Geology

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  • 70 percent of beaches eroding on Hawaiian islands Kauai, Oahu, and Maui

    ScienceDaily: Geology News
    7 May 2012 | 3:56 pm
    An assessment of coastal change over the past century has found 70 percent of beaches on the islands of Kaua»i, O»ahu, and Maui are undergoing long-term erosion, according to new results.

  • Fantastic Pictures from Bezymianny

    Volcano World : Supplement
    Robert Peckyno
    9 Mar 2012 | 12:04 am
    Culmination of the volcano eruption at 21:40 UTC on March 08, 2012. Photo by Yu. Demyanchuk. Dr. Olga Girina from KVERT sent a message with a link to this excellent website with current pictures from Bezymianny.   Very very cool stuff!

  • Sulfur finding may hold key to Gaia theory of Earth as living organism

    ScienceDaily: Geology News
    15 May 2012 | 7:31 pm
    Is Earth really a sort of giant living organism as the Gaia hypothesis predicts? A new discovery may provide a key to answering this question. This key of sulfur could allow scientists to unlock heretofore hidden interactions between ocean organisms, atmosphere, and land -- interactions that might provide evidence supporting this famous theory.

  • Vietnam Oil and Natural Gas Report

    Geology News
    Geology.com
    15 May 2012 | 11:44 am
    “Vietnam is an important oil supplier to regional and domestic markets and may emerge as a significant natural gas supplier in the next decade. Vietnam’s oil production has declined overall since 2004, after several years of steady increases and became a net oil importer in 2011.” Quoted from the Energy Information Administration country analysis brief.

  • Magnitude 6.0 earthquake hits PNG

    Geology News
    16 May 2012 | 3:03 am
    The quake hit the remote New Britain region at a depth of 154 kilometres, 512km northeast of Port Moresby, the US Geological Survey said.
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    ScienceDaily: Geology News

  • Sulfur finding may hold key to Gaia theory of Earth as living organism

    15 May 2012 | 7:31 pm
    Is Earth really a sort of giant living organism as the Gaia hypothesis predicts? A new discovery may provide a key to answering this question. This key of sulfur could allow scientists to unlock heretofore hidden interactions between ocean organisms, atmosphere, and land -- interactions that might provide evidence supporting this famous theory.

  • Greater insight into earthquake cycles

    10 May 2012 | 1:20 pm
    For those who study earthquakes, one major challenge has been trying to understand all the physics of a fault -- both during an earthquake and at times of "rest" -- in order to know more about how a particular region may behave in the future. Now, researchers have developed the first computer model of an earthquake-producing fault segment that reproduces the available observations of both the fault's seismic and aseismic behavior.

  • Technology measures Martian sand movement: Dune migration rates appear to be similar to those on Earth

    9 May 2012 | 12:59 pm
    Last year, images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured sand dunes and ripples moving across the surface of Mars -- observations that challenged previously held beliefs that there was not a lot of movement on the Red Planet's surface. Now, new technology has allowed scientists to measure these activities for the very first time.

  • Not always safety in numbers when it comes to extinction risk

    8 May 2012 | 10:28 am
    A basic tenet underpinning scientists' understanding of extinction is that more abundant species persist longer than their less abundant counterparts. A new study reveals a much more complex relationship. A team of scientists analyzed more than 46,000 fossils from 52 sites and found that greater numbers did indeed help clam-like brachiopods survive the Ordovician extinction. Surprisingly, abundance did not help brachiopod species persist for extended periods outside of the extinction event.

  • 70 percent of beaches eroding on Hawaiian islands Kauai, Oahu, and Maui

    7 May 2012 | 3:56 pm
    An assessment of coastal change over the past century has found 70 percent of beaches on the islands of Kaua»i, O»ahu, and Maui are undergoing long-term erosion, according to new results.
 
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    Geology News

  • Vietnam Oil and Natural Gas Report

    Geology.com
    15 May 2012 | 11:44 am
    “Vietnam is an important oil supplier to regional and domestic markets and may emerge as a significant natural gas supplier in the next decade. Vietnam’s oil production has declined overall since 2004, after several years of steady increases and became a net oil importer in 2011.” Quoted from the Energy Information Administration country analysis brief.

  • Uranium Drilling was Up in 2011

    Geology.com
    15 May 2012 | 11:40 am
    United States uranium exploration drilling was 5,441 holes covering 3.3 million feet in 2011. Development drilling was 5,156 holes and 3.0 million feet. Combined, total uranium drilling was 10,597 holes covering 6.3 million feet, 47 percent more holes than in 2010.

  • Worthless Marcellus Leases in New York

    Geology.com
    15 May 2012 | 11:15 am
    After a long moratorium on Marcellus Shale drilling in New York, a variety of proposed regulations and local bans on drilling could render millions of leased acres as worthless.

  • 17% of Nigerian Oil is Stolen?

    Geology.com
    15 May 2012 | 11:06 am
    An article on the Reuters.com website repoerts that 17% of the crude oil production in Nigeria is being lost to theft.

  • Ohio Shale Oil and Natural Gas

    Geology.com
    15 May 2012 | 9:53 am
    Jack Gerard of the American Petroleum Institute comments on opportunities for oil and natural gas production from shales in Ohio.
 
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    About.com Geology

  • Plate Tectonics and the Real Earth

    15 May 2012 | 2:11 pm
    Maybe maps of plates like the one I posted about yesterday, all outlines and schematics, aren't what you want. What about a map of the geologic features themselves that stand for plate boundaries? After all, this is how geologists began to work out plate tectonics: from actual things on the ground and in outcrops. That's the next new map I've put up, Plate-Tectonic Features and Global Topography. It may seem like a fine distinction, but I think this map is especially helpful in showing how plate concepts play out in the landscape around us.

  • Plates and Their Boundaries

    14 May 2012 | 6:38 pm
    The venerable USGS plate-tectonic map I mentioned on Saturday is OK as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far at all. In 2006 the USGS produced a beautiful poster and website called This Dynamic Planet, and it includes a small world map that deserves wider exposure. It shows the plate boundaries, of course, but it also shows whether they're divergent, convergent, transform or diffuse—key to understanding how everything fits and interoperates. See it on this site now.

  • A Subtle Change in the Plate Map

    11 May 2012 | 7:13 pm
    For many years, the U.S. Geological Survey's cartoon map of the tectonic plates has crept farther behind the times. But I continue to feature it here on About.com Geology because it's still beautiful and still gets the most basic point across: Earth's outer shell is made of plates. Since its first appearance on the web in 1996, the map has been a good reminder of the names of the major plates, with one exception—the "Philippine plate" is correctly called the Philippine Sea plate. After all, the Philippine Islands sit on the adjacent Eurasian plate (well, the Sunda plate, but that's…

  • Another Reason to Be Nice to Your Dentist

    9 May 2012 | 2:04 pm
    You should be nice to your dentist because they have sharp instruments, of course. But another reason is that they wear out those instruments and have to replace them, and the old ones are excellent for cleaning fossils. Five years ago my hygeinist turned down my request, but this time I asked her boss, the dentist, and now I have a handful of steel dental picks ready to deploy on my Sharktooth Hill fossils. The lesson is, be persistent and don't be afraid to go straight to the top of the hierarchy....Read Full Post

  • Volcanic Gases

    6 May 2012 | 7:23 pm
    Volcanoes . . . those are, like, lava, right? Yes, volcanoes would be nothing without molten rock. But they would be nothing, either, without gases. Volcanoes arise from the combination of magma and gases. Once the magma comes out as lava, the gases fly away and disappear. The effects of lava are obvious while the effects of gases are dispersed and fleeting. But that steady stream of gas from Earth's interior has built the environment we have today. My new article on volcanic gases fills in some of the details of that fugitive element that makes volcanism itself possible.
 
