What are the consequences of tectonic uplift?
"Drought Is Causing the Western U.S. to Rise Like an Uncoiling Spring"
"File under apocalyptic imagery: The western United States' worst drought in possibly 500 years
is causing the ground to rise up like an uncoiling spring.A new report
in Science from
the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at U.C. San Diego found that
the massive loss of groundwater associated with the drought has caused a
tectonic "uplift" of more than half an inch in California's mountains,
with an average 0.15 of an inch across the west.Sifting through ground-positioning data from GPS stations throughout the region, the researchers had discovered those stations had been moving upwards in recent years, coinciding with the current drought. Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist specializing in earthquakes and an author of the study, told Scripps
that
the data can only be explained by a rapid uplift of the tectonic
plate underlying the western U.S. (which, he stressed, has virtually no
effect on the San Andreas fault and does not increase risk of
earthquakes). "http://www.citylab.com/weather/2014/08/drought-is-causing-the-western-us-to-rise-like-an-uncoiling-spring/378979/
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2014/08/20/science.1260279
