million years ago, or even earlier, so we wondered whether any steranes in these rocks might be more tightly bound to the kerogens and not easily released during standard biomarker extraction.” Therefore, Zhang et al utilized a stepwise heating protocol where samples were slowly heated in gold tubes in 9 steps from 300°C to 490°C. The organic molecules liberated in each of the nine steps were extracted and steranes indicating the presence of both red and green algae were liberated, especially at the higher temperatures.

Zhang continues “Many will be concerned that the steranes we found were a product of some kind of contamination. We were also worried about this, but we ran in parallel samples that have been heated to high temperatures during their geologic history and that, therefore, contained no biomarkers. We found no steranes in these. This means that our protocols were clean, and we are therefore confident that the steranes we found were indigenous to the rock.”

It’s still not completely clear why the steranes were so tightly bound to the kerogen and not released during standard protocols. But, the findings of Zhang et al. show that both green and red algal groups were present in marine ecosystems by 1400 million years ago. This is 600 million years earlier than evident from previous biomarker studies. This work shows that the red and green algal lineages had certainly evolved by 1400 million years ago, and this should be a useful constraint in timing the overall history of eukaryote evolution. This work also shows that at least some ancient marine ecosystems functioned more similarly to modern ecosystems than previously thought, at least with respect to the types of photosynthetic organisms producing organic matter. This means furthermore that there was sufficient nutrients and oxygen available to drive the presence of algae-containing ecosystems.

Professor Don Canfield, Nordic Center for Earth Evolution, University of Southern Denmark, a co-author on the study adds: “We hope that our study will inspire others to utilize similar techniques to better unravel the full history of eukaryote evolution through geologic time.”

Reference:
Shuichang Zhang, Jin Su, Sihong Ma, Huajian Wang, Xiaomei Wang, Kun He, Huitong Wang, Donald E. Canfield. Eukaryotic red and green algae populated the tropical ocean 1400 million years ago. Precambrian Research, 2021; 357: 106166 DOI: 10.1016/j.precamres.2021.106166

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Southern Denmark. Original written by Birgitte Svennevig.

Earth’s crust mineralogy drives hotspots for intraterrestrial life

DeMMO field team from left to right: Lily Momper, Brittany Kruger, and Caitlin Casar sampling fracture fluids from a DeMMO borehole installation. Credit: ©Matt Kapust
DeMMO field team from left to right: Lily Momper, Brittany Kruger, and Caitlin Casar sampling fracture fluids from a DeMMO borehole installation. Credit: ©Matt Kapust

Below the verdant surface and organic rich soil, life extends kilometers into Earth’s deep rocky crust. The continental deep subsurface is likely one of the largest reservoirs of bacteria and archaea on Earth, many forming biofilms—like a microbial coating of the rock surface. This microbial population survives without light or oxygen and with minimal organic carbon sources, and can get energy by eating or respiring minerals. Distributed throughout the deep subsurface, these biofilms could represent 20-80% of the total bacterial and archaeal biomass in the continental subsurface according to the most recent estimate. But are these microbial populations spread evenly on rock surfaces, or do they prefer to colonize specific minerals in the rocks?

To answer this question, researchers from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, led a study to analyze the growth and distribution of microbial communities in deep continental subsurface settings. This work shows that the host rock mineral composition drives biofilm distribution, producing “hotspots” of microbial life. The study was published in Frontiers in Microbiology.

Hotspots of microbial life

To realize this study, the researchers went 1.5 kilometers below the surface in the Deep Mine Microbial Observatory (DeMMO), housed within a former gold mine now known as the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF), located in Lead, South Dakota. There, below-ground, the researchers cultivated biofilms on native rocks rich in iron and sulfur-bearing minerals. After six months, the researchers analyzed the microbial composition and physical characteristics of newly grown biofilms, as well as its distributions using microscopy, spectroscopy and spatial modelling approaches.

The spatial analyses conducted by the researchers revealed hotspots where the biofilm was denser. These hotspots correlate with iron-rich mineral grains in the rocks, highlighting some mineral preferences for biofilm colonization. “Our results demonstrate the strong spatial dependence of biofilm colonization on minerals in rock surfaces. We think that this spatial dependence is due to microbes getting their energy from the minerals they colonize.” explains Caitlin Casar, first author of the study.

Future research

Altogether, these results demonstrate that host rock mineralogy is a key driver of biofilm distribution, which could help improve estimates of the microbial distribution of the Earth’s deep continental subsurface. But leading intraterrestrial studies could also inform other topics. “Our findings could inform the contribution of biofilms to global nutrient cycles, and also have astrobiological implications as these findings provide insight into biomass distributions in a Mars analog system” says Caitlin Casar.

Indeed, extraterrestrial life could exist in similar subsurface environments where the microorganisms are protected from both radiation and extreme temperatures. Mars, for example, has an iron and sulfur-rich composition similar to DeMMO’s rock formations, which we now know are capable of driving the formation of microbial hotspots below-ground.

Reference:
Caitlin P. Casar et al, Rock-Hosted Subsurface Biofilms: Mineral Selectivity Drives Hotspots for Intraterrestrial Life, Frontiers in Microbiology (2021). DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.658988

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Frontiers.

A new view on plate tectonics

The Atlantis II fracture zone in the southwestern Indian Ocean with a zoom on the northern corner. The greater water depth in the transform valley is clearly visible. As the plates move, magmatism in the corners refills the deep transform valleys so that the adjacent fracture zones are shallower. Graphic: Christoph Kersten/GEOMAR according to Grevemeyer et al., 2021
The Atlantis II fracture zone in the southwestern Indian Ocean with a zoom on the northern corner. The greater water depth in the transform valley is clearly visible. As the plates move, magmatism in the corners refills the deep transform valleys so that the adjacent fracture zones are shallower. Graphic: Christoph Kersten/GEOMAR according to Grevemeyer et al., 2021

Forces acting inside the Earth have been constantly reshaping the continents and ocean basins over millions of years. What Alfred Wegener published as an idea in 1915 has finally been accepted since the 1960s, providing a unifying view about our planet. The fact that the theory of plate tectonics took so long to gain acceptance had two simple reasons. First, the geological formations that are most important for its understanding lie at the bottom of the oceans. Secondly, forces controlling the processes act below the seafloor and are hence hidden from our view. Many details of plate tectonics are therefore still unclear today.

Today, five scientists from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, the Southern University of Science and Technology (Shenzhen, China) and GeoModelling Solutions GmbH (Switzerland) publish a study in the international scientific journal Nature that questions a previous basic assumption of plate tectonics. It is about so-called transform faults. “These are large offsets in the mid-ocean ridges. So far, they have been assigned a purely passive role within plate tectonics. However, our analyses show that they are definitely actively involved in shaping the ocean floors,” explains Prof. Ingo Grevemeyer from GEOMAR, lead author of the study.

A look at a global overview map of the ocean floors helps to understand the study. Even at low resolution, several tens of thousands of kilometres long mid-ocean ridges can be recognised on such maps. They mark the boundaries of the Earth’s plates. In between, hot material from the Earth’s interior reaches the surface, cools down, forms new ocean floor and pushes the older ocean floor apart. “This is the engine that keeps the plates moving,” explains Prof. Grevemeyer.

However, the mid-ocean ridges do not form unbroken lines. They are cut by transverse valleys at almost regular intervals. The individual segments of the ridges each begin or end in an offset at these incisions. “These are the transform faults. Because the Earth is a sphere, plate movements repeatedly cause faults that produce these ridge offsets,” explains Prof. Lars Rüpke from GEOMAR, co-author of the study.

Earthquakes can occur at the transform faults and they leave long scars, so-called fracture zones, on oceanic plates. Until now, however, research assumed that the two plates only slide past each other at transform faults, but that seafloor is neither formed nor destroyed in the process.

The authors of the current study have now looked at available maps of 40 transform faults in all ocean basins. “In all examples, we could see that the transform valleys are significantly deeper than the adjacent fractures zones, which were previously thought to be simple continuations of the transform valleys,” says co-author Prof. Colin Devey from GEOMAR. The team also detected traces of extensive magmatism at the outer corners of the intersections between transform valleys and the mid-ocean ridges.

Using sophisticated numerical models, the team found an explanation for the phenomenon. According to this, the plate boundary along the transform fault is increasingly tilted at depth, so that shearing occurs. This causes extension of the seafloor, forming the deep transform valleys. Magmatism at the outer corners to the mid-ocean ridges then fills up the valleys, so that the fracture zones become much shallower. Oceanic crust that forms at the corners is therefore the only crust in the ocean that is formed by two-stage volcanism. What effects this has on its composition or, for example, the distribution of metals in the crust is still unknown.

