Earth Sciences

Records show an equivalent event on the Oregon coast occurred in 1700

Earthquake-caused tsunamis as severe as those that swept southeast Asia on Sunday have happened in the past off the Oregon coast, according to a University of Oregon geoscientist.

In fact, a tsunami caused by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake occurred on Jan. 26, 1700, wiping out Oregon tribal villages in low-lying coastal estuaries and causing damage as far away as Japan. Ray Weldon, who researches and teac

The type of devastating tsunami that struck the southern coast of Asia is entirely possible in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, but might not cause as much loss of life there because of better warning systems, according to experts at Oregon State University.

OSU is home to the Tsunami Wave Basin at the Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory, one of the world’s leading research facilities to study tsunamis and understand their behavior, catastrophic effects and possibl

A longstanding theory that provides much of the basis for our understanding of climate change – that the mile-thick ice sheet covering Antarctica developed because of a shift in ocean currents millions of years ago – has been challenged by Purdue University scientists.

Though climate scientists have theorized for decades that the circulation of warm ocean currents was responsible for keeping Antarctica largely ice-free during the Eocene epoch prior to 35 million years ago, a s

Researchers at TU Delft have made progress in the theoretical foundation of a special subsoil imaging technique. This technique could be used to chart underground mineral resources, it is called “acoustic daylight imaging”. The method uses natural acoustic signals, already present in the earth, to create an image of the subsurface layers. This week, Professor Kees Wapenaar will publish an article in the renowned scientific magazine “Physical Review Letters”.

Usually, the compositi

People in earthquake-prone California often talk about the “Big One,” a devastating quake that many experts say will surely strike the region sometime in the future.

A research team is now working to predict when the big one – and even little ones – might occur. Termed SAFOD (San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth), the project involves more than 20 researchers from several major universities, labs and government agencies, including the husband-wife team of Fred and Judi Chester

Imagine a lake three times the size of the present-day Lake Ontario breaking through a dam and flooding down the Hudson River Valley past New York City and into the North Atlantic. The results would be catastrophic if it happened today, but it did happen some 13,400 years ago during the retreat of glaciers over North America and may have triggered a brief cooling known as the Intra-Allerod Cold Period.

Assistant Scientist Jeffrey Donnelly of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution