• 10,000 could die in Northwest quake, chilling report says

    NOAA

    Oregon's idyllic coastline, a region that may be due for a powerful earthquake that could do plenty of damage.

    By Lauren Gambino, The Associated Press

    SALEM, Ore. — More than 10,000 people could die when — not if — a monster earthquake and tsunami occur just off the Pacific Northwest coast, researchers told Oregon legislators Thursday.

    Coastal towns would be inundated. Schools, buildings and bridges would collapse, and economic damage could hit $32 billion.

    These findings were published in a chilling new report by the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission, a group of more than 150 volunteer experts.

    In 2011, the Legislature authorized the study of what would happen if a quake and tsunami such as the one that devastated Japan hit the Pacific Northwest.

    The Cascadia Subduction Zone, just off the regional coastline, produced a mega-quake in the year 1700. Seismic experts say another monster quake and tsunami are overdue.

    "This earthquake will hit us again," Kent Yu, an engineer and chairman of the commission, told lawmakers. "It's just a matter of how soon."

    When it hits, the report says, there will be devastation and death from Northern California to British Columbia.

    Many Oregon communities will be left without water, power, heat and telephone service. Gasoline supplies will be disrupted.

    The 2011 Japan quake and tsunami were a wakeup call for the Pacific Northwest. Governments have been taking a closer look at whether the region is prepared for something similar and discovering it is not.

    Oregon legislators requested the study so they could better inform themselves about what needs to be done to prepare and recover from such a giant natural disaster.

    The report says that geologically, Oregon and Japan are mirror images. Despite the devastation in Japan, that country was more prepared than Oregon because it had spent billions on technology to reduce the damage, the report says.

    Jay Wilson, the commission's vice chairman, visited Japan and said he was profoundly affected as he walked through villages ravaged by the tsunami.

    "It was just as if these communities were ghost towns, and for the most part there was nothing left," said Wilson, who works for the Clackamas County emergency management department.

    Wilson told legislators that there was a similar event 313 years ago in the Pacific Northwest, and "we're well within the window for it to happen again."

    Experts representing a variety of state agencies, industries and organizations expanded on the report's findings and shared with lawmakers how they have begun planning.

    Sue Graves, a safety coordinator for the Lincoln County School District, told lawmakers that high school students in her district take semester-long classes that teach CPR and other survival techniques in preparation for a giant earthquake. The class teaches students to "duck, cover and hold" when the ground starts shaking.

    Maree Wacker, chief executive officer of the American Red Cross of Oregon, said it is important for residents to have their own contingency plans for natural disasters.

    "Oregonians as individuals are underprepared," she said.

  • Deadly Solomon Islands quake struck along subduction zone

    By Becky Oskin
    Our Amazing Planet

    The deadly earthquake and tsunami that hit the Solomon Islands Wednesday struck along a subduction zone, the same geologic setting responsible for the world's most powerful earthquakes.

    In a subduction zone, two of Earth's tectonic plates meet and one slides beneath the other into the mantle, the deeper layer beneath the crust. The Solomon Islands sits above the collision between the Australia and Pacific plates. In the region of Wednesday's magnitude-8.0 earthquake, the Australia plates dives beneath the Pacific plate toward the east-northeast at a geologically speedy 3.7 inches (94 millimeters) per year, according to the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS).

    The earthquake hit at a depth of 17.8 miles (28.7 kilometers) and was the second-largest earthquake in the Solomon Islands region in almost 40 years, IRIS said in a statement. Several aftershocks followed, the largest measuring magnitude 6.6, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

    The tsunami generated by the quake, reported as 3 feet (0.9 meters) in height, hit villages on Santa Cruz Island, destroying structures and homes, according to news reports. A tsunami watch was issued for Australia, Indonesia and New Zealand, but not for the rest of the Pacific, according to the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center.

    Subduction zone quakes shove the seafloor in one sudden movement, which may generate a tsunami by pushing the ocean water above. However, depending on the depth and size of the earthquake, the actual seafloor surface may not move a significant amount, so a big earthquake doesn't always produce a massive wave. For example, a magnitude-7.6 subduction zone earthquake in the Philippines in August 2012, which started deep in Earth's crust, did not trigger a tsunami.