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    The Geology News Blog

  • Daily Geology Photos – May 15

    Dave Schumaker
    15 May 2012 | 11:23 am
    A summary of photos posted on flickr today, tagged with “geology.” Displayed below are 100 geology-related photos were added to flickr today. Similar Posts on Geology News: Daily Geology Photos – May 10 Daily Geology Photos – May 19 Daily Geology Photos – May 21 Daily Geology Photos – May 15 Daily Geology Photos – May 2 The Geology News Blog, 2012. | Permalink | No comments yet | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Who is linking?

  • Daily Geology Photos – May 14

    Dave Schumaker
    14 May 2012 | 11:22 am
    A summary of photos posted on flickr today, tagged with “geology.” Displayed below are 77 geology-related photos were added to flickr today. Similar Posts on Geology News: Daily Geology Photos – May 10 Daily Geology Photos – May 19 Daily Geology Photos – May 21 Daily Geology Photos – May 15 Daily Geology Photos – May 2 The Geology News Blog, 2012. | Permalink | No comments yet | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Who is linking?

  • Daily Geology Photos – May 13

    Dave Schumaker
    13 May 2012 | 11:24 am
    A summary of photos posted on flickr today, tagged with “geology.” Displayed below are 35 geology-related photos were added to flickr today. Similar Posts on Geology News: Daily Geology Photos – May 10 Daily Geology Photos – May 19 Daily Geology Photos – May 21 Daily Geology Photos – May 15 Daily Geology Photos – May 2 The Geology News Blog, 2012. | Permalink | No comments yet | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Who is linking?

  • Daily Geology Photos – May 12

    Dave Schumaker
    12 May 2012 | 11:23 am
    A summary of photos posted on flickr today, tagged with “geology.” Displayed below are 51 geology-related photos were added to flickr today. Similar Posts on Geology News: Daily Geology Photos – May 10 Daily Geology Photos – May 19 Daily Geology Photos – May 21 Daily Geology Photos – May 15 Daily Geology Photos – May 2 The Geology News Blog, 2012. | Permalink | No comments yet | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Who is linking?

  • Daily Geology Photos – May 11

    Dave Schumaker
    11 May 2012 | 11:22 am
    A summary of photos posted on flickr today, tagged with “geology.” Displayed below are 33 geology-related photos were added to flickr today. Similar Posts on Geology News: Daily Geology Photos – May 10 Daily Geology Photos – May 19 Daily Geology Photos – May 21 Daily Geology Photos – May 15 Daily Geology Photos – May 2 The Geology News Blog, 2012. | Permalink | No comments yet | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Who is linking?
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    geology « WordPress.com Tag Feed

  • General Geology/Geography of Taiwan

    melissakgriffith
    10 May 2012 | 12:15 am
    Tonight, I went to a very interesting dinner and lecture hosted by the Albuquerque International Association (AIA) titled “Expecting the Unexpected, Geophysical Catastrophes and Human Civilization“.  The speaker, Dr. Richard Aster from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, was wonderful and the lecture inspired me to delve a little into the geology/geography of Taiwan. Why not, right! (or perhaps you are still pondering on the ‘why’ portion and less on the ‘why not’; what can I say, I am a geek) Be prepared for the extreme academic nature of…

  • Geology Is the Science of the Earth

    harifromtheworldday
    9 May 2012 | 7:00 pm
    _The Earth, Our Home Let us begin our trip through the science at home, where most trips naturally b

  • Not Enough Hours in a Day!!!

    Henfield Guy
    9 May 2012 | 5:49 pm
    Heeeellllllloooooooo Blog Readers!!! :) Be VERY proud of me today! :) I have done a day of almost solid work!!! (which is quite an achievement considering that Wednesday is the day when I have the fewest subjects ;D) I haven’t actually stopped all day really, everything I have done has been rushed, and timed carefully to the nearest minute! I did have to watch some TV today, because otherwise that builds up and blocks other days of revision. So, let’s quickly run through my day, cos I’m tired and I don’t want to still be here in an hours time ;) Right, so my day…

  • Life in Desolation Canyon

    lmsinca
    9 May 2012 | 5:16 pm
    Haaaaaahaaaaaa, did I catch you with the title?  Since it’s a bit of a slow news day, except for the fact that Obama finally evolved, and I’m not particularly interested in controversy right this second, I’ll just go ahead and put up a boring post. I’m not sure if any of you will be interested in this or not but I thought I’d mention that our youngest daughter is off to Desolation Canyon again to finish her research in fluvial geology (her mountain pictured above).   She’s working on her Master’s at the Colorado School of Mines and will be finished with her thesis…

  • Mauilicious Vacation Part 5: Side Effect, Lava Lust

    LB
    9 May 2012 | 1:00 pm
    On Maui, or any island in the Hawaiian chain for that matter, there is one thing they have plenty of
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    Clastic Detritus

  • Things you should know about doing a PhD in science

    Brian Romans
    15 May 2012 | 7:56 am
    Chris Chambers over at the blog NeuroChambers has a great post up with some advice about doing a PhD in science. It’s a long post with a long list of tips/advice, but well worth reading in my opinion. First, a reality based statement about getting a PhD: … a PhD is hard. It’s meant to be hard, not because inflicting pain is necessarily fun, nor because some scientists are ‘dementors’, and not because your PhD is expected to solve the mysteries of the universe. It’s hard because it is an apprenticeship in science: a frustrating, triumphant, exhausting, and ultimately…

  • IODP 342: Scientific objectives and general information

    Brian Romans
    14 May 2012 | 2:01 pm
    In just 17 days I’ll be heading to Bermuda to board the JOIDES Resolution drill ship for IODP Expedition 342 to acquire cores of deep ocean sediment offshore the Grand Banks, northeastern Canada. I’ll be at sea for a full two months and see land again when we dock in St. John’s, Newfoundland in early August. The scientific objectives are explained in detail on this site, but, in short, the goal is to acquire a series of cores of deep-sea sediment that have been accumulating since as far back as the Late Cretaceous (~70 million years ago). The primary goal is to obtain a…

  • IODP Expedition 342 — A sneak preview

    Brian Romans
    6 May 2012 | 8:48 am
    In the spirit of a trailer for a summer blockbuster, here’s a short (2 minute) and fun video about Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 342 to the Grand Banks this June-July. I will be participating on this cruise as part of the science staff. I leave for this expedition in a few weeks and hope to get a more detailed post up before then. (I also hope to post during the expedition, which IODP encourages, but we’ll see how much time I have to do that.) In the meantime, if you’re interested in the scientific objectives of this expedition, check out the prospectus…

