June 2016 on EARTH Magazine

Geoscience on Film: The view from outside Kathmandu

Tue, 28 Jun 2016 10:46:07 -0400

This school — seen here in June 2016 — was one of roughly 300 in Nepal that survived the intense shaking of the April 2015 Gorkha earthquake after it was retrofitted to withstand strong ground motion. Credit: Diane LaMacchia

Doug Prose, formerly a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, and his wife, Diane LaMacchia, have produced documentaries showcasing Earth and the geosciences through their nonprofit Earth Images Foundation since 1992. Recent films have included “Earth: The Inside Story” and “Italy’s Mystery Mountains," both released in 2014 and aired on PBS. In spring 2015, Prose blogged for EARTH while filming on location in eastern and northern India for a documentary delving into the complex interplay of tectonics, natural hazards and humanity in the Himalayan region. Just weeks after departing, the massive Gorkha earthquake struck, severely damaging parts of Nepal, northern India and Tibet, and prompting LaMacchia and Prose to return to the region this June to investigate recovery efforts in the quake’s aftermath. Prose wrote about their recent experiences while there, and filed the following series of posts upon returning home. Read posts in this series, as well as from the 2015 trip, here.

Geoscience on Film: Revisiting an earthquake-ravaged region, one year on

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 11:15:39 -0400

Damage overall in Kathmandu from the April 2015 Gorkha earthquake was lighter than anticipated, but it was different story in the city's historic Durbar Square, where the extensive damage is still obvious 14 months later. Credit: Doug Prose

Doug Prose, formerly a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, and his wife, Diane LaMacchia, have produced documentaries showcasing Earth and the geosciences through their nonprofit Earth Images Foundation since 1992. Recent films have included “Earth: The Inside Story” and “Italy’s Mystery Mountains," both released in 2014 and aired on PBS. In spring 2015, Prose blogged for EARTH while filming on location in eastern and northern India for a documentary delving into the complex interplay of tectonics, natural hazards and humanity in the Himalayan region. Just weeks after their departure, the massive Gorkha earthquake struck, severely damaging parts of Nepal, northern India and Tibet, and prompting LaMacchia and Prose to return to the region this June to investigate recovery efforts in the quake’s aftermath. Prose wrote about their recent experiences while there, and filed the following series of posts upon returning home. Read posts in this series, as well as from the 2015 trip, here.

Saving Mongolian wildlife, 80 million years after extinction

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 09:59:02 -0400

Children visit the Institute for the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs mobile museum in 2015 during ISMD's first outreach trip through Mongolia in 2015. Credit: ©Institute for the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs

In the time of_ Velociraptor_, 80 million years ago, southern Mongolia looked surprisingly like the Gobi Desert that exists there today. Animals roamed, nested and fought amid an arid climate while sand-soaked winds battered rocky outcrops. Today, walking along the Flaming Cliffs of Bayanzag, you may only notice one stark difference: Where Velociraptor and other dinosaurs once thrived, there are now only a few fossilized remains. And even those are endangered.

Comment: What's a map worth? The big cost and bigger benefit of three-dimensional elevation data

Fri, 17 Jun 2016 13:05:31 -0400

Map of the areal extent and quality of planned, in progress and existing publicly available lidar and InSAR/IfSAR data that meet the specifications of the 3DEP program. Credit: 3DEP.

High-resolution topographic data are critical for a number of tasks — from managing flood risks to ensuring aviation safety to mapping hiking trails. In the past, such data came from careful analysis of aerial photos, but today, researchers have at their fingertips a suite of remote sensing technologies that can record ground-surface elevation — even when the ground is obscured by thick summer foliage, winter snow and ice, or dense cloud cover.

Down to Earth With: Planetary scientist Steven Squyres

Fri, 17 Jun 2016 12:35:58 -0400

Steven Squyres is the James A. Weeks Professor of Physical Sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., and the principal investigator of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission, which landed the rovers Spirit and Opportunity on Mars in 2004. Credit: NASA.

