Highly Allochthonous

Boobquake: a slightly silly test of a ridiculous scientific hypothesis

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 06:07:40 -0500

It seems that whenever a natural disaster (or other tragedy) strikes, there is but a short delay before someone with a megaphone and an axe to grind points his finger at an entirely innocent group of people and blames them as the cause of the tectonic activity, meteorological phenomenon, or terrorist act.

What am I talking about? Pat Robertson has said that the Port-au-Prince earthquake was caused by a pact the Haitians had made with the devil. Rush Limbaugh recently suggested that the Eyjafjallajökull eruption was a response to the passage of the US healthcare bill (displaying a somewhat tenuous grasp of geography as well as geology). Or remember when Jerry Falwell blamed feminists, lesbians, and the ACLU for the 9-11 terrorist attacks? It's a strange and loathsome pathology that pushes aside science in favor of demonizing those with little power.

The latest incarnation of such wackaloonery is the statement by an Iranian cleric that the immodest dress of women is the cause of earthquakes:

"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran's acting Friday prayer leader. (Chicago Tribune, 19 April 2010)

A few days later, the sentiment was supported by Iran's top spiritual leader:

"We can avoid earthquakes if the faithful and devoted people pray to God," Jannati said during the Friday sermon. (LA Times, 23 April 2010)

Jen McCreight, a Purdue University grad student, has had enough of this nonsense and has dreamed up and organized a grassroots effort to test the correlation between immodestly dressed women and seismic activity. Today, 26 April 2010, is the day of the "boobquake," in which thousands of women around the world will wear the least modest shirt in their closet in attempt to set the seismograph needles trembling. After the day is over, McCreight and others will show statistically that seismically...nothing happened. Because women's bodies do not cause earthquakes.

If you want to follow the silly science, you can read McCreight's blog, check the hashtag #boobquake on Twitter, or check in on the Facebook event page (177,829 confirmed attendees at this moment). The mainstream media has also picked up on this event, so you may hear something about it on radio or TV.

If you are concerned that this event is somehow anti-feminist or demeaning to women, here's what McCreight has to say about it:

I'm asking women to wear their most "immodest" outfit that they already would wear, but to coordinate it all on the same day for the sake of the experiment. Heck, just showing an ankle would be considered immodest by some people. I don't want to force people out of their comfort zones, because I believe women have the right to choose how they want to dress. Please don't pressure women to participate if they don't want to. If men ogle, that's the fault of the men, not me for dressing how I like. If I want to a show a little cleavage or joke about my boobs, that's my prerogative.

So today I'm wearing a shirt that I wouldn't normally wear to work and I'll probably start my 90% male hydrogeology class with a brief mention of earthquake hazards. Because even though I know that the actions of tens of thousands of women for one day aren't going to change the minds of Iranian clerics or make a measurable difference in women's rights or sexist attitudes, I also know that my shirt is not going to cause an earthquake. And, in the words of boobquake organizer McCreight: "I'm a firm believer that when someone says something so stupid and hateful, serious discourse isn't going to accomplish anything - sometimes light-hearted mockery is worthwhile."

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Stuff I linked to on Twitter last week

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 15:40:00 -0500

Before you check out the interesting bits of my Twitter stream for the last week, I highly recommend clicking through to the latest edition of the geology blogging carnival The Accretionary Wedge, hosted at Callan Bentley's Mountain Beltway. The theme this month was 'geological heroes', and it's a fascinating look at some of the people who have influenced your favourite geobloggers' careers and scientific outlooks.

Volcanos

Interesting look at optical properties of ash erupted from Eyjafjallaj\u00f6kull from http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php

Nice summary of Eyjafjallaj\u00f6kull eruption so far from BGS
http://www.bgs.ac.uk/research/highlights/changingEruptionstyles.html

Totally. Awesome. : Spectacular footage of bombs exiting the Icelandic crater at 100s of m elevation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6dDesUPkMo
(via @callanbentley)

Glacio-volcanic expert John Stevenson continues to provide some great background on Eyjafjallajokull eruption #ash
http://johnalexanderstevenson.blogspot.com/2010/04/eyjafjallajokull-update-more-musings.html
http://johnalexanderstevenson.blogspot.com/2010/04/eyjafjallajokull-update-more-on.html

Nice! Great plots of #ash plume last week from Man Uni LIDAR
http://data.cas.manchester.ac.uk/lidar/
(via @dr_andy_russell, @alomshaha)

What causes the volcanic lightning in the Eyjafjallaj\u00f6kull #ashcloud?
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2010/04/volcanic_lightning_eyjafjallaj.php

The scourge of jet engines everywhere: Eyjafjallajoekull ash at x20 magnification.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/interactives/4528599823/
(via @sciencebase)

Scripps scientists reveal why Iceland's volcanoes are seething with history:
http://explorations.ucsd.edu/Features/2009/Seething_History/
(via @Explorations)

Wonderful video footage of Eyjafjallajokull's explosive eruptions:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2010/apr/19/iceland-eyjafjallajokull-volcano-erruption-ash
(via @kejames)