  • Friday Field Photo #168: Scorched Earth

    Brian Romans
    4 May 2012 | 7:26 am
    During my last trip down to Chilean Patagonia we spent a day in nearby Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, which had experienced a devastating wildfire some weeks earlier. The fire burned more than 31,000 acres and is thought to have been started by a careless tourist. By the time we went to the park the fire had been put out for several weeks, but the evidence was obvious. It was a surreal experience to walk around on a landscape that was very recently covered in a mix of low, dense (and sometimes prickly) vegetation and dense woods. With the exception of some charred roots, most of the ground…

  • A geological pilgrimage to the Late Cretaceous

    Brian Romans
    30 Apr 2012 | 6:29 pm
    This month’s Accretionary Wedge asked participants to discuss a place they would go (or did go) for a geological pilgrimage: I would like to define the pilgrimage as a single place, which is “geologically” unique,  relatively remote, and requires some difficulty to get to. If you have already done your geological pilgrimage, please share with us your experience. If you are still planning your pilgrimage, then let us know where your sacred geological spot is and why. Perhaps this is cheating, but instead of a geographic place, I’ve chosen a ‘place’ in Earth history…
 
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    Geotripper

  • Antelope Canyon - A Magical Place

    14 May 2012 | 6:33 pm
    Just a mini-blog today, a sort of picture sequence from the road. I'm sitting in a Subway in Kanab on the way to Kodachrome Basin for our next camp. I'm investigating a trip we are conducting through the educational division of AAPG. If you want to see what we will explore, check these pictures out...Antelope Canyon on the Navajo Nation outside Page, Arizona.The pictures almost have an almost spiritual feeling. I have to admit, however, that I did not photograph the many dozens of fellow photographers with whom we were standing shoulder to shoulder. The canyon was stunning, but crowded.

  • Not all the Rocks in Grand Canyon are Flat...

    13 May 2012 | 10:48 am
    It is sometimes too easy to fall into a perceptual trap when confronted by a place as amazing as the Grand Canyon. The Spaniards who first saw the canyon in the 1500's thought it was maybe a thousand feet deep, and the Colorado River only 6 feet wide. Going from viewpoint to viewpoint, one might think that the layers of the canyon are uniform...and flat.There are some important exceptions, which to me is what makes each viewpoint unique and interesting. For instance, if you walk to the east from Grandview Point, you can catch the Sinking Ship, and see that large structures offset or bend the…

  • If You Have to be Stuck Somewhere, It Might As Well Be Here

    12 May 2012 | 11:46 am
    I mentioned in yesterday's post about the engine worship ritual method of fixing broken down cars. I didn't realize that Mrs. Geotripper was playing the anthropologist yesterday and taking pictures. As some of you may know, the Engine Ritual is a highly structured approach to appealing to the car gods to make a car run again. All the men in the group (this is a religious issue, not a sexist issue; I'm told by Mrs. Geotripper that women look for the trouble-shooting section of the car manual) must gather around the open hood of the car. They form a semi-circle with the high priest (the…

  • What's Missing From This Picture? Only a billion years or so...

    12 May 2012 | 1:11 am
    Geology is good for perspective. The bookends of this particular day: the very very long hour spent trying to restart a dead car in a remote canyon, and a billion years in one hand. I'm on the road researching a field seminar for the AAPG in Arizona and Nevada, and I saw some incredible things.1.7 billion years ago, fragments of continental crust were colliding to form the core of a new North American continent. Those mountains climbed to the sky, rivaling the Himalaya or the Andes in their grandeur. The time was so ancient that not a bit of life existed on the mountain flanks. The…

  • If I've Told You Once, I've Told You a Thousand Times...oh wait...

    9 May 2012 | 9:02 pm
    I have told you a thousand times. This is my 1000th post here at Geotripper.What have I been telling you? Mostly I've been talking about the science of geology, and the very real wonders of living on this planet. I'm hoping that even if you can't get out and see the places I have talked about that you can sense some of the awe that I feel when I look at rocks and landscapes, and see the powerful forces that have shaped our planet for 4.5 billion years. I also secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) hope that you might develop an appreciation for our terrestrial home, and find ways to protect…
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    Arizona Geology

  • Registration open for Volcanism in the Southwest conference

    15 May 2012 | 11:35 pm
    Registration is open for the Volcanism in the American Southwest Conference to be held in Flagstaff, October 18-20, 2012.     This meeting provides an opportunity for volcanologists, land managers, and emergencyresponders to meet, converse, and begin to plan protocols for any future volcanic activity in the American Southwest states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah, which host Holocene volcanic eruption deposits and are vulnerable to future volcanic activity. The last volcanic eruption in Arizona was about 1,000 years ago in the San Francisco volcanic field…

  • Minerals bills in Congress

    15 May 2012 | 10:42 pm
     The U.S. mining industryis lining up support for H.R. 4402, a bill that would force federal agencies to complete their review of strategic and critical minerals within 30 months,  which is being voted on tomorrow in the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources. Two weeks ago, president and CEO of the National Mining Association, Hal Quinn, testified before members of the House Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee in support of Rep. Mark Amodei’s, R-Nev., National Strategic and Critical Minerals Production Act of 2012(H.R. 4402). According to an email from NMA, "Mr. Quinn…

  • Arizona could help fill helium shortage

    15 May 2012 | 10:21 pm
    The threat of a worldwide helium storage is attracting front page headlines (Tucson's Arizona Daily Star) and a Congressional bill to halt the near give-away of U.S. reserves.    But neither of the stories I read yesterday mentioned Arizona's helium resources and efforts underway to develop them.The St. John's carbon dioxide field in eastern Arizona could be equally considered a helium field.   A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about Kinder Morgan's purchase of the field and plans to produce large amounts of CO2 for enhanced oil recovery in New Mexico and Texas.  But helium…

  • Web tools to track wildfires

    15 May 2012 | 10:04 pm
    The Arizona State Forester, Scott Hunter, has released a new online interactive mapping application that allows you to track the progress of wildfires across the state.  The version at right is a static pdf version but the live version allows you to zoom in and see the fire perimeters.The service is similar to the federal GeoMAC site that only covers large fires.

  • Potash company to acquire big ranch near Holbrook

    14 May 2012 | 11:31 pm
    Apache Junction-based Passport Potash announced today an agreement to buy the 41,000 acre Fitzgerald Ranch to add to their land holdings over the Holbrook potash deposit.  [Right, Passport land holdings and original boundaries of the national park. Credit, Passport Potash]The company said that "On closing of this acquisition Passport's holdings will include approximately 70,000 acres of contiguous, royalty free, private land. Combined with Passport's 52,000 acres of public land, their land package will comprise over 122,000 acres." Passport noted that: There is no royalty attached to the…
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    Dean W. Armstrong

  • Improvements on my first cigar box guitar build.

