NOVA Geoblog

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Next week's NOVA Science Seminar

Science Seminar, presented by the Math, Science, and Engineering Division, Annandale Campus and also supported by Lyceum

"The Scientific Basis of Music"
Herbert A. Smith, Director Jazz Studies, Northern Virginia Community College.
Friday, November 20, 2009, CE Forum, 12 noon - 1pm

This presentation will focus on music and its essential relationship to science. It will explore areas, aspects and elements of music that most reasonably could be termed the science of music. The talk will also illuminate unique principles, concepts and procedures shared within the sciences as well as music. It will highlight the benefits of music study and practice in the intellectual and philosophical development of the educated and enlightened individual.

Professor Smith has taught at NOVA since 1976 and has performed with notable local and internationally known jazz musicians throughout his long career in music. He has taught a variety of courses including Jazz Improvisation, History of Music, Music Theory, Composition and Music Appreciation. Before he joined the faculty at NOVA he taught at Howard University and Southern Illinois University, hosted two radio jazz shows and was in the US Air Force band for three years. Herb Smith has a passionate interest in history, politics, economics, philosophy and the study of world cultures.

All students, staff, and faculty are cordially invited.

Labels: meetings, music, nova

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Boring Volcanic Field, Oregon

On the day before the GSA meeting began, I participated in a field trip to the Boring Volcanic Field, a zone of anomalously-located volcanic vents around Portland, Oregon. The field is named for the Boring Hills, adjacent to the town of Boring, Oregon, which is named for a dude named "Boring." Kim Kastens noted this funny name on the Earth and Mind blog recently. The USGS maintains an information page on the field here.

Today, some photos...

Atop Rocky Butte, field trip leaders Rick Conrey (WSU) and Russ Evarts (USGS Menlo Park) orient the group with a map highlighting the various units comprising the Boring Volcanic Field:

Mount Hood hides its peak in the clouds:

At our first outcrop stop, the field trip participants get out and look at the Boring rocks:

Here, a Boring lava flow overlies Troutdale Formation fluvial gravels:

Annotated version for the untrained eye:

In places, a "baked" zone of contact metamorphism can be seen in the Troutdale as it got scorched by the lava that flowed on top of it (bright red), but the characteristic red color was missing underneath one spot, the central overhang in this photo:

Weird, huh? Maybe the metamorphosed sediments need a certain amount of rain-mediated chemical weathering before they "blush"?

Well-rounded clast from the Troutdale: vesicular basalt from the Columbia River Plateau:

Another nice Columbia River flood basalt boulder, this one with phenocrysts of plagioclase, and a concentric zonation of texture (massive in the center, vesicular towards the edges):

Plus, you can find cobbles derived from further afield: gneiss (from Idaho?), quartzite (Belt rock?), etc:

Between cobbles of the Troutdale, you can see hyaloclastic sand (immature sand with lots of hydrated basaltic glass fragments, apparently produced by interactions of magma and water in the source area, upstream):

More hyaloclastic sand:

Oooh! A "crack panel" on the side of some cooling columns at another stop! These horizontal slats are produced in individual fracture-propagation events, and each one concludes with a little ridge called an arrest line.

Mafic pyroclastics that underlie the lava flows at this second stop:

More mafic pyroclastics, on a cinder cone in Mount Tabor Park.

This is a pretty neat outcrop: you can see normal faults cutting these angle-of-repose inclined volcanic strata, presumably forming in slumping events.

Annotated version of this same photo, highlighting a marker layer and its offset along the fault:

The weather was pretty grim for this trip, so that was a bummer. But it's Portland, right? What did we really expect? Anyhow, I enjoyed being introduced to this suite of rocks -- boring out of context, but interesting given their location well west of the main axis of Cascade volcanism. Unfortunately, the field trip didn't really address why the Boring rocks are there. I was expecting some sort of detailed discussion of the possibilities: an evaluation of different models for their generation and passage to the surface... but that really didn't happen in any substantive way. So it wasn't the most amazing field trip I've ever gone on, but it was a nice day of checking out a cool suite of rocks.

Labels: meetings, oregon, pleistocene, pliocene, sediment, volcano

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Tugboat portrait of geobloggers

Here's a photo of 18 of the 19 geobloggers who assembled on Monday night in Portland:

I had to do some photoshopping, as you might have deduced. Not everybody was in the same place at the same time: herding geobloggers is worse than herding cats! So... I've had to be creative to get them all in the same jpg space.

In alphabetical order, those pictured are:

Andrew Alden, About.com
Jessica Ball, Magma Cum Laude
Callan Bentley, NOVA Geoblog
"Silver Fox," Looking for Detachment
Steve Gough, Riparian Rap
Anne Jefferson, Highly Allochthonous
Kim Hannula, All My Faults Are Stress Related
Kyle House, Geologic Froth(ings)
Erik Klemetti, Eruptions
Jim Lehane (younger of the two Jims), Dino Jim's Musings
Chuck Magee, Lounge of the Lab Lemming
Marcella, Pooh's Thoughts
Mary, a geo-Twitterer
Jim Repka (older of the two Jims), Active Margin
Brian Romans, Clastic Detritus
Ron Schott, Ron Schott's Geology Home Companion Blog
Peter Selkin, Oblate Spheroid
David Williams, Stories In Stone

MAK was there too, but for some reason I don't have him in any of my photos... Sorry!

Labels: blogs, meetings, oregon

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

GSA update 4

My final day at GSA was fruitful. I started off in the "Earth, et al." session hosted by ODU's Nora Noffke. It was devoted to the Precambrian, and had some interesting talks about fluctuating oxygen levels, mineral evolution, microbially-induced sedimentary structures, and Neoproterozoic glaciation. This last one was most interesting to me: UMD's Jay Kaufman talked about field work he conducted in Siberia last summer, documenting a diamictite unit between Ediacaran strata and Cambrian strata. There's even a carbon isotope excursion to match up with it! Cool... literally.

I had lunch with my friend David Dantzler, who I hadn't even realized was at the conference, until I saw him come in to one of the Darwin-focused sessions. In the afternoon, I attended another eight talks, including some on greenstone belts in South Africa, some on geological education, and a couple about the evolution of orogens, with an emphasis on South America. (One of these was an excellent talk by Brian Romans about his field area in Patagonia.) I finished up with Kim Hannula's talk about the geoblogosphere's role in supporting women geoscientists. Then it was time to bug out: back to the hotel, then to the airport, then to Los Angeles, then to Dulles, where I arrived this morning at 6:30am. On the flight, I took an Advil PM, put in earplugs and wore one of those little eye-masks so I could get some decent amount of sleep... Mixed success on that front. Once I got to Dulles, I got some coffee, and headed straight to work! It's good to be back in the familiar environs of my office and lab again. Thanks for a great conference, everyone!