Volcanic Ash Gives Jet Engine a Turbocharge [before shredding and clogging them up, anyway...]
http://news.discovery.com/earth/volcanic-ash-gives-jet-engine-a-turbocharge.html
(via @RonsGeoPicks)

Awesome shot of lightning around Eyafallaj\u00f6kull eruption plume (h/t )
http://www.swisseduc.ch/stromboli/perm/iceland/eyafallajokull_20100416-en.html?id=14

Planets

Pretty amazing new images of solar activity: [Video] This solar loop is 30 times the size of Earth!
http://www.nasa.gov/mov/445831main_Alan%20Video%201-First%20sun%20image%20and%20footage%20H264.mov
(via @CPPGeophysics, @NASA)

General Geology

Embedded sensors to monitor landslide-prone areas
http://www.physorg.com/news191176760.html
Project site with realtime data
http://sdcoastalstorms.org/index.cfm?method=cPortal.Init

V interesting movies of analogue deformation expts: gypsum+sugar->boudins, yoghurt+cherries->shear zones!
http://www.youtube.com/user/StrucGeology

Mark Twain the geologist [Only loosely. But v interesting, all the same]
http://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2010/04/mark-twain-the-geologist.html
(via @RonsGeoPicks)

Ancient rock slide shifted the Continental Divide [only by 80m, but still - impressive]
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Massive+ancient+rockslide+shifted+geography+continent+Study/2934202/story.html
(via @geology4u)

Braided Streams of Yore
http://pascals-puppy.blogspot.com/2010/04/braided-streams-of-yore.html
(via @RonsGeoPicks)

Environmental

Arctic Sea Ice Extent, 2009-2010 Sept minimum 5.4 million sq km, bang between extreme 2007 low and 1979-2000 average.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php

Nice to see some actual figures: Carbon Capture and Storage increases energy costs by up to 25%
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/6398
(via @TheOilDrum)

Interesting discussion of climatic forcing of landslides & other geohazards (via )
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2010/04/can_climate_change_make_the_be.html
(via @NatureNews)
Special issue of Phil. Trans Roy. Soc. on issue
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/368/1919.tocx

Feel free to doubt climate change: just don't deny it [finally, a sensible analysis in MSM]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/18/climate-change-east-anglia-report

72 1/2 bath fulls of water to make just one pair of jeans. See how our water imports worsen global water shortage.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8628832.stm
(via @suehutton)

Disturbing: Cerro de Pasco in Peru being devoured and poisoned by mine Look it up on Google Maps. Eye-opening.
http://www.physorg.com/news190816505.html

Interesting miscellaney

Sir Paul Nurse calls for reform of science funding [stable, long term funding for the 'best'?]
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article7106626.ece
(via @TimesScience)

Nothing new under the sun: in 1954 'Climategate' was 'Tobaccogate'. Excellent piece by
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100503/hari

It's a microbial world - survey reveals oceans host vast diversity of (individually) rare species.
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100418/full/news.2010.190.html
(via @NatureNews)

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A very British paradigm shift

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 11:55:00 -0500

Callan's theme of "geological heroes" for this month's Accretionary Wedge gives me the opportunity to highlight an act of intellectual bravery that I have always admired. The man behind this act was Arthur Holmes

Arthur Holmes in 1910 (left) and 1960 (right).

Holmes is probably most famous for his work on establishing radiometric dating as a reliable method of dating rocks, which definitively pushed the age of the Earth into the billions of years, and allowed geologists to finally put some numbers onto the geological timescale. It opened the door to developing a truly global picture of the history of our planet, and the maturation of geology into an empirical, as well as a descriptive, scientific discipline.

But that's not what I most admire him for.

Holmes' understanding of radioactivity, and particularly its role of the production of heat inside the Earth, also led him to conclude that the slow motion of continents over geological timescales, as advocated by Alfred Wegener, could potentially be driven by convection currents in the mantle. His model, shown below, incorporates continental rifting and ocean creation above upwellings, and underthrusting of ocean crust and mountain buliding at the edges of continents to accommodate it. Whilst not exactly alike, in the broadest sense it is remarkably similar to the modern plate tectonic picture that emerged in the 1960s. Arthur Holmes first proposed it in 1928.

This is scientific thinking at it's most pure, and brilliant: taking a step back, cutting through the layers of complexity and contention that have built up around a question, and building the ideas back up again with the advantage of better information. Knowing what we now know, Holmes seems almost stunningly prescient.

But that's not what I most admire him for, either.

No, it's what Arthur Holmes did next that I admire most of all. The 1920s was not a good time to be advocating the drift of continents. The rejection of Wegener's ideas meant that Holmes was proposing a mechanism for a process that many believed did not exist. But rather than dropping the whole idea, or lurching into somewhat overzealous advocacy in the manner of Alexander du Toit, he still talked about it in his lectures. More famously, he devoted the final chapter of his textbook 'Principles of Physical Geology', first published in 1944, to discussing continental drift, presenting the apparent geological connections between now widely separated continents, Wegner's proposal of the ancient supercontinent Pangaea to explain them, and his own theory that rifting and continental drift was ultimately driven by convection currents within the Earth's mantle.

