Midwest on EARTH Magazine

Benchmarks: October 8, 1871: The deadliest wildfire in American history incinerates Peshtigo, Wisconsin

Tue, 19 Sep 2017 11:53:00 -0400

On Oct. 8, 1871, the same day as the Great Chicago Fire, another, even more devastating fire in and around the lumber town of Peshtigo, Wis., burned nearly 500,000 hectares of land and killed as many as 2,500 people — more than any other fire in U.S. history. Credit: K. Cantner, AGI, based on a map from the Atlas of Wisconsin.

On Oct. 8, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire burned through 900 hectares of the city, killing as many as 300 people and leaving another 100,000 homeless. More than 17,400 buildings were destroyed and financial losses totaled more than $200 million at the time (equivalent to $3.7 billion in 2016 dollars).

Midwest's hybrid rift formed in three stages

Thu, 17 Dec 2015 11:44:56 -0500

Many of the rocks exposed around Lake Superior were uplifted from the Midcontinent Rift during the formation of Rodinia, including these basalt cliffs along the Porcupine Escarpment in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.

Middle America is not often recognized for its interesting geology, yet it boasts one of the largest and most unusual geologic features in the country: the Midcontinent Rift, which stretches 3,200 kilometers in two arms from Lake Superior to Oklahoma and Alabama. Subsurface imaging of the rift has revealed that it’s not just a rift, it’s also what’s known as a large igneous province, making it a hybrid geologic feature not seen anywhere else in the world. A new modeling study is offering a more complete story of how the Midcontinent Rift evolved, in three stages.

Geomedia: Zombie Science? New Madrid and "Disaster Deferred"

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:41:58 -0500

Stumps of trees in Lake County, Tenn., killed by deposits of sand during the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812. U.S. Geological Survey

During the winter of 1811-1812, three strong earthquakes between magnitude 7 and 8 rocked the New Madrid seismic zone, which runs through parts of eastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas. The quakes opened deep fissures, destroyed forests and lakes, and produced intense ground shaking that liquefied the soil, turning the land to the consistency of jelly across an area of 10,000 square kilometers. They also became the stuff of legend — legend that has been hard to shake, and has made it difficult to realistically assess the modern hazard in the region, asserts Seth Stein, a seismologist at Northwestern University and the author of a new book, “Disaster Deferred: How New Science is Changing Our View of Earthquake Hazards in the Midwest.”