Also: GSA is maintaining a webpage summarizing the various posts from registered geobloggers. It's incomplete, but a useful idea: a repository for all the stuff being said about the conference from the various attending geobloggers.

Labels: archean, blogs, geology, hadean, meetings, oregon, patagonia, proterozoic, snowball earth

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

GSA update 3

Whew! A busy day at the Geological Society of America meeting in Portland, Oregon. I started off the day in the two-year-college session, culminating (for me, anyhow) in my talk about the role that field trips play in my geology classes at NOVA. I believe in spirited presentations, so I moved away from the lecturn and spoke extemporaneously about my images and data, and the talk was well-received by the audience -- or at least that portion that chose to tell me what they thought. After the talk, I was really tired out (I hadn't realized I was stressing about the talk, but apparently I must have been.) I went back to the hotel and took a shower, dealt with some mortgage stuff (I'm buying a condo in DC), and then semi-refreshed, headed back to the fray at the Convention Center.

I've met another several geobloggers: Brian Romans and Kim Hannula. Geoblogger Lockwood Dewitt sent me a rock (natrolite in calcite! likely from a pillow basalt!) via roaming geoblogger "Silver Fox." Cool. I dig it. I had some people come up to me out of the blue and tell me that they read this blog, and that is super cool to hear. Thanks!

In the afternoon, I went to a few sessions about volcanism and the end-Permian extinction, history-of-geology, and I forget what else.

In the late afternoon, the beer began flowing. I started off at the W.W. Norton publishing company's beer bash, where I brushed shoulders with Walter Alvarez, met the author of my Physical Geology textbook, Steve Marshak, and chatted at length with Bob Lillie of Oregon State University about getting the National Park Service better educated about their geological resources. Then it was off to the AGI reception, where I won a bottle of wine and got to chat with David Williams, author of Stories In Stone. Meg Sever, the editor of EARTH, with whom I've e-mailed a zillion times, but never met. Turns out Meg went to William & Mary, like me (and Jessica Ball, also at the AGI reception), so the three of us trooped upstairs to the William & Mary alumni reception. It was good to see Brent Owens, Heather McDonald, and Chuck Bailey there, as well as other W&M geology grads (including Graham, who reads this blog! Hi Graham!).

The evening's final event was the much-ballyhooed geoblogger's meet-up. At 8pm, about fifteen of us assembled at Tugboat Brewing Company, a cozy, charming little pub in downtown Portland. Every time someone walked through the door, a rousing, "Yeeeaaaahhh!!!" cheer went up. And every time someone left, they got booed! It was terrific fun meeting everyone that I've had these online geoblogging relationships with over the past ~1.5 years, and I think a good time was had by all. I'll put some photos up later... [Other online reminiscences about the meetup: Chuck and Jessica.]

Labels: books, geology, meetings, national parks, nova, oregon

Monday, October 19, 2009

GSA update 2

The Sunday afternoon sessions were not as diverse for me as the morning sessions, but there was some fun stuff in there.

I started off with the "digital advances" session co-sponsored by geobloggers Kyle House and Ron Schott. Working with several other organizers, Ron and Kyle put on quite a show. Kyle gave his "Get with it, Luddites!" spiel, Ian Jackson evangelized about OneGeology (a global geologic map), geoblogger Lee Allison talked about geoblogging and geotweeting (and featured the blog title banners of several GSA-attending geobloggers, including mine), and Declan De Paor (from Virginia's own Old Dominion University) showed off many of the myriad very cool digital techniques he is using. He began his talk by putting his iPhone number up on the screen and then encouraging the audience to text him their questions as he spoke, so he could read them off the iPhone propped there on the lecturn and answer them as a seamless part of his talk. Then Ron demonstrated a virtual field trip that integrated Google Earth with Giganpan imagery. When it worked, this really awed the crowd. Unfortunately, Google Earth crashed repeatedly during the demo -- which must have been frustrating for Ron. Then the talks stopped an the informal demonstrations and playing around with the technologies began on the edges of the room. Milling around in the crowd, I met for the first time fellow geobloggers Jim Repka and "Silver Fox," and chatted a bit with Kyle and Lee.

(I should also mention that I ran into Bryan of In Terra Veritas and Andrew Alden earlier in the day: geobloggers galore!)

Then I went to see Bob Hazen talk about how mineral surfaces could have provided a template for organizing biomolecules as a prelude to the origins of life. It was cool, but more of an overview talk rather than a presentation of new research.

I went to a couple of very well-attended but lackluster presentations on Sierran uplift, and then closed out the day in the structural geology session, which included an interesting study about detrital zircon populations presenting skewed age populations if the basin from which they were derived had experienced landslides. Finally, Doug Burbank of UCSB gave an invited lecture and the feedbacks between geomorphology, climate, and mountain building. I checked out a few dozen posters, and then called it a day.

Labels: geology, meetings, oregon

Sunday, October 18, 2009

GSA update 1

The Annual meeting of the Geological Society of America is underway!

I enjoyed a nice field trip yesterday, investigating some anomalous igneous rocks around Portland; more on that in a later (illustrated) post.

Last night, I had dinner at the Deschutes Brewpub with Michelle Arsenault of NSF, volcanological blogger Erik Klemetti and his wife, and a fan of NOVA Geoblog, Dennis M. This was a fun and eclectic group of people, with all sorts of unexpected connections! And the Obsidian Stout was lovely...

Today the meeting proper began, and I have been delighted to attend talks on topics as diverse as geoscience education, the 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake, biomarkers (chemical "fossils"), uplift of the Teton range, oxidation of the shallow ocean before the "Great Oxidation Event," and the recently-much-hullabalooed plumbing system beneath a Permian "supervolcano" in Italy. Wow! Such interesting topics, such skilled speakers, such inspiring scientists. I heard one geologist tell firsthand about his experiences living through the Hebgen Lake quake, and another put forward the suggestion that Ediacaran fossils are lichens, not animals. Several workers presented evidence that there was a substantial land biota in the Neoproterozoic. When ideas like that are being batted around, it's hard not to catch the excitement. More later... Now it's time for me to head off for another round of talks!

Labels: geology, meetings, oregon

Saturday, October 17, 2009

GSW flight #179

Last night on my flight from DC to Portland, there were five GSW members ... About one-twelfth of the population of Wednesday's meeting! Plus I ran into the geologist from Blue Ridge Community College and a grad student from Virginia Tech. Cool!