I have always admired that Holmes was willing to hold his scientific ground - he believed his idea had some merit, and put them, and the evidence in support of them, out there for other geologists to consider. Furthermore, he freely acknowledged the speculative nature of these ideas, and that more evidence would be needed to prove or disprove them. But the the matching geological sequences, fossils, and mountains belts on the two sides of the Atlantic ocean needed to be explained one way or another; and if not this way, then how? This is how you argue minority ideas in science: not through shrill publicity seeking and accusations of scientific censorship and suppression, but through patient, evidence-based advocacy.

Save the somewhat iconoclastic final chapter, 'Principles of Physical Geology' was very highly regarded, which meant that many younger geologists were at least made aware of the arguments that Wegener had made, and the evidence he amassed to make them. As the evidence started to pile up in the 1950s and 1960s - the palaeomagnetic data indicating large shifts in latitude, the structure and extent of the mid-ocean ridges, and the magnetic stripes on the ocean floor around them - did Holmes' final chapter help to nudge these geologists more speedily to their final conclusions? It's difficult to say, but it certainly seems that plate tectonics was accepted far more speedily and gracefully in the wider geological community on the British side of the Atlantic than on the American one, and I have often wondered whether that was because Arthur Holmes' low-key advocacy had prepared the way for these new ideas.

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A uniformitarian approach to Earth day

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 12:25:00 -0500

In considering what I should say about Earth Day, I find that the post I wrote two years ago is just as good a reflection of my feelings as it was when I originally posted it. So if you want to know what I think, go and read 'A planet is for life, not just for Earth day'. A brief taster:

Whilst I'm never going to be completely opposed to attempts to get people to think more about their impact on our planet, and how we might do something to minimise it, it seems to me that focussing on today as a singular event is missing the point. If it's to mean anything, this shouldn't be the one day in the year when people "do something" for the environment; it should be the day when everyone reaffirms their commitment to do something every other day of the year, too.

I'm sure recycling prose is good for the environment somehow. However, if your inner consumer is in need of shiny new verbiage, others are being less lazy than me. Check out:

Callan's musings over at Mountain Beltway.

James Hrynyshyn reports on the latest warning from climatologists about our civilisation's hardly-slowing greenhouse gas emissions. We're "racing towards a cliff and hoping to stop just before it."

A special Earth Day Edition of Where on Google Earth (which has also broken the #200 barrier).

And if you haven't checked out the Pathological Geomorpology group blog yet, check out the Pathological Geomorpology group blog. There's no better way to gain an appreciation of just how awesome our planet is.

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The seismic non-pocalypse

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:30:00 -0500

Before everyone was distracted by Eyjafjallajokull disrupting air travel and tongues alike, the geo-worry of the moment was not volcanoes, but earthquakes. So far this year there have been six earthquakes of magnitude 7 or greater, including the a devastating magnitude 7.0 quake in Haiti, a truly enormous tsunami-generating magnitude 8.8 off the coast of Chile (although fortunately, the tsunami hysteria was greater than the actual tsunami), and a 7.2 in northwest Mexico. Most recently, last week's magnitude 6.9 in western China/Tibet also caused much damage and many casualties.

Whenever the world experiences what seems like a run of especially damaging earthquakes, people start to wonder if it has some long-term significance, with some seeing precursors of their impending apocalypse of choice. The USGS has clearly been fielding some questions about the perceived uptick in seismic activity, as last week they released a statement that in terms of earthquake frequency 2010 is so far on course to be a relatively normal year.

Scientists say 2010 is not showing signs of unusually high earthquake activity. Since 1900, an average of 16 magnitude 7 or greater earthquakes - the size that seismologists define as major - have occurred worldwide each year. Some years have had as few as 6, as in 1986 and 1989, while 1943 had 32, with considerable variability from year to year.

With six major earthquakes striking in the first four months of this year, 2010 is well within the normal range. Furthermore, from April 15, 2009, to April 14, 2010, there have been 18 major earthquakes, a number also well within the expected variation.

I thought this point could be best illustrated visually, so I ran a search through the USGS/NEIC earthquake catalogue for earthquakes of magnitude 7 or greater that have been recorded globally since 1973 (the starting point of the database). The results are plotted below. In the last 28 years, there have been on average around 13 such 'significant' earthquakes a year, with a magnitude 8 occuring about every year and a half. This average rate is marked by the grey line on the plot: if we extraplolate the six major earthquakes recorded in the first four months, 2010 is on course to experience 18 major earthquakes, a little above average but well within the variability shown by the whole dataset (and it's actually closer to the centennial average of 16 major quakes a year reported by the USGS above).

(Click for a larger version.)

However, looking at earthquake frequencies may not be the best way to examine this issue. What we're really interested in is the total energy being released by these earthquakes, and because the magnitude scale is logarithmic, a single magnitude 8 is responsible for releasing many times more energy than a magnitude 7. In fact, an increase of one unit of earthquake magnitude, which corresponds to a 10-times increase in the amplitude of the earthquake waves recorded by a seismometer, corresponds to >a 32-times increase in the total seismic energy released. If you look at the frequency distribution on the graph above with that fact in mind, it immediately becomes clear that the relatively infrequent magnitude 8 and 9 earthquakes actually release far more energy than all those magnitude 7s. A plot of annual seismic energy release clearly shows this: there is a lot more year-on-year variability, because in some years there are one or two magnitude 8s and in others there are none, and there are too few magnitude 7s to make up the difference. The year that really stands out is 2004: it was only a slightly above average year in terms of earthquake frequency, but one of those quakes was the magnitude 9.1 Boxing Day earthquake off Northern Sumatra, which released as much energy as 1500 magnitude 7s, all in one go.

