Work shows for the first time that massive erosion influences seismicity - and does so in a geological instant.
The Earth’s crust is under constant stress. Every now and then this stress is discharged in heavy earthquakes, mostly caused by the slow movement of Earth's crustal plates. There is, however, another influencing factor that has received little attention so far: intensive erosion can temporarily change the earthquake activity (seismicity) of a region significantly. This has now been shown for Taiwan by researchers from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in cooperation with international colleagues. They report on this in the journal Scientific Reports.
The island in the western Pacific Ocean is anyway one of the most tectonically active regions in the world, as the Philippine Sea Plate collides with the edge of the Asian continent. Eleven years ago, Typhoon Morakot reached the coast of Taiwan. This tropical cyclone is considered the one of the worst in Taiwan's recorded history.
Within only three days in August 2009, three thousand litres of rain fell per square metre. As a comparison, Berlin and Brandenburg receive an average of around 550 liters per square meter in one year. The water masses caused catastrophic flooding and widespread landsliding. More than 600 people died and the immediate economic damage amounted to the equivalent of around three billion euros.
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