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Scientists aren't particularly surprised to find volcanism in the region, which is home to active volcanoes like Mount Vesuvius and Mount Etna. But the new complex is unusual because it was created by a rare kind of fault... The western Mediterranean is seismically restless because of the collision of three tectonic plates: the African, the Eurasian and the Anatolian. Making matters more complex is a small chunk of crust called the Adriatic-Ionian microplate, which broke off of the African Plate more than 65 million years ago and is now being pushed under the larger Eurasian Plate in a process called...

USGS reported 11 earthqaukes (the largest a magnitude 5.6) off the Oregon coastline today, right at the Oregon-CA border on the Juan de Fuca rise associated with the subduction zone of the Pacific plates and North American plates. This area, the Juan de Fuca fault subduction zone, has been quiet since 1700 - when a magnitude 9.0 quake occurred dropping land as much as 2 meters (9 feet) over the entire 800 mile Vancouver-Washington-Oregon coastline. That quake in 1700 caused documented 10 meter (30 foot) high tsunami's recorded in Japan that crushed many villages and towns. Many previous large earthquakes...

The blue ball represents all of the earths water. Not that much...

Explanation: How much of planet Earth is made of water? Very little, actually. Although oceans of water cover about 70 percent of Earth's surface, these oceans are shallow compared to the Earth's radius. The above illustration shows what would happen is all of the water on or near the surface of the Earth were bunched up into a ball. The radius of this ball would be only about 700 kilometers, less than half the radius of the Earth's Moon, but slightly larger than Saturn's moon Rhea which, like many moons in our outer Solar System, is mostly water ice. How...

The world's oldest water, which is locked deep within the Earth's crust, is present at a far greater volume than was thought, scientists report. The liquid, some of which is billions of years old, is found many kilometres beneath the ground. Researchers estimate there is about 11m cubic kilometres (2.5m cu miles) of it - more water than all the world's rivers, swamps and lakes put together. The study was presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting. It has also been published in the journal Nature. The team found that the water was reacting with the rock to release...

A team of researchers revealed evidence of an unknown geochemical pathway used by the Earth to sequester water deep within, releasing small amounts through plate tectonics in a process that feeds our oceans "from within," Ohio State University reported.

First terrestrial discovery of an extremely rare mineral called ringwoodite confirms theory about huge water ‘reservoirs’ 410 to 660 km beneath the surface of our planet, says a team of researchers led by Prof Graham Pearson from the University of Alberta, Canada.

Scientists say rock layer hundreds of miles down holds vast amount of water, opening up new theories on how planet formed After decades of searching scientists have discovered that a vast reservoir of water, enough to fill the Earth’s oceans three times over, may be trapped hundreds of miles beneath the surface, potentially transforming our understanding of how the planet was formed. The water is locked up in a mineral called ringwoodite about 660km (400 miles) beneath the crust of the Earth, researchers say. Geophysicist Steve Jacobsen from Northwestern University in the US co-authored the study published in the journal...

In what could quench the thirst of billions of people in the future, researchers have discovered our planet's largest water reservoir 640 km beneath our feet - bound up in rock deep in the earth's mantle. This water is not in a form familiar to us - it is not liquid, ice or vapour. This fourth form is water trapped inside the molecular structure of the minerals in the mantle rock. Scientists have been looking for this missing deep water for decades," explained geophysicist Steve Jacobsen from Northwestern University.

Scientists Discover Massive Freshwater Reserves Underneath The Ocean Floor Agence France Presse Dec. 5, 2013, 7:22 AM Australian researchers said Thursday they had established the existence of vast freshwater reserves trapped beneath the ocean floor which could sustain future generations as current sources dwindle. Lead author Vincent Post, from Australia's Flinders University, said that an estimated 500,000 cubic kilometres (120,000 cubic miles) of low-salinity water had been found buried beneath the seabed on continental shelves off Australia, China, North America and South Africa. "The volume of this water resource is a hundred times greater than the amount we've extracted from...