Squyres already considered himself a scientist, and, with his father’s help, would conduct rudimentary experiments with a chemistry kit. By the time he was 10, he had become fascinated by meteorology and erected a weather station in his backyard. He vividly remembers building an anemometer out of funnels, and realizing that his device would need to be calibrated in order to accurately measure wind speed. So, he asked his father to drive the family car up and down their street. While perplexed neighbors looked on, Squyres excitedly hung the instrument out the window, shouting to his dad to drive 5 miles per hour as he counted how many times the kitchen funnels spun around. Next, Squyres asked his dad to drive 10 miles per hour, and then even faster, repeating his counts at each speed until the calibration was complete.

Slow-moving super-eruptions still travel great distances

Thu, 16 Jun 2016 10:06:26 -0400

Deposits of Peach Spring Tuff from a super-eruption 18.8 million years ago can be seen throughout Arizona, Nevada and Southern California. Credit: David Buesch.

When Hollywood movies depict the destruction unleashed by volcanic eruptions, they usually focus on red-hot lava, but even more dangerous are pyroclastic flows: mixtures of rocky debris and searing hot ash and gas that move as fast as 700 kilometers per hour and can bulldoze, incinerate and suffocate anything in their paths. In a new study looking at pyroclastic flow deposits associated with the Silver Creek Caldera in the southwestern U.S., researchers have found that not all pyroclastic flows are so swift. Dense, slow-moving flows can still wreak havoc over vast distances.

Take a stand (or sit) for better water quality management

Thu, 16 Jun 2016 09:42:20 -0400

Referred to as "separation," "urine diversion" or "no-mix" toilets, the toilets of the future look, on the outside, like typical toilets today. The insides of the bowls are divided into two collection areas — one at the front for urine and another at the back for feces. Credit: Eawag, Ruedi Keller

The average person urinates four to seven times over a 24-hour period, producing about 1.5 liters of urine per day. Here are some things you can do today to help conserve water, improve water quality, and keep all that waste from going to waste.

'P' is for phosphate: Could urine solve a fertilizer shortage?

Thu, 16 Jun 2016 09:26:37 -0400

Researchers at the Rich Earth Institute are experimenting with using urine-derived fertilizer to grow crops. Here, institute researcher Abe Noe-Hays adds sanitized urine fertilizer to lettuce. Credit: Marcin Szczepanski.

Whether you’re enjoying a juicy burger from a fast-food drive-thru or digging into a brightly colored salad at a backyard barbecue, your meal likely started life on a farm. Each day, agriculture around the world produces an average of 27.3 million tons of food, enough to feed Earth’s current population of about 7.3 billion — although not all of that food reaches people.

Bringing geoscience to bear on the problem of abandoned mines

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 15:09:08 -0400

On Aug. 5, 2015, a 3-million-gallon spill of acid mine water from the Gold King Mine above Silverton, Colo., turned the Animas River orange. Credit: Riverhugger, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Not much happened around the Silverton Caldera in southwestern Colorado between 26 million years ago — when hydrothermal alteration of the caldera’s fractured granitic rocks left behind extensive veins of metal-rich ores — and 1871, when those deposits were discovered by prospectors. That’s when Silverton really started to boom. From 1871 to 1991 — when the Sunnyside Mine on the east side of Bonita Peak, the largest of dozens in the area, closed — an estimated $530 million worth of gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc were extracted from the Silverton Caldera. Most of the prospectors and mining companies that extracted that wealth are long gone, but a legacy of widespread environmental impacts remains.

Giant armadillo look-alikes really were giant armadillos

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 15:00:14 -0400

An illustration of two glyptodonts battling, using their club-like tails for weapons. Credit: Peter Schouten.

Due to coincidences of evolution, extinct creatures sometimes resemble living animals, even if they’re not actually related. But in a new study looking at the family tree of glyptodonts, armored beasts resembling giant armadillos that once roamed South America, researchers have found that the animals actually were early relatives of modern armadillos.