Since transform faults are a fundamental type of plate boundary and frequent phenomenon along active plate boundaries in the oceans, this new finding is an important addition to the theory of plate tectonics and thus to understanding our planet. “Actually, the observation was obvious. But there are simply not enough high-resolution maps of the seafloor yet, so no one has noticed it until now,” says Prof. Grevemeyer.

Reference:
Ingo Grevemeyer, Lars H. Rüpke, Jason P. Morgan, Karthik Iyer, Colin W. Devey. Extensional tectonics and two-stage crustal accretion at oceanic transform faults. Nature, 2021; 591 (7850): 402 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03278-9

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (GEOMAR).

Rare earth unlocks copper, gold and silver secrets

The research potentially has wide implications for the materials sector and industry. Credit: Monash University
The research potentially has wide implications for the materials sector and industry. Credit: Monash University

A study by Monash scientists has found that a rare earth affects the fate of a key reaction with copper, gold, silver, and uranium mineralisation.

The work is part of the “Olympic Dam in a test tube” project, where researchers tried to reproduce the processes that resulted in the concentration of more than a trillion dollars worth of metals at Olympic Dam in South Australia in the laboratory.

The study, published in Nature Communications, found that Cerium, which belongs to the group of elements called ‘rare earths‘ speeds up important reactions and plays other significant roles.

“Previous thinking was that Cerium just came along for the ride, that is, the ore fluids picked up some cerium on their way to Olympic Dam,” said study author Professor Joël Brugger, from the Monash School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment.

“But our results place Cerium in the driver’s seat, as the presence of Cerium affects the fate of one of the key reactions associated with copper, gold, silver, and uranium mineralisation at Olympic Dam,” he said.

“The study establishes the fact that trace elements can have an important, yet difficult to predict, effect on the coupling between fluid flow, creation of porosity, and mineral dissolution and precipitation, that controls large-scale element mobility and rheology in the Earth’s crust.”

Giant ore deposits are natural wonders, where enormous amounts of metals are accumulate.

They represent an important part of Australia’s wealth and are key for resourcing a carbon-free economy, which requires large amounts of traditional metals such as copper, as well as high-tech metals such as rare earth elements (until now used only in some niche applications).

“In order to discover new giant deposits and efficiently mine existing ones, we need a mechanistic understanding of the processes that form—and transform—the minerals that host valuable metals,” Professor Brugger said.

The research team discovered that Cerium plays an active role during the replacement of magnetite by hematite: it acts as a catalyst that speeds up the reaction; provides space for the precipitation of the value minerals; and promotes a positive feedback between reaction and fluid-flow, that contributes to increasing the metal endowment of the deposit.

The study potentially has wide implications for the materials sector and industry.

“Although more recycling is an important part of raw materials’ future, we need more metals than the sum of those mined to date to resource the transition to a carbon-free economy,” Professor Brugger said.

“Giant deposits are attractive because they can produce for decades, providing long-term security of supply and justifying large investment to ensure sustainable mining.”

Reference:
Yanlu Xing et al. Trace element catalyses mineral replacement reactions and facilitates ore formation, Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-21684-5

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Monash University. The original article was written by Silvia Dropulich.

When volcanoes go metal

Volcano magma chamber. Credit: Cardiff University
Volcano magma chamber. Credit: Cardiff University

What would a volcano — and its lava flows — look like on a planetary body made primarily of metal? A pilot study from North Carolina State University offers insights into ferrovolcanism that could help scientists interpret landscape features on other worlds.

Volcanoes form when magma, which consists of the partially molten solids beneath a planet’s surface, erupts. On Earth, that magma is mostly molten rock, composed largely of silica. But not every planetary body is made of rock — some can be primarily icy or even metallic.

“Cryovolcanism is volcanic activity on icy worlds, and we’ve seen it happen on Saturn’s moon Enceladus,” says Arianna Soldati, assistant professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the work. “But ferrovolcanism, volcanic activity on metallic worlds, hasn’t been observed yet.”

Enter 16 Psyche, a 140-mile diameter asteroid situated in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Its surface, according to infrared and radar observations, is mainly iron and nickel. 16 Psyche is the subject of an upcoming NASA mission, and the asteroid inspired Soldati to think about what volcanic activity might look like on a metallic world.

“When we look at images of worlds unlike ours, we still use what happens on Earth — like evidence of volcanic eruptions — to interpret them,” Soldati says. “However, we don’t have widespread metallic volcanism on Earth, so we must imagine what those volcanic processes might look like on other worlds so that we can interpret images correctly.”

Soldati defines two possible types of ferrovolcanism: Type 1, or pure ferrovolcanism, occurring on entirely metallic bodies; and Type 2, spurious ferrovolcanism, occurring on hybrid rocky-metallic bodies.

In a pilot study, Soldati and colleagues from the Syracuse Lava Project produced Type 2 ferrovolcanism, in which metal separates from rock as the magma forms.

“The Lava Project’s furnace is configured for melting rock, so we were working with the metals (mainly iron) that naturally occur within them,” Soldati says. “When you melt rock under the extreme conditions of the furnace, some of the iron will separate out and sink to the bottom since it’s heavier. By completely emptying the furnace, we were able to see how that metal magma behaved compared to the rock one.”

The metallic lava flows travelled 10 times faster and spread more thinly than the rock flows, breaking into a myriad of braided channels. The metal also traveled largely beneath the rock flow, emerging from the leading edge of the rocky lava.

The smooth, thin, braided, widely spread layers of metallic lava would leave a very different impression on a planet’s surface than the often thick, rough, rocky flows we find on Earth, according to Soldati.

“Although this is a pilot project, there are still some things we can say,” Soldati says. “If there were volcanoes on 16 Psyche — or on another metallic body — they definitely wouldn’t look like the steep-sided Mt. Fuji, an iconic terrestrial volcano. Instead, they would probably have gentle slopes and broad cones. That’s how an iron volcano would be built — thin flows that expand over longer distances.”

Reference:
A. Soldati, J. A. Farrell, R. Wysocki, J. A. Karson. Imagining and constraining ferrovolcanic eruptions and landscapes through large-scale experiments. Nature Communications, 2021; 12 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-21582-w

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by North Carolina State University. Original written by Tracey Peake.

Extinct Caribbean bird’s closest relatives hail from Africa, South Pacific

Adzebills, also close relatives of cave-rails, were large, flightless birds with big beaks that could have been used to prey on small animals or strip vegetation. Illustration courtesy of Nobu Tamura, CC BY 3.0
Adzebills, also close relatives of cave-rails, were large, flightless birds with big beaks that could have been used to prey on small animals or strip vegetation. Illustration courtesy of Nobu Tamura, CC BY 3.0

In a genetic surprise, ancient DNA shows the closest family members of an extinct bird known as the Haitian cave-rail are not in the Americas, but Africa and the South Pacific, uncovering an unexpected link between Caribbean bird life and the Old World.

Like many animals unique to the Caribbean, cave-rails became extinct soon after people settled the islands. The last of three known West Indian species of cave-rails — flightless, chicken-sized birds — vanished within the past 1,000 years. Florida Museum of Natural History researchers sought to resolve the group’s long-debated ancestry by analyzing DNA from a fossil toe bone of the Haitian cave-rail, Nesotrochis steganinos. But they were unprepared for the results: The genus Nesotrochis is most closely related to the flufftails, flying birds that live in sub-Saharan Africa, Madagascar and New Guinea, and the adzebills, large, extinct, flightless birds native to New Zealand.

The study presents the first example of a Caribbean bird whose closest relatives live in the Old World, showcasing the power of ancient DNA to reveal a history erased by humans.

The discovery was “just mind-blowing,” said study lead author Jessica Oswald, who began the project as a postdoctoral researcher at the Florida Museum.

“If this study had not happened, we might still be under the assumption that the closest relatives of most things in the Caribbean are on the mainland in the Americas,” said Oswald, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Nevada, Reno and a Florida Museum research affiliate. “This gives us an understanding of the region’s biodiversity that would otherwise be obscured.”

Many animals evolved unusual forms on islands, often making it difficult to classify extinct species based on their physical characteristics alone. But advancements in extracting viable DNA from fossils now enables scientists like Oswald to answer longstanding questions with ancient genetic evidence. Oswald described her work as similar to a forensic investigation, tracing the evolutionary backstory of extinct animals by piecing together fragmented, degraded genetic material.

“Understanding where all of these extinct species fit into a larger family tree or evolutionary history gives us insight into what a place looked like before people arrived,” she said. “That’s why my job is so fun. It’s always this whodunit.”

Oswald was just starting her ancient DNA work at the Florida Museum when David Steadman, curator of ornithology and study co-author, suggested the Haitian cave-rail as a good candidate for analysis.