    Dean W. Armstrong
    26 Apr 2012 | 10:25 pm
    To improve my first cigar box guitar build, I added a piece of 2" x 1/4" mahogany mull casing (ripped to 1.5") to the neck. I sanded it multiple times and applied multiple layers of clear shellac to it. I glued it to the neck with wood glue (while clamping I ran into issues with ink bleed on my clamp softeners). Then I also added fret marks with a silver sharpie (which then smeared while trying to clean things). I also screwed the neck to the cigar box in two places hoping to eliminate some odd buzzing/high harmonics that were occuring. Some of them were coming from the nut and/or bridge…

  • First Cigar Box Guitar build

    Dean W. Armstrong
    8 Feb 2012 | 10:34 am
    A few photos of my first cigar box guitar. For cigar boxes both Hyde Park Cigars (the place on 53rd and Harper) and Binny's have them, although the latter's supply is variable. The neck is 1x2 poplar from home depot. I bought the tuning pegs for about $10 from C.B Gitty and the strings online. The saddle is a hard drive spindle top as are the coverings on the sound holes. The bridge and neck are just pieces of the cigar box. There is a piezo pickup inside. So, the errors made in this build were: the holes drilled for the tuning pegs need to be aligned better. I drilled 1/4" holes with a…

  • Audio Acoustic Amplifiers with no electronics

    Dean W. Armstrong
    6 Feb 2012 | 4:15 pm
    Amplifying audio without the use of any electronics: Audio Acoustic Amplifiersfrom Experimental Musical Instruments.

  • "Wrong Emphasis on the Wrong Syllable"

    Dean W. Armstrong
    2 Dec 2011 | 2:17 pm
    I'm just putting this here because I would doubt Facebook or Twitter would archive very well. Mike Myers, in the movie "View from the Top", has a line "You put the wrong em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble". I was just watching the 1933 movie "Moonlight and Pretzels" at the Northwest Chicago Film Society showing, and a character in that movie does the exact same joke!

  • Refrigerator payback

    Dean W. Armstrong
    22 Aug 2011 | 7:46 pm
    My current fridge (a Hotpoint Foodcenter 24) is older than I am. It was originally the avocado color shown in the ad; at some point someone painted it black but only the front and the sides they could reach; the top back and sides were not. The spread control is appreciated but not used. The giant dust bunnies of a never cleaned coil underneath was not. I measured the yearly annual cost of this fridge at $290 a year with a kill-a-watt; at that rate, a really nice replacement will begin paying for itself in six years. The previous owners had this fridge for 15 years and paid over $4000 in…
 
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    Geology News

  • Vietnam Oil and Natural Gas Report

    Geology.com
    15 May 2012 | 11:44 am
    “Vietnam is an important oil supplier to regional and domestic markets and may emerge as a significant natural gas supplier in the next decade. Vietnam’s oil production has declined overall since 2004, after several years of steady increases and became a net oil importer in 2011.” Quoted from the Energy Information Administration country analysis brief.

  • Uranium Drilling was Up in 2011

    Geology.com
    15 May 2012 | 11:40 am
    United States uranium exploration drilling was 5,441 holes covering 3.3 million feet in 2011. Development drilling was 5,156 holes and 3.0 million feet. Combined, total uranium drilling was 10,597 holes covering 6.3 million feet, 47 percent more holes than in 2010.

  • Worthless Marcellus Leases in New York

    Geology.com
    15 May 2012 | 11:15 am
    After a long moratorium on Marcellus Shale drilling in New York, a variety of proposed regulations and local bans on drilling could render millions of leased acres as worthless.

  • 17% of Nigerian Oil is Stolen?

    Geology.com
    15 May 2012 | 11:06 am
    An article on the Reuters.com website repoerts that 17% of the crude oil production in Nigeria is being lost to theft.

  • Ohio Shale Oil and Natural Gas

    Geology.com
    15 May 2012 | 9:53 am
    Jack Gerard of the American Petroleum Institute comments on opportunities for oil and natural gas production from shales in Ohio.
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    Volcano World : Supplement

  • Rise and fall of underwater volcano revealed by sonar

    Robert Peckyno
    13 May 2012 | 7:41 pm
    More great stuff from the researchers studying Monowai and undersea volcanism near Tonga.  In a period of less than a month, researchers noted “huge changes” in the height of the volcano – according to a recent article in Nature Geoscience  (Watts, A.B., Peirce, C., Grevemeyer, I., Paulatto, M., Stratford, W., Bassett, D., Hunter, J., Kalnins, L., de Ronde, C. & Lamarche, G. 2012. Rapid rates of growth and collapse at Monowai submarine volcano, Kermadec arc. Nature Geoscience)   This research into the Monowai volcano provides a fascinating insight into the…

  • Fantastic Pictures from Bezymianny

    Robert Peckyno
    9 Mar 2012 | 12:04 am
    Culmination of the volcano eruption at 21:40 UTC on March 08, 2012. Photo by Yu. Demyanchuk. Dr. Olga Girina from KVERT sent a message with a link to this excellent website with current pictures from Bezymianny.   Very very cool stuff!

  • Volcanoes Vex Air Force Base Relocation

    Robert Peckyno
    8 Mar 2012 | 11:36 pm
    The proposal to relocate the 18th Aggressor Squadron’s 21 F-16s from Eielson, located 25 miles southeast of Fairbanks, to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage is intended to save money. It’s part of an $8.7 billion dollar cut to the Air Force budget. Alaska is one of 33 states with bases affected by proposed cuts. Alaska’s congressional delegation and Gov. Sean Parnell expressed that concern in a letter sent Wednesday to the Air Force’s secretary and chief of staff stating that “When volcanoes near Anchorage erupt, the air space can close.  While the Air Force has…

  • Earthquake Swarm Rumbles in Hawaii

    Robert Peckyno
    25 Feb 2012 | 11:24 am
    Current Seismic Activity The U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory reports the Kaoiki seismic swarm continues about three miles Northwest of Halemaumau Crater with increased activity overnight with two magnitude 4+ earthquakes Friday (Feb 24). As of 7:15 a.m. Friday 78 earthquakes were recorded in the previous 24 hours with 74 of these were related to the earthquake swarm, two were in the upper East rift zone and two were on the South flank faults. Click the map for a continuously updated map of earthquakes in Hawaii

  • February 15-21, 2012

    Robert Peckyno
    25 Feb 2012 | 11:09 am
    Volcanoes with reported activity include: Cleveland, Chuginadak Island | Kanaga, Andreanof Islands | Reventador, Ecuador | Tinakula, Santa Cruz Islands (SW Pacific) | Tungurahua, Ecuador | Turrialba, Costa Rica | Bezymianny, Central Kamchatka (Russia) | Hierro, Canary Islands (Spain) | Karymsky, Eastern Kamchatka (Russia) | Kilauea, Hawaii (USA) | Kizimen, Eastern Kamchatka (Russia) | Popocatépetl, México | Puyehue-Cordón Caulle, Central Chile | Sakura-jima, Kyushu |  Shiveluch, Central Kamchatka (Russia) As always, you can view loads of additional background information at…
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    Earth Learning Idea

  • 'Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink'

    14 May 2012 | 6:32 am
    'Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink' is an ELI activity investigating how to get clean water from dirty 'pond' water. This investigation could be used in any lessons involving discussions about water supply. People have always needed to find clean water to drink. It is a vital factor in where people can live.The activity is one of many in our Resources and Environment category and can be found, along with many other ideas, on our website.