Fossil dinosaur illuminates evolution of tyrannosauroid body sizes

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 12:55:14 -0400

Fossils of the horse-sized Timurlengia euotica, which lived about 90 million years ago in what is now Uzbekistan, have helped fill a gap in the tyrannosauroid family tree. Credit: Original painting by Todd Marshall.

Tyrannosauroid dinosaurs were the dominant predators of the terrestrial ecosystems in which they roamed for much of the Late Cretaceous, from about 80 million to 66 million years ago. Some, like Tyrannosaurus rex, reached lengths up to about 13 meters and heights of nearly 4 meters. Their large size and keen senses — relatively large nasal passageways suggest a heightened sense of smell — are considered to have been keys to their success.

Statistics shine light on T. rex family tree

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 12:27:07 -0400

Tyrannosaurus rex is one of the most recognizable dinosaurs, but the tyrannosauroid family tree is also occupied by many lesser-known cousins — such as Xiongguanlong and Lythronax — along with some large holes. Now, researchers have produced a new phylogenetic family tree including all of the known tyrannosauroid species that highlights the largest remaining gaps and provides clues as to how they might be filled.

Searching for the ancestors of meandering rivers

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 12:16:31 -0400

In outcrops of the Tombador Formation in the Bahia state of Brazil, researchers found evidence of ancient channel-braided rivers — which combined traits of modern sheet-braided and meandering rivers — that existed before plants colonized land. Credit: Bruno Boito Turra.

It might be difficult to imagine Earth devoid of vegetation, but for billions of years the sun shone, winds blew and rivers flowed on a planet without any plants.

A new gravity map of Earth

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 12:08:01 -0400

This portion of the new whole-Earth gravity map shows gravity gradients in the North Atlantic. Credit: Johannes Bouman/TUM.

Gravity differs from place to place around Earth because of the uneven distribution of mass across and within the planet. Scientists can study the variation in gravitational pull by measuring the gravity field at different places on the surface of the planet. In a new study published in Scientific Reports, gravity field data collected over the entire planet between 2009 and 2013 by the European Space Agency’s Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellite has been mapped, revealing many of Earth’s internal features, such as magmatic plumes welling up toward the surface.

A labyrinth of silver mines uncovered on the shores of the Aegean Sea

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 11:29:05 -0400

A mining archaeologist at work in a 5,000-year-old silver mine in Thorikos, Greece. Credit: Ghent University.

By the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., silver mines under the ancient Greek city of Thorikos, now known as Lavrio, were the most important mines in Greece. Recent underground exploration of the network of tunnels found at the foot of the city’s Mycenaean-aged Acropolis is shedding new light on the scale — and miserable conditions — of the mines.

Geomedia: Television: 'NOVA' for the earth science enthusiast

Tue, 14 Jun 2016 18:11:30 -0400

Three recent earth science-themed NOVA episodes have examined the possible roles of rocks and minerals in the emergence of life on early Earth, the April 2015 earthquake that struck Nepal, and the persistent hazard of sinkholes in some parts of the world. Credit: left: CC0 public domain; middle: Jessica Lea/UK Department for International Development, CC BY 2.0; right: Ann Tihansky/U.S. Geological Survey

“NOVA,” the weekly prime-time science series that airs on PBS, is known for producing high-quality TV documentaries on subjects ranging from espionage and the military to ancient civilizations and nature. Naturally, much “NOVA” programming touches on topics in geoscience, so we decided to review several recent hour-long episodes that might be of particular interest to our readers. To find out about upcoming broadcasts or watch episodes online, visit http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/.

New fossils illuminate 'hobbit' evolutionary history

Wed, 08 Jun 2016 14:52:48 -0400

A reconstruction of Homo floresiensis by Atelier Elisabeth Daynes. Credit: Kinez Riza

Scientists first discovered fossils of Homo floresiensis — a species of extinct 1-meter-tall hominins nicknamed “hobbits” — in Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004. Until now, H. floresiensis, thought to have lived between about 95,000 and 50,000 years ago based on recent evidence, was the only extinct hominin known to have lived on Flores, although artifacts discovered on the island dating to 800,000 to 1 million years ago pointed to earlier hominin habitation. Now, in two new studies published in Nature, researchers announce the discovery of hobbit-like hominin fossils found elsewhere on the island that are roughly 700,000 years old. The new remains, if confirmed, would extend the age range of the hobbit lineage, and may help researchers piece together why H. floresiensis became so small.

