A Major Earthquake Caused One of the Largest Rivers on Earth to Abruptly Change Course

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A recent study published in Nature Communications reveals that a massive earthquake 2,500 years ago dramatically shifted the course of one of the world's largest rivers. This previously undocumented seismic event rerouted the main channel of the Ganges River into present-day, densely populated Bangladesh, an area that continues to be at high risk for significant earthquakes.

Scientists have documented many river-course changes, called avulsions, including some in response to earthquakes. However, I don't think we have ever seen such a big one anywhere," said study coauthor Michael Steckler, a geophysicist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is part of the Columbia Climate School. It could have easily inundated anyone and anything in the wrong place at the wrong time, he said.

[...] Like other rivers that run through major deltas, the Ganges periodically undergo minor or major course changes without any help from earthquakes. Sediments washed from upstream settle and build up in the channel, until eventually, the river bed grows subtly higher than the surrounding flood plain. At some point, the water breaks through and begins constructing a new path for itself. But this does not generally happen all at once-it may take successive floods over years or decades. An earthquake-related avulsion, on the other hand, can occur more or less instantaneously, said Steckler.

[...] Chamberlain and other researchers were exploring this area in 2018 when they came across a freshly dug excavation for a pond that had not yet been filled with water. On one flank, they spotted distinct vertical dikes of light-colored sand cutting up through horizontal layers of mud. This is a well-known feature created by earthquakes: In such watery areas, sustained shaking can pressurize buried layers of sand and inject them upward through overlying mud. The result: literal sand volcanoes, which can erupt at the surface. Called seismites, here, they were 30 or 40 centimeters wide, cutting up through 3 or 4 meters of mud.

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