(Click for a larger version.)

Interestingly, 2010 does stand out a bit on this plot thanks to that magnitude 8.8 off Chile, which is, behind the Sumatra earthquake, the 2nd biggest earthquake recorded since 1973. Indeed, if you're willing to squint a bit, you might hypothesise that there does seem to be an increase in the rate of seismic energy release in the last 5 years. However, the significance of this is easily refuted by adding a couple of events from just before the NEIC catalogue starts: the 1960 Chile earthquake (magnitude 9.5), and the 1964 Prince William Sound earthquake (magnitude 9.2).

Effectively, the entire 27 years' worth of seismic energy release recorded in the NEIC catalogue only represents about three quarters of the energy released by just these two earthquakes. So, if there was ever a time to announce the oncoming seismic apocalypse, the early 60s would have been the time to do it - even if you would then have had to cope with the embarrassment of us still being here. The problem is that the seismic rhythms of the planet operate over timescales much longer than a year, or even a decade. Over hundreds and thousands of years, there is some regularity to the seismicity in a particular area, driven as it is by tectonic forces that can remain relatively constant over millions of years. But we humans don't see things on that broad temporal scale: instead we are stuck right in the temporal guts of a random process, giving the occasional large earthquake much more significance that it actually has in the grand scheme of things.

There is a slightly more subtle point here too. The seismic energy released so far this year was mostly due to just one earthquake: the magnitude 8.8 off Chile. Whilst it caused $30 billion of damage and killed more than 500 people, in terms of human impact it was dwarfed by the earthquake in Haiti - despite that quake releasing less than 1/500th of the energy. As Kim explained a while back, Port-au-Prince was right next to a shallow rupture, so the shaking due to the earthquake was extremely intense; in Chile, the fault rupture was deep and offshore, and by the time it had reached the towns and cities on the coast, the seismic energy had spread out, resulting in a wider region of strong, but not quite so intense, shaking.

So really, worrying about rates of large earthquakes is a little beside the point. For human populations and infrastructure it's not so much a question of how much energy is being released, but where that release is taking place.

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More tributes to Reds Wolman from all those who miss him

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:37:54 -0500

About two months ago, I noted with great sadness the passing of a legendary figure in fluvial geomorphology, M. Gordon "Reds" Wolman, long-time professor at The Johns Hopkins University and inspiration to hundreds, if not thousands, of geomorphologists, hydrologists, and environmental scientists around the world.

In the past two months, Wolman's students and colleagues have done an outstanding job of paying tribute to our hero. On April 11th, generations of Wolman's students gathered on the Hopkins campus for a memorial service, which included a eulogy from a childhood friend and reflections from Hopkins geomorphology colleague Peter Wilcock. The day before the memorial, many of the attendees conducted their own Reds' style field trip to some of his favorite locations in Baltimore County and waved their arms and debated some of the same questions Reds had spent decades pondering. (Sadly, I could not attend the celebration, because I was leading my hydrogeology class on a field trip to Congaree National Park, but somehow I feel like Reds would understand.)

Among the lasting tributes to Wolman are a couple of JHU web pages, two wonderful videos (below), and perhaps my favorite memorial ever:

A permanent memorial tribute will be installed outside the classrooms in Ames Hall where Reds Wolman taught for more than a half century. Stones provided by students, colleagues and friends from around the world will be constructed into a path in a shape that mirrors a meandering river.

For those of you still wondering what all the fuss was about (and still reading this post), please take a few more minutes and listen to the preface of one of Wolman's seminal works and some reflections from Wolman's colleagues and students (including, if you listen carefully, me) and from Wolman himself.

Reds is deeply missed by all who knew him, but these wonderful tributes give us a small way to hang on to the man who influenced, encouraged, and inspired us.

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Volcanic ash: you can't avoid if you can't detect it

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 07:35:00 -0500

If you're wondering what all the fuss is about with the "ashpocalypse" still shutting down most air travel in Europe, particularly in the light of several airlines trumpeting successful 'test flights' through the European skies, this is the only quote you really need to read:

Guy Gratton, head of Cranfield University's facility for airborne atmospheric measurement, took a flight with fellow researchers to gather data.

Speaking as an aeronautical engineer, I would not want to be putting an airliner up there at the moment, said Gratton.

There is a lot of fairly nasty stuff there that we were running away from, knowing what we did. We have standard airline instruments on the aeroplane, we have got a storm scope and we have got a weather radar and they were looking straight through it.

Neither of those were seeing any of this stuff. It was only our specialist cloud physics instruments that were able to see the particles.