  • Amazing technology

    9 May 2012 | 1:31 pm
    Video of a sandbox equipped with a Kinect 3D camera and a projector to project a real-time colored topographic map with contour lines onto the sand surface. The sandbox lets virtual water flow over the surface. Find out more. Perhaps we could use this video to accompany 'Dam burst danger'

  • Identifying minerals - use your sense(s)!

    7 May 2012 | 6:31 am
    Identifying minerals - use your sense(s)! - by doing this activity pupils can appreciate that we use several senses in identifying unknown objects, often without realising it. They will be encouraged to use a range of tests on minerals and not to rely on snap judgements based on sight alone. They will have to learn to work co-operatively when many in the group are disadvantaged by being blindfolded. Also they must memorise the properties of several minerals by carrying out tests themselves.This activity reinforces that minerals are substances of well-definedcomposition which have reliable…

  • Sandcastles and slopes

    30 Apr 2012 | 5:26 am
    What makes sandcastles and slopes collapse? Ask pupils if they have ever made a big sandcastle. What was the steepest angle theycould build the side walls of the castle? Could they make a steeper wall if the sand was dampened? Questions like these go well beyond the playground or beach. Many people have been killed by the collapse of unstable slopes of loose rock or sand.This ELI investigates the factors which affect the angle at which loose materials rest before they begin to slide.This is one of many activities in our Earth energy/processes category. Activities relating to landslides can be…

  • Opengeoscience 2: tilted and folded rocks

    23 Apr 2012 | 1:47 pm
    The new ELI today is the second of our Opengeoscience activities. By doing this activity, you will be able to find on geological maps:-- shallow-dipping sedimentary rocks- vertical rocks- folded sedimentary rocks - unconformityYou will be able to explore how geological features appear on maps and how the formations are linked to relief features.Brilliant resource!Let us know how you get on.This activity is the 130th practical Earthlearningidea to be found on our website - search for an Earth-related topic you want to know about.
 
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    geosciblog - plus

  • A Few Debate Tactics for Conservatives/Libertarians

    9 May 2012 | 11:13 am
    [Disclaimer:  I have never had any sort of debate training.  I have simply observed conversations and engaged in logical thought as to what was effective and what wasn't. I often practice class lectures on various subjects, so as to be prepared. Likewise, it doesn't hurt to engage in debate practice-sessions before the fact, wherein you imagine yourself in a one-on-one debate, whether in person or on Facebook.  If this imagined debate is with a longitme "Modern Liberal" friend or relative, maintaining decorum and civility is paramount in order to; 1)…

  • A Facebook Challenge....

    8 May 2012 | 8:02 am
    In order to attempt to be as consistent and politically honest as possible, you need to periodically do the "mirror test", i.e., if the actions and policies of Presidents (of a particular party) greatly concern you, do you apply the same standards and concerns to the other major party, i.e., the party which you favor? If an administration does something hazardous to our freedom, are you willing to step forward and criticize "your" party? If you perceive(d) that a particular administration, e.g., Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush 41 and/or Bush 43, did something illegal, immoral, unsustainable,...why…

  • Why Modern Liberals Ain't - Agenda 21

    3 May 2012 | 1:24 pm
    Put aside an hour and a half, for the sake of the future and listen to these words from Rosa Koire, a Liberal Democrat from the San Francisco Bay-area./From her organization's website Democrats Against U.N. Agenda 21: "UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development is implemented worldwide to inventory and control all land, all water, all minerals, all plants, all animals, all construction, all means of production, all information, and all human beings in the world. INVENTORY AND CONTROL."More on the subject from Rosa Koire - "Behind the Green Mask" (set aside another hour and a half):More on Agenda 21…

  • Socialist Elizabeth Warren - Long Lost Cherokee Princess?...

    2 May 2012 | 10:22 am
    I don't think so.From this article and a Facebook post: "Big deal. Being 1/32nd Cherokee is not unusual for someone from Oklahoma or Georgia or the Carolinas. Our family history suggests that one of my great-great-great grandmothers was Cherokee. Cynthia Harriet Reynolds was from Alabama and married George Bowman Hudlow. Their daughter Paralee married James Lumpkin Heard and their daughter Emma was my paternal-paternal great grandmother.Was Cynthia 100% or 50% Cherokee? Don't know. I ran across info on the internet that her mother may have been adopted by a white family in Alabama. So I…

  • Why Modern Liberals Ain't - Political Evolution and its Blowback

    25 Apr 2012 | 9:11 am
    In response to an American Thinker post..."Been there, had that happen, especially with the advent of Facebook. My evolution from Classical Liberal (not a Leftist) to a Libertarian/Conservative has taken years to transpire. Influenced by my Dad (a southern Democrat of his time) I am an "information sponge" and a radio talk show "junkie". When he would listen to the Sunday radio broadcasts of Drew Pearson - in the 1960s - as a kid, I was fascinated by someone not just reporting the news, but talking about the news and what it meant. Especially when Pearson would authoritatively say "I…
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    GeoEcology

  • eBird, the power of crowd science

    26 Apr 2012 | 12:48 pm
    eBird is a user-friendly online bird listing application, and much more. Crowd science, small contributions by very large numbers of participants, powers continental-scale analysis of biological diversity. eBird applies the principles of crowd science to birds, their distribution and abundance.The Audubon Christmas Bird Count is the original crowd science application, 112 years of data! eBird is fairly new on the scene but has taken the lead in moving crowd science forward for birds and offering convenient and FREE data storage and light data processing for YOU. eBird enables you to track and…

  • North American Bird Phenology Program

    24 Apr 2012 | 9:57 am
    phe-nol-o-gy, the scientific study of cyclical and seasonal natural phenomena in relation to climate, plants and animals.The North American Bird Phenology Program houses six million Migration Observer Cards hand-written during nearly a century of record-keeping by amateur and professional field ornithologists. Today, you can help digitize the huge data file by transcribing the cards, making this wealth of information available for modern processing and analysis.Migration data card, 1922., one of six million on file.Visit the North American Bird Phenology Program to join this monumental…

  • Haiku for a late winter day

    11 Feb 2011 | 8:07 am
    blue sky on bright snow loud bite of winter ice; March to watery green

  • Coldest day of winter

    10 Feb 2011 | 7:37 am
           Today, my routine drive across Delaware County, Ohio registered below zero readouts on my vehicle thermometer from -2 to -8 degrees F. The below zero temperatures today, our season lows, do not telegraph the inexorable seasonal change underway. Ohio maple sugar season will begin next week, without fail. Sap will rise in sun-warmed trees as daytime temperatures reach the mid-forties.       The seasonal symphony of careening, colliding polar air masses is nearly past. Mountains of piled air, high pressure zones holding arctic…

  • 2010 ties 2005 as hottest year

    4 Feb 2011 | 5:49 am
    Another hot year, globally speakingThe winter of 2010 made many Midwesterner's wonder if we are headed for another ice age! Deep snow and cold were reminiscent of winters long past. Nevertheless, NASA reports weather data analysis indicating that 2010 tied with 2005 as the globe's hottest year since temperature records have been kept."Global surface temperatures in 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest on record, according to an analysis released Wednesday by researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The two years differed by less than 0.018°F. The difference is…
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    The Landslide Blog