Labels: gsw, meetings, oregon

Friday, October 16, 2009

Off to GSA

I'm in the office this morning, taking care of a bunch of last minute details before I depart this afternoon for the Geological Society of America's annual meeting. It's held this year in Portland, Oregon, and I'm pleased to be going in spite of the many responsibilities I'm temporarily putting on hold back here in DC and NOVA. Meetings like this are a great opportunity for professional scientists to catch up on the latest ideas both inside and outside their specialties. I'm also going to be participating in a field trip to the awesomely-named Boring Volcanic Field tomorrow, and maybe doing a little self-guided tour of Portland's geology on my own. I will be presenting a paper of my own (on the role field trips play in geology education*) on Monday. I'm looking forward to meeting many of my fellow geology bloggers Monday night, and not looking forward to the red-eye flight back to DC Tuesday night/Wednesday morning... and then going straight back to work. Fortunately I think I've got all my stuff set for next week, so it should be "plug and play" upon my return... but I've got a hunch I'm going to be pretty tired, regardless.

So... take a deep breath, Bentley... here we go!
______________________________________
* subject of my MSSE capstone research project.

Labels: meetings, oregon, travel

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Steve Fetter: movin' on up!

Steve Fetter, former dean of public policy at the University of Maryland, came to NOVA to speak at our first annual Climate Change Symposium in 2008. He was our "headliner" act. Now, I learn from the University of Maryland alumni magazine Terp that Steve is now an assistant director in the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. Congratulations Steve!

Labels: climate change, maryland, meetings, politics

Monday, October 12, 2009

The "flipping fault"

Returning now to some of the stuff I saw when I was out in Bishop, California for the GSA Field Forum I attended in September. One of the cool little spots we visited was "the flipping fault," a location on the Volcanic Tableland north of Bishop where an east-dipping fault scarp dies out and a west-dipping fault scarp starts up. Check it out:

Here, try one with annotations:

Here's a Google Map of the location, as seen from the perspective of a passing turkey vulture:

Notice how the road, Casa Diablo Road, goes right through the notch where the two meet. Complicating the picture a wee bit is a Pleistocene drainage channel which uses the same route between the two scarps (and diverges from the road in the lower-left).

Another view, further back and higher up:

And of course we must annotate that one too:

Recall that these are normal faults busting through the Bishop Tuff's upper welded layer, the "Ig2." In the annotations, I've sketched in the approximate position of the "hanging-wall cutoff" (lower boundary of each scarp) and the "foot-wall cutoff" (upper boundary of each scarp).

There are roughly equal numbers of east-dipping and west-dipping faults on the Volcanic Tableland. Originally, some creative structural geologists wanted to interpret this feature as an overall "propeller" shaped fracture: a so-called "flipping" fault (as in, it's one single fault that flips its dip direction in the middle). However, this was not the interpretation of our workshop leaders, who suggested that it was simply two faults that started independently and then propagated towards one another.

Taking a fresh look at these images now, almost a month after I visited the outcrop, I find that I agree with them. One thing that seems obvious to me now is how the east-dipping fault truncates on the face of the west-dipping fault scarp. My annotations reflect this interpretation. What do you think?

Labels: california, conferences, meetings, structure

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Geoblogger's pow-wow in Portland

In case anyone has not been following the thread at the old post on this topic, here's the plan for geology bloggers who want to meet up and quaff some ale at the GSA meeting in Portland the week after next: let's meet up 8pm at Tugboat (link to map) on Monday night, October 19.

If anyone is around on ~~Friday~~ Saturday, I'll also be at the Deschutes Brewery (link to map) on Friday night, October 16, at 8:30pm: A fan of NOVA Geoblog invited me out for a beer! (Why don't the rest of you do that?) You're welcome to join us: The more, the merrier.

Saturday night and Sunday night are wide open for me. Give a shout if you want to make a plan.

Labels: blogs, meetings, oregon

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Upcoming NOVA Science Seminar

Friday, October 23, 2009, CE Forum
12 noon - 1pm

"Community-Based Environmental Action"

Chris Bright, President and Co-Founder of the Earth Sangha, a non-profit environmental group

The Earth Sangha is a Buddhist environmental group based in Fairfax County co-founded by Chris and his wife, Lisa Bright, to work with volunteers on ecologically significant restoration projects in natural areas. Every year over 500 volunteers donate more than 10,000 hours of their time to the Sangha's restoration projects throughout northern Virginia. Volunteers have built the Sangha's Wild Plant Nursery, DC region's most comprehensive local-ecotype native-plant propagation center. (Local ecotypes are local, wild native-plant populations; the use of local ecotypes is a standard best practice in restoration because that helps to conserve the genetic diversity and local adaptation in the species planted.) The Earth Sangha is also a kind of low-tech innovator in the control of invasive alien plants; such plants are a major threat to local natural areas. In 2006, the Sangha transplanted a version of its community-nursery approach to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. The Sangha's Tree Bank / Hispaniola program works along a portion of the Dominican Republic - Haiti border, where it helps impoverished farmers improve their incomes and restore patches of native forest on their lands.

Chris Bright will describe the Earth Sangha's work, the rationale behind it, and its implications for the conservation agenda. Before founding the Earth Sangha, Chris was a Senior Researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, a think tank that tracks global environmental and social trends. He is the author of numerous articles and one book, Life Out of Bounds: Bioinvasion in a Borderless World, the first global, interdisciplinary study of biological invasion written for a general audience.

Labels: action, environmental, meetings, nova

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

October PGS: Pre-plate-tectonic Paleomag

"Heresy at Cambridge: Paleomagnetism before Vine and Matthews"

Gregory A. Good, Ph.D.
Director, Center for History of Physics
American Institute of Physics

Potomac Geophysical Society Meeting, October 15, 2009

The story of Fred Vine, Drummond Matthews, and sea-floor spreading is a well known part of the acceptance of plate tectonics in the 1960s. Vine and Matthews published their famous paper "Magnetic Anomalies over Oceanic Ridges" in Nature in 1963, but interest in paleomagnetism and continental drift in England started to rise as early as 1950 among a group of physicists and cosmologists there. These interlopers in geology -- Patrick Blackett, Teddy Bullard, and Keith Runcorn -- all had started in particle physics and cosmic ray research. How they ended up providing a basis for discovery in earth science traces an interesting tale of interdisciplinary research in the mid-20th century.

Greg is a historian of science who currently writes mostly about the history of geophysics and especially the history of geomagnetic research. He has degrees in both physics and in history of science and he taught in the History Department at West Virginia University from 1983 until 2008. He has been on the History Committee of the AGU since 1989 and is a member of GSA, the International Commission for the History of the Geological Sciences, and the History of Science Society. He has published many articles and two books, one on the geosciences at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the other an encyclopedia of the history of the earth sciences. He edited the journal Earth Sciences History for the History of the Earth Sciences Society for six years. He was named a Fellow of the GSA this year, having received the Mary C. Rabbitt Award of the GSA Historical Division in 2008.

