July 2012 on EARTH Magazine

Energy Notes: March 2011-2012

Tue, 19 Jun 2018 16:27:21 -0400

Credit: The American Geosciences Institute

U.S. Oil & Petroleum Imports (millions of barrels per day)

Oil and petroleum imports data are preliminary numbers taken from the American Petroleum Institute’s Monthly Statistical Report. For more information visit www.api.org.

Mineral Resource of the Month: Aluminum

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 14:51:35 -0400

E. Lee Bray, a mineral commodity specialist for the U.S. Geological Survey, compiled the following information about aluminum, an element that is the second-most used metal.

Bauxite, shown here being loaded onto a ship in Queensland, Australia, is the most commonly used aluminum ore. Credit: ©iStockphoto.com/John Carnemolla

Aluminum is the third-most abundant element in Earth’s crust, after oxygen and silicon. In nature, aluminum is bonded to iron, oxygen, potassium, silicon and other elements in common rock-forming minerals. In tropical conditions, potassium, silicon and other elements can be naturally leached from rocks to leave behind bauxite — a rock composed mainly of aluminum hydroxide with iron oxides and clay — which is the most commonly used aluminum ore. Aluminum has also been recovered from alunite, anorthosite and clay, but the cost of producing aluminum from these sources tends to be higher than from bauxite.

Travels in Geology: Trapped by geology in Iceland with flights grounded by volcanic ash, one writer seeks out the island's geologic wonders

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 13:23:08 -0400

With plentiful precipitation and glacial meltwater, Iceland is famous for its abundance of waterfalls, including Hraunfossar. Credit: David B. Williams

On a recent trip to Iceland, my wife and I learned a central fact of life while traveling around this isolated island country: We could never escape the geology. We quickly learned to be wary of hot water taps because the water — sourced directly from geothermal hot springs — came out at scalding temperatures. At a hostel in the small town of Laugarvatn, we more comfortably exploited this phenomenon by soaking in a hot pot — similar to one built by one of Iceland’s most famous early citizens, the 12th-century writer Snorri Sturluson, which you can still visit. We also ate delicious tomatoes grown in greenhouses heated by Iceland’s largest thermal spring, which gushes 180 liters of boiling water every second.

Getting There and Getting Around Iceland

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 12:47:35 -0400

Iceland Air is the main airline serving Iceland, but many major American and international carriers stop there. The airport is in Keflavik, about 50 kilometers from the capital city of Reykjavik. Public buses timed to flight arrivals run to and from Reykjavik.

Off the beaten path in the north of Iceland

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 12:44:01 -0400

Although many of Iceland’s best-known geologic features are in the south — on the southwest Reykjanes peninsula, near Keflavik airport and the capital city of Reykjavik, and along the southern coast Ring Road — the north shouldn’t be overlooked. Without entering the interior highlands, which often requires four-wheel-drive, one can skirt the border of Vatnajökull National Park to take in an array of sights from geothermal to glacial.

Benchmarks: July 1, 1912: Hawaiian Volcano Observatory officially becomes the first of its kind in U.S.

Mon, 01 Aug 2016 13:58:35 -0400

Thomas A. Jaggar Jr., seen here in 1916, prompted the establishment of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and served as its director from 1912 until 1940. Credit: USGS HVO.

Living on the fringe of an active volcano in Hawaii is a precarious venture. Because Hawaii’s shield volcanoes aren’t prone to explosive activity, you’re typically not threatened by violent eruptions such as would occur at Mount St. Helens, for example. On the other hand, the slow-moving, unpredictable lava flows can still overtake your home, even if it has avoided years of previous eruptions.

Down to Earth With: Geomorphologist Gregory Tucker

Tue, 13 Jan 2015 10:24:21 -0500

Gregory Tucker in the Grand Canyon. Credit: Courtesy of Gregory Tucker.

As an undergraduate anthropology student, Gregory Tucker thought math was a boring subject with abstract rules that didn’t relate to his life. Today, that “boring” subject provides the foundation for Tucker’s innovative research involving numerical modeling and unique field studies that recently earned him the European Geosciences Union’s 2012 Ralph Alger Bagnold Medal, one of the highest prizes in geomorphology.