Cave-rails share physical characteristics with several types of modern birds, and scientists have conjectured for decades whether they are most closely related to wood rails, coots or swamphens — birds that all belong to the rail family, part of a larger group known as the Gruiformes. Oswald and Steadman hoped that studying cave-rail DNA would clarify “what the heck this thing is,” Oswald said.

When preliminary results indicated the species had a trans-Atlantic connection, Steadman, who has worked in the Caribbean for more than 40 years, was skeptical.

The genetics also showed that the cave-rail isn’t a rail at all: While flufftails and adzebills are also members of the Gruiformes, they are in separate families from rails.

“It just didn’t seem logical that you’d have to go across the Atlantic to find the closest relative,” Steadman said. “But the fact that people had a hard time classifying where Nesotrochis was within the rails — in hindsight, maybe that should have been a clue. Now I have a much more open mind.”

One reason the cave-rail was so difficult to classify is that when birds lose the ability to fly, they often converge on a similar body plan, Steadman said. Flightlessness is a common adaptation in island birds, which face far fewer predators in the absence of humans and invasive species such as dogs, cats, rats and pigs.

“You don’t have to outfly or outrun predators, so your flying and running abilities become reduced,” Steadman said. “Because island birds spend less energy avoiding predators, they also tend to have a lower metabolic rate and nest on the ground. It’s no longer life in the fast lane. They’re essentially living in a Corona commercial.”

While sheltered from the mass extinctions that swept the mainland, cave-rails were helpless once people touched foot on the islands, having lost their defenses and cautiousness.

“Being flightless and plump was not a great strategy during human colonization of the Caribbean,” said study co-author Robert Guralnick, Florida Museum curator of biodiversity informatics.

How did cave-rails get to the Caribbean in the first place? Monkeys and capybara-like rodents journeyed from Africa to the New World about 25-36 million years ago, likely by rafting, and cave-rails may also have migrated during that timespan, Steadman said. He and Oswald envision two probable scenarios: The ancestors of cave-rails either made a long-distance flight across an Atlantic Ocean that was not much narrower than today, or the group was once more widespread across the continents, with more relatives remaining to be discovered in the fossil record.

Other researchers have recently published findings that corroborate the story told by cave-rail DNA: A study of foot features suggested Nesotrochis could be more closely related to flufftails than rails, and other research showed that adzebills are close relatives of the flufftails. Like cave-rails, adzebills are also an example of a flightless island bird extinguished by human hunters.

“Humans have meddled so much in the region and caused so many extinctions, we need ancient DNA to help us sort out what’s related to what,” Oswald said.

The findings also underscore the value of museum collections, Steadman said. The toe bone Oswald used in her analysis was collected in 1983 by Charles Woods, then the Florida Museum’s curator of mammals. At that time, “nobody was thinking about ancient DNA,” Steadman said. “It shows the beauty of keeping things well curated in a museum.”

Ryan Terrill of Occidental College, the Florida Museum’s Brian Stucky and Michelle LeFebvre and Julie Allen of the University of Nevada, Reno, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign also co-authored the study.

Reference:
Jessica A. Oswald, Ryan S. Terrill, Brian J. Stucky, Michelle J. LeFebvre, David W. Steadman, Robert P. Guralnick, Julie M. Allen. Ancient DNA from the extinct Haitian cave-rail ( Nesotrochis steganinos ) suggests a biogeographic connection between the Caribbean and Old World. Biology Letters, 2021; 17 (3) DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2020.0760

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Florida Museum of Natural History. Original written by Natalie van Hoose.

Melting glaciers contribute to Alaska earthquakes

Glaciers such as the Yakutat in Southeast Alaska, shown here, have been melting since the end of the Little Ice Age, influencing earthquakes in the region. Credit: Sam Herreid
Glaciers such as the Yakutat in Southeast Alaska, shown here, have been melting since the end of the Little Ice Age, influencing earthquakes in the region. Credit: Sam Herreid

In 1958, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake triggered a rockslide into Southeast Alaska’s Lituya Bay, creating a tsunami that ran 1,700 feet up a mountainside before racing out to sea.

Researchers now think the region’s widespread loss of glacier ice helped set the stage for the quake.

In a recently published research article, scientists with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute found that ice loss near Glacier Bay National Park has influenced the timing and location of earthquakes with a magnitude of 5.0 or greater in the area during the past century.

Scientists have known for decades that melting glaciers have caused earthquakes in otherwise tectonically stable regions, such as Canada’s interior and Scandinavia. In Alaska, this pattern has been harder to detect, as earthquakes are common in the southern part of the state.

Alaska has some of the world’s largest glaciers, which can be thousands of feet thick and cover hundreds of square miles. The ice’s weight causes the land beneath it to sink, and, when a glacier melts, the ground springs back like a sponge.

“There are two components to the uplift,” said Chris Rollins, the study’s lead author who conducted the research while at the Geophysical Institute. “There’s what’s called the ‘elastic effect,’ which is when the earth instantly springs back up after an ice mass is removed. Then there’s the prolonged effect from the mantle flowing back upwards under the vacated space.”

In the study, researchers link the expanding movement of the mantle with large earthquakes across Southeast Alaska, where glaciers have been melting for over 200 years. More than 1,200 cubic miles of ice have been lost.

Southern Alaska sits at the boundary between the continental North American plate and the Pacific Plate. They grind past each other at about two inches per year — roughly twice the rate of the San Andreas fault in California — resulting in frequent earthquakes.

The disappearance of glaciers, however, has also caused Southeast Alaska’s land to rise at about 1.5 inches per year.

Rollins ran models of earth movement and ice loss since 1770, finding a subtle but unmistakable correlation between earthquakes and earth rebound.

When they combined their maps of ice loss and shear stress with seismic records back to 1920, they found that most large quakes were correlated with the stress from long-term earth rebound.

Unexpectedly, the greatest amount of stress from ice loss occurred near the exact epicenter of the 1958 quake that caused the Lituya Bay tsunami.

While the melting of glaciers is not the direct cause of earthquakes, it likely modulates both the timing and severity of seismic events.

When the earth rebounds following a glacier’s retreat, it does so much like bread rising in an oven, spreading in all directions. This effectively unclamps strike-slip faults, such as the Fairweather in Southeast Alaska, and makes it easier for the two sides to slip past one another.

In the case of the 1958 quake, the postglacial rebound torqued the crust around the fault in a way that increased stress near the epicenter as well. Both this and the unclamping effect brought the fault closer to failure.

“The movement of plates is the main driver of seismicity, uplift and deformation in the area,” said Rollins. “But postglacial rebound adds to it, sort of like the de-icing on the cake. It makes it more likely for faults that are in the red zone to hit their stress limit and slip in an earthquake.”

Reference:
Chris Rollins, Jeffrey T. Freymueller, Jeanne M. Sauber. Stress Promotion of the 1958 M w ∼7.8 Fairweather Fault Earthquake and Others in Southeast Alaska by Glacial Isostatic Adjustment and Inter‐earthquake Stress Transfer. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 2021; 126 (1) DOI: 10.1029/2020JB020411

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Traces of Earth’s early magma ocean identified in Greenland rocks

Isua in Greenland Credit: Hanika Rizo
Isua in Greenland. Credit: Hanika Rizo

New research led by the University of Cambridge has found rare evidence — preserved in the chemistry of ancient rocks from Greenland — which tells of a time when Earth was almost entirely molten.

The study, published in the journal Science Advances, yields information on a important period in our planet’s formation, when a deep sea of incandescent magma stretched across Earth’s surface and extended hundreds of kilometres into its interior.

It is the gradual cooling and crystallisation of this ‘magma ocean’ that set the chemistry of Earth’s interior — a defining stage in the assembly of our planet’s structure and the formation of our early atmosphere.

Scientists know that catastrophic impacts during the formation of the Earth and Moon would have generated enough energy to melt our planet’s interior. But we don’t know much about this distant and fiery phase of Earth’s history because tectonic processes have recycled almost all rocks older than 4 billion years.

Now researchers have found the chemical remnants of the magma ocean in 3.6-billion-year-old rocks from southwestern Greenland.

The findings support the long-held theory that Earth was once almost entirely molten and provide a window into a time when the planet started to solidify and develop the chemistry that now governs its internal structure. The research suggests that other rocks on Earth’s surface may also preserve evidence of ancient magma oceans.

“There are few opportunities to get geological constraints on the events in the first billion years of Earth’s history. It’s astonishing that we can even hold these rocks in our hands — let alone get so much detail about the early history of our planet,” said lead author Dr Helen Williams, from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences.

The study brings forensic chemical analysis together with thermodynamic modelling in search of the primeval origins of the Greenland rocks, and how they got to the surface.

At first glance, the rocks that make up Greenland’s Isua supracrustal belt look just like any modern basalt you’d find on the sea floor. But this outcrop, which was first described in the 1960s, is the oldest exposure of rocks on Earth. It is known to contain the earliest evidence of microbial life and plate tectonics.