More information at the PGS website.

Labels: magnetism, meetings, pgs, plate tectonics

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Upcoming Richard Dawkins talks in our ~area

Richard Dawkins is on a speaking tour in promotion of his new book on the evidence for evolution, which I just got yesterday. He's not coming to DC, but the closest speeches he'll be giving are in Charlottesville, at UVA (Oct.16), and then in Philadelphia, at the library (Oct.22).

Labels: evolution, meetings, pennsylvania, virginia

Monday, September 28, 2009

Cafe Scientifique: Earth Science in the spotlight

WHAT: Earth Science in the Spotlight: Engaging the Public

WHEN: Tuesday, Oct. 6, 5:30-8:00 PM; program begins at 6:15 PM.

WHERE: The Front Page Restaurant, 4201 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA, Located near Ballston Metro on the ground floor of the NSF building. Parking is available under the NSF building or at Ballston Common Mall.

WHO: Ann E. Benbow, Ph.D., Director of Education, Outreach and Development, American Geological Institute

HOW: Special 1/2 price burgers start at 5:30 PM. Please come early to order table service and socialize. Short presentation begins at 6:15 PM, followed by Q&A. No science background required- only an interest! Cafe Scientifique is free and open to the public. Register online here.

ABOUT THE TOPIC: The news media routinely sound alarms about natural disasters, climate change, and the energy crisis. But who helps the public make sense of these issues? More and more, scientists are stepping up to help ordinary people, from school children to policy makers, understand the earth science behind the headlines. Earth science, after all, encompasses virtually all the sciences, from biology to chemistry to physics. Learn how AGI, an association of 45 member societies across the geosciences, is tapping the expertise of professional geologists, oceanographers, meteorologists, and other scientists to improve education and promote public awareness on such timely topics. Join us for a brief discussion, exciting video and hands-on activities showing how you can play a vital part.

COMING NEXT MONTH: November 3, Mario J. Molina, Ph.D., Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 1995 will speak on ozone depletion in the atmosphere.

Labels: meetings, science and society, teaching

Friday, September 25, 2009

GSA blogroll

Kim already gave GSA a shout-out about this, but in the unlikely event any Portland-meeting-attending geobloggers see this first, go register your blog at their "dynamic blogroll."

Labels: meetings, oregon

Monday, September 21, 2009

James Balog on TED

If you haven't seen this yet, please watch it. Nice work, Mr. Balog!

Labels: art, climate change, glaciation, global warming, ice, meetings

Friday, September 11, 2009

NOVA Science Seminar: "Cameras we cannot picture"

The first of our monthly science seminar series is coming up at the end of the month:

"Cameras we cannot picture"
Dr. Ravi Athale, Senior Principal Scientist, The MITRE Corporation
Monday, September 28, 2009, Ernst Center Forum, 12 noon - 1pm

Abstract: The world of imaging has evolved from its humble origins as a pinhole camera to its current incarnations of very large (Hubble Space Telescope) and very small (pill cameras that one swallows). Last 10 years, in particular, has seen more rapid growth in our ability to record static and moving images than anytime in human history. This has been enabled by replacing film with semiconductor devices for recording imagers. Dr. Athale argues that as dramatic as this progress has been, the future will bring even more startling and unimaginable changes due to the integration of imaging with equally spectacular progress in computing, communications and storage technologies.

Ravi Athale is Senior Principal Scientist and Department Head, Emerging Technology office at the MITRE Corporation. Over past 30 years he has worked as a scientist, educator and manager in government, academic and industrial institutions. In 2007, he received Leadership Award of the Optical Society of America and Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service. In addition, he is a co-author of a high school engineering textbook published by Prentice-Hall and is a co-founder of company that develops consumer products based on computer generated holograms.

Please join us, if you can!

Labels: art, meetings, nova, science and society, tech

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

PGS: North Korean nukes

The September meeting of the Potomac Geophysical Society will be held September 17th at the Fort Myer Officers' Club in Arlington, VA in the Campaign Room. This month's talk will be: North Korean Nuclear Test of May 25 2009: Similarities and Differences With Respect to the Initial October 9, 2006 Test, by Jack Murphy (SAIC, McLean, VA).

Abstract:
On May 25, 2009 North Korea announced that it had conducted its second nuclear weapons test. As with the first test, this second explosion was well-detected by the seismic stations of the International Monitoring System (IMS), as well as numerous other international stations operated by the USGS and other organizations. The best relative seismic location for this explosion places it within 2 km of the ground truth location of the initial 2006 test in a mountainous region of northeastern North Korea. Comparisons of the seismic data recorded at common stations from these two tests indicate that the second was approximately four times larger than the first, having an estimated yield in the range from about 2 to 5 kt. While there are many similarities in the observations from the two tests, there are several notable differences. Perhaps the most surprising of these is that there were no reported detections from any of the IMS radionuclide stations. The report of a noble gas (Xe¹³³) detection in Canada tentatively associated with the October 2006 test had led to some optimism that the more complete network of stations operating in 2009 might provide powerful detection capability with respect to clandestine underground nuclear tests. While analyses are continuing, the absence of detections from the May 2009 test has tempered that optimism to some extent. Another unusual aspect of the May 2009 test was the observation of anomalously large long-period surface waves. While the surface waves from the October 2006 were also somewhat larger than expected, the surface wave Ms magnitude value for the May 2009 test places it in the earthquake population on the Ms:Mb discriminant plot, and there has been no convincing explanation offered for this to date. Thus, despite the many years of experience with nuclear test monitoring, there continue to be unanticipated surprises that require in-depth analyses and assessments.

Reception at 6:30. Dinner at 7:30. Talk at 8:30 PM. Allow 15 minutes for security entering Ft. Myer as all civilian vehicles are searched. To ensure access to and from Fort Myer use the Hatfield Gate, open 24 hours a day. If you wish to attend dinner ($25), please make reservations with Joydeep Bhattacharyya at 703-676-4373 or via e-mail. If you wish, please feel free to attend the talk without dinner. Non-members and guests are welcome. Visit the PGS web site at for new meeting announcements, etc.