Bare Earth Elements: Welcome to the GEOlympics

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 17:40:25 -0400

Let the GEOlympics begin! © Kathleen Cantner

William Smith's 1815 geological map of Britain. public domain

The limestone arch, Durdle Door, along the Jurassic Coast. © Saffron Blaze, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Fingals Cave, a cavernous seacave on the Scottish island of Staffa. © Karl Gruber, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Hutton's Unconformity -- younger, horizontal strata overlying older, upturned layers -- at Siccar Point. © dave souza, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

The thin, glacially carged Striding Edge near Helvellyn Peak in Lake District National Park. © Dominic Donnini

A geological decathlon through Great Britain

The games of the 30th Olympiad officially kick off today in London. Among the myriad events that draw many of the world’s best athletes, the decathlon perhaps requires more versatility than any other. Over two days, 10 events — from the 100-meter sprint to the long jump to the pole vault — test competitors’ speed, strength, agility and endurance.

How the school of rock came to be

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 15:51:55 -0400

The JOIDES Resolution. John Van Hoesen

In the late 1950s, a growing interest in better understanding the structure and composition of Earth resulted in the creation of the controversial Project Mohole. Although the name may sound better suited for an Isaac Asimov novel, it was indeed a real, albeit short-lived, attempt to drill through the boundary between the crust and mantle, called the Mohorovičić (Moho) discontinuity — an engineering feat yet to be achieved. The project led to the modern-day Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) — and eventually the School of Rock.

Trash-to-treasure: Turning nonrecycled waste into low-carbon fuel

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:45:27 -0400

Paper and cardboard commodity streams are part of the output of a materials recovery facility. John R. Fyffe

Americans produce more than four pounds of trash per person per day, amounting to 20 percent of the world’s waste. Although recycling rates have increased over the past few decades — out of the 4.4 pounds of trash (per capita) that we produce in the U.S. each day, we compost or recycle about 1.5 pounds and incinerate another 0.5 pounds — more than 50 percent of our waste still ends up buried in landfills. Now, through the use of a novel energy recovery technique, we could reduce the amount that is sent to landfills by about 10 percent and produce a fuel that is relatively clean and more energy dense than coal. Materials that were considered garbage for generations are now being recognized for what they still offer after their useful life — valuable energy resources capable of solving multiple problems at once. Trash can become treasure.

School of rock: Educating educators at sea

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:39:51 -0400

Most of the School of Rock expeditions are aboard the IODP's ship, the JOIDES Resolution, pictured here at dock in British Columbia. John Van Hoesen

School of Rock participant (and author) John Van Hoesen records smear slide data. Sabreena Kasbati, Aquarium of the Pacific, USA & IODP

Many things come to mind when you hear the words “School of Rock”: a bad Jack Black flick, the middle school band you were in, the guitar school down the street from you, some pun about geology … yes, all are likely candidates. But the one I’m thinking of probably didn’t cross your mind. The School of Rock I had the privilege to attend is a professional development opportunity for educators to spend a week to 10 days at sea, learning about ocean drilling, how science is conducted on a yawing ship, and how to be better science teachers.

2012: The end of the world or just another year of living in harm's way?

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 11:58:39 -0400

The 1.2-kilometer-diameter Meteor Crater in Arizona was formed by a roughly 50-meter-diameter impactor about 50,000 years ago. ©Michael Collier, ESW Image Bank

A pair of curving erupting prominences on the sun on June 28, 2000. Prominences are huge clouds of relatively cool dense plasma suspended in the sun's hot, thin corona. At times, they can erupt, escaping the sun's atmosphere. SOHO (ESA & NASA)

Geysers and thermal waters in Yellowstone reveal the area's seething magma chamber beneath. Brenna Tobler

©Callan Bentley

We live on a knife-edge, separated from an ocean of super-heated rock by a wafer-thin and perpetually rupturing crust, swinging our way through a cosmic minefield of lethal debris around a nuclear furnace prone to tantrums. For doomsayers, the end of the Mayan long-count calendar, set against such a backdrop, is a gift. Though Mayan culture never spoke of a cataclysm, Dec. 21, 2012 — the purported last day of a 5,125-year cycle in the Mesoamerican calendar — has been added to an endless list of days when the world has been predicted to end.

Karakoram glaciers buck global, regional trends

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 10:36:18 -0400

Two prominent peaks — Diran (left) and Rakaposhi — tower over a glacier in the Karakoram Range of northern Pakistan to the west of an area where, a new study suggests, glacial ice volume has remained stable or perhaps grown slightly in recent years. Copyright Waqas.usman, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported

When it comes to glaciers, stability represents a refreshing change of pace. In contrast to regional and global trends — which, scientists say, have unambiguously indicated ice loss in recent decades — a team of French glaciologists has confirmed that glaciers in a portion of the northwestern Himalayas remained stable on average, or may have even grown slightly, in recent years. The results have implications for local water supplies and glacial hazards and, the team says, underscore the value of high-resolution monitoring in accurately determining regional-scale glacial changes.