The new research shows that the Isua rocks also preserve rare evidence which even predates plate tectonics — the residues of some of the crystals left behind as that magma ocean cooled.

“It was a combination of some new chemical analyses we did and the previously published data that flagged to us that the Isua rocks might contain traces of ancient material. The hafnium and neodymium isotopes were really tantalizing, because those isotope systems are very hard to modify — so we had to look at their chemistry in more detail,” said co-author Dr Hanika Rizo, from Carleton University.

Iron isotopic systematics confirmed to Williams and the team that the Isua rocks were derived from parts of the Earth’s interior that formed as a consequence of magma ocean crystallisation.

Most of this primeval rock has been mixed up by convection in the mantle, but scientists think that some isolated zones deep at the mantle-core boundary — ancient crystal graveyards — may have remained undisturbed for billions of years.

It’s the relics of these crystal graveyards that Williams and her colleagues observed in the Isua rock chemistry. “Those samples with the iron fingerprint also have a tungsten anomaly — a signature of Earth’s formation — which makes us think that their origin can be traced back to these primeval crystals,” said Williams.

But how did these signals from the deep mantle find their way up to the surface? Their isotopic makeup shows they were not just funnelled up from melting at the core-mantle boundary. Their journey was more circuitous, involving several stages of crystallization and remelting — a kind of distillation process. The mix of ancient crystals and magma would have first migrated to the upper mantle, where it was churned up to create a ‘marble cake’ of rocks from different depths. Later melting of that hybrid of rocks is what produced the magma which fed this part of Greenland.

The team’s findings suggest that modern hotspot volcanoes, which are thought to have formed relatively recently, may actually be influenced by ancient processes.

“The geochemical signals we report in the Greenland rocks bear similarities to rocks erupted from hotspot volcanoes like Hawaii — something we are interested in is whether they might also be tapping into the depths and accessing regions of the interior usually beyond our reach,” said Dr Oliver Shorttle, who is jointly based at Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences and Institute of Astronomy.

The team’s findings came out of a project funded by Deep Volatiles, a NERC-funded 5-year research programme. They now plan to continue their quest to understand the magma ocean by widening their search for clues in ancient rocks and experimentally modelling isotopic fractionation in the lower mantle.

“We’ve been able to unpick what one part of our planet’s interior was doing billions of years ago, but to fill in the picture further we must keep searching for more chemical clues in ancient rocks,” said co-author Dr Simon Matthews from the University of Iceland.

Scientists have often been reluctant to look for chemical evidence of these ancient events. “The evidence is often altered by the course of time. But the fact we found what we did suggests that the chemistry of other ancient rocks may yield further insights into the Earth’s formation and evolution — and that’s immensely exciting,” said Williams.

Reference:
Helen M. Williams, Simon Matthews, Hanika Rizo, Oliver Shorttle. Iron isotopes trace primordial magma ocean cumulates melting in Earth’s upper mantle. Science Advances, 2021; 7 (11): eabc7394 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abc7394

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Cambridge. The original story is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Gravity mission still unearthing hidden secrets

Despite ESA’s GOCE mission ending over seven years ago, scientists continue to use this remarkable satellite’s gravity data to delve deep and unearth secrets about our planet. Recent research shows how scientists have combined GOCE data with measurements taken at the surface to generate a new model of Earth’s crust and upper mantle. This is the first time such a model has been created this way – and it is shedding new light on the processes of plate tectonics. The new model produced in ESA’s 3D Earth study shows for the first time how dissimilar the sub-lithospheric mantle is beneath different oceans, and provides insight as to how the morphology and spreading rates of mid-oceanic ridges may be connected with the deep chemical and thermal structure. Credit: ESA/Planetary Visions)
Despite ESA’s GOCE mission ending over seven years ago, scientists continue to use this remarkable satellite’s gravity data to delve deep and unearth secrets about our planet. Recent research shows how scientists have combined GOCE data with measurements taken at the surface to generate a new model of Earth’s crust and upper mantle. This is the first time such a model has been created this way – and it is shedding new light on the processes of plate tectonics. The new model produced in ESA’s 3D Earth study shows for the first time how dissimilar the sub-lithospheric mantle is beneath different oceans, and provides insight as to how the morphology and spreading rates of mid-oceanic ridges may be connected with the deep chemical and thermal structure. Credit: ESA/Planetary Visions)

Despite ESA’s GOCE mission ending over seven years ago, scientists continue to use this remarkable satellite’s gravity data to delve deep and unearth secrets about our planet. Recent research shows how scientists have combined GOCE data with measurements taken at the surface to generate a new model of Earth’s crust and upper mantle. This is the first time such a model has been created this way—and it is shedding new light on processes of plate tectonics, which, in turn, are related to phenomena such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

The lithosphere, which includes the planet’s hard crust and the partially molten top part of the upper mantle, is fundamental to plate tectonics.

Plate tectonics describes how the crust is divided into a mosaic of plates that slide laterally over the malleable top of the upper mantle and in doing so give rise to new seafloor along mid-ocean ridges, mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes. A better understanding of these processes relies on knowledge of differences in the lithosphere’s temperature and chemical composition.

Geophysicists traditionally measure the speed at which seismic waves propagate when an earthquake occurs to determine the distribution of subsurface physical properties. The speed of seismic waves is governed mostly by the temperature of subsurface rocks and to a lesser extent by density.

Here, gravity data from space can add to picture because the strength of the gravity signal is related to density. In addition, data from satellites is uniform in coverage and in accuracy, and satellites cover areas where ground measurements are scarce.

For over four years, GOCE mapped Earth’s gravity with extreme detail and accuracy. This has led to some remarkable discoveries, from deep below the surface of our planet to high up in the atmosphere and beyond.

New research published in Geophysical Journal International describes how scientists generated a new model of the lithosphere using the joint power of GOCE gravity data and seismological observations combined with petrological data, which comes from the study of rocks brought to the surface and from laboratories where the extreme pressures and temperatures of Earth’s interior are replicated.

Javier Fullea, from Complutense University of Madrid and the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, and also co-author of the paper, said, “Earlier global models of the crust or lithosphere suffered from limited resolution or were based on a single method or dataset.

“Only recently available models were able to combine multiple geophysical data, but they were often only on regional scales or they were limited by how the different data are integrated.

“For the first time, we’ve been able to create a new model that combines global-scale multiple terrestrial and GOCE satellite datasets in a joint inversion that describes the actual temperature and composition of mantle rocks.”

Jesse Reusen, from Delft University of Technology, added, “This novel model provides an image of the present-day composition and thermal structure of the upper mantle that can be used to estimate the viscosity. In fact, it has already been used to estimate the remaining post-glacial uplift—or the rise of the land after the removal of weight of the ice—following the melting of the Laurentide ice sheet in Canada, improving our understanding of interactions between the cryosphere and the solid Earth. This research was published last year in the Journal of Geophysical Research.”

The new model produced in ESA’s 3D Earth study shows for the first time how dissimilar the sub-lithospheric mantle is beneath different oceans, and provides insight as to how the morphology and spreading rates of mid-oceanic ridges may be connected with the deep chemical and thermal structure.

ESA’s Roger Haagmans, commented, “Our GOCE mission never ceases to impress. The data it delivered during its four-year life in orbit continue to be used to understand the complexities of our planet. Here we see it shining new light on the structure of Earth deep below our feet. Even though processes are occurring deep down, they have an effect on Earth’s surface—from the generation of renewed seafloor to earthquakes, so in turn, affect us all.

“Moreover, this is a remarkable result from the 3D Earth project and another significant step towards the realisation of one of the main goals of our Science for Society programme: develop the most advanced reconstruction of our solid Earth from the core to the surface, and its dynamic processes.”

Reference:
J Fullea et al. WINTERC-G: mapping the upper mantle thermochemical heterogeneity from coupled geophysical-petrological inversion of seismic waveforms, heat flow, surface elevation and gravity satellite data, Geophysical Journal International (2021). DOI: 10.1093/gji/ggab094

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by European Space Agency.

Geologists discover powerful ‘river of rocks’ below Caribbean

In this image, the warped amount of the surface is due to the opening of the Central American gateway that allowed hot material to flow through. (a) Before 8.5 million years ago, hot material was upwelling under the Galapagos from deep inside the Earth, but was blocked out of the Caribbean because of a curtain of subducting plate. (b) A gateway opened at 8.5 million years ago allowing the hot material to flow through. (c) Today, the hot material reaches midway between Central America and the Lesser Antilles, tilting up the bottom of the Caribbean sea by about 300 m (1,000 ft). Credit: University of Houston
In this image, the warped amount of the surface is due to the opening of the Central American gateway that allowed hot material to flow through. (a) Before 8.5 million years ago, hot material was upwelling under the Galapagos from deep inside the Earth, but was blocked out of the Caribbean because of a curtain of subducting plate. (b) A gateway opened at 8.5 million years ago allowing the hot material to flow through. (c) Today, the hot material reaches midway between Central America and the Lesser Antilles, tilting up the bottom of the Caribbean sea by about 300 m (1,000 ft). Credit: University of Houston

Geologists have long thought tectonic plates move because they are pulled by the weight of their sinking portions and that an underlying, hot, softer layer called asthenosphere serves as a passive lubricant. But a team of geologists at the University of Houston has found that layer is actually flowing vigorously, moving fast enough to drive plate motions.

