No abstract

Examples of the mightiest energy releases by great earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and hypotheses providing explanations for them are analyzed along with the results of some recently published researches and visualizations. The emerging conclusions are that the mechanism of the strong earthquake is a chemical explosion; that volcanic eruption is a special type of earthquake wherein the hypocenter rises to the earth-surface; and that there is an association between the seismic-volcanic processes and mantle "fluids" and the lack of energy for mantle plumes. A conceptual system of hypotheses is put forward to explain the conservation of energy during Earth's accretion, its quasi-stable release by primordial H-and He-degassing and of the crucial role of the energy of degassing-comprisingreactions in endogenic processes. Specific mechanisms and chemical processes are proposed for the gas-liquid mantle plumes melting through the solid mantle using heat-energy released in reactions of their metamorphic and chemical transformation under gradual decrease of pressure and temperature; volcanic gases are put forward as energy carriers. 3 He performance as a unique measuring transformer correlative to the internal heat flow was used for calculation of energy release by degassing; it equals to 5.12 Â 10 20 J/yr, an amount of energy five-fold greater than the entire energy loss involved in earthquake and volcanic activity. The hypotheses proposed are objectively testable. ª 2012, China University of Geosciences (Beijing) and Peking University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Judean Mountains' anticlinorium, Israel, a part of the Syrian Arc fold system, underwent several phases of compressional folding, uplift and faulting in post-Turonian through Quaternary times. This study emphasizes the earliest tectonic phase of earIy Late Coniacian age. Ostracode biozonation clearly indicates the duration and extension of Senonian sedimentation and timing of onlap over the evolving Judean Mountains' structure. Terra Nova, 1,349-358What ailed thee, o thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan that thou wast driven back? Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams and ye little hills, like lambs?' (Psalms 114: 5 and 6).

It is already well known that the "when, where and how strong" earthquake prediction problem cannot be solved by only analyzing the database from former earthquakes. A possible solution to this problem is proposed herein based on the analysis of the physicochemical processes as participants in earthquake preparation and on the characteristic rate of reflection of these processes on the Earth's surface. The proposed procedure includes monitoring of correlation of electromagnetic fields variations with tidal waves. This solution provides a way of selecting a complex of reliable earthquake precursors using the Inverse Problem Method for earthquakes which will occur in the region around the monitoring point (radial distance ≈ 700 km) in the next seven-day period [1].

Strike-slip fault systems on the western margin of the Dead Sea active pull-apart basin (central part of the Dead Sea Transform) have been mapped in detail in the vicinity of the Ya'elim Valley, in the southeastern Judean Desert.Compressional, tensional and strike-slip shearing features are described and the geomorphology of the valley (which changes over a 6 km long segment from a mature meandering valley to a deep and narrow canyon, and then to an oversized, very deep and very wide U-shaped canyon), is elucidated using profiles and superimposed cross-sections.A kinematic model for the Formation of the Ya'elim Valley is proposed, reflecting dextral shearing on the margins of counterclockwise rotating blocks. In the same area Subrecent-Recent spreading of tensional fractures has occurred, separating sections of blocks which protrude eastward into the deepest on-land depression.The large-width of shear zones sub-perpendicular to the Transform may relate to repeated reversals in the sense of rotation of second-order (rigid block) domains, caused by rotations of neighbouring first order domains due to earthquake ruptures on individual parallel faults of the Transform. Terra Nova, 3, 638-647