  • Flash flood in Nepal kills at least 15, with up to 36 more missing

    6 May 2012 | 2:23 am
    Yesterday the Seti River in Kaski District in Nepal was affected by a catastrophic and very sudden flash flood.  The flood affected the villages of Kharapani in Sardikhola VDC; Sadal in Machhapuchhre VDC; Yamdi; and Ramghat in Kaski district.  To date 15 people are confirmed to have been killed, but the toll will inevitably rise.  Initial estimates are that there are a further 36 people missing, including three tourists.  For further news see the post on my main blogThis is an interesting event as the flood was clearly very large.  In most cases in Nepal such…

  • Investigating the Tumbi Quarry landslide in Papua New Guinea

    1 Feb 2012 | 4:00 am
    Despite widespread calls for an investigation of the Tumbi Quarry landslide in Papua New Guinea, and a pledge from the PNG Government to undertake such an inquiry, there is little evidence of action.  Given the suggestions, at the moment with no hard evidence either way in the public domain, that quarrying operations for the Exxon-Mobil LNG pipeline project may have played a part in the initiation of the landslide, this is somewhat unfortunate.  RNZI has today posted an article from which this quote is taken:"Christine Yango denies that the project is to blame for the landslide,…

  • An update on the Tumbi Quarry (Papua New Guinea) landslide

    31 Jan 2012 | 1:56 am
    The landslide a week ago in Papua New Guinea continues to generate a great deal of noise in that part of the world.  The confirmed death toll is now 25 people, but that number is expected to rise.  However, given the size of the landslide, I wonder whether it is really possible to recover all of the victims.  Only four bodies have been recovered to date.There are now some better images of the landslide available online.  This one, from the Australian, appears to show the head-scarp…

  • Placeholder

    30 Jan 2012 | 12:22 am
    Placeholder for a new domain...

  • Intriguing landslide of the week – catastrophic bluff collapse at WE Energies plant at Oak Creek in Wisconsin

    1 Nov 2011 | 3:15 am
    Summary: An initial report of a landslide that occurred yesterday at the WE Energies electricity generating station in Wisconsin, USA.  Some thoughts on possible causes are included.In Wisconsin yesterday a landslide occurred at the WE Energies power station complex near to Oak Creek in southern Wisconsin.  This is the site, which is located on the western edge of Lake Michigan:The landslide has occurred on the southern side of the complex in an area that is being developed for pollution control equipment (presumably sulphur scrubbers or suchlike).  It appears to be a fairly…
 
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    Riparian Rap

  • Matt Kuchta's science in slow motion

    7 May 2012 | 1:40 pm
    [This is the first in a series of posts in which we'll feature some of our many interesting and impressive colleagues.  Stay tuned for more.]"To me, good science looks cool," Matt Kuchta, professor of geology at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, says.When Kuchta has anything to do with it, science looks awesome.In the past few months, he's been using a high-speed video camera to show events in super slow motion.Like this one, which shows stress and strain in gelation during a collision.Or this one, showing bank collapse in an Emriver Em2 model at 1,000 frames per second.Or a slow-motion…

  • Amazing augmented reality Kinect sandbox.

    6 May 2012 | 4:43 pm
    Oliver Kreylos at UC Davis has just posted this video showing an amazing hands on "augmented reality" (AR) tool built with a sandbox, Microsoft Kinect sensor, and a digital projector.  From the project home page:  Together with the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center, Lawrence Hall of Science, and ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center, we are involved in an NSF-funded project on informal science education for freshwater lake and watershed science. As part of this project, we are primarily developing 3D visualization applications to teach earth science concepts, but we…

  • Emriver models in space!

    21 Apr 2012 | 5:09 pm
     An Emriver Em2 has boldly gone where none has gone before!One of our models was featured on the flight deck of Blast Beyond, a space-themed children’s science show on PBS affiliate KCOS-13 in El Paso, Tex.J.R. Lujan and Martin Christiansen, National Park Service Rangers from the Chamizal National Memorial in El Paso, taught “cadets” on the show about river habitats, morphology and the effects of building in a watershed.The El Paso Emriver is helping teach lessons in history, too.  In that region, a hundred-year-long border dispute was the result of the Rio Grande River…

  • Grazie professore Zolezzi!

    12 Apr 2012 | 10:46 am
    Steve, Guido Zolezzi and Christina talk around the Em3 in the MorrisLibrary rotunda on SIU campus.Last week we helped SIU-Carbondale’s NSF-funded IGERT program welcome Guido Zolezzi for a special lecture.  Dr. Zolezzi is a professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Trento in Italy.Dr. Zolezzi heads the European SMART (Science for Management of Rivers and their Tidal Systems) program, an interdisciplinary doctoral partnership much like SIUC’s IGERT program.He gave a fascinating talk on the downstream effects of dam releases in European rivers.  His work…

  • Em2 number 100 ships!

    6 Apr 2012 | 2:11 pm
    Last week we shipped Emriver Em2 number 100 to Oglala Lakota College in South Dakota. Our geomodels now reach thousands of people -- students, citizens, and decision-makers.Six years ago, when I was building these models in our garage, my wife, Kate, said, “give your river models to the world.”   She knew this would be a labor of love, not profit.  She was right, and in 2007, reluctantly, I gave up my well-paying consulting work and we bought a building and hired a few people to help.  Then the economy tanked, and education budgets were slashed.  The first two…
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    Adventures in the world of Geology

  • How to be a Volcano Stalker

    2 May 2012 | 1:57 am
    Have a volcano you just adore? Wish you could gaze lovingly at it 24/7? Can't spend forever on its flanks? Never fear, the internet is here!The internet makes it very easy to stalk your favorite volcano, as long as the volcano is widely studied.... in a populated area... and not one of those ones no one else has heard of (hipster)!But seriously....There are several tools online which you can use to keep up to date on many volcanoes. You can easily find the most up to date information on a specific volcano by looking up the volcano observatory that monitors it (if there is one that…

  • Etna! Katmai! Volcanoes!

    25 Apr 2012 | 6:34 pm
    I shall call this another entry into the sporadic lunch time blogging series!Etna, Etna, Etna....I really just wanted to share with you an amazing, and BEAUTIFUL photo that popped up on the Volcano group on facebook.I mean just look at that! WOW! That photo makes my heart melt. I really have nothing else to say about this other than LOOK AT THIS AWESOME PHOTO! I did take the time to look up the weekly activity report from the Global Volcanism Program and according to them, this paroxysm is the 25th since January 2011 and followed 11 days of quiescence. It took…

  • Avoiding writing

    22 Apr 2012 | 12:15 am
    Not me! I haven't been avoiding writing!I have. I find it really had to write after I have been coding and processing data all week. It has also been an interesting adjustment from the student life to working life. I am so used to not having any fun, just working non stop and being stressed. Now I work 8-5 and then have time to enjoy life! You would think this would be easy, but I am finding it hard. I swing from wanted to work when I get home, to wanting to do NOTHING. I am trying to find a balance.I have started by starting some hobbies that do not involve the computer. I have started…

  • Interesting geology.

