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Posts Tagged Allah’s Blessing

Mud Volcano Island Rises From Sea After Pakistani Earthquake

 
Pakistan Mud Volcano
 
September 28, 2013
 
 
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On September 24, 2013, a major strike-slip earthquake rattled western Pakistan, killing at least 350 people and leaving more than 100,000 homeless. The 7.7 magnitude quake struck the Baluchistan province of northwestern Pakistan. Amidst the destruction, a new island was created offshore in the Paddi Zirr (West Bay) near Gwadar, Pakistan. 
 
On September 26, 2013, the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured an image of that new island, which sits roughly one kilometer (0.6 miles) offshore. Likely a “mud volcano,” the island rose from the seafloor near Gwadar on September 24, shortly after the earthquake struck about 380 kilometers (230 miles) inland. 
 
Credits: NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using EO-1 ALI data from the NASA EO-1 team. Photograph and video courtesy of the National Institute of Oceanography, Pakistan. Caption by Michael Carlowicz, with interpretation help from William Barnhart, U.S. Geological Survey, Asif Inam, National Institute of Oceanography, Pakistan, and Eric Fielding, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 
 
 
 
 
 
Mud Volcano Island Rises From Sea After Pakistani Earthquake
 
September 26, 2013
 
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A powerful earthquake that struck the southwestern province of Baluchistan, Pakistan Tuesday afternoon, killing hundreds of people, has given rise to a new island off the coast of the country’s Gwadar Port.
 
The island, which rises to more than 60 feet above sea level, received its first visits yesterday from local residents wanting to explore the small muddy, rocky landmass. As locals surveyed the new islet, it became evident that the island was more alive than they had anticipated. A local journalist who decided to take part in the visit described to the BBC that the mound was littered with dead fish. However, the most unsettling discovery was the release of what seemed to be gas of some kind.
 
“We could hear the hissing,” Bahram Baloch said, adding that persistent flames appeared when a lit match was put near it. “Not even the water could kill it, unless one poured buckets over it.” A Pakistani marine biologist who also visited the site explained to GEO.TV

 

 that the gas was methane. However, USGS geophysicist Bill Barnhart expressed to ABC News that it is unlikely to be methane, due to the fact that methane gas in that region is typically farther offshore and much deeper. “It’s not the most likely scenario. It could also be carbon dioxide, fluids in the ground.”

 
Whatever the gas is, it is likely scientists only have a short time to study it. If the island follows popular tradition, it will sink back down into the sea within a few months. A similar island popped up in the 1960s after a large earthquake, only to vanish in less than a year. A 1940s quake produced an island that existed for only a few weeks.
 
Barnhart later told NatGeo’s Brian Clark Howard that the island is “a transient feature… It will probably be gone within a couple of months. It’s just a big pile of mud that was on the seafloor that got pushed up.” Such mud islands, created by so-called mud volcanoes, occur all over the world and Barnhart and his colleagues agree that this is what is occurring off the Pakistani coast. The island does appear to be created of mud from the seafloor, although rocks are also prominent on the landmass.
 
Barnhart explained to NatGeo that although mud volcanoes can be found everywhere, they don’t always produce islands. Evidence of this occurred in California after an earthquake in 2010. Barnhart said tremors caused carbon dioxide to seep up through the ground, producing a lot of boiling bubbles, but no island of any kind. Pakistani scientists have already made plans to begin investigating the island before it decides to sink back into the abyss in order to gain a better understanding of how and why it formed.
 
“We don’t know much about it so far,” Barnhart noted. “We haven’t had a satellite pass over it yet to really identify it.” While scientists gear up to study the newly-formed island, the Pakistani government is still trying to dig out from the recent temblor, which measured 7.7 on the Richter scale. At last count, the death toll was at more than 340 with hundreds more injured.
 
Source: Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
 
 
 
 
Mud volcano likely formed new island off Pakistan’s coast
 
By Scott Sutherland 
30 Sep, 2013
 
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This aerial photograph shows the island that sprang up in the aftermath of last week’s earthquake.
 
Last week, a deadly earthquake shook the mountains of southern Pakistan, leveling buildings and claiming the lives of over 400 people. In the aftermath, though, people living along the country’s coastline reported that a new island had sprung up from the water, and scientists believe that it may have been caused by a mud volcano.
 
The new island, measuring around 90 metres wide and reaching about 20 metres above the water line, formed a little over 2 kilometres from the shoreline. Initial reports of the new land-mass were met with some skepticism, however NASA’s Observing-1 satellite captured images of it on September 26th, and comparing them to Landsat-8 satellite imagery from April 17th clearly shows that it is definitely something new.
[ Related: Pakistan earthquake may have created a new island off coast ]
 
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Left: Landsat-8 image from April 17, 2013.                                      Right: Earth Observing-1 image from Sept 26, 2013.
 
The ideas for what caused this island to form vary, but the one that has gained the most support so far, it seems, is that it was a mud volcano — the earth of the ocean floor was loosened by the earthquake, which allowed a trapped deposit of methane gas to push up to the surface, carrying the mud and earth with it. These mud volcanoes are fairly common in Pakistan, with 80 active ones currently known to be in Balochistan province, where the earthquake occurred.
 
Shortly after the island formed, local residents went out to explore it, recording this video. Towards the end of the video, you can see the methane gas burbling up through the surface of the island, and the people lighting the gas on fire:

This island hasn’t been named yet, but it’s likely not going to be around long enough to earn one. These mud volcano islands aren’t very stable, and this one will be eroded away by the ocean tides within a few years at most.
 
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