5.6 magnitude earthquake rattles Lake Baikal in Russia

July 16, 2011 – RUSSIA – Today’s 5.6 magnitude earthquake in the world’s oldest and deepest lake highlights a history of past geological upheaval that may be inching closer to another event. There is a volcanic fault rift under the lake that has produced an increasing number of earthquakes over the years. Here’s the background on the lake:  The northern part of Lake Baikal is the shallowest, with a maximum depth of 890 metres. Baikal and the mountains surrounding it came into existence due to fracturing and movement of the earth’s crust, resulting from tension inside the Earth itself. The major geologic feature of the Baikal Territory is that it incorporates the borderline of the great tectonic structures – the Siberian platform and its framing and the Sayano-Baikalsky folded belt. Tectonic movements along this border never cease and are manifested by earthquakes and by fluctuations of separate parts of the shores. Annually, the ground seismic stations register up to 2,000 earthquake tremors; the most sensitive seismographs, installed at various depths of the lake, identify them more frequently. In 1862, north of the Selenga’s delta, an area of land of about 200 square kilometres sank under water to a depth of 2 metres as the result of an earthquake whose magnitude, as A. Voznesensky stated, reached magnitude 11. (This compares to the magnitude 10 quake in Ashkhabad in1948, and the magnitude 7 in Tashkent in 1967). The new bay formed on Baikal by the 1862 earthquake was called Proval (gap), and the new water-ways that broke through, the Cape – Oblom (Break-On). –Irkutsk.org

History: Multiple earthquakes shook the Lake Baikal region between December 30, 1861 and January 1, 1862, causing widespread panic and destruction, unleashing a tsunami of icy water that rolled over the Tsagan steppe, and leaving more than 200 square kilometers of land permanently underwater along with the homes and livestock of the Buriats who lived there. The 1861/62 disaster offers a window into the meanings of the environment and the role of natural disasters in human history. –Stanford University

See our post: Lake Baikal: the mysterious rift of fire at 900 fanthoms?