Getting there and getting around Turkey

Wed, 01 Jun 2016 10:06:12 -0400

Private boats to visit the Sunken City are surprisingly affordable along the Turquoise Coast. Credit: Terri Cook and Lon Abbott.

Turkey has two major airports — Istanbul and Ankara — and many smaller regional ones. Istanbul Ataturk Airport offers nonstop flights on Turkish Airlines from several U.S. cities, including New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and San Francisco. To enter the country, Americans need a visa; these can be quickly obtained online.

Travels in Geology: Turkey's storied Turquoise Coast

Wed, 01 Jun 2016 09:43:39 -0400

The rugged Taurus Mountains meet the Mediterranean Sea along Turkey's Turquoise Coast. Credit: Terri Cook and Lon Abbott.

We visited Turkey in June 2015, prior to the heightening of the Syrian refugee crisis. At the time, there were few security concerns, but due to recent turmoil, the U.S. Department of State has issued a travel warning encouraging Americans to avoid visiting southeastern Turkey and warning of heightened threats from terrorist groups throughout the country. At press time, none of the areas covered in this article were within the State Department’s advised avoidance area. However, it’s best to frequently check the State Department website (https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en.html) prior to your trip and sign up for their travel alerts in case additional warnings are posted.

Dating of landslides around Oso reveals recurring patterns

Wed, 01 Jun 2016 09:18:48 -0400

Sean LaHusen points to buried debris in a landslide deposit that predates the 2014 disaster on the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River. Credit: Alison Duvall/University of Washington.

On March 22, 2014, after a period of heavy rain, a hillside near the town of Oso, Wash., collapsed, sending 7.6 million cubic meters of mud and debris across the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River, destroying a rural neighborhood and killing 43 people. The slide took Oso residents by surprise, but scientists say the event was not altogether unexpected, as evidence for dozens of past landslides can be found throughout the Stillaguamish River Valley. New research suggests that large slides have occurred in the Oso vicinity even more frequently than previously suspected.

Where on Earth? - June 2016

Tue, 31 May 2016 09:33:54 -0400

Click to enlarge photo.

Clues for June 2016:

This tiny promontory — the southeasternmost location on a peninsula that is the southwesternmost tip of a country and a continent — protrudes to the east into a “bogus” body of water, which is a famous hunting ground of great white sharks seeking a meal of fur seal. The peninsula hosts multiple capes, a similarly named town and a famous flat-topped mountain.
When the HMS Beagle docked nearby in late May and early June 1836, Charles Darwin made one of his first geologic maps highlighting a geologic contact that settled a debate between plutonists and neptunists over the origins of what are now known (thanks to the plutonists’ triumph) as igneous rocks.
The old lighthouse on this promontory was poorly located, misleading many a mariner onto the rocks. The April 1911 wreck of a Portuguese ship — which shared a name and similar fate with a much more famous British ocean liner that was sunk in 1915 — prompted the relocation of the lighthouse to its current site.

Geomedia: Books: 'Floodpath' recounts the deadly collapse of California's St. Francis Dam

Thu, 26 May 2016 16:10:59 -0400

"Floodpath: The Deadliest Man-Made Disaster of 20th-Century America and the Making of Modern Los Angeles," by Jon Wilkman, Bloomsbury Press, 2016, ISBN-13: 978-1620409152.

The catastrophic collapse of the St. Francis Dam, located 80 kilometers north of downtown Los Angeles and east of the town of Santa Clarita, just before midnight on March 12, 1928, claimed more than 400 lives when towering floodwaters destroyed homes, bridges and farmland, as they swept through downstream communities. The disaster was initially blamed on the failure of the west abutment, anchored in soft conglomerate rock. Additional studies have revised this explanation, with recent research citing other geologic and design factors that likely contributed. Regardless, the collapse effectively ended the career of William Mulholland, the self-taught engineer whose 1913 Owens Valley Aqueduct made the explosive growth of Los Angeles possible. Yet, despite the magnitude of the disaster and its impact on local and national policy, it has been almost entirely forgotten, except by a few historians.