Jet engines do not react well with volcanic ash, but this would not be so much of a concern if commercial airliners could detect when they were flying into areas with dangerously high concentrations and divert around them, much as they do with storm systems. But the ash is too fine to be picked up on radar, meaning that normally equipped planes are effectively flying blind, reliant on external satellite and model data to steer a safe path. Do these data sources have the reliability, the resolution, and more importantly, the timeliness, to provide the pilots warning that they are flying into danger? A pilot's first indication that something was wrong could well be when an engine shuts down.

Hopefully someone is seriously exploring solutions to this detection problem (can that specialised cloud physics instrumentation be deployed more widely, I wonder?), which is in the long term the only way to minimise disruption if Icelandic volcanism continues. In the meantime, it's interesting that many people seem to be chafing more at the disruption brought on by a natural hazard with a clear and well-defined associated risk, than they do at restrictions in the name of protecting us from the much smaller chances of an undefined terrorist attack.

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Stuff I linked to on Twitter last week

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 11:00:00 -0500

More interesting geo-stuff I've highlighted for my followers on Twitter in the past 7 days, unsurprisingly dominated by the ongoing eruption of Eyjafjallajoekull. I've yet to find the definitive link on how to pronounce it, though.

I'm trying out dividing things into sub-categories this week, to make it seem like a bit less of a firehose.

Volcanoes

Clear View of The Vent [of Eyjafjallajoekull]
http://outsidetheinterzone.blogspot.com/2010/04/clear-view-of-vent.html
(via @RonsGeoPicks)

Ice cap thaw may awaken Icelandic volcanoes [reduced pressure on magma chamber -> eruption?]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/16/AR2010041604363.html
(via @RonsGeoPicks)

Iceland has 50-60-year cycles of volcano & quake activity. New eruption could signal years of heavy action to come:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18786-get-ready-for-decades-of-icelandic-fireworks.html
(via @Reillymj)

Impact of Eyjafjallajoekull eruption on CO2 emissions. One for next climate sceptic rant on volcs.
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/planes-or-volcano/
(via @theneweconomics)

Incredible images & footage of Icelandic volcano [Some look almost unreal...]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yahooeditorspicks/galleries/72157623855495574
(via @SciencePunk, @AlistairReid)

Good source of Iceland eruption links/webcams/videos/blogs/data:
http://islande2010.mbnet.fr/2010/04/eyjafjallajokul-links-liens-a-propos-de-leyjafjallajokul/
(via @CPPGeophysics)

Very cool satellite image of volcanic plume from Eyjafjallajokull.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/iceland-volcano-plume.html
(via @NASA, @NASA_EO)

Footage of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupting under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pazzn44zDs
(via @polarwander)

The effects of volcanic dust on Britan's climate could be severe [& everywhere else, presumably...]
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article7098303.ece
(via @TimesScience)

A geopal who has studied sub-glacial eruptions in Iceland blogs some thoughts on Eyjafjallajokull eruption
http://johnalexanderstevenson.blogspot.com/2010/04/fire-and-ice-again-baby.html

Great piece on (slow) ecological recovery in wake of 1980 Mt St Helens eruption
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/58034/title/A_fresh_look_at_Mount_St._Helens
(via @tpenews)

A tale of two volcanoes (very interesting)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/opinion/16winchester.html
(via @geographile, @swellyn)

Fascinating article on Toba eruption & early human migration - poss more complex than catastrophe->genetic bottleneck
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627561.300-supervolcano-how-humanity-survived-its-darkest-hour.html

Earthquakes

Is recent earthquake activity unusual? Scientists say "no." [& apocalypse nuts across the net ignore them]
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2439
(via @USGS)

NASA's Earthquake related visualizations:
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/advsearch.cgi?query=earthquake&req=search
(via @geographile, @caroldn)

NYT addresses the "so many earthquakes these days" perception [and q well, too]
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/opinion/11musson.html
(via @callanbentley)

Planets

Microbial life found in Hydrocarbon Lake raises hopes for exo-life on Titan? Though much lower temps there..
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25051/
(via @kzelnio)

Great shots of Saturn's moon Dione, showing (putative) tectonic faults via
http://www.space.com/common/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=23632
(via @rowanNS, @Spacedotcom)

Water on Mars yet again
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2010/04/water_on_mars_yet_again.html
(via @NatureNews)

General Geology

10 Great Places to See Geology in Action!
http://geotripper.blogspot.com/2010/04/10-great-places-to-see-geology-in.html
(via @Geoblogfeed)

Stalagmite reveals carbon footprint of early Native Americans [through land use changes]
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100415110007.htm
(via @tpenews)

Peruvian glacier split triggers deadly tsunami: [could be ongoing hazard as Andean glaciers melt?]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/13/peru-glacier-ice-lake-tsunami
(via @CPPGeophysics)

Magnetic poles may once have been at equator [during 'low latitude' Neoproterozoic glaciations]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627554.000-magnetic-poles-may-once-have-been-at-equator.html
(via @newscientist)

Time-lapse video of Hawaiian lava flows
http://geographile.blogspot.com/2010/04/time-lapse-lava-flow-and-rock-making-in.html
(via @dafydd2277, @geographile)

Interesting miscellaney

Good advice for academic writers. Avoid Bad Writing [Agree w/ major point if not *all* the specifics]
http://chronicle.com/article/Bad-WritingBad-Thinking/65031/
(via @history_geek)