Labels: earthquakes, korea, meetings, pgs

Thursday, September 3, 2009

PSW: Maryland in the Miocene

PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON

Maryland in the Miocene: Paleoenvironmental History of the Calvert Cliffs
Susan Kidwell, Williams Rainey Harper Professor of Geology
Department of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago

Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2009
7:00 p.m., in the Cooper Room, National Museum of Natural History (10th St. and Constitution Ave. in NW Washington, DC)

Meet in the Constitution Avenue lobby at 5:00 p.m. if you wish to join the PSW members for dinner at the "Elephant and Castle," NW corner of 12th & Penna. Ave., NW

Non-Smithsonian visitors will be escorted to the Cooper Room at 6:30 and 6:55 p.m.

Labels: dc, fossils, maryland, meetings, miocene, psw, smithsonian

Fall 2009 Walkingtown DC

The fall edition of Walkingtown, DC again features my walking tour of DC geology, "History Before History: the Geologic Saga of Washington, DC." It will be on Sunday, September 20, and is free (but reservations are required; sign up with Cultural Tourism DC, the sponsors of the event). Hope you can join us.

Labels: dc, geology, meetings, piedmont

Monday, August 31, 2009

Geobloggers get-together at GSA?

Hello to the other geobloggers who read this blog!

I'm making my plans for GSA (Portland, Oregon) this week, and wondering if when we should get together for libations, conviviality, and rocks (and perhaps recording a podClast?). My talk is Monday morning, and I think I'll come out for a field trip the Saturday before the meeting. And of course the big digital innovations session is Tuesday. I may have to leave after that though... remains to be seen whether I can get people here to proctor an exam in my absence.

Anyone know a good pub in Portland? Anybody have field trip recommendations?

Labels: meetings, oregon

Friday, July 31, 2009

Microbial mat conference

Nora Noffke of Old Dominion University would like to draw your attention to this SEPM field conference on microbial mats in siliciclastic deposits. The conference presents an important and novel review on microbial mats and the sedimentary structures they form in siliciclastic settings through Earth history, from the early Archean to the present. The meeting is organized by Nora and Henry Chafetz, and brings together the expertise and knowledge of an international panel of leading researchers to provide a state-of-the art overview of the field. The participants will give and get a timely review of the current and most topical areas of research, essential for all scientists interested in this rapidly growing field.

Labels: archean, meetings, stromatolites

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Climate Change at Cafe Scientifique

WHAT: Top Ten Things You Should Know About Climate Change

WHEN: Tuesday, August 4, 5:30-8:00 PM; program begins at 6:15 PM.

WHERE: The Front Page Restaurant, 4201 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA, Located near Ballston Metro on the ground floor of the NSF building. Parking is available under the NSF building or at Ballston Common Mall.

WHO: Keith Dixon, Research Meteorologist and Climate Modeler, NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Joe Witte, Meteorologist, Newschannel 8

HOW: Special 1/2 price burgers start at 5:30 PM. Please come early to order table service and socialize. Short presentation begins at 6:15 PM, followed by Q&A. No science background required—only an interest!

Cafe Scientifique is free and open to the public. Register online here.

ABOUT THE TOPIC: In the coming decades, scientists expect climate change to have an increasing impact on human and natural systems. In a warmer world, accessibility to food, water, raw materials, and energy are likely to change. Climate change will also affect our weather, human health, biodiversity, economic stability, and national security. Come learn the top ten things you should know to know about climate change.

SUPPORT THIS CAFE: The Ballston Science and Technology Alliance, a nonprofit organization, is the sponsor of Cafe Scientifique Arlington. Since April 2006, the goal of Cafe Scientifique has been to make science more accessible and accountable by featuring speakers whose expertise spans the sciences and who can talk in plain English. Cafe is held each month on first Tuesdays at the Front Page in Arlington. Please go to www.arlingtonvirginiausa.com/bsta and contribute. Help keep Cafe open and free to all!

COMING NEXT MONTH: September 1, BioDiversity: How Special We Are! Dave Harrelson and Susan Jewel, Biologists, Endangered Species Program, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service SPECIAL BSTA PROGRAM: August 25, 4:15 PM at Room 110 NSF, Climate Change Communication 2.0, Ed Maibach, Director of George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication. Register online here.

For more information contact Kaye Breen, ballstonscience@yahoo.com, visit www.arlingtonvirginiausa.com/bsta or join us on twitter: http://twitter.com/sciencecafeva or facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ballston-Science-and-Technology-Alliance/116954825970.

Labels: climate change, dc, meetings, nova

Thursday, June 11, 2009

NAGT write-up in the NOVA "Intercom"

There's a brief blurb (with a few photos) on the first few pages of this week's Intercom about the NAGT meeting last month on the Loudoun campus, and Ken Rasmussen's award.

Labels: geologists, meetings, nova

Saturday, June 6, 2009

HOME

An impressive talk, and the film he alludes to was released yesterday, for free.

The movie HOME is available now, for free download. Enjoy!

Labels: environmental, meetings, movies, websites

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Ray Stanford's dino tracks

I saw Ray Stanford, an enthusiastic amateur paleontologist, speak last month at a meeting of the Paleontological Society of Washington.

It was my first PSW meeting, and I got a warm welcome from PSW president and University of Maryland paleontologist Tom Holtz, who gave a specific shout-out to NOVA Geoblog, encouraging the ~30 attendees to check it out. (If you're arriving as a consequnce of that endorsement, welcome!) Four of my Honors students joined me for the talk. Just getting to go behind the scenes at the Smithsonian is a treat in itself. From the Easter Island moai in the Constitution Avenue lobby of the museum, we were escorted through labyrinthine passageways to the Cooper Room. Our route brought us past immense fossil collections, cossetted away in row after row of cabinets. It was enticing, and made me resolve to arrange a special tour there sometime for the Honors students.

The point of the talk was Stanford's immense collection of fossil dinosaur tracks (and at least one apparent mammal track which is quite large: raccoon-sized at least, with apparent dinosaur skin impressions right next to it). It used to be thought that Maryland only had Triassic/Jurassic fossil tracks, from the Newark Supergroup rift valleys that opened up during the breakup of Pangea / opening of the Atlantic Ocean. Stanford has made a real scientific breakthrough by demonstrating that there are early Cretaceous-aged tracks in the area too.

None of his Cretaceous-aged tracks are collected in situ. Instead, he finds them all as "float" (weathered-out loose blocks) in streams draining exposures of (what I infer to be) the Patuxent Formation. (He didn't specifically mention source formations that I heard during the talk.)

He's found a ton of stuff! Actually,if I'm being literal, he's found tonS of stuff! And he stores it all in his living room! He recently had the foundations of his house reinforced because he has so much STUFF. Hundreds of tracks, and other fossils, too. Whoa! This guy does not play by the same rules as most folks.