Bringing dinosaur biology into the 21st century

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 15:59:04 -0400

Skeleton of the _Giraffatitan brancai_ at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Germany. This is the largest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world. Axel Mauruszat

Meike Köhler and colleagues looked at rest lines in the bones of modern ruminants like the _Muntiacus _deer to compare them to rest lines in dinosaurs. Courtesy of Meike Köhler

We may know a lot about dinosaurs, but there’s an awful lot we don’t know yet, especially about their biology. How heavy were the dinosaurs? Were they fast or slow? Recent research poses new answers to these long-standing questions.

Blogging on EARTH: Finding prehistoric souvenirs in Michigan

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 16:10:41 -0400

A close-up of the coral structure fossilized in Petoskey stones. Though the stones are found in the northern part of Michigan's Lower Peninsula, the coral lived in a warm shallow sea near the equator 350 million years ago. Plate tectonics have since moved Michigan about halfway to the North Pole and lifted the region above sea level. Jay R. Thompson

Around the Fourth of July, I usually visit my parents and participate in a geological family tradition that is pointless to the extreme and yet addictive and fun. Mom and Dad live on Lake Leelanau near Traverse City, Mich. The lake is about a dozen kilometers long and a few kilometers wide. It’s a great place for water-skiing, fishing, jet-skiing and kayaking. We do some of those things, but we also wade along the shore behind my parents’ house and search for Petoskey stones, the state stone of Michigan.

Five outstanding questions in earth science

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 19:13:31 -0400

A magma chamber beneath Yellowstone National Park has produced super-eruptions in the past and may do so again someday. Copyright Mary Caperton Morton

Sauropods' massive sizes are well established, but less is known about their biology. Copyright Matt Martyniuk, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Even 15 years after the release of “Good Will Hunting,” there remains something appealing about watching the title character, a mathematically inclined janitor at MIT, scribble the solution to an unsolved mathematics problem on a hallway blackboard. In reality, there are a number of unsolved problems in mathematics, seven of which were designated in 2000 by the Clay Mathematics Institute as “Millennium Prize Problems,” each with a purse of $1,000,000. To date, only one has been solved.

Neutralizing the rain: After much success in the battle against acid rain, challenges remain

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 14:17:43 -0400

Hundreds of ponds and lakes in the Adirondacks, such as Blue Mountain Lake, once were devoid of life. Now they are being restocked, and so far, the fish are surviving. Copyright Mwanner, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported

Each of the 250 national and international stations must meet the same criteria to eliminate collection bias. Surrounding vegetation must be lower than 0.6 meters, which means the collectors sometimes must be placed on platforms, such as this one located in Northern California. National Atmospheric Deposition Program

Precipitation collections are analyzed each week at the National Atmospheric Deposition Program lab in Illinois. Scientists have been collecting data since 1978. National Atmospheric Deposition Program

Ecosystems are not the only things impacted by acid rain. Buildings and statues also show telltale acid rain damage. Copyright Nino Barbieri, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported

Every Tuesday at 9 a.m., Dave Warner collects water from a white plastic 3.5-gallon tub that sits on a strip of tall grass between two cornfields at the University of Nebraska Agricultural Research and Development Center near Mead, Neb. For more than 30 years, the bucket has collected all forms of precipitation — from hail to rain to snow — to be analyzed for nitric and sulfur oxides, the main components of acid rain.

Sumatran strike-slip earthquakes challenge seismologists

Wed, 09 May 2012 14:35:04 -0400

Map showing the location of two large strike-slip earthquakes (red stars) off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia on April 11, 2012. Aftershocks (orange circles) of the strike-slip earthquakes are also indicated, as are prominent tectonic features including the Sunda megathrust fault (pink) and a series of north-south fractures (black) in the vicinity of the earthquakes. courtesy of Earth Observatory of Singapore

Events may shed light on regional tectonics, alter stress on nearby megathrust

Following the magnitude-8.6 earthquake that struck off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia on April 11, chaos reigned in Banda Aceh, a provincial capital near Sumatra’s northern tip as residents scrambled to evacuate to higher ground ahead of a potential tsunami. Unlike in December 2004 when a deadly tsunami — triggered by the magnitude-9.1 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake — swept over the Sumatran coastline, though, no significant tsunamis made landfall on April 11 and only a handful of earthquake-related fatalities were reported.