Researchers at Northwestern University have found evidence for a massive reservoir of water deep within the Earth's mantle. The reservoir, which is said to be three times the volume of the oceans on the surface, is contained within highly-pressurized rock known as ringwoodite. The scientists hope that their findings, recently published in the journal Science, can shed light on where Earth's oceans came from. THREE TIMES THE VOLUME OF THE OCEANS ON EARTH'S SURFACE The team, led by mineralogist Steven Jacobsen, used an array of 2000 seismometers to study how seismic waves generated by earthquakes move through the Earth's interior....

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have shown that deep sea fault zones could transport much larger amounts of water from the Earth’s oceans to the upper mantle than previously thought.Water is carried mantle by deep sea fault zones which penetrate the oceanic plate as it bends into the subduction zone.  Subduction, where an oceanic tectonic plate is forced beneath another plate, causes large earthquakes such as the recent Tohoku earthquake, as well as many earthquakes that occur hundreds of kilometers below the Earth’s surface.Seismic modellingSeismologists at Liverpool have estimated that over the age of the Earth, the Japan subduction...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A team of scientists from Oregon State University has created the first global three-dimensional map of electrical conductivity in the Earth's mantle and their model suggests that that enhanced conductivity in certain areas of the mantle may signal the presence of water. What is most notable, the scientists say, is those areas of high conductivity coincide with subduction zones – where tectonic plates are being subducted beneath the Earth's crust. Subducting plates are comparatively colder than surrounding mantle materials and thus should be less conductive. The answer, the researchers suggest, may be that conductivity in those areas...

Scientists scanning the deep interior of Earth have found evidence of a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean. The discovery marks the first time such a large body of water has found in the planet’s deep mantle. The finding, made by Michael Wysession, a seismologist at Washington State University in St. Louis, and his former graduate student Jesse Lawrence, now at the University of California, San Diego, will be detailed in a forthcoming monograph to be published by the American Geophysical Union. Looking down deep The pair analyzed more than...

Huge Underground "Ocean" Found Beneath Asia Richard A. Lovett for National Geographic News February 27, 2007 A giant blob of water the size of the Arctic Ocean has been discovered hundreds of miles beneath eastern Asia, scientists report. Researchers found the underground "ocean" while scanning seismic waves as they passed through Earth's interior. But nobody will be exploring this sea by submarine. The water is locked in moisture-containing rocks 400 to 800 miles (700 to 1,400 kilometers) beneath the surface. "I've gotten all sorts of emails asking if this is the water that burst out in Noah's flood," said the...

If a 9.0 earthquake were to strike along California's sparsely populated North Coast, it would have a catastrophic ripple effect. A giant tsunami created by the quake would wash away coastal towns, destroy U.S. 101 and cause $70 billion in damage over a large swath of the Pacific coast. More than 100 bridges would be lost, power lines toppled and coastal towns isolated. Residents would have as few as 15 minutes notice to flee to higher ground, and as many as 10,000 would perish. For years, scientists believed the largest earthquake the area could produce was magnitude 7.5. But scientists...

Just 50 miles off the Pacific Northwest coast is an earthquake hotspot that threatens to unleash on Seattle, Portland and Vancouver the kind of damage that has shattered Chile. The fault has been dormant for more than 300 years, but when it awakens — tomorrow or decades from now — the consequences could be devastating.

Earthquake Hazards Program: Northridge, California 1994 01 17 "The USGS Earthquake Hazards Program provides earthquake information for current and past earthquakes, hazards and preparedness information, and education resources for teachers and students." Latest Quakes   EQ Facts & Lists   Hazards & Preparedness   For Kids Only   Regional Websites   Science & Technology    HOME | ABOUT US | EQ GLOSSARY | FOR TEACHERS | PRODUCTS & SERVICES | DID YOU FEEL IT? | FAQ | SEARCH    EQ Facts & Lists Large Earthquakes in the United States Northridge, California 1994 01 17 12:30:55 UTC (local time: 4:30 a.m.)...

SEATTLE - You can't feel it, but at this moment, parts of Washington and British Columbia are having an earthquake. It is a slow-moving trembler that can't be felt and won't cause any injuries or damage. Still, by the end of the event, which already has lasted more than two weeks, it is likely to have released about as much energy as equivalent to a 6.7 quake – similar to that the Nisqually earthquake did in February 2001. The movement is occurring deep beneath the Strait of Juan de Fuca and parts of Vancouver Island in the area where the...