    There were dozens of earthquakes around the Solomon Islands in the month leading up to Wednesday's massive quake, the USGS reported. More than 40 magnitude-4.5 quakes shook the islands in the past week alone, and seven of those temblors were larger than a magnitude-6.0, the USGS said.

    Reach Becky Oskin at boskin@techmedianetwork.com. Follow her on Twitter @beckyoskin. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

  • Ancient Caribbean tsunami likely altered ecosystems

    Anja Scheffers. Boka Bartol

    A coastal lagoon on the Caribbean island of Bonaire.

    By Charles Q. Choi
    Our Amazing Planet

    An ancient tsunami caused dramatic long-term ecological changes in the Caribbean more than 3,000 years ago, new research suggests.

    Scientists investigated sediments from a coastal lagoon on the Caribbean island of Bonaire about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of the Venezuelan coast. The Caribbean is highly vulnerable to coastal hazards such as hurricanes, tsunamis, mudslides and floods.

    Bonaire has not experienced a tsunami during the past 500 years of its recorded history. However, analysis of the size of sediment grains found on the island, the organic matter present in the sediment (such as animal remains and carbonate minerals), as well as other factors suggest that a devastating wave struck the island about 3,000 to 3,300 years ago.

    "We assume that the height of the ancient tsunami along the coast was at least 8 to 9 meters (26 to 30 feet) as inferred from the size of transported boulders," said researcher Max Engel, a coastal geomorphologist at the University of Cologne in Germany. [ 7 Ways the Earth Changes in the Blink of an Eye ]

    Altered ecosystem
    The researchers estimate the tsunami reached at least 820 feet (250 m) onshore. "Lagoons and valleys of the island might be inundated up to a kilometer (0.6 miles) or more, and the flat and low-lying southern tip of the island might have been entirely inundated," Engel told OurAmazingPlanet.

    This catastrophe apparently altered the coastal ecosystem and sedimentation patterns in the area. In the wave's aftermath, a barrier of coral rubble separated a former mangrove-fringed bay from the open sea, transforming it into a highly salty lagoon that has persisted up to now.

    "Large tsunamis may occur on the ABC islands — Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao — even though tsunamis have never been observed in historical times," Engel said.

    Uncertain source
    It remains uncertain where this tsunami might have come from. "The most likely source would be a local to regional tsunami triggered by an earthquake along the southern boundary of the Caribbean tectonic plate — that is, the coast of Venezuela," Engel said. For instance, historical records suggest a devastating tsunami in 1530 was triggered by an earthquake near Cumaná, Venezuela.

    In addition, a strong earthquake at the northeastern boundary of the Caribbean cannot be excluded as the tsunami's cause either. For instance, the 1867 temblor in the Anegada Passage in the U.S. Virgin Islands triggered a tsunami that traveled across the Caribbean. "Further possible trigger mechanisms include submarine volcanic activity in the southern Antilles island arc, though these tsunamis tend to be local," Engel said.

    The wave may even have been a "teletsunami," an oceanwide tsunami originating on the other side of the Atlantic.

    "For instance, computer models indicate that the collapse of a flank of the Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands into the sea may induce a tsunami that still reaches a height of several meters after crossing the Atlantic Ocean and approaching the Caribbean islands and the southern coasts of North America," Engel said.

    The investigators said further studies should look for evidence of tsunamis across the entire Caribbean to reconstruct reliable patterns of tsunami magnitude, frequency and location, as well as their environmental impact. In addition, researchers should develop computer models simulating earthquake-triggered tsunamis capable of creating the pattern of coastal flooding on Bonaire that matches the geological evidence to identify a possible trigger mechanism posing a threat in the future.

    "We provided evidence for a potential hazard for which there is no real awareness on Bonaire," Engel said. "I hope this work contributes to an increase in public awareness on a local and regional level."

    Engel and his colleagues detailed their findings in the January issue of the journal Naturwissenschaften.

    Follow OurAmazingPlanet for the latest in Earth science and exploration news on Twitter @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook and  Google+.

  • Fisheries yet another victim of Japan tsunami

    Hideki Takami, Fisheries Research Agency Japan

    Underwater photographs of a rocky shore area at Tomarihama in northeastern Japan. On the left, sea urchins (Strongylocentrotus nudus) before the tsunami on Nov. 11, 2010. On the right, the area after the event (on June 8, 2011), with large rocks cracked and turned over on the sea floor. In consequence, bare rock was exposed and urchins were not observed.

