Quote:Taiwan's 'vanishing canyon' erasing quake record

By Jonathan Webb Science reporter, BBC News

A gorge in Taiwan, sliced through rocks only raised by a 1999 earthquake, is disappearing at an unprecedented rate.

Geologists say the Daan River, which floods regularly and violently, will wipe the gorge off the map in 50 years.

Massive earthquakes shake this region every 300-400 years, but these results explain why so little evidence remains of previous tremors, making predictions and mapping of fault lines difficult.

The find also allows researchers to witness gorge erosion in fast-forward.

The study is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Erasing the evidence

"The really cool thing about this place is that it's happening so fast, we can watch it," said Dr Kristen Cook, a geologist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam.

"We can see processes that you can't reconstruct."