    30 Mar 2012 | 3:18 am
    I recently went to Palau! Limestone on top of volcanics!? How cool is that!? I bought a text book while I was there, and there is a section on the geology of the islands. Expect a write up soon! I was just too excited, and had to share! Seriously cool island.

  • Kicking Matlabs ass!

    25 Mar 2012 | 6:18 pm
    Work, travel more work, and coding. That has been my life for a while now. I find it hard to write after coding. Maybe it has something with changing my brain over from being totally literal, to something more fluid. Well it is raining right now (actually I would call this a tropical downpour), so I am trying to hand at writing again. I figured since coding is making it hard to write, I would write about coding. Or you know, the fact that I kicked ass at coding this week!I never realized that my love for being outside, and looking at rocks would require me to know how to write…
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    A LONG WAY TO GO

  • Never Ever Give Up

    7 May 2012 | 2:49 am
    Do you need some motivation? Then watch this truly touching and inspiring video. To say it with Arthur: "Never underestimate what you can acccomplish if you believe in yourself." It's always wonderful to come across stories like Arthur's, which show that nothing is impossible to the one who believes that he or she can overcome any limitation, aby obstacle, any injustice, any setback in life.

  • 24/7/365

    29 Apr 2012 | 3:07 pm
    Long time no see! Unfortunately, my posting frequency has become signifi-cantly lower again. I haven't lost my desire to share some of my impressions and thoughts on geoscience and career paths, but my professional life has become a different one during the last few months and I have to leave it at some essential blog entries from time to time. However, I'm still controversial and will continue

  • Seismologists Watch the Line

    26 Dec 2011 | 7:29 am
    Seismologists are a special breed because, basically, all we do is watch the line. Any resemblance to the similar-sounding song by Johnny Cash is strongly intended. Dr. Richard Alley, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at the Pennsylvania State University, takes a humorous musical look at why seismologists are important in our world. It is a pity that his videos haven't attracted more viewers

  • Questions From a Student #2

    23 Dec 2011 | 4:05 am
    Unfortunately, this is just my second blog entry in the series of questions from a student in more than one year (read #1), but looking back at all the developments since fall 2010, it has been getting really difficult to actually spend time on the basic questions in every student's life. I still have them, but they have taken a back seat. However, I have come across a central question time and

  • New Page: Photo Gallery

    10 Dec 2011 | 8:24 am
    In addition to the presentation of my experience as a student in the actual blog you are reading right now, I also want to share some of my sources of energy, which is the reason why I created additional web pages with motivational videos and inspirational quotes earlier this year. The feedback to these additional pages shows that it was a good decision to create them because several people told
 
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    Oakland Geology

  • Serpentine sanctuary

    Andrew
    15 May 2012 | 4:56 pm
    Serpentine Prairie is looking good these days. With a large portion of the land fenced off from dogs and people, and with the exotic trees removed, this strange ground is healing. See the boulders romping in their new space.

  • The hills of Mountain View

    Andrew
    5 May 2012 | 5:17 pm
    A few years ago in this space I called Mountain View Cemetery “a manicured showcase of the lower Oakland hills.” While you’re visiting the dead, it is pleasant to lift your eyes to the hills and consider the living world. The cemetery’s ground reflects its variety of bedrock geology, as shown on the geologic map. The entrance area is young stream fill with a fringe of higher, older Pleistocene alluvium (Qpaf), then going outward and upward we have the Franciscan sandstone (Kfn) and then Franciscan melange (dark blue) with large enclaves of greenstone, or altered basalt…

  • Haddon Hill from Ivy Hill

    Andrew
    29 Apr 2012 | 5:30 pm
    Ivy Hill is a small but distinct lobe of the big Pleistocene alluvial fan of central Oakland, a wedge between Park Boulevard and 8th Avenue bounded on the west by East 18th Street. This view is from nearly at its high point, at East 21st Street and 7th Avenue, looking at and over Haddon Hill. Click the photo for a 1150-pixel version. The tall trees beyond the telephone pole are in Smith Park, on Park Boulevard, at the foot of Haddon Hill. Beyond the hill are a whole bunch of buildings on the other side of Lake Merritt. Left of the light pole are the Elihu Harris building and City Hall; to…

  • Haddon Hill

    Andrew
    22 Apr 2012 | 10:21 pm
    Lately I’ve been walking on the part of Oakland underlain by the large Pleistocene alluvial fan (see the city geologic map). As I go, I mentally map it into separate entities, and one of them is Haddon Hill, bounded by the lake, 580 and Park Boulevard. In the past I only saw the hill from the lake, as in this shot from New Year’s Day 2007. The west face of the hill, seen here, is quite steep. The opposite side of the hill slopes more gently down to the valley of Park Boulevard, and then the opposite side of Park is also quite steep. That doesn’t seem to be a general pattern,…

  • A real old-timer

    Andrew
    15 Apr 2012 | 4:08 pm
    Mountain View Cemetery is a fun place for geology. Not only are there the untouched hillsides and the knockers of local bedrock, but the monuments themselves are displays of fine stone from around the world. On my last visit, though, this one caught my eye. It’s an example of the oldest stone in the United States, the Morton Gneiss from southwestern Minnesota. I mentioned it a few weeks ago in a KQED Quest Science Blogs post before finding this specimen. Touching it will put you in contact with something 3,524 million years old, more than three-fourths of the planet’s age. Let me…
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    Accidental Remediation

  • field oversight II

    15 May 2012 | 7:29 pm
    I wrote a post ages ago about some of the politics of doing field oversight on another environmental firm - how, even in a situation where your clients may be at odds, you generally work fine together.Performing field oversight is generally a job left to lower-level field people. It's not terribly taxing, and the field representative who's doing the technical work generally knows what to do. In fact, it's often used as training. After I wrote that post, I found myself in a new situation - I was the person to be overseen, and the person there to keep tabs on me had never seen this stuff…

  • follow up - part 1

    14 May 2012 | 6:21 pm
    I've had a hard couple of weeks and I fell off the blog-posting wagon. So I'm going to try another theme week as a prompt for new posts. This week's theme is "follow up". I've been posting for about 4 years now, so I figured it's time for some updates on old posts.Today, I'm revisiting "filing follies," which I wrote early last year. I complained that my documents that needed filing sat in the admin person's internal mailbox for months on end.It turned out that this woman, who's been with the organization for about a million years, does not use her mailbox. She didn't know where (what?) it…

  • traffic sensing?

    1 May 2012 | 8:20 pm
    After I raved about my GPS' traffic sensing here, I have to admit that I've had a serious problem recently - the traffic sensing on my GPS has been useless for most of the last month.I've been driving in multiple regions and for extended periods, and have been unable to get any traffic signals, except for the odd time when there's no traffic on the road at all. Weekends, rush hour, off-peak, major metropolitan areas, rural areas, everywhere. What the hell use is traffic sensing only when there's no traffic?! And why am I paying $9 per month for a non-functional service?I did a search for "GPS…

  • 400 posts

    30 Apr 2012 | 7:26 pm
    Great. Blogspot decides to change everything just when I need to root through a huge number of posts to create a word cloud. And then my computer doesn't play well with wordle.net any more.In spite of a multitude of obstacles, the word cloud for the last 100 posts is attached. For the last blog milestones, see here for 300, here for 200, and here for 100.