In their study published in Nature Communications, researchers from the UH College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics looked at minute changes in satellite-detected gravitational pull within the Caribbean and at mantle tomography images — similar to a CAT Scan — of the asthenosphere under the Caribbean. They found a hot “river of rocks” being squeezed from the Pacific Ocean through a gateway under Central America and reaching to the middle of the Caribbean Sea. This underground “river of rocks” started flowing eight million years ago, when the Central American gateway opened, uplifting the overlying seafloor by several hundred feet and tilting it to the northeast toward the Lesser Antilles.

“Without the extra support generated by this flow in the asthenosphere, portions of Central America would still be below sea level. The Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans would be connected without a need for the Panama Canal,” said study co-author Lorenzo Colli, assistant professor of geophysics, geodynamics and mantle structure in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

The findings have implications for understanding the shape of the Earth’s surface, of its evolution over time through the appearance and disappearance of shallows seas, low-lying land bridges and the forces that move tectonic plates and cause earthquakes.

Another fascinating discovery, according to the researchers, is the asthenosphere is moving six inches per year, which is three times faster than an average plate. It can move independently from the overlying plates and drag them in a different direction.

“This challenges the top-down notion that subduction is always the driver,” explained Jonny Wu, study co-author and assistant professor of structural geology, tectonics and mantle structure. “Think of the plates moving like an air hockey puck and being lubricated from below. Instead, what we found is the air hockey table is imposing its own currents on the puck that’s moving around, creating a bottom-up movement that has not been well recognized, and that’s being quantified here.”

Reference:
Yi-Wei Chen, Lorenzo Colli, Dale E. Bird, Jonny Wu, Hejun Zhu. Caribbean plate tilted and actively dragged eastwards by low-viscosity asthenospheric flow. Nature Communications, 2021; 12 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-21723-1

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Houston. Original written by Sara Tubbs.

Volcanic eruptions had large and persistent impacts on global hydroclimate over the last millennium

Arenal, a major tourist attraction in Costa Rica, is one of the most active volcanos in Central America. Credit: Ernesto Tejedor
Arenal, a major tourist attraction in Costa Rica, is one of the most active volcanos in Central America. Credit: Ernesto Tejedor

Large tropical volcanos have caused some of the world’s most destructive natural disasters in history, with eruptions spewing out massive quantities of harmful gases and other debris that can wipe out everything in their path.

But what about wider impacts on global climate? These large eruptions are known to temporarily cool the planet and cause other climate disruptions, including changes in the global distribution of rainfall.

In a new study, a team of paleoclimate researchers, including Ernesto Tejedor and Mathias Vuille at the University at Albany, used a proxy product that employs natural climate archives to better understand the global and seasonal hydroclimate impacts of all known tropical eruptions over the last millennium larger than Mount Pinatubo in 1991, the largest volcanic eruption to happen in the last 100 years.

Their results showed that the hydroclimatic response following these large eruptions was often significant and at times persisted for more than a decade. Most notably, the eruptions that were followed by abnormally dry conditions were estimated over tropical Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East, along with wet conditions over Oceania and the South American monsoon regions. The researchers also compared their results to those from a stand-alone climate model and found that the model simulated smaller and more short-lived hydroclimatic impacts.

Results are now published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“We have not had a major volcanic eruption in 30 years, so I think we tend to forget how large of a societal disruption they can cause,” said Vuille, a professor in UAlbany’s Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences. “When looking at the hydroclimatic response globally, much of the previous work has relied on existing climate models. Our proxy product adds new, real-world data to estimate the responses on a global scale, which suggests these eruptions can cause much larger and prolonged wet and dry anomalies than we initially believed.”

PHYDA Product

The new dataset used in this study, called the Paleo Hydrodynamics Data Assimilation (PHYDA) product, was created through support from UAlbany’s $5 million “PIRE CREATE” project, which is funded through the National Science Foundation.

The PHYDA product is a publicly available global reconstruction of temperature and hydroclimate conditions over the last 2,000 years, which are estimated by combining information from a climate model and a global collection of 2,591 tree-ring records, 197 coral and sclerosponge records, 153 ice-core isotope records, 26 cave-sediment records, 10 lake-sediment records and one marine-sediment record.

Using PHYDA, the researchers were able to compare their new proxy-estimated climate responses to volcanism with those derived exclusively from a climate model using the Community Earth System Model Last Millennium Ensemble (CESM-LME).

“The trees, and the other natural climate archives included in the PHYDA, were there to see these volcanic eruptions happen. It’s not a theoretical construct,” said Jason Smerdon, PIRE CREATE researcher and professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “This was the first time we were able to use this new proxy product as an estimate of volcanic climate responses in the past, and the picture it paints has yielded surprises in terms of how large and persistent the hydroclimatic impacts of volcanism can be.”

Volcanic Eruption Preparedness

The researchers agree that understanding why there are discrepancies between the hydroclimatic impacts estimated from a proxy-based product and a stand-alone climate model will be critical for projecting how future volcanic eruptions may affect global climate, especially with added impacts from anthropogenic climate change.

It is probable that more large tropical volcanic eruptions will occur within the next century, according to Tejedor, the paper’s first author and UAlbany postdoctoral researcher on the PIRE CREATE team.

“If you look at past centuries and the frequency of large volcanic eruptions through history, it is very likely that we’ll see a similar-sized eruption before the end of this century, possibly more than one,” said Tejedor. “We believe our findings serve as an important warning that affected communities must not only think about immediate impacts, but that volcanic eruptions can also lead to long-lasting changes in climate.”

Reference:
Ernesto Tejedor et al. Global hydroclimatic response to tropical volcanic eruptions over the last millennium, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2019145118

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University at Albany.

Europe’s largest meteorite crater – home to deep ancient fungi

Fungi sample, hypha and sphere in a drill core sample from 540 m depth in the Siljan impact structure, scanning electron microscope image (width ~70 µm). Credit Henrik Drake.
Fungi sample, hypha and sphere in a drill core sample from 540 m depth in the Siljan impact structure, scanning electron microscope image (width ~70 µm). Credit Henrik Drake.

Fractured rocks of impact craters have been suggested to be suitable environments for deep colonization of microbial communities. In a new study published in Communications Earth & Environment, a team of researchers shows that fungi has colonized deep parts of the largest impact crater in Europe, the Siljan impact structure, Sweden. Intriguingly, the fungi seem to have been fueling methane production in the crater.

At the scenic Swedish lake of Siljan, an impressive impact structure of more than 50 km in diameter formed almost 400 million years ago. In newly retrieved bore cores from drillings deep into the crater, a team of researchers have found fossil evidence of fungi.

The researchers examined an intensively fractured rock section at 540 depth level in the crater and noted fine filamentous structures in the vuggy rock. After closer examination in the laboratory, it became clear to them that the filaments were fossilized remains of fungi. Fungi that withstand the oxygen free environment at these depths.

The relative abundance of different isotopes of carbon and sulfur within minerals found in relation to fungi suggested to the researchers that the fungi were involved in methane- and sulfide-forming processes in relationships with other inhabitants of the deep biosphere – bacteria and archaea.

Henrik Drake, of the Linnaeus University, Sweden, and lead author of the study, explains the discovery:

-The findings suggest that fungi may be widespread decomposers of organic matter and overlooked symbiotic partners to other, more primitive, microorganisms, thereby capable of enhancing the production of greenhouse gases in the vast rock-hosted deep biosphere.

The first in situ finding

Radioisotopic dating of tiny calcite crystals formed following microbial methane formation revealed an age of the fungi fossils to around 39 million years ago, more than 300 million years after the meteorite impact.

-We propose that the anaerobic fungi decomposed organic bituminous material in the fractures and produced hydrogen gas that fueled methanogens. This would be the first in situ finding of ancient anaerobic fungi linked to methanogenesis at great depth in the continental crust, says Magnus Ivarsson, at the Swedish Museum of Natural History and co-author of the study.

The impact structure, with a ring zone of down-faulted Paleozoic sediments, has been optimal for deep colonization of fungi, because energy sources in the form of organics and hydrocarbons from overlying shales have migrated throughout the fractured crater.