    By Charles Choi, Contributor, OurAmazingPlanet

    The devastating earthquake that ravaged Japan in 2011 may have also wreaked havoc on vital fisheries, researchers say.

    The magnitude 9.0 Tohoku-Oki temblor in 2011 was the most powerful earthquake to hit Japan in recorded history, and set off a tsunami that lay waste to the country's northeastern coast, claiming the lives of nearly 19,000 people.

    Past studies have analyzed the effects of tsunamis on marine ecosystems, for example investigating the effects the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami had on coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangrove forests. A recent study also showed how the tsunami affected the seafloor by leaving behind huge, underwater dunes. However, until now, scientists had not looked into the effects of a major tsunami on fisheries, one of Japan's most important industries.

    Since 2008, researchers had regularly surveyed fishery resources at the port of Tomarihama, the coastal area closest to the epicenter of the quake.To see what effects the tsunami had, scientists took a fisherman's boat to analyze this site via scuba diving three months after the catastrophe. Trees and structures up to 50 feet (15 meters) high on the area's coast were almost entirely destroyed by the disaster, suggesting the tsunami reached at least that height there. [ In Pictures: Japan Earthquake & Tsunami ]

    "More than 90 percent of the boats around the survey point were swept away or destroyed by the tsunami, so it was difficult to rent a boat after the disaster," said researcher Hideki Takami, a marine biologist at the Tohoku National Fisheries Research Institute in Japan.

    The scientists focused their survey on two types of marine life, abalone (Haliotis discus hannai) and sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus nudus). Both are valuable fisheries resources in Japan, and since they are common and abundant grazers there, both may exert strong influences on the marine ecosystems where they live.

    The researchers found that levels of adult abalone dropped by more than half after the tsunami. In addition, "juvenile abalone and sea urchins largely decreased, to 14 and 5 percent of the densities just before the disaster, respectively," Takami told OurAmazingPlanet.

    Underwater visibility at the site was much lower than it was before the earthquake due to sediment in the ocean, even three months after the tsunami. The researchers suggest the great turbulence the tsunami caused washed away many of the animals in the ecosystem.

    The researchers do note these findings are based on surveys conducted at just one site, "so the overall picture of effects of the earthquake and tsunami event on rocky shore ecosystems remains largely unknown," Takami said. Still, given the drop in juvenile abalone levels, "since the age at first capture of abalone is at four to five years old, "the future commercial catch may considerably decrease for at least four to five years after the event," he said.

    Future research should continuously monitor the ocean ecosystems "to avoid collapse of these ecologically and economically important resources," Takami said.

    Takami and his colleagues Nam-il Won and Tomohiko Kawamura will detail their findings in a future issue of the journal Fisheries Oceanography.

     

     

    © 2012 OurAmazingPlanet. All rights reserved. More from OurAmazingPlanet.

     

  • Fridge, other tsunami debris wash ashore in Hawaii

    Nicholas Mallos

    Researchers examine a buoy and refrigerator traced to the 2011 Japan tsunami. Debris like this is not normally seen in Hawaii, but the tsunami has sent a number of unusual items across the Pacific.

    By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience

    Oyster buoys and refrigerator parts set adrift by the 2011 Japan tsunami are now rolling in with the tide on Hawaii's beaches, a new field survey reveals.

    Black oyster buoys and refrigerator parts — and even a full refrigerator — that trace back to Japan have shown up on the islands of Oahu and Kauai, said Nicholas Mallos, a conservation biologist and ocean debris specialist at the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy. Also on Oahu, researchers found a large 4-foot by 4-foot chunk of housing insulation framed in wood, a piece almost certainly sent into the sea by the devastating tsunami.

    "These items have never before been seen on these beaches," Mallos told LiveScience.

    The Japanese government has estimated the tsunami, which was triggered by an underwater earthquake in March 2011, swept about 5 million tons of wreckage out to sea. While 70 percent appears to have sunk offshore, the rest is floating in the Pacific Ocean. The first bit to show up in Hawaii, in September, was a barnacle-covered seafood storage bin.

