From San Francisco, at the 2001 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union
Scientists using the Global Positioning System (GPS) to track ground movement along faults in southeastern Alaska have measured something entirely different–the rapid rise of parts of the region resulting from the recent melting of glaciers.
The average rate of the ground’s horizontal movement along the Fairweather Fault, which runs roughly parallel to the coast in Alaska’s panhandle, is one of the fastest in the world, says Jeff Freymueller, a geophysicist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.