-The preserved organic molecules that we could detect in the fungal remains give us additional evidence for a fungal origin and also for the proposed biodegradation pathway of shale-derived hydrocarbons, ultimately leading to production of methane at depth, adds co-author Christine Heim, of University of Cologne, Germany.

Henrik Drake summarizes:

-Microorganisms and their strategies for survival and colonization of Earth’s most hostile environments continue to amaze and surprise us, and here we add another fungal piece to the deep biosphere jigsaw puzzle.

Reference:
The results are presented in the article”Fossilized anaerobic and possibly methanogenesis-fueling fungi identified deep within the Siljan impact structure, Sweden” in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment (published 18th of February 2021). DOI:10.1038/s43247-021-00107-9. The article is available in full-length here: www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00107-9

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Linnaeus University.

Younger Tyrannosaurus Rex bites were less ferocious than their adult counterparts

Skeletons of four tyrannosaurid specimens tested in the study. Clockwise from above left: adult Tyrannosaurus rex “Sue” (FMNH PR 2081) (Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL; photo by the Field Museum), juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex “Jane” (BMRP 2002.4.1) (Burpee Museum of Natural History; photo by A. Rowe), adult Tarbosaurus bataar (Dinosaurium exhibition, Prague, Czech Republic; photo by R. Holiš) and Raptorex kriegsteini skeletal reconstruction (LH PV18) (Long Hao Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China; photo by P. Sereno). Credit: Listed in caption. Final image by Andre Rowe
Skeletons of four tyrannosaurid specimens tested in the study. Clockwise from above left: adult Tyrannosaurus rex “Sue” (FMNH PR 2081) (Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL; photo by the Field Museum), juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex “Jane” (BMRP 2002.4.1) (Burpee Museum of Natural History; photo by A. Rowe), adult Tarbosaurus bataar (Dinosaurium exhibition, Prague, Czech Republic; photo by R. Holiš) and Raptorex kriegsteini skeletal reconstruction (LH PV18) (Long Hao Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China; photo by P. Sereno). Credit: Listed in caption. Final image by Andre Rowe

By closely examining the jaw mechanics of juvenile and adult tyrannosaurids, some of the fiercest dinosaurs to inhabit earth, scientists led by the University of Bristol have uncovered differences in how they bit into their prey.

They found that younger tyrannosaurs were incapable of delivering the bone-crunching bite that is often synonymous with the Tyrannosaurus rex and that adult specimens were far better equipped for tearing out chunks of flesh and bone with their massive, deeply set jaws.

The team also found that tension from the insertion of the lower pterygoid muscle is linked to decreasing stresses near the front of the typical tyrannosaur jaw, where the animals may have applied their highest impact bite forces using their large, conical teeth.

This would be advantageous with the highly robust teeth on the anterior end of the tyrannosaur jaw, where, usually, they may have applied their highest impact bite forces. Crocodilians experience the reverse situation — they possess robust teeth near the posterior end of their mandible where they apply their highest bite forces.

Adult tyrannosaurids have been extensively studied due to the availability of relatively complete specimens that have been CT scanned.

The availability of this material has allowed for studies of their feeding mechanics. The adult Tyrannosaurus rex was capable of a 60,000 Newton bite (for comparison, an adult lion averages 1,300 Newtons) and there is evidence of it having actively preyed on large, herbivorous dinosaurs.

The team were interested in inferring more about the feeding mechanics and implications for juvenile tyrannosaurs.

Their main hypotheses were that larger tyrannosaurid mandibles experienced absolutely lower peak stress, because they became more robust (deeper and wider relative to length) as they grew, and that at equalized mandible lengths, younger tyrannosaurids experienced greater stress and strain relative to the adults, suggesting relatively lower bite forces consistent with proportionally slender jaws.

At actual size the juveniles experienced lower absolute stresses when compared to the adult, contradicting our first hypothesis. This means that in real life, adult tyrannosaurs would experience high absolute stresses during feeding but shrug it off due to its immense size. However, when mandible lengths are equalized, the juvenile specimens experienced greater stresses, due to the relatively lower bite forces typical in slender jaws.

Lead author Andre Rowe, a Geology PhD Student at the University of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences, said: “Tyrannosaurids were active predators and their prey likely varied based on their developmental stage.

“Based on biomechanical data, we presume that they pursued smaller prey and fulfilled an environmental role similar to the ‘raptor’ dinosaurs such as the dromaeosaurs. Adult tyrannosaurs were likely subduing large dinosaurs such as the duckbilled hadrosaurs and Triceratops, which would be quickly killed by their bone-crunching bite.

“This study illustrates the importance of 3D modeling and computational studies in vertebrate paleontology — the methodology we used in our study can be applied to many different groups of extinct animals so that we can better understand how they adapted to their respective environments.”

There are two major components of this research that Andre and the team would like to see future researchers delve into continued CT and surface scanning of dinosaur cranial material and more application of 3D models in dinosaur biomechanics research.

Andre added: “There remains a plethora of unearthed dinosaur material that has not been utilized in studies of feeding and function — ideally, all of our existing specimens will one day be scanned and made widely available online to researchers everywhere.

“The current lack of 3D model availability is noticeable in dinosaur research; relatively few studies involving 3D models of carnivorous dinosaurs have been published thus far. There is still much work to be done concerning skull function in all extinct animals — not only dinosaurs.”

Reference:
Andre J. Rowe, Eric Snively. Biomechanics of juvenile tyrannosaurid mandibles and their implications for bite force: Evolutionary biology. The Anatomical Record, 2021; DOI: 10.1002/ar.24602

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Bristol.

Rise of marine predators reshaped ocean life as dramatically as mass extinctions

These fossil ammonites have lost their outer coating of shell, revealing the iridescent nacre beneath. Now extinct, ammonites were a group of marine mollusks that first appeared about 409 million years ago, persisting until the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. Credit: Florida Museum photo by Jeff Gage
These fossil ammonites have lost their outer coating of shell, revealing the iridescent nacre beneath. Now extinct, ammonites were a group of marine mollusks that first appeared about 409 million years ago, persisting until the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. Credit: Florida Museum photo by Jeff Gage

Evolutionary arms races between marine animals overhauled ocean ecosystems on scales similar to the mass extinctions triggered by global disasters, a new study shows.

Scientists at Umeå University in Sweden and the Florida Museum of Natural History used paleontological databases to build a multilayered computer model of the history of marine life over the last 500 million years. Their analysis of the fossil record closely echoed a seminal 1981 study by paleontologist J. John Sepkoski — with one key difference.

Sepkoski’s ground-breaking statistical work showed abrupt ocean-wide changes in biodiversity about 490 and 250 million years ago, corresponding to two mass extinction events. These events divided marine life into what he called “three great evolutionary faunas,” each dominated by a unique set of animals.

But the new model reveals a fourth.

The fierce fight for survival that played out between predatory marine animals and their prey about 250 to 66 million years ago may have been an equally powerful force, reshaping ocean diversity into what we see today. This third grand transition was much more gradual than its predecessors and driven by organisms, rather than external processes.

“What we learned is that not all major shifts in animal life have been related to mass extinction events,” said study lead author Alexis Rojas, who earned his Ph.D. at the University of Florida. Rojas is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Integrated Science Lab, a hub dedicated to interdisciplinary research at Umeå University.

Many scientists have long held the view that external factors such as volcanic activity, asteroid impacts or changes in climate are the primary drivers of major shifts in the Earth’s biosphere, said study co-author Michal Kowalewski, Rojas’ doctoral adviser and the Florida Museum Thompson Chair of Invertebrate Paleontology.

“The fossil record tells us that some of the key transitions in the history of life were rapid changes triggered by abrupt external factors. But this study shows that some of those major transitions were more gradual and may have been driven by biological interactions between organisms,” he said.

One reason Sepkoski’s work was so revolutionary was that he took a mathematical approach to a practical problem: The fossil record is too big and complex for one person to be able to discern life’s underlying patterns by looking at specimens alone.

“When its components are examined individually or in small groups, the complexity of their form, function, interaction, and history often seems overwhelming, and almost infinite,” he wrote in the introduction to his 1981 study.

Organizing these components into a hierarchy of systems, he argued, presented a more complete view. Sepkoski’s modelling divided 500 million years of ocean life into three great dynasties, each separated by a mass extinction that cleared the way for new groups to flourish and dominate. After the reign of trilobites, clamlike animals known as brachiopods and certain ancient corals and ammonites rose to prominence. After the cataclysmic end-Permian extinction, sometimes known as the “Great Dying,” they were in turn replaced by snails, clams, crustaceans, modern corals and various kinds of bony fishes.

Sepkoski’s hypothesis fundamentally changed how scientists thought about the history of life, Kowalewski said. It offered an organized way of understanding the history of marine ecosystems — the overarching storyline and plot twists.