There were a lot of coprolites mentioned, including:

a 98-pound coprolite (!)
a coprolite with a dinosaur footprint in it
a dinosaur footprint with a coprolite in it

He also shared what he claimed were skin textures preserved in tracks. Some were self-evident, and I readily accepted them as valid. However, others weren't visible to the naked eye, and he only "demonstrated" them with Photoshopped images wherein the contrast dial was turned up to 11 -- I think this "technique" generated patterns that resembled skin impressions, but when I looked at the fossil itself, they were nowhere to be seen. I am dubious about this particular claim.

The talk gave me lots to think about, but not so much about dinosaur lifestyles or anatomy so much as the role of amateurs in science. Here's a guy with boundless enthusiasm, and he's finding stuff that the books literally said didn't exist. His efforts have resulting in expanding Maryland's Mesozoic paleontological record into the Cretaceous, and he's found all sorts of stuff that's super-duper interesting, like that mammal track.

Stanford was profiled last year in Geotimes magazine, before it switched its name to EARTH. Discovery News also ran a story about his findings. Interestingly, when Googling his name for this blog post, I also came across some other wacky stuff he's involved in, including UFO's. This definitely jibes with the lack of scientific rigor that I perceived in his presentation. (Quote from the interviewer: "In the 1970s, Stanford was the moving force behind the Association for the Understanding of Man (AUM) and Project Starlight. The former an attempt to decipher the UFO enigma by psychic means, the latter using advanced scientific instruments.")

So, having learned this, what do I make of his paleontological data? The best I can come up with is to trust my own eyes and view his claims open-mindedly but with the traditional scientific filter of skepticism. I accept the coprolite data; I found it self-evidently convincing. The skin-texture data? Not so much. The UFO stuff? Don't get me started...

Labels: coastal plain, cretaceous, culpeper basin, fossils, maryland, meetings, mesozoic, museums, psw, science and society, smithsonian

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

NAGT field trip photos

Whew!

Sorry I haven't posted much here in the past week. I've been swamped.

The good news is that my biggest task is now off my plate (just turned in the first draft of my MSSE capstone to my advisor), and that means I've got some spare attention left for the blog.

I thought I would take the opportunity to share some images from this past weekend's NAGT (National Association of Geoscience Teachers) Eastern Section conference, held at the NOVA Loudoun campus. On Saturday, I led a version of my "Bedrock Geology of Washington, DC" trip for a group of eight conference attendees.

All these photos are from Randy Newcomer, Director of Training and Services for Complete Safety Solutions of Lititz, Pennsylvania, and are posted with his permission... and my annotations!

If you're interested in seeing (most of) these rocks, join next Sunday's Walkingtown, DC tour!

Labels: conferences, dc, field trips, meetings, msse, nova, piedmont

Monday, May 11, 2009

Last PSW of the academic year

PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON

Confessions of a Dinosaur Hunter
by Richard Thompson
American Institute of Physics / AAAS Congressional Science Fellow

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 7:00 p.m., in the Cooper Room, National Museum of Natural History 10th St. & Constitution Ave.

Meet in the Constitution Avenue lobby at 5p.m. if you wish to join us for dinner, at the "Elephant and Castle," NW corner of 12th & Penna. Ave., NW

Non-Smithsonian visitors will be escorted to the Cooper Room at 6:30 and 6:55 p.m.

Last Meeting of the Season: See you in September!

Labels: dinosaurs, fossils, meetings, psw, smithsonian

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Walkingtown, DC announcement

Just a heads-up for DC-area readers: The spring 'edition' of Walkingtown, DC is coming up, and once again I'll be leading my "History Before History" tour. This three-hour walking tour of Adams-Morgan, the Zoo, and Rock Creek Park covers the geologic saga which formed the bedrock of the nation's capital city. We'll look at the Rock Creek Shear Zone, Cretaceous-aged river gravels, a faulted unconformity, and the Georgetown Intrusive Suite. It's free and open to the public. More information is on the Walkingtown website. Please join us!

Labels: dc, geology, meetings

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Upcoming talk at NSF

"Climate Change in the American Mind"

Tuesday, April 28th, 10am

National Science Foundation
Arlington, VA
Room 1235

Anthony Leiserowitz
Yale Project on Climate Change

Report here

Labels: climate change, meetings, science and society

Monday, April 13, 2009

Bonnie Bassler talk at Carnegie

Bonnie Bassler, whose TED talk I featured here on Sunday, will be speaking Thursday evening at the Carnegie Institution in northwest DC, as part of their "Capitol Science" lecture series. As in the TED talk, she will be discussing "Cell-to-Cell Communication in Bacteria." The talk begins at 6:45pm. Enjoy!
Hat tip to Diego H. for letting me know about this!

Labels: dc, meetings, microbes

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

New USGS lecture series

On Wednesday, April 1, the U.S. Geological Survey will kick off a new public lecture series at their national headquarters facility in Reston, Virginia.

The USGS "Science in Action" public lecture series will be held the first Wednesday of every month. These evening events are free to the public and intended for a general audience to familiarize them with science issues that are meaningful to our daily lives. The USGS speakers are selected for their ability and enthusiasm to share their expertise with an audience that may be unfamiliar with the topic.

The first one: From 7-8pm, Dr. John Jones, an expert in remote sensing, will discuss several projects in the Shenandoah National Park and the Everglades. Learn how science from satellites can help decision-makers address issues related to climate change, water resources, and habitat conditions.

Upcoming lectures will be about climate change, hurricanes, energy, glaciers, and a fascinating expedition down the Congo River.

Lectures are held at the USGS building located at 12201 Sunrise Valley Dr., Reston, Va.
For more information on the next three talks - speakers and abstracts - visit the USGS Public Lecture Web site or call 703-648-4748.

Hat tip to Dave Schumaker's Geology News blog.

Labels: meetings, virginia

Monday, March 16, 2009

AEG: Stokowski talks busted bridges

The Association of Environmental and Engineering Geologists is having NOVA adjunct geology instructor Steve Stokowski talk at their meeting on Thursday. His topic blends petrology (the study of rocks) with applied science.

Sexy Pictures, Busted Bridges, Broken Buildings, and Messed-Up Monuments: A Petrographic Odyssey

Microscopic analyses and geologic understanding are essential for the correct diagnosis and corrective actions necessary when rock, brick, concrete and similar building materials deteriorate, as these four case histories illustrate. The first case history is of the deteriorated brownstone loggia at the Oakes Ames Memorial Hall, North Easton, MA. The second case history is of a total replacement failure of a large memorial to WWII veterans in the Rhode Island Veterans Cemetery, Exeter, RI. The third case history concerns the use of defective, cracked, and residually expansive brick to construct the Prospect Mountain High School, Alton, New Hampshire. The final case history concerns deterioration of the 1930's Fore River Bridge between Quincy and Weymouth, Massachusetts. It can be expensive to correct the effects of the deterioration of common building materials!