Benchmarks: June 4, 1783: The era of aviation launches with the first balloon flight

Thu, 26 May 2016 15:55:41 -0400

A crowd of peasants attacked the first hydrogen balloon in Gonesse, France, in August 1783. Credit: public domain.

In the small French town of Gonesse in August 1783, a large, spherical and nebulous object painted with red and yellow stripes fell from the sky and began fluttering about on the ground. The town’s peasants, fearful, attacked the object with pitchforks, and then tied it to a horse’s tail to be dragged through the streets.

Seeing the seafloor in high definition: Modern mapping offers increasing clarity on Earth's vast underwater landscape

Fri, 20 May 2016 16:03:01 -0400

In the 1950s, Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen, of what was then called the Lamont Geological Observatory, began creating seafloor maps based on single-beam sounding data from the U.S. Navy and other sources. Their compilation map of the global seafloor was published in 1977. Credit: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

Gliding through pitch-black waters 50 meters off the ocean bottom, the “D. Allan B” can sense the seafloor below in striking clarity, despite the darkness. In its backyard off the California coast, the 5-meter-long, torpedo-shaped autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) operated by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) has surveyed submarine topography ranging from deep canyons incising the continental shelf to subtle scarps weaving through blankets of ocean-bottom sediments. Since entering operation about a decade ago, the AUV’s mapping prowess — it can distinguish features less than a meter wide and just 10 centimeters tall, a level of precision that rivals NASA’s Mars-mapping HiRISE camera — has become an integral tool in MBARI’s efforts to study Earth’s surface beneath the waves.

Double trouble: Volcanic eruption leads to strong earthquake eight months later

Fri, 20 May 2016 13:54:43 -0400

The deadly January 2002 eruption of the Nyiragongo Volcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo also triggered a damaging earthquake in October 2002 near Lake Kivu. Credit: Christelle Wauthier/Penn State.

In January 2002, Nyiragongo Volcano erupted in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing more than 100 people. Eight months later and 19 kilometers to the south, a magnitude-6.2 earthquake shook the Lake Kivu region, partially destroying the town of Kalehe. Now, scientists have determined that the two events were linked, and their results highlight a newly observed trigger for strong earthquakes near active volcanoes.

Geologic Column: Geology for the people: Finding new paths to public outreach

Fri, 20 May 2016 13:37:28 -0400

One might think ice age history an unlikely topic for a popular science book, but our 2012 book, “The Hudson Valley in the Ice Age,” seems to have struck a chord with the public. Over the last few years, we have built upon our success to highlight local awareness of our Hudson Valley and Catskills regional geology. We thought our story might encourage others to undertake similar efforts in their own communities.

Ice (Re)Cap: June 2016

Fri, 20 May 2016 13:05:31 -0400

Phosphorus-rich meltwater flows from the Leverett Glacier in southwest Greenland. Credit: Jon Hawkings.

From Antarctica to the Arctic; from polar caps, permafrost and glaciers to ocean-rafted sea ice; and from burly bears to cold-loving microbes, fascinating science is found in every nook and crevasse of Earth’s cryosphere, and new findings are announced often. Here are a few of the latest updates.

Underwater Roman marble traced to Greece, Italy and Turkey

Fri, 20 May 2016 12:56:15 -0400

Scientists take the plunge underwater to analyze one of the most valuable materials used to construct affluent Roman villas: white marble. Credit: courtesy of Michela Ricca et al..

From the first century B.C. to the third century A.D., the city of Baiae, located on the west coast of Italy, near Naples, was the preferred summer home of Roman emperors, including Augustus and Nero. The once-grand city now lies under more than 5 meters of water due to coastal subsidence, and is preserved as the Underwater Archaeological Park of Baiae. Researchers have now traced the opulent city’s white marble floors to some of the most famous quarries in Italy, Greece and Turkey.