But as our knowledge of the fossil record grows, so does Sepkoski’s dilemma of how to analyze such vast and complex information, said Kowalewski.

“With millions of fossil specimens now documented, there is simply no feasible way for our brains to process such massive archives of paleontological data,” he said. “Fortunately, analytical methods continue to improve, giving us better ways to extract and examine information hidden inside these immensely complex data.”

Rojas took on this challenge by using the latest advancements in data modelling. Specifically, he was interested in using complex network tools to create a better representation of the fossil record. Unlike other approaches in paleobiology, complex networks use a linked structure of nodes representing physical and abstract variables to uncover underlying patterns in a given system. Network approaches can be applied to social phenomena — for example, showing a Facebook user’s patterns of interactions with friends on the platform — but they can also be applied to complex natural systems. Like Sepkoski, Rojas is a classically trained paleontologist looking for a fresh perspective on the fossil record.

“There are many processes happening at the same time at multiple scales: in your neighborhood, your country and across the entire planet. Now imagine the processes that occur in one day, one year or 500 years. What we are doing is trying to understand all these things across time,” he said.

A simple network might consist of a single layer — all records of animal life and where they lived. But Rojas and his colleagues’ network incorporates different intervals of time as individual layers, a feature lacking in previous research on macroevolution. The result is what Rojas described as a new, abstracted fossil record, a complement to the physical fossil record represented by the specimens in museum collections.

“It’s important because the questions we are asking, the processes we are studying, occur at different scales in time and space,” Rojas said. “We’ve taken some steps back so we can look at the entire fossil record. By doing that, we can explore all sorts of questions.”

Think of it like navigating a Google Earth that represents the oceans over the last 500 million years. When and where would you go?

“Our interactive map of marine life shows smaller groups of animals and their interactions within each evolutionary fauna,” Rojas said. “At the most basic levels, this map shows ocean regions with particular animals. The building blocks of our study are the individual animals themselves.”

This complex network shows what Sepkoski’s model could not capture: a gradual transition in ocean life coincident with the Mesozoic Marine Revolution, which started about 150 million years ago during the Mesozoic Era. First hypothesized in the 1970s, this revolution was caused by the rapid increase of marine predators such as bony fish, crustaceans and snails, which have dominated oceans ever since. Their proliferation drove prey to become more mobile, hide beneath the ocean floor or enhance their defenses by thickening their armor, developing spines or improving their ability to regenerate body parts.

Sepkoski knew about the Mesozoic Marine Revolution, but his model, limited by the methods and data available at the time, was unable to delineate the ocean ecosystems preceding and following this gradual transition. The study by Rojas and his colleagues demonstrates that both physical and biological processes play key roles in shaping ocean life at the highest levels.

“We are integrating the two hypotheses — the Mesozoic Marine Revolution and the three great evolutionary faunas into a single story,” Rojas said. “Instead of three phases of life, the model shows four.”

Joaquin Calatayud, Magnus Neuman and Martin Rosvall of Umeå University also co-authored the study.

Reference:
Alexis Rojas, Joaquin Calatayud, Michał Kowalewski, Magnus Neuman, Martin Rosvall. A multiscale view of the Phanerozoic fossil record reveals the three major biotic transitions. Communications Biology, 2021; 4 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s42003-021-01805-y

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Florida Museum of Natural History. Original written by Natalie Van Hoose.

Research shows we’re surprisingly similar to Earth’s first animals

Fossil of Dickinsonia, an Ediacaran-era animal. (Mary Droser/UCR)

The earliest multicellular organisms may have lacked heads, legs, or arms, but pieces of them remain inside of us today, new research shows.

According to a UC Riverside study, 555-million-year-old oceanic creatures from the Ediacaran period share genes with today’s animals, including humans.

“None of them had heads or skeletons. Many of them probably looked like three-dimensional bathmats on the sea floor, round discs that stuck up,” said Mary Droser, a geology professor at UCR. “These animals are so weird and so different, it’s difficult to assign them to modern categories of living organisms just by looking at them, and it’s not like we can extract their DNA — we can’t.”

However, well-preserved fossil records have allowed Droser and the study’s first author, recent UCR doctoral graduate Scott Evans, to link the animals’ appearance and likely behaviors to genetic analysis of currently living things. Their research on these links has been recently published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

For their analysis, the researchers considered four animals representative of the more than 40 recognized species that have been identified from the Ediacaran era. These creatures ranged in size from a few millimeters to nearly a meter in length.

Kimberella were teardrop-shaped creatures with one broad, rounded end and one narrow end that likely scraped the sea floor for food with a proboscis. Further, they could move around using a “muscular foot” like snails today. The study included flat, oval-shaped Dickinsonia with a series of raised bands on their surface, and Tribrachidium, who spent their lives immobilized at the bottom of the sea.

Also analyzed were Ikaria, animals recently discovered by a team including Evans and Droser. They were about the size and shape of a grain of rice, and represent the first bilaterians — organisms with a front, back, and openings at either end connected by a gut. Evans said it’s likely Ikaria had mouths, though those weren’t preserved in the fossil records, and they crawled through organic matter “eating as they went.”

All four of the animals were multicellular, with cells of different types. Most had symmetry on their left and right sides, as well as noncentralized nervous systems and musculature.

Additionally, they seem to have been able to repair damaged body parts through a process known as apoptosis. The same genes involved are key elements of human immune systems, which helps to eliminate virus-infected and pre-cancerous cells.

These animals likely had the genetic parts responsible for heads and the sensory organs usually found there. However, the complexity of interaction between these genes that would give rise to such features hadn’t yet been achieved.

“The fact that we can say these genes were operating in something that’s been extinct for half a billion years is fascinating to me,” Evans said.

The work was supported by a NASA Exobiology grant, and a Peter Buck postdoctoral fellowship.

Going forward, the team is planning to investigate muscle development and functional studies to further understand early animal evolution.

“Our work is a way to put these animals on the tree of life, in some respects,” Droser said. “And show they’re genetically linked to modern animals, and to us.”

Reference:
Scott D. Evans, Mary L. Droser, Douglas H. Erwin. Developmental processes in Ediacara macrofossils. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2021; 288 (1945): 20203055 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2020.3055

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of California – Riverside. Original written by Jules Bernstein.

‘Pompeii of prehistoric plants’ unlocks evolutionary secret

Reconstruction of the crown of Paratingia wuhaia sp. nov.
Reconstruction of the crown of Paratingia wuhaia sp. nov.

Spectacular fossil plants preserved within a volcanic ash fall in China have shed light on an evolutionary race 300 million years ago, which was eventually won by the seed-bearing plants that dominate so much of the Earth today.

New research into fossils found at the ‘Pompeii of prehistoric plants’, in Wuda, Inner Mongolia, reveals that the plants, called Noeggerathiales, were highly-evolved members of the lineage from which came seed plants.

Noeggerathiales were important peat-forming plants that lived around 325 to 251 million years ago. Understanding their relationships to other plant groups has been limited by poorly preserved examples until now.

The fossils found in China have allowed experts to work out that Noeggerathiales are more closely related to seed plants than to other fern groups.

No longer considered an evolutionary dead-end, they are now recognized as advanced tree-ferns that evolved complex cone-like structures from modified leaves. Despite their sophistication, Noeggerathiales fell victim to the profound environmental and climate changes of 251 million years ago that destroyed swamp ecosystems globally.

The international research team, led by palaeontologists at Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology and the University of Birmingham, today published its findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Co-author Dr. Jason Hilton, Reader in Palaeobiology at the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Forest Research, commented: “Noeggerathiales were recognized as early as the 1930s, but scientists have treated them as a ‘taxonomic football’, endlessly kicked around without anyone identifying their place in the Story of Life.

“The spectacular fossil plants found in China are becoming renowned as the plant equivalent of Pompeii. Thanks to this slice of life preserved in volcanic ash, we were able to reconstruct a new species of Noeggerathiales that finally settles the group’s affinity and evolutionary importance.

“The fate of the Noeggerathiales is a stark reminder of what can happen when even very advanced life forms are faced with rapid environmental change.”

The researchers studied complete Noeggerathiales preserved in a bed of volcanic ash 66 cm thick formed 298 million years ago, smothering all the plants growing in a nearby swamp.

The ash stopped the fossils from rotting or being consumed, and preserved many complete individuals in microscopic detail.

Lead-Author Jun Wang, Professor of Palaeobotany at Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, commented: “Many specimens were identified in excavations in 2006-2007 when a few leaves were visible on the surface of the ash. It looked they might be connected to each other and a stem below — we revealed the crown on site, but then extracted the specimens complete to take them back to the lab.

“It has taken many years to study these fully and the additional specimens we have found more recently. The complete trees are the most impressive fossil plants I have seen and because of our careful work they are also some of the most important to science.”

