© Alaska Earthquake CenterHundreds of small seismic events have occurred in an area near Pothole Glacier.
Hundreds of small seismic events have been registered in the area since June 11, with almost 100 of the recordings exceeding magnitude 2.
"That catches our attention," says West, "because magnitude 2 is big enough that you're being recorded, you can see that signal a few hundred kilometers away."
The three possible sources of these seismic events, according to West, are standard earthquake activity, volcanic activity or glacial activity. "The patterns of all these little events didn't fit the pattern of a classic earthquake swarm driven by stresses, tectonic pressures in the region," says West. The Alaska Earthquake Center worked with the Alaska Volcano Observatory and largely ruled out volcanic activity. That left glaciers as the most likely explanation.
"I have to be clear, there is no smoking gun right now about exactly what these are," West says. "The hypothesis of least astonishment I think is that they are probably coming from one of the glaciers in that area."
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