Strong earth activity in Pacific Ring

Four strong earthquakes signal angry ‘Ring of Fire’

The Pacific 'Ring of Fire' has been angry over the past day, producing four strong earthquakes since yesterday afternoon.

Yahoo,

31 January, 2013

North-central Chile was the first to feel the Ring's wrath, as a magnitude 6.8 quake went off at about 3:15 p.m. EST, centred roughly 40 km north of Vallenar, the capital city of Chile's Huasco Province. Reports say that it shook buildings as far away as Santiago, nearly 600 kms to the south, and closer to the epicenter, some buildings in lower-income areas of Vallenar suffered collapsed walls. According to a Reuters report, one unfortunate woman died shortly after the quake, of an apparent heart attack.

Epicenters of magnitude 6.2 and 6.0 earthquakes east of the Solomon Islands

The Solomon Islands, in the south Pacific, were next, as two strong earthquakes, registering as magnitude 6.0 and 6.2 on the Richter Scale, struck just east of the island of Nuendö at 6:03 p.m. EST. No reports of any damage or injuries from either of these earthquakes as of yet, however the area is sparsely populated, with Lata, a community of just over 550 residents at the northwestern end of Nuendö, being the closest settlement to the quake.

Epicenter of magnitude 6.0 earthquake off the southern coast of Alaska

Finally, this morning, at 4:53 a.m. EST, a magnitude 6.0 earthquake shook an already battered region along the southern tip of Alaska. The Alaskan Earthquake Center is apparently reporting that today's tremor is an aftershock of the magnitude 7.5 quake that shook this same area on January 5th, and it is just north of where a magnitude 7.7 earthquake shook Haida Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands) in October of last year. No damage or injuries have been reported from this latest quake.

Although earthquakes around the 'Ring of Fire' have been known to touch off tsunamis, no alerts were sounded as a result of any of these four events.

These earthquakes occurring in relatively quick succession, separated by distances of thousands of kilometres, punctuates just how active the 'Ring of Fire' is and just how unpredictable it can be. Although efforts are being made to put early warning systems into place, true earthquake prediction remains a lofty goal.

Fields of fire: 4 volcanoes now erupting simultaneously in Kamchatka

Spiegel,

31 January, 2013

A unique show is taking place on Kamchatka these days: Four separate but nearby volcanoes are erupting simultaneously on the Russian peninsula. A Moscow film crew has produced an awe-inspiring 360-degree video of the natural fireworks.

Volcanic eruptions are hardly a rarity. It seems that a new one goes off every few weeks or so somewhere in the world. But a string of four volcanoes erupting in close proximity to one another is virtually unheard of.

That, though, is what has taken place in recent weeks on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's far east. Four different cones and mountains, all within 180 kilometers (110 miles) of each other, have been active simultaneously since late November. Given that volcano experts don't believe that the four volcanoes are being fed from the same magma source, the parallel eruptions would seem to be the geological equivalent of winning the lottery.

And, as a photography team from the Moscow-based Airpano discovered, the phenomenon presented a fantastic opportunity to produce some awe-inspiring images and videos. Indeed, the quartet of lava and ash-spewing peaks are so close to one another -- they lie within 180 kilometers (110 miles) of each other -- that that the film crew recently visited all of them in a single day. (Use your mouse to change your viewpoint once you click in to the video below.)

360-DEGREE VIDEO

Flight over the Tolbachik Volcano:

A close-up look at a geologic inferno (limited functionality on iPad and iPhone). Please note that the navigation messages are in German. Use your mouse to change your viewpoint once you click in to the video.

That volcanoes erupt in Kamchatka is, of course, hardly news. The peninsula, which has a total land mass that is slightly larger than Germany, is one of the most active parts of the infamous "Ring of Fire," the zone of volcanic and seismic activity that encircles the Pacific Ocean. Three tectonic plates -- the North American Plate, the Okhotsk Plate and the Pacific Plate -- collide beneath Kamchatka, with the peninsula's coastal range boasting 30 active volcanoes.

All four of the volcanoes now erupting have shown significant activity in recent years. Most recently, Tobalchik began spewing lava on Nov. 27 of last year, creating the impressive lava flows visible in the 360 degree video taken by Airpano. Shiveluch, the northernmost of the four, prefers shooting columns of ash high into the air, which it has been doing on a regular basis during the last four years since a magma dome in its crater exploded. Besymjanny awoke with a bang in the 1950s following 1,000 years of dormancy and has been active since then, with huge clouds of ash rising on a regular basis. Finally, the southernmost of the quartet, Kisimen, has been erupting regularly since 2010, and there is concern that it could perform a repeat of the violent explosion which sheered of half of the mountain some 1,300 years ago.