Pulcinella's Restaurant
6852 Old Dominion Drive
McLean, VA 22101

AEG members, guests $30.00
Students $10.00

6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Social Hour and Section Business
7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Dinner
8 p.m. Presentation
9 p.m. Closing Statements

Labels: geology, meetings, minerals, science and society

Friday, March 13, 2009

Trout, reefs, and Lusi: Upcoming GSW meeting

Geological Society of Washington: Meeting 1432
Wednesday March 25, 2009

Andrew Todd, US Geological Survey, Denver, Colorado - Abandoned Mines and Trout: The Interaction of Geochemistry, Metal Bioavailability, and Stream Ecology.
Ian G. Macintyre, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC - The Almost Total Loss of Acropora palmata from Shallow Waters off Barbados, West Indies, Initiated by Catastrophic Destruction of a Major Bank-Barrier Reef off the Southeast Coast.
Thomas J. Casadevall, U.S. Geological Survey, Denver, Colorado - Lusi: Long-lived Mud Eruption near Surabaya, Indonesia.

John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club
2170 Florida Ave NW
Washington, D.C.

Refreshments 7:30 pm; Meeting 8:00

Future meetings 2009: April 22 (Bradley Lecture); Sept. 23; Oct. 14; Nov. 4; Dec. 9.

Labels: environmental, fish, gsw, meetings, mining, reefs, volcano

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Mike Kaas on the Silver Hill Mine

Sorry for the late notice... this is for today at lunchtime.

The Sliver Hill mine:

America's First Silver Mine and Supplier of Lead to the Confederacy

L. Michael Kaas

Abstract: The Silver Hill Mine in Davidson County, North Carolina was the first important underground silver mine in America. Discovered in 1838, it produced significant quantities of silver and lead into the mid-1840's. As the oxidized ores were depleted, abundant, rich, lead-zinc sulfide ores were encountered. These complex primary ores presented the mine operators with difficult metallurgical problems. Mine development and production slowed. Nearly a decade passed as the owners experimented with new processing and smelting technologies. These efforts were largely unsuccessful and the mine closed in the early 1850's. The Civil War created an urgent need for lead to supply Southern troops. The Confederate government operated the Silver Hill Mine to provide an alternate source of lead in case the mines at Austinville, Virginia should fall into Northern hands. Lead concentrates with high silver values were shipped from Silver Hill to the newly constructed Confederate smelter in Petersburg, Virginia. After the War, the mine continued to operate for several years but the problems of the refractory sulfide ores were not solved and the mine closed again. For more than a century after production stopped, the Silver Hill Mine was the repeated target of both mining companies and stock promoters.

Where: Pier 7 Restaurant, 650 Water Street, SW, Washington, DC (within walking distance of the Waterfront Metro on the Green Line) Free parking with validation from Pier 7 Restaurant.

11:30 - Social 12:00 - Lunch 12:30 - Speaker

Meeting cost: $20.00 for Washington, DC Section SME members $25.00 for non-members

Contact Steve Stokowski with questions

Labels: dc, history, meetings, minerals, mining, north carolina

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Revelle lecture announced

The National Academies' Ocean Studies Board would like to announce that Dr. Paul G. Falkowski, Board of Governors' Professor at Rutgers University, will be the speaker for the tenth annual Roger Revelle Commemorative Lecture, scheduled for Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 5:30pm. It will be held in the Baird Auditorium in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (10th Street and Constitution Avenue). Dr. Falkowski's talk is entitled:

The Once and Future Ocean

The ocean has been a feature of Earth's surface for at least 4 of the past 4.5 billion years, and has provided the primary environment for the evolution of microbes that drive the biogeochemical cycles on Earth. Over this long period of time, the ocean has witnessed extreme changes, ranging from complete coverage with ice to extensive periods when there was no ice at all; periods of extraordinary extinction of animal life, to periods of dramatic evolutionary radiation of animals. Throughout all of Earth's history, the ocean has served as the primary backbone of life on the planet; and the core metabolic processes have been successfully transferred across vast stretches of geological time. Humans, in contrast, evolved only about 200,000 years ago, and in that short period of time have come to successfully outcompete and plunder many of Earth's living resources. Over the past 100 years, in particular, we have increasingly altered the trophic structure of the ocean as well as its physical circulation and chemical properties. While human impacts will surely alter ecosystem functions the core metabolism of the ocean will go on. Rather, ironically, humans are the fragile species that will lose capabilities of using the ocean as a source of food and novel molecules. Our future is intimately tied to that of the ocean. We have to begin viewing the oceans as a key component of the Earth system; one that we cannot live without.

This event is free and open to the public. For planning purposes, please complete this brief registration form. You are encouraged to post the event flyer or to forward it to your colleagues. For more information, contact Pamela Lewis.

Please visit Roger Revelle Lecture Series for information on Roger Revelle and on previous lectures.

Labels: dc, meetings, oceans, smithsonian

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Sam Love to speak at NOVA

Sam Love, one of the original national staff members of the first Earth Day, will speak on April 22 on the impact of changing our environmental culture. The event will be at 12:30 p.m. in the CE Forum on the Annandale Campus. Free & open to the public.

In his Earth Day 2009 presentation, Love will review some of the early fantasies based on cheap abundant energy. He then lays out some operating rules for a sustainable future and why there is reason for hope.

More information on p. 11 of last week's Intercom.

Labels: environmental, meetings, nova

Monday, February 23, 2009

Science seminar video

Even if you don't have iTunes, the NOVA-Annandale Science Seminar series will be televised...

Check at our new webpage: http://www.nvcc.edu/annandale/scienceseminar/

Specific video: Dick Pellerin on math's many uses; Me on my western roadtrip.

Labels: geology, meetings, nova, science and society, travel

Sunday, February 22, 2009

This week's GSW talks

GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON : Meeting 1430

John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club, 2170 Florida Ave N.W., Washington, D.C.

Wednesday, 25 February 2009; Refreshments 7:30 pm; Meeting 8:00 pm
_____________________________________________________

Julie O'Leary, Carnegie Institution (DTM): Water storage and transport in the mantle: constraints from the H isotopic composition of ocean-island basalts

Jeff Pigati, US Geological Survey (Denver): Snails, cienegas, and the science of wetland deposits in the American Southwest

Barbara Anne am Ende, The Aerospace Corporation: Is thermal imaging practicable for finding caves and abandoned mines?