    Paradise of plastic
    Exposed to ocean currents on every side, the Hawaiian Islands are a hotspot for Pacific junk. Some of this ocean litter originates from the fishing industry; most of the rest is consumer garbage from soda bottles, toys and other plastic goods, much broken down by the waves beyond recognition. [ In Photos: Tsunami Debris & Ocean Trash in Hawaii ]

    At Kimalo Point on Hawaii's Big Island, tiny fragments of plastic penetrate as much as 3 feet below the beach surface.

    "Many places on the beach, it's hard to differentiate the sand from the plastics on the surface," Mallos said.

    The tsunami debris is different. For one thing, it tends to be larger, having only been in the ocean since March 2011, Mallos said. The debris also comes ashore in surprisingly homogenous waves. This summer, it was oyster buoys, Mallos said. Now, it's refrigerator parts.

    The reason? Wind acts on similar objects in similar ways, according to research by Nikolai Maximenko of the University of Hawaii at Manoa's International Pacific Research Center. All of the tsunami debris went into the ocean at the same time, but some objects drift across the Pacific faster than others. That results in clusters of similar objects showing up in Hawaii and along the North American West Coast at the same time. [ Tracking Tsunami Debris (Infographic) ]

    Debris hunt
    Mallos and colleagues from the Japan Environmental Action Network, the Oceanic Wildlife Survey and the Japan Ministry of the Environment just completed a beach survey in Hawaii in search of this tsunami debris. They found about six or seven items, including the rusted Japanese refrigerator and buoys, which very likely came from the tsunami, Mallos said.

    "We're not seeing a massive wave of debris wash onto the shore at one time, but right now, what it's been is a slow accumulation of debris here and there," he said. 

    The tsunami debris is a problem, but it's part of a much bigger issue, Mallos said. Hawaii is awash with plastic trash from all over the world; the islands also neighbor the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area of the North Pacific where currents push masses of plastics into a suspended gyre of trash. Long story short: The oceans are a mess.

    The Hawaii survey turned up masses of this typical ocean garbage, including fishing nets and traps, Mallos said. One of the stranger items was an intact plastic trashcan from Los Angeles County with "Heal the Bay" stickers on it. Heal the Bay is a nonprofit group that works to clean up California's Santa Monica Bay. In an unfortunate irony, one of the group's trash cans got into the ocean and floated some 2,500 miles to end up on a beach in Hawaii.

    "It really highlights the fact that trash travels very far," Mallos said.

    The average person can do their part to reduce ocean trash, Mallos said. Because consumer plastics are a huge part of the problem, resolving to use reusable grocery bags, coffee mugs and water bottles can keep one-time use plastics out of the oceans. The Ocean Conservancy has developed a free app, called Rippl, designed to nudge users into a more ocean-friendly routine by reminding them to take those sorts of small actions.

    The problem of typical ocean trash is inextricably linked to the issue of tsunami debris, Mallos said. Tsunamis aren't preventable, but regular ocean litter is, he said.

    "To the extent we can keep regular forms of ocean trash out of the ocean, in the face of disasters, the ocean becomes more resilient and better equipped to deal with the debris," he said.

    The new survey was funded by the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan.

    Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas or LiveScience@livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

    © 2012 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

     

     

  • Study: Japan nuclear disaster caused mutated butterflies

    Joji Otaki / EPA

    This handout photo, released Tuesday, shows a healthy adult pale grass blue butterfly (top) and a mutated variety (bottom). Severe mutations were found in butterflies collected near Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

    By Arata Yamamoto, NBC News

    TOKYO -- Researchers in Japan have found signs of mutation in butterflies, signaling one of the first indications of change to the local ecosystem as a result of last year's nuclear accident in Fukushima, according to one of the first studies on the genetic effects of the incident.

    Joji Otaki from the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, who led the research, collected 144 commonly-found pale grass blue butterflies two months after the March 2011 accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.

    Initial results indicated that roughly 12 percent of the butterflies showed signs of abnormalities, such as disfigurement in their antennas, smaller-sized wings, change in color patterns and indented eyes, Otaki said.

    Even more alarming, when he collected another 238 samples six months later he found that those abnormalities had increased to 28 percent and the mutations had doubled to 52 percent in their offspring.


    To see the effects of internal exposure to radiation, unaffected clean butterflies were also fed cesium-coated leaves collected from Fukushima. The result was a reduction in the size of those butterflies, as well as a lower survival rate.