Social trends and shifting climates had complex effects in medieval Italy

Fri, 20 May 2016 12:50:33 -0400

Researchers combined written historical records housed in the Abbey of Farfa and Rieti Cathedral, seen here, with environmental records from sediment and pollen to see how the landscape of Italy's Rieti Valley changed through medieval times. Credit: Alessandro Antonelli, CC BY 3.0.

It’s easy to anecdotally pin environmental changes and their societal impacts on shifting climates. But when scientists and historians came together to look at environmental changes through the warm Medieval Climate Anomaly and cold Little Ice Age in Rieti, Italy, they found that the real story of climate and social change is much more complex — and interesting.

Ancient Indonesian tools made by mysterious inhabitants

Thu, 19 May 2016 22:12:43 -0400

These stone artifacts were found scattered on the ground near Talepu Hill on the island of Sulawesi, and date to at least 118,000 years ago. Credit: Erick Setiabudi.

The island of Sulawesi is one link in a chain of islands between mainland Asia and Australia, and was likely an important stepping stone in human dispersal from Eurasia through Oceania to Australia. Previous research has placed modern humans on Sulawesi as early as 40,000 years ago, but scientists have now dated a set of stone tools to at least 118,000 years ago, suggesting humans occupied the island far earlier than thought.

Above oil seeps, photosynthetic life flourishes

Thu, 19 May 2016 22:04:40 -0400

Researchers found that phytoplankton abundances in the Gulf of Mexico were higher in the water column above naturally occurring oil and gas seeps than in nearby areas not above seeps. Credit: NASA.

The direct effects of oil and gas releases in the ocean are typically negative — as in the case of 2010’s Deepwater Horizon oil well disaster, which devastated marine ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico. But scientists have now found that when natural oil and gas seeps upwell toward the ocean’s surface, they can also carry nutrients such as nitrates and nitrites from the seafloor that feed communities of phytoplankton, which flourish as a result.

Surprise quake at Mount Fuji triggered by rising gases

Thu, 19 May 2016 21:58:28 -0400

With a peak elevation of 2,335 meters, Mount Fuji is the highest mountain in Japan. Credit: Midori, CC BY 3.0.

On March 15, 2011, four days after the magnitude-9 Tohoku megathrust earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, a magnitude-5.9 earthquake shook the southern flank of Mount Fuji. Seismicity has been rare at the volcano since its last eruption in 1707, leading many researchers to suspect that the Fuji quake — which hit about 300 kilometers southwest of the megaquake — was remotely triggered by the Tohoku event. In a new study, scientists looking at the volcano’s underlying structure and plumbing have offered a potential mechanism for how Tohoku’s shaking could have touched off the Fuji earthquake: through rising gas-rich fluids released from the magma chamber beneath the volcano.

Measuring rising seas is tricky in deltas

Thu, 19 May 2016 16:38:36 -0400

Researchers used an experimental basin filled with water and sand-, silt- and clay-sized sediments to mimic natural deltas and study the formation and preservation of stratigraphic records. Credit: Kyle Straub.

Earth’s stratigraphic record offers a patchwork diary of how different parts of the planet have formed and changed over time. Some of the most extensive pieces of the stratigraphic record are found in deltas, making them ideal places to look for long-term chronicles of Earth’s history, as well as clues to future changes to our coastal landscapes.

Lack of fungi did not lead to copious Carboniferous coal

Thu, 19 May 2016 16:27:03 -0400

The majority of the world's coal dates to the Carboniferous Period. Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.

The Carboniferous Period is famous for supplying Earth with an abundance of coal deposits. According to one hypothesis, the formation of all this coal is explained by a proposed 60-million-year gap, or lag, between the spread of the forests globally about 360 million years ago and the rise of wood-eating microbes and fungi that could break down tough plant matter. But a new study refutes this idea, instead attributing the Carboniferous’ copious coal to the consolidation of the supercontinent Pangea.

