USGS · 70231296
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Jack B. Epstein, Patricia F. Buis. 1991. The second Lehigh Tunnel; geology and the New Austrian Tunnelling Method. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/70231296
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KEEP EXPLORING
A large inventory of landslides exists for Allegheny County, Pa., and historical movement of many of these has resulted in considerable damage to property, roads, and infrastructure. Along Interstate Route 79, a subset of the landslide inventory includes deep-seated rockslides, two of which reactivated during construction of the highway in the late 1960s (Gray and others, 2011). Following the initial movement of the rockslides, slope-stability investigations were conducted (Hamel, 1969; Hamel and Flint, 1969), and measures were taken to reduce their impacts to the highway, but movement of at least one of the rockslides persists even today. Long-term continuous monitoring of such landslides provides critical data used to assess how the state of activity and velocity of movement (when the landslide is active) change with rainfall and snowmelt. Currently, we are continuously monitoring meteorological conditions and movement of a rockslide along the northbound side of Interstate Route 79 in Aleppo, Pa. (Figure 1). The project is intended to extend over many years (approximately 5 to 10) in order to collect sufficient data to assess how extreme storms, prolonged wet periods, and melting of the snowpack affect the landslide. The rockslide is an ideal location for such long-term monitoring because the land is owned by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), and movement is not directly impacting the highway; therefore no stabilization measures are necessary in the short term.
The Pymatuning earthquake occurred on Friday, September 25, 1998, at 19:52:52 Universal Coordinated Time (UTC), or 3:52:52 p.m. EDT, near Jamestown, Pa., at the southern end of the Pymatuning Reservoir, which straddles the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. The National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) determined that the event had a magnitude of 5.2 mbLg (a magnitude scale used to measure the size of earthquakes that are regional distances away [100 to 1,000 km, or 60 to 600 mi]), an epicenter of 41.5°N latitude, 80.4°W longitude, and an estimated depth of 5 km (3 mi). One person was reported injured as a result of being thrown to the ground by the earthquake, and it caused minor damage to buildings and seriously disrupted many water wells in the GreenvilleJamestown, Pa., area. The earthquake was generally felt over an area of approximately 200,000 km 2 (77,230 mi 2 ) throughout northern Ohio, western Pennsylvania and New York, and much of southern Ontario, Canada (see map on back cover). It was also felt as far west as Illinois and Wisconsin, as far east as New Jersey, Connecticut, and the District of Columbia, and as far south as Kentucky and Virginia. During the aftershock field investigation that commenced within 12 hours of the main shock, a World Wide Web site, < http://groundmotion.cr.usgs.gov/pym/pym.htm >, was established from the field headquarters. The web site was used not only to transmit investigation results to the world in near real time but also to receive information from the local community as new earthquake effects were reported. As of March 1999, at least 11 aftershocks have occurred, the largest being a magnitude 2.3. The largest recent previous earthquake in the region was the northeastern Ohio (Leroy) earthquake of magnitude 5.0 that occurred on January 31, 1986, about 65 km (40 mi) west-northwest of the Pymatuning shock. This event was also felt by many of those who felt the Pymatuning earthquake. Similar to most of the seismicity east of the Rocky Mountains, earthquakes in the region are probably shallow (5 to 10 km, or 3 to 6 mi), and Seeber and Armbruster (1993) hypothesized that the earthquakes occurred along preexisting zones of weakness in Precambrian rocks. Wegweiser and others (1998) suggested that seismicity in northwestern Pennsylvania may be associated with the northwest-trending “cross-strike discontinuities” that are recognized in Paleozoic rocks and may represent reactivation of faults in the Precambrian basement. Using structure-contour maps constructed on the tops of lower Paleozoic strata, Alexandrowicz and Cole (1999) found evidence of preexisting northwest-striking faults in the epicentral region of the Pymatuning shock. The Harvard focal mechanism for the Pymatuning earthquake (a method used to infer the slip and orientation of the fault that generated an earthquake) indicates thrust faulting on a northwest striking plane, which is consistent with the regional northeast-southwest compressive stress regime observed in the area. Seeber and Armbruster (1993) plotted three prior earthquakes in the epicentral area having magnitudes greater than 3; two were instrumentally located near the Pymatuning earthquake, and the third event occurred 20 to 30 km (12 to 19 mi) to the northeast in 1852 (Figure 1).