The researchers also deduced that that the ancestral lineage from which seed plants evolved diversified alongside the earliest seed plant radiation during the Devonian, Carboniferous and Permian periods, and did not rapidly die out as previously thought.

Reference:
Jun Wang, Jason Hilton, Hermann W. Pfefferkorn, Shijun Wang, Yi Zhang, Jiri Bek, Josef Pšenička, Leyla J. Seyfullah, David Dilcher. Ancient noeggerathialean reveals the seed plant sister group diversified alongside the primary seed plant radiation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021; 118 (11): e2013442118 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2013442118

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Birmingham.

Unusual earthquakes highlight central Utah volcanoes

The Cinders lava flow Utah
The Cinders lava flow Utah

If you drive south through central Utah on Interstate 15 and look west somewhere around Fillmore, you’ll see smooth hills and fields of black rock. The area is, aptly, named the Black Rock Desert. It may not look like much, but you’re looking at some of Utah’s volcanoes.

A pair of earthquake sequences, in September 2018 and April 2019, focused scientists’ attention on the Black Rock Desert. The sequences, which included the main quakes and their aftershocks, were very different from the Magna earthquake that shook the Wasatch Front in 2020 and other Utah earthquakes. The Black Rock sequences were captured by the Utah Regional Seismic Network and by nearby temporary seismic equipment deployment that was monitoring a geothermal well. Earthquakes in the Black Rock Desert are rare and capturing the seismic recordings from these earthquakes provides a glimpse into the volcanic system of the Black Rock Desert that, while not showing any signs of erupting, is still active. A study of the earthquake sequences is published in Geophysical Research Letters.

“The results showed us that we should give more attention to the Black Rock area,” says Maria Mesimeri, a postdoctoral research associate with the University of Utah Seismograph Stations. “We need to improve seismic and volcanic monitoring in this area, so that we are aware of small changes that may occur.”

Not your typical earthquakes

The earthquake sequences, with main shocks of magnitude 4.0 and 4.1 respectively, were picked up by both the Utah Regional Seismic Network and a dense temporary network of seismometers deployed as part of Utah FORGE, an experimental geothermal project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and operated by the University of Utah, located about 19 miles south of the Black Rock Desert near Milford, Utah. The temporary network allowed researchers to detect more aftershocks than usual. For example, the regional network detected 19 earthquakes as part of the April 2019 sequence. But the dense temporary network detected an additional 35 quakes. Each additional aftershock provided a bit more information for seismologists studying the sequence.

The Black Rock sequences showed some interesting features that set them apart from the 2020 Magna sequence and other Utah earthquake sequences. While the initial Magna quake occurred at a depth of about six miles below the surface, a typical depth for Utah earthquakes, the Black Rock quakes were much shallower — around 1.5 miles below the surface.

“Because these earthquakes were so shallow,” Mesimeri says, “we could measure surface deformation [due to the quakes] using satellites, which is very unusual for earthquakes this small.”

Also, Mesimeri and her colleagues found, the quakes produced much lower-frequency seismic energy than usually seen in Utah quakes. And one of the main types of seismic waves, shear waves or S-waves, wasn’t detected in the Black Rock sequences.

Volcanoes? In Utah?

All of these signs point to the Black Rock sequences having a very different origin than the Magna sequence, which was generated by movement of the Wasatch Fault. The Black Rock quakes, on the other hand, may have been generated by ongoing activity in the Black Rock volcanic field.

What are volcanoes doing in the middle of Utah? The Wasatch Mountains (and Wasatch Fault) form the eastern margin of a region called the Basin and Range province that stretches west to the Sierra Nevada. The province is being stretched apart by plate tectonics, and that stretching thins the crust, allowing more heat to rise up from the Earth’s interior. In the Black Rock area, that heat resulted in eruption of basalt lava up until around 9,000 to 12,000 years ago.

So what do these earthquake sequences mean for the volcanoes of the Black Rock Desert?

“Our findings suggest that the system is still active and that the earthquakes were probably the result of fluid-related movement in the general area,” Mesimeri says, referring to potentially magma or heated water. “The earthquakes could be the result of the fluid squeezing through rock or the result of deformation from fluid movement that stressed the surface faults.”

Activity in a volcanic field does not mean eruption, and Mesimeri says that there’s no evidence that any eruption is imminent in the Black Rock Desert. But, she says, it’s an area that geoscientists may want to monitor a little more closely.

Reference:
Maria Mesimeri, Kristine L. Pankow, William D. Barnhart, Katherine M. Whidden, J. Mark Hale. Unusual Seismic Signals in the Sevier Desert, Utah Possibly Related to the Black Rock Volcanic Field. Geophysical Research Letters, 2021; 48 (5) DOI: 10.1029/2020GL090949

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Utah. Original written by Paul Gabrielsen.

How do you know where volcanic ash will end up?

Volcanic plume associated with the April-May 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull volcano (Iceland) and Scanning Electron Microscope image of a typical ash cluster made of micrometric volcanic particles collected on an adhesive paper during fallout. © UNIGE, Costanza Bonadonna
Volcanic plume associated with the April-May 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull volcano (Iceland) and Scanning Electron Microscope image of a typical ash cluster made of micrometric volcanic particles collected on an adhesive paper during fallout. © UNIGE, Costanza Bonadonna

When the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland erupted in April 2010, air traffic was interrupted for six days and then disrupted until May. Until then, models from the nine Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres (VAACs) around the world, which aimed at predicting when the ash cloud interfered with aircraft routes, were based on the tracking of the clouds in the atmosphere. In the wake of this economic disaster for airlines, ash concentration thresholds were introduced in Europe which are used by the airline industry when making decisions on flight restrictions. However, a team of researchers, led by the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, discovered that even the smallest volcanic ash did not behave as expected. Its results, to be read in the journal Nature Communications, will help to refine the way that volcanic ash is represented in forecasting models used by the VAACs, which must react in real-time to provide useful advice during a volcanic eruption.

The eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano in 2010 not only disrupted global air traffic, but also called into question the functioning of the forecast strategies used by the VAACs, based only on the spatial tracking of the ash cloud. A meeting of experts refined the strategies based on ash concentration thresholds and enabled flights to resume more quickly, while ensuring the safety of passengers and flight personnel.

“During a volcanic explosive eruption, fragments ranging from a few microns to more than 2 metres are ejected from the volcanic vent,” explains Eduardo Rossi, a researcher at the Department of Earth Sciences of the UNIGE Faculty of Sciences and the first author of the study. The larger the particles, the faster and closer to the volcano they fall, reducing the concentration of ash in the atmosphere. “This is why the new strategies have integrated concentration thresholds better defining the dangerousness for aircraft engines. From 2 milligrams per cubic metre, airlines must have an approved safety case to operate,” says the Geneva-based researcher.

Particle aggregates that impact predictive models

Despite existing knowledge about the ash clouds, several open questions remained unanswered after the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption, including the discovery of particles in UK that were much larger than expected. “We wanted to understand how this was possible by accurately analysing the ash particles from the Sakurajima volcano in Japan, which has been erupting 2-3 times a day for more than 50 years,” says Costanza Bonadonna, a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at UNIGE.

By using adhesive paper to collect the ash before it hit the ground, the team of scientists had already observed during the Eyjafjallajökull eruption how micrometric particles would group together into clusters, which, after the impact with the ground, were destroyed. “It plays an important role in the sedimentation rate, notes Eduardo Rossi. Once assembled in aggregates, these micrometre particles fall much faster and closer to the volcano than the models predict, because they are ultimately heavier than if they fell individually. This is called premature sedimentation. ”

The rafting effect, declared impossible by theory

In Japan the UNIGE team made a new important discovery: the observation of the rafting effect. Using a high-speed camera, the volcanologists observed the sedimentation of the ash in real-time and discovered previously unseen aggregates called cored clusters. “These are formed by a large particle of 100-800 microns — the core — which is covered by many small particles less than 60 microns, explains Costanza Bonadonna. And this external layer of small particles can act like a parachute over the core, delaying its sedimentation. This is the rafting effect. ”

This rafting effect had been theoretically suggested in 1993, but finally declared impossible. Today, its existence is well and truly proven by direct observation and accurate theoretical analysis, made possible by high-speed camera. “Working with Frances Beckett of the UK Met Office, we have carried out several simulations that have enabled us to answer the questions raised by the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull and the unexplained discovery of these oversized ash particles in UK. It was the result of this rafting effect, which delayed the fall of these aggregates,” enthuses Eduardo Rossi.

Now that the ash aggregates, the cored clusters and the rafting effect have been studied, it is a matter of collecting more accurate physical particle parameters so that one day they can be integrated into the operational models of the VAACs, for which size and density play a crucial role in calculating the concentration of ash in the atmosphere.

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Université de Genève.

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