  • taking a pillow

    18 Apr 2012 | 4:52 pm
    I sleep on my stomach, so I need to sleep on a hard, flat pillow. I almost always have a problem with hotel pillows. Either they're way too high and I get a crick in my neck, or they're too squashy and I end up feeling as if I'm suffocating. What I end up doing is either sleeping on the very corner of the pillow that squashes down the most, or rummaging for a spare blanket to fold up to the correct height. Or, going without entirely.I always meant to bring a pillow from home (hell, I mentioned this in a post ages ago), but I never thought of it until it was too late, i.e. I was getting ready…
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    goodSchist

  • My Visit to CERN

    Chris
    25 Apr 2012 | 5:59 pm
    Hello fellow science nerds. Today, thanks to m’lady’s forward thinking and eagerness to book well in advance, I had the great privilege of visiting CERN in Geneva. We were heading to Geneva anyway as part of a world trip. So you don’t have to incur the extremely high prices of Geneva, I thought I’d share my experience as best I could. So let’s start. The Globe at CERN in Geneva. Since we’re visitors to Geneva we got free public transport passes, so getting to CERN from our hotel (on the tram) was free. The Globe is an exhibit and one of the more…

  • The podClast – episode 17

    Chris
    27 Feb 2011 | 12:19 am
    Episode 17 of the podClast is ready for download. You can grab the mp3 here (26.1 MB, 50:07), or subscribe through iTunes here. You can subscribe to the podClast RSS feed here. Or you can listen to it right here: Episode 17 of the podClast concentrates on the 6.3 magnitude earthquake with struck Christchurch on 22nd of February 2011 which has tragically resulted in thousands on injuries and hundreds of deaths. We chat about the seismic setting and the human element of this disaster. Also discussed is the concept of the anthropocene, a proposed new geological epoch, age or chron (whichever…

  • The podClast – episode 16

    Chris
    6 Sep 2010 | 10:02 pm
    Episode 16 of the podClast is ready for download. You can grab the mp3 here (18.3 MB, 39:40), or subscribe through iTunes here. You can subscribe to the podClast RSS feed here. Or you can listen to it right here: It’s episode 16 of the podClast. This episode discusses the magnitude 7.1 earthquake which struck Christchurch New Zealand at 04:36  NZST on 2001-09-04. We discuss the damages, the geological setting and other bits and pieces relating to New Zealand seismicity. Participants Chris - goodSchist (@yorrike) Ron - Ron Schott’s Geology Home Companion Blog (@rschott) Chris…

  • The podClast – episode 15

    Chris
    2 Sep 2010 | 11:40 pm
    Episode 15 of the podClast is ready for download. You can grab the mp3 here (22.4 MB, 48:41), or subscribe through iTunes here. You can subscribe to the podClast RSS feed here. Or you can listen to it right here: It’s episode 15 of the podClast. Double earthquakes in Tonga, massive floods in Pakistan, single earthquakes in Haiti and California and a whole lot more. It’s a slow motion tsunami of geological discussion. Participants Chris - goodSchist (@yorrike) Ron - Ron Schott’s Geology Home Companion Blog (@rschott) Chris – Highly Allocthonous (@allocthounous)…

  • Tsunami Reporting Hall of Shame

    Chris
    28 Feb 2010 | 4:14 pm
    The massive M 8.8 earthquake in Chile resulted in a tragic loss of life which, as of 2010-03-01, numbered more than 700. We won’t know the full extent of the damage inflicted on Chile or the interesting geological information we can gather from this event for a while yet. What we have been able to determine, or at least what we’ve been reminded in the 24-48 hours following the earthquake and the Pacific-wide tsunami alert, however, is that the Main Stream Media, as a whole, is absolutely clueless when it comes to geology or science in general. Perhaps enamored by such…
 
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    Mineral Web

  • Range Resources Test Doubles Marcellus Well IPs

    RTDukes
    27 Apr 2012 | 11:48 am
    Range Resources tested reduced cluster spacing on two wells in a producing unit in the Marcellus Shale. Range Marcellus Acreage Map - Click to Enlarge The results are intriguing to say the least. Production came online at roughly double rates of wells that didn’t receive the treatment. The Marcellus has already proven to be resilient to low natural gas prices and an uplift in individual well performance of 100% will only further entrench the Marcellus as a leading shale gas play. In the first quarter of 2012, Range wells across the board averaged 6.6 mmcf/d and 252 b/d of NGLs and…

  • Chesapeake ‘Force Majeure’ Gas Lease Case In New York

    RTDukes
    9 Apr 2012 | 9:21 am
    Chesapeake and StatoilHydro’s landowner court case in New York is now going to both federal court and arbitration. The case is over whether or not a state moratorium on hydraulic fracturing is sufficient to declare “force majeure”. Chesapeake acquired leases covering thousands of acres in New York at low prices. Many leases signed before the Marcellus rush included lease bonuses of just $3 per acre. When you consider bonuses that have reached above $5,000 per acre in the better portions of the play, you begin to understand why Chesapeake will fight to hold its current…

  • Shell’s Marcellus Cracker Plant Planned for Monaca, PA – NW of Pittsburgh

    RTDukes
    22 Mar 2012 | 12:14 pm
    Shell finally announced the location of its highly anticipated cracker plant in the Appalachian region. Shell was courted by Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, but eventually decided on locating the plant in Monaca, Pennsylvania.  All three states were lobbying for the location of the multi-billion dollar facility because it will be the first plant of its kinds built in the area in decades and will likely support thousands of jobs during construction. The complex will include an ethane cracker and potentially polyethylene and mono-ethylene glycol units. All the aforementioned products…

  • Natural Gas Prices Hit Prompt Month 10-Year Lows – Royalty Pain

    RTDukes
    9 Mar 2012 | 8:26 am
    Natural Gas prices hit 10-year prompt month lows of $2.30/mmbtu this week and there doesn’t look to be anything coming in the next several months that should change the current outlook. Oil & gas companies with significant exposure to natural gas prices have been lowering capital budgets for 2012 and shifting dollars from dry-gas targets to oil and liquids-rich plays. That will only magnify at $2 natural gas prices. Many companies made corporate acquisitions, leased acreage, and drilled billions of dollars in wells that need much more than $2 natural gas to pay back. The one saving…

  • Fracking Does Not Contaminate Drinking Water – UT Study

    RTDukes
    20 Feb 2012 | 10:15 am
    We can debate whether it should be called Fracking or Frac’ing for decades to come, but a new UT Study concludes that hydraulic fracturing does not in itself cause drinking water contamination.  The University of Texas Energy Institute study was not funded by industry dollars. The study noted that contamination is usually related to above ground spills or a mishandling of wastewater. All in all, it means the “Fracking Scare” is just a scare. As long as oil & gas business conduct business as safely as possible, just like every other business in the country, our drinking…
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