(via @CPPGeophysics)
Hannibal\u2019s real Alpine trunk road to Rome is revealed [technically just strong candidate]
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/court_and_social/article7029508.ece
(via @history_geek)

Newspaper comments: Forget anonymity! The problem is community management: by Excellent!
http://www.wordyard.com/2010/04/13/newspaper-comments-forget-anonymity-the-problem-is-management/
(via @BoraZ, @scottros)

Oooh. : Cook's first voyage around the world 1768-1771 (with Joseph Banks), maps, journal entries:
http://southseas.nla.gov.au/journals/maps/01_world.html
(via @SmallCasserole)

Spreading the seed of science [inc. how to identify that rarest of creatures, a science-literate MP]
http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/2010/04/spreading-the-seed-of-science.html
(via @TimesScience)

Twittering is a difficult art form - if you are doing it right: (Think I'm roughly 80/20 mind/life casting)
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2010/04/twittering_is_a_difficult_art.php
(via @BoraZ)
Another perspective: http://k8grrl.blogspot.com/2010/04/gendered-use-of-social-media.html

Unlectures [More discussion, less powerpoint?]
http://www.possibilitiesendless.com/?p=106
(via @kjhaxton)

Science and art, all in one: Sun's cumulative path from June to December, as seen by a pinhole camera
http://helpmyphysics.co.uk/wordpress/?p=276

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A volcanic sunset over Edinburgh

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 10:25:00 -0500

In the last couple of days in Edinburgh, we've been treated to some rather spectacular sunsets.

You could argue that in Scotland a clear sky is more unusual than a nice sunset, but it's likely that the beauty of this one has been enhanced by the light-scattering effects of volcanic ash thrown up into the stratosphere by the sub-glacial eruption of Eyjafjallajoekull, and blown by the prevailing Atlantic winds across Northern Europe (those familar with Edinburgh may have noted the geological irony of my taking photos of the effects of an active volcano from an extinct one).

Source: NASA.

Source: UK Met Office, where a nice animation is also available.

All this volcanic material in the air may have a pleasing aesthetic effect, but as you're no doubt aware, it doesn't react too well with jet engines. For that reason most flights out of UK and northern European airports have been grounded for the past couple of days, and may stay grounded until at least tomorrow. It's somewhat humbling how what is really only a fairly minor volcanic eruption can completely disrupt the life of an entire continent. On the other hand, it is doing wonders for our collective carbon footprint: the estimated amount of carbon dioxide that has been emitted by Eyjafjallajoekull is ~~30 times less than~~ only three quarters (revised figure - thanks kai) of the amount not being emitted by all those grounded planes.

For more on the Eyjafjallajoekull eruption, both Eruptions and The Volcanism Blog are providing excellent ongoing coverage. You should also check out a post by my friend John Stevenson, an expert on sub-glacial eruptions. And if you want to see a few more photos of yesterday's sunset in Edinburgh, click below the fold.

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Tectonics of the Qinghai Earthquake

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 13:38:00 -0500

Late on Tuesday (or Wednesday morning local time) western China was shaken by a magnitude 6.9 earthquake. The focal mechanism, courtesy of the USGS, tells us that it occured on a strike-slip fault like the San Andreas fault and the Enriquillo fault in Haiti. In fact, it is located along the trace of the Xianshuihe fault system, one of several large strike slip faults that cut through this region. The focal mechanism can be interpreted as left-lateral (the two sides of the fault move left relative to each other) motion on a northwest-southeast trending fault, which is consistent with this earthquake being due to a rupture of a segment of the Xianshuihe fault.

Focal mechanism and location of the 13 April earthquake in the Qinghai region of China. Map from Tapponnier et al. 2001 (Click for a slightly larger version).

The Xianshuihe fault is one of several similar faults spread over a wide region, indicating that something tectonically interesting is going on in this part of Asia. Since we are located at the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, it's no surprise that deformation in this region is driven by the continuing continental collision between India and Asia. India is moving northwards at around 5 centimetres a year, and the Indian crust and lithosphere is old, cold, and strong, much more so than the accreted island arcs and marine sediments that it is colliding with. Thus the Asian crust is intensely deformed, being squashed and crumpled and uplifted to form the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau, the highest region on Earth. But there are limits to how high the mountains can get before they will collapse under their own weight, and the Himalayas and Tibet are at or beyond this limit; therefore the Asian crust is also being pushed away to either side by the encroaching Indian plate, just as the prow of a ship parts the water it is moving through. This 'tectonic escape' explains the fairly westward motion of the crust in western China relative to the rest of Asia, which can clearly be seen in GPS measurements of the current deformation.

(Click for larger version)

This motion is ultimately accommodated by strike-slip motion on faults such as those that make up the Xianshuihe system.

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Toads: seismic prognosticators?

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:40:00 -0500

Is a pet toad the new must-have earthquake detector? This paper, which is getting a lot of media attention today, claims that in the 5 days before the L'Aquila earthquake in April last year, toads which should have been massing to engage in their annual mating instead left their ponds and ran for the hills. The authors speculate that this exodus was linked to very low frequency electromagnetic perturbations in the atmosphere which happened around the same time.