    In Japan, a nuclear ghost town stirs to life

    The Fukushima disaster occurred after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake knocked out a power line at the plant and generated a tsunami that flooded the facility's emergency generators, destroying the plant's cooling system. Catastrophic meltdowns occurred in three reactors, releasing radiation that has tainted the surrounding environment.

    Five nuclear plants in total suffered some level of damage from the earthquake and tsunami; all but Fukushima Dai-ichi were shut down safely.

    Story: What are the odds? US nuke plants ranked by quake risk

    'Something has gone wrong'
    Otaki, who has been studying these butterflies for 10 years to analyze the effects of global warming, said that butterflies are the best environmental indicators because they are widely found in almost any environment.

    "But since we've seen these effects on butterflies, it’s easy to imagine that it would also have affected other species as well. It’s pretty clear that something has gone wrong with the ecosystem,” he said.

    Slideshow: Then-and-now: Tsunami cleanup

    AP

    View side-by-side the progress that Japan has made since the tsunami and earthquake in March 2011.

    Launch slideshow

    However, at the same time, he also warns that because each species’ sensitivity to radiation varies, it was too early to immediately apply these finding to humans.

    NYT: For new nuclear chief, concerns over plant safety

    But what is clear, said Otaki, is that the genetic changes found in these butterflies indicate a disruption in Fukushima's ecosystem and that more study is needed to learn the full scope of the effects of the radiation released into the environment.

    At Hiroshima memorial, Japan leaders vow to listen to citizens in revamp of nuke policy

    "Effects of low level radiation is genetically transferred through generation, which suggests genetic damage. I think it’s clear that we see the effects passed on through generations," Otaki added.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    More world stories from NBC News:

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  • Fukushima: Before, during and after

    DigitalGlobe

    DigitalGlobe acquired this satellite image of Japan's Fukushima nuclear complex on Feb. 2, 2012, almost a year after the tsunami. Click here for larger version.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News




    Satellite images tracked the catastrophic impact of Japan's magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami on the Fukushima nuclear complex and other key sites, and now they're tracking the reconstruction.

    To mark Sunday's anniversary of the disaster, DigitalGlobe is releasing pictures showing "before, during and after" views of the devastation. You can see the three views of Fukushima here — but you really should check out our interactive slideshow to get a better sense of the changes that have taken place over the past year at Fukushima and at the Port of Sendai, which was destroyed in the tsunami.

    "I'm struck by the progress, by how efficient the Japanese have been in reconstructing their infrastructure," Steve Wood, vice president of DigitalGlobe's analysis center, told me today. "In less than a year they've been able to turn this port into an active, functioning component. That's significant, considering that a year ago there were shipping containers, fires and mud covering that entire area. ... And there are literally hundreds of examples of that up and down the coast."

    In the hours, days and weeks after the March 11 quake, satellite operators funneled fresh imagery to disaster workers, relief groups, government agencies and private companies coping with the aftermath. "We saw everything from big industrial partners who wanted to see the status of their factories, to government agencies involved in the actual reconstruction," Wood said.

    Japanese officials and the U.S. military used the images to figure out which places were best for setting up aid operations, while relief organizations scanned wide-scale maps to see which areas were most in need of help. In places where planes weren't allowed to fly, "we were effectively the only game in town" for that initial post-quake aerial imagery.

    Today, satellite images provide an effective way to gauge how much progress is being made, through comparisons of the before-during-and-after views. "To communicate and explain that to people is really an important and powerful tool that I've seen evolve over the years," Wood said. Pictures from space were important in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean quake and tsunami, they're important for Japan, and they'll be important for current and future hotspots such as Syria.

    During Japan's crisis, Wood's team at DigitalGlobe was working 24/7, and the weeks and months have sped by. "It's hard for me to believe it's been a year," Wood said. For some of us, Sunday's anniversary may seem like a turning point — but it's really just one more day in the timeline of Japan's reconstruction. These pictures remind us that the work is far from finished.

    DigitalGlobe

    A labeled version of the image from Feb. 2 shows the status of the four nuclear reactor buildings at the Fukushima plant.

    DigitalGlobe

    A satellite image from March 14, 2011, shows the ruined Fukushima nuclear complex during the height of the crisis. Click here for larger version.

    DigitalGlobe

    A satellite image from Nov. 21, 2004, shows the Fukushima complex long before the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Click here for larger version.

    More about the Japan quake and tsunami:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.