Comment: Assessing the threat from massive rock slope failures in the Norwegian fjordlands

Mon, 16 May 2016 11:44:29 -0400

Florence Magnin is installing temperature loggers at 1,400 meters above Loen Lake on an unstable slope at Hoggrenningsnibba Mountain. In the background across the lake, a rockslide scar can be seen at Ramnefjellet Mountain; it is the failure surface of two previous rockslides that caused displacement waves in 1905 and 1936 (with maximum wave runups of 40.5 and 74.2 meters), which killed 61 and 74 people, respectively. Credit: Reginald L. Hermanns.

All high-latitude coastlines with pronounced relief are characteristically incised by deep fjords — carved by repeated glacial cycles — reaching far into the mountain landscapes. What is not characteristic of all of these coastlines is settlements, as these landscapes tend to be quite inhospitable, not to mention dangerous, thanks to the likelihood of rockslides. Norway, however, with thousands of people living on and visiting its fjordlands, is a different story. In recent years, Norway’s geological community has worked to reduce the risks posed by landslides to fjordland communities.

Radar reveals unmarked graves

Mon, 16 May 2016 11:30:53 -0400

Kevin Williams (left) and Trevor Jennings conduct a ground-penetrating radar survey at a cemetery in western New York. Credit: courtesy of Kevin Williams.

The occasional excursion to Death Valley or mineralogical study of bloodstone notwithstanding, geoscientists don’t often delve into the macabre in the course of their work. But when the administrators of two cemeteries in western New York came calling in 2014, researchers from Buffalo State College ended up using their geophysical field skills to hunt for centuries-old graves.

Buried sands tell of tsunami hazard from creeping megathrust fault

Mon, 16 May 2016 11:18:57 -0400

Thick sand deposits separated by dark bands of soil offered evidence of six tsunamis in the last 1,700 years at Stardust Bay on Alaska's Sedanka Island. Credit: Richard Koehler.

A slow-moving portion of the Alaska-Aleutian Megathrust Fault near Alaska’s Dutch Harbor appears more capable of generating sizable tsunamis than previously thought, according to a new study.

Giant icebergs spur carbon storage in Southern Ocean

Mon, 09 May 2016 15:38:41 -0400

Dozens of giant icebergs are currently floating in the Southern Ocean, with more projected to calve in the coming years. Credit: Patrick Rowe, National Science Foundation.

A new study shows that giant icebergs floating in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica may be playing a larger role in carbon sequestration and Earth’s global carbon cycle than previously thought.

The most dangerous fault in America

Mon, 09 May 2016 14:35:54 -0400

The entire length of the Hayward Fault runs through densely populated cities such as Oakland, Fremont and Berkeley (shown here), and is not far from the metropolises of San Francisco (background) and San Jose. The U.S. Geological Survey describes the Hayward Fault as "the single most urbanized earthquake fault in the United States." Credit: ©iStockphoto.com/ConstantGardner.

Last summer, a startling article appeared in The New Yorker magazine outlining what could happen to the Pacific Northwest in the event of a large earthquake resulting from a full rupture of the Cascadia Subduction Zone. As recently as 1700, this convergent zone produced an earthquake estimated at magnitude 9. If such an event happened today, the results would be devastating. The article attracted a great deal of attention, especially among people who had never heard of the possibility that the heavily populated Pacific Northwest could, in a geologic moment, become “toast” — as someone quoted in the article put it.

Down to Earth With: Solar physicist Thomas Berger

Mon, 09 May 2016 13:55:52 -0400

A NASA schematic showing the technologies and infrastructure that can be affected by space weather. Credit: NASA.

Growing up in California during the Space Race, Thomas Berger was fascinated with aeronautics and aviation, so when he arrived at the University of California at Berkeley, physics seemed like the natural choice. After graduating with a degree in engineering physics, Berger took a job with Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank. But he soon decided it was not for him and returned to graduate school at Stanford, where he discovered a new passion: solar physics.