I'm not going to go into detail on this, because Michael Reilly has produced an excellent write-up already, even interviewing Susan Hough, who has written a book on the science of earthquake prediction that is high on my to-read list. Dave Petley also has some interesting thoughts. Given my previous thoughts on claimed earthquake precursors, it should come as no surprise that I share their scepticism about all of this. One data point does not a robust detection system make.

Not a seismologist.

Of course, it's no surprise that this story has legs: earthquake detection is extremely topical in the wake of two large earthquakes in the last three months, and being able to give it the "serendipitous discovery" spin (study toad breeding, publish on earthquakes!) just adds to the appeal. However, this study suffers from the usual problems with claimed earthquake precursors: is this 'precursor' replicated in other places, before other earthquakes? More importantly, is it only associated with earthquakes? Is there a consistent correlation between the appearance of the precursor, and the size and/or the timing of the earthquake that follows? These are the questions that need to be answered before you can move from anecdata to something that is actually useful. They are also questions that have yet to be definitively answered for any claimed percursor, be it animal, electrical, or gaseous. It's not that the various types of signals that have been observed before large earthquakes have no connection to what's going on beneath our feet - it's entirely plausible that in some cases they do - but I suspect that without some new theoretical insights into what that connection might be, we're never going to be able to interpret with confidence what these signals mean before it's too late to matter.

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Stuff I linked to on Twitter last week

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 11:00:00 -0500

Another week's worth of interesting links I shared via Twitter

Blog Post by @brianshiro - Earth and Space 2010 [great write-up of what sounds like an interesting conference]
http://www.astronautforhire.com/2010/03/earth-and-space-2010.html

Active reading techniques to improve understanding & retention [how to read sci papers effectively]
http://a-life-long-scholar.blogspot.com/2010/03/active-reading-techniques-to-improve.html
(via @Geoblogfeed)

Relative relatives [how do you accurately describe evolutionary relationships to a layman?]
http://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/relative-relatives/
(via @Geoblogfeed)

Icelandic eruption from space [shows lava flowing along drainage to east of lava fountains]
http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2010/03/icelandic_eruption_from_space.php

Plans to drill into Antarctic sub-ice lakes, including Vostok, are well underway it seems
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100324/full/464472b.html

Magnetotactic bacteria FTW! : Bacteria build a mini-pyramid
http://blogs.sundaymercury.net/weirdscience/2010/03/bacteria-build-a-mini-pyramid.html
(via @ScienceSoWhat)

How small planets can have self-sustaining magnetic fields [inc. poss. asteroid Vesta! Only short lived ones of course]
http://www.physorg.com/news188753199.html

How China overtook the US in renewable energy [with data on global clean energy spending/usage]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/mar/25/china-renewable-energy-pew-research
(via @guardianscience)

Telegraph Reports, "Oil Reserves 'Exaggerated by 1/3'" An Analysis and Some Charts--Going In Depth
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6324
(via @TheOilDrum)

Japan creates elastic alloy to make earthquake-proof buildings. [if it works, lets hope its cheap-ish]
http://www.inhabitat.com/2010/03/23/elastic-iron-alloy-could-be-used-to-make-earthquake-proof-buildings/
(via @geology4u)

Haiti, After the Quake [Interview with medic who has been on the ground in Port-au-Prince]
http://news.discovery.com/earth/haiti-after-the-quake.html
(via @RonsGeoPicks)

Island disputed by India and Bangladesh sinks below waves [Anyone else instantly think of Jingo?]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/cif-green/2010/mar/24/india-bangladesh-sea-levels
(via @guardianscience)

6 Ways We're Already Geoengineering Earth [yes, it counts even when its unintended]http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/geoengineering-gallery/
(via @highlyanne, @ScienceSoWhat)

Strain Is Accumulating On Istanbul
http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2010/03/strain-is-accumulating-on-istanbul.html
(via @Geoblogfeed)

Extreme palaeontology! How to collect a skeleton from cliff face with 200 m of sandstone as overburden
http://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/guest-post-how-to-collect-a-skeleton-from-a-cliff-face-with-200-meters-of-sandstone-as-overburden/
(via @Geoblogfeed)

When are freak weather events considered normal? How the unusual are becoming the expected:
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2010/03/24/2854603.htm
(via @geographile, @BraveNewClimate)

More impressive "curtain of fire" movies from Iceland eruption: [night shots towards end]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthvideo/7500544/Active-Icelandic-volcano-new-pictures.html
(via @CPPGeophysics)

Mississippi River looking mighty indeed outside Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory today:
http://mediamill.cla.umn.edu/mediamill/embed/64513
(via @stcNCED)

I am out-geeked. What is the tensile strength of rock and roll? (from @geographile)
http://bit.ly/bw6SXk
(via @callanbentley @stressrelated, @geographile)

More detail on possiblity of Eyjafjallaj\u00f6kull eruption triggering Katla - has happened before, 3 times in 1100 years
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18690-iceland-waits-for-volcanic-shoe-to-drop.html

Chileans' quake knowledge saved thousands of lives [that, plus 30 seconds before most intense shaking]
http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre62i4ao-us-quake-chile-knowledge/

How dinosaurs rose to prominence: early Atlantic rift volcanism linked to end-Triassic mass extinction
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100322153947.htm

