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Some Earthquakes Expected Along Rio Grande Rift in Colorado And New Mexico, New Study Says

By Guest PostJanuary 15, 2012Environmentactive, anne sheehan, anthony lowry, colorado plateau, earth, earthquake hazards, earthquakes, fault bounded basins, fort collins, frederick blume, garden city, geologically alive, geologists, global positioning system, gps, magnitude, mark murray, Mexico, molten rock, nanostrain, new mexico tech, rates of deformation, rio grande rift, rise of magma, spreading motion, steven nerem, surface coloradom rocky mountains, unavco, university of colorado boulder, university of new mexico, western great plains

The Rio Grande Rift, a thinning and stretching of Earth’s surface that extends from Colorado’s central Rocky Mountains to Mexico, is not dead but geologically alive and active, according to a new study involving scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

“We don’t expect to see a lot of earthquakes, or big ones, but we will have some earthquakes,” said CU-Boulder geological sciences Professor Anne Sheehan, also a fellow at CIRES. The study also involved collaborators from the University of New Mexico, New Mexico Tech, Utah State University and the Boulder-headquartered UNAVCO. The Rio Grande Rift follows the path of the Rio Grande River from central Colorado roughly to El Paso before turning southeast toward the Gulf of Mexico. (more…)

Study Indicates Hail May Disappear From Colorado’s Front Range by 2070

By Guest PostJanuary 12, 2012Environmentclimate change, climate models, climate warming, colorado, colorado springs, continental divide, decision-makers, denver, downscaled, downscaling technique, eastern flank, flash floods, foothill communities, fort collins, global climate models, greenhouse gases, hail, hail damage, hailstones, james scott, joseph barsugli, kelly mahoney, michael alexander, nature climate change, precipitation, rain, regional scale models, regional topography, risk of flooding, rocky mountains, runoff, thunderstorms, weather scale

Summertime hail could all but disappear from the eastern flank of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains by 2070, says a new study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Less hail damage could be good news for gardeners and farmers, said lead author Kelly Mahoney, a research scientist at CIRES, but a shift from hail to rain can also mean more runoff, which could raise the risk of flash floods. “In this region of elevated terrain, hail may lessen the risk of flooding because it takes awhile to melt,” Mahoney said. “Decision makers may not want to count on that in the future.” (more…)

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Some Earthquakes Expected Along Rio Grande Rift in Colorado And New Mexico, New Study Says

Study Indicates Hail May Disappear From Colorado’s Front Range by 2070