Earthquakes can Sink Volcanoes, Researchers Find

Earthquakes can sink volcanoes located several miles away from the epicenter, according to new research.

Researchers, working on two independent studies, found that massive earthquakes that occurred in Chile in 2010 and in Japan in 2011 led to the sinking of volcanoes by over six inches. Researchers have different explanations on why mountains sink due to earthquakes. However, both study teams agree that future research on the subject will lead to the discovery of a single mechanism connected with the phenomenon.

According to one of the studies, the earthquake in Japan led to volcanoes on the island of Honshu, which is about 120 miles from the epicentre, sink by as much as 9.3 inches, AFP reported. Mega-earthquakes that occurred in Chile and in Japan were of subduction type, where one part of the Earth's crust moves beneath the other.

"It's amazing, the parallels between them," said Matthew Pritchard, a geophysicist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., and lead author of one of the studies, reports Livescience. "I think it makes a really strong case that this is a ubiquitous process."

There were, however, no instances of volcanoes erupting after the earthquakes, researchers found.

Pritchard and his team's research is based on the Chilean earthquake. The team says that the earthquake helped release some of the compressed hydrothermal fluids in the volcanoes, which led to the sinking of the mountain.

Youichiro Takada, a geophysicist at Kyoto University in Japan, who led the team that studied the Japan Earthquake, said that the magma tubes under the volcanoes sank more than the magma chambers in the surrounding region and this made way for the mountain to sink, according to Livescience.

The studies are published in the journal Nature Geoscience.