Earth's rivers from space
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/gallery-rivers/
(via @clasticdetritus)

Earthquakes, urbanization & fatalities [nice plot of fatalities vs quake magnitude - sadly, Haiti an outlier]
http://shakingearth.blogspot.com/2010/03/earthquakes-urbanization-and-fatalities.html

Perry Mason & the climate change deniers Great post on confusion over criminal vs scientific standards of evidence.
http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2010/03/perry-mason-and-climate-change-deniers.html

Weathering the Grenvillian landscape [outcrop photos of Neoproterozoic rift sediments]
http://mountainbeltway.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/transect-debrief-2-weathering-the-grenvillian-landscape/
(via @Geoblogfeed)

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Oman's view of the Snowball Earth

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 11:40:00 -0500

The latest Accretionary Wedge, being hosted at Geology Happens, asks: what are you working on? This seemed to me to be a good excuse to finally write something about this whole Snowball Earth thing that I'm currently researching. More musings will hopefully follow in the future.

Why did visit I Oman last year? Because in Oman you can find Late Neoproterozoic rocks, between about 750 and 600 million years in age, that contain sequences like this:

There are two very different rock units in this outcrop. The lower part consists of a diamicite: a sedimentary rock that contains both very fine particles (the dark grey matrix) and also large pebbles, cobbles and even occasionally boulders, and possibly everything in between (this range of different grain sizes means that is a poorly sorted sediment).

The buff coloured unit deposited directly above this is a carbonate rock, more specifically dolomite; it is crystalline, and generally quite fine grained.

This is not just an outcrop of extremes because of the obvious lithological differences between the two units. Diamictites are often interpreted as having being deposited in a glacial environment*. Bedrock underneath a glacier is very efficiently ground up into fine powder by the slowly moving ice, while larger rock fragments are also swept along, frozen within the main body of the glacier itself. Thus, when the ice melts at the end of a glacier, fine and coarse material will all get mixed up in the same deposit. However, whilst this suggests that the lowermost unit was deposited in a very cold, icy climate, the carbonate appears to have been directly chemically precipitated from seawater, something which only happens in warm, tropical conditions - think the Bahamas. There is no sign of a large time gap between the formation of these two units, so if these interpretations are correct, this outcrop records an extremely abrupt climatic shift from very cold conditions to very warm ones.

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Is Anne a hydrologist? geomorphologist? hydrophillic geologist? or whathaveyou?

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:01:52 -0500

The theme for the next edition of the geoblogosphere's Accretionary Wedge carnival is along the lines of "what are you doing now?" Recently as I was whining to my co-blogger about how busy my teaching was keeping me, and how I wouldn't have time to write anything for the Wedge, Chris suggested that I exhume some navel-gazing writing I'd done a while ago and simply post that. If you would rather have seen some pretty pictures of my students on field trips, just blame Chris for this text-heavy post.

So, what do I do? The major theme of my research is analyzing how geologic, topographic, and land use variability controls hydrologic response, climate sensitivity, and geomorphic evolution of watersheds, by partitioning water between surface and ground water. The goal of my research is to improve reach- to landscape-scale prediction of hydrologic and geomorphic response to human activities and climate change. My work includes contributions from field studies, stable isotope analyses, time series analyses, geographic information systems, and hydrological modeling. My process-based research projects allow me to investigate complex interactions between hydrology, geomorphology, geology, and biology that occur on real landscapes, to test conceptual models about catchment functioning, and to show whether predictive models are getting the right answers for the right reasons. My current and past research has allowed me to investigate landscapes as diverse as the Cascades Range volcanic arc, the Appalachian Mountains and Piedmont of the southeastern United States, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, and the Upper Mississippi River watershed.

In brief, my research interests look like this (thanks to TagCrowd):

created at TagCrowd.com

More specifically, my on-going and developing research program focuses on three areas:

Watershed influences on hydrologic response to climate variability and change;
Controls on and effects of partitioning flowpaths between surface water and groundwater; and
Influence of hydrologic regimes on landscape evolution and fluvial geomorphology

If you really want the long version of my research interests, venture onward. But don't say I didn't warn you.

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Research Blogging likes us

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:15:00 -0500

When the winners of the 2010 Research Blogging Awards were announced earlier today, it was no surprise that Ed Yong deservedly won big or that Bora was crowned king of the Tweeters. However, it was a bit more of a surprise to discover that Highly Allochthonous was voted the best Conservation or Geosciences blog. And in another triumph for the geoblogosphere, the excellent Amphibol was top of the German research blog pile.

I can't help being a little chuffed at this, although any good opinions of this blog's effectiveness at distilling the scientific literature for the layman are almost certainly just as much a testament to my coblogger Anne's excellent literature picks posts as any of my own semi-irregular research blogging. I'd like to thank whoever nominated us, and whoever liked what we do here enough to vote for us ahead of the other excellent contenders in our category: ConservationBytes , Dave's Landslide Blog, Ecographica, In Terra Veritas, Southern Fried Science, Thriving Oceans, and Voltage gate. All are well worth checking out. In fact, all of the nominees found on the awards page are worthy additions to your feed reader.

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