Labels: gsw, meetings

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Video of "Rock & Road" talk

Last week, the team of videographers at NOVA put up video of last semester's science seminars on iTunes U. There, you'll find Dick Pellerin's talk on mathematics' unescapable practicality, and my own talk on last summer's western road trip, "Two Months of Rock and Road."

Enjoy!

Labels: meetings, nova, tech

Sunday, February 15, 2009

NOVA science seminar: Tropical Reefs

Science Seminar: The Tropical Reefs of Roatan

Friday February 20, 2009
CE Forum 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm

Jill Caporale, NOVA Faculty
Dianne Heath & Robert Schreiner, NOVA Students

Join Professor Jill Caporale and her students Dianne Heath and Robert Schreiner as they discuss the reefs, dolphins and mangroves of Roatan, Honduras. Jill Caporale believes that getting students out in the field is the best way to for students to learn and rekindle their "natural sense of wonder."

Jill Caporale has taught Biology and Natural Science at Northern Virginia Community College as an adjunct and full-time faculty since 1988. She has taken students to the rainforests of Costa Rica and the Reefs of Honduras. This year she will be returning with students to investigate the tropical waters off the coast of Roatan, Honduras. So, if you have ever wanted to snorkel coral reefs and swim with dolphins come listen to their talk, or better yet, sign up to go this summer.

Sponsored by the Lyceum and the Math, Science Engineering Division

Labels: meetings, nova, reefs

Friday, February 13, 2009

Cool speaker for Bradley Lecture

It was announced at Wednesday's Geological Society of Washington meeting that this year's Bradley Lecture will be delivered by Paul Hoffman, Emeritus Professor of Geology at Harvard University. The lecture is scheduled for the evening of April 22, starting at 8pm at the Cosmos Club.

Dr. Hoffman is best known for his work promoting the "Snowball Earth" hypothesis. It ought to be an exciting evening of geology!

Labels: geology, gsw, meetings, snowball earth

Thursday, February 12, 2009

February PGS meeting

The February meeting of the Potomac Geophysical Society will be held February 19th at the Fort Myer Officers' Club in Arlington, VA in the Campaign Room. This month's talk will be: Listening to a Melting Arctic Ocean - Singing the Blues?, by Peter N. Mikhalevsky, SAIC, VA.

Abstract:
The waters of the Arctic Ocean have been warming since the mid 1990's. Average maximum temperatures have risen by more than 1°C. In the last 20 years submarine measurements of sea ice draft have shown a 40% reduction in average sea ice thickness while satellite remote sensing has shown a 14% reduction in sea-ice extent over the same period decreasing at a rate of 3-5%/decade (thicker multi-year ice at 7-10%/decade). Forecasts indicate that if these trends continue the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free, "A Blue Arctic Ocean" before the end of this century. Significant effort is needed to expand our observational capabilities in the Arctic Ocean to support better modeling, forecasting and improve our understanding of this critical ocean and the linkages to global climate. One technique - acoustic thermometry - has been shown to be a very effective for monitoring average heat content and average temperature in the Arctic Ocean and in particular in the Arctic Intermediate Water (AIW) layer. Two experiments conducted in 1994 and 1999 measured the warming and demonstrated the feasibility of long term observations. Plans are in process to incorporate acoustic thermometry and tomography in in-situ Arctic Ocean observatories.

Dinner Menu
Chicken Marsala (House salad & vegetables, rolls and butter)
Tira Mi Su
Coffee / tea
A vegetarian meal can be substituted by request.

Reception at 6:30. Dinner at 7:30. Talk at 8:30 PM. Allow 15 minutes for security entering Ft. Myer as all civilian vehicles are searched. To ensure access to and from Fort Myer use the Hatfield Gate, open 24 hours a day (https://webmail-1.nvcc.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.fmmcmwr.com/directionsmyer.htm). If you wish to attend dinner ($25), please make reservations with Joydeep Bhattacharyya at 703-676-4373 or via E-mail at Joydeep.bhattacharyya@saic.com. If you wish, please feel free to attend the talk without dinner. Non-members and guests are welcome. Visit the PGS web site at https://webmail-1.nvcc.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.potomacgeophysical.com%2520/ for new meeting announcements, etc.

Labels: climate change, global warming, meetings, oceans, pgs

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

2/18 PSW meeting

PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON

Institutional Memories: The Paleo Art of National Geographic and the Smithsonian Institution
by Angela Botzer (National Geographic) and Mary Parrish (Scientific Illustrator, Dept. of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution)

Paleo art has been an important part of the dissemination of the science of paleontology for two important Washington, DC institutions and their audiences for more than 150 years. The presenters will detail fascinating histories of paleo art via the material housed in the collections of their respective organizations.

Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009
7:00 p.m., in the Cooper Room, National Museum of Natural History
10th St. & Constitution Ave. Meet in the Constitution Avenue lobby at 5:00 p.m. if you wish to join some fun paleontologists for dinner, at the "Elephant and Castle," NW corner of 12th & Penna. Ave., NW. Non-Smithsonian visitors will be escorted to the Cooper Room at 6:30 and 6:55 p.m.

Remaining Dates for 2008-2009 Season: March 18, April 15, May 13

Labels: art, dc, fossils, meetings, psw, smithsonian

Sunday, February 8, 2009

This week's GSW slate: UPDATED

Wednesday 11 February 2009; Refreshments 7:30 pm; Meeting 8:00 pm;

the John Wesley Powell Auditorium

2170 Florida Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. 20008

Featured speakers:

Laurent G. J. Montesi, University of Maryland College Park - Cutting through the plate: rift interaction at the Galapagos triple junction

~~Marianne Guffanti, U.S. Geological Survey (Reston) - Volcano Hazards Revealed: Three Decades of Nature's Lessons for Applied Volcanology~~ Cheryl Lewis Ames, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History - Species composition and distribution of shrimps at cold, methane-bearing, hydrocarbon seeps in the northern Gulf of Mexico

Andrew Johnston, Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum - Talking about the science of climate change with general audiences

Labels: gsw, meetings

Monday, February 2, 2009

More Darwiniana this week

As noted everywhere, next Thursday is the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. We've got fun plans at NOVA (and you're invited), but you might also opt for this symposium at the National Museum of Natural History downtown:

Thursday, February 12, 2009
Darwin Anniversary Symposium
Baird Auditorium, 12:00 noon to 3:00 pm

February 12, 2009 marks the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and the 150th year since the publication of his influential work, On the Origin of Species. To recognize Darwin's scientific accomplishments, including his observations on plant and animal life, the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health, in conjunction with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, offers a day of discussions with distinguished panelists that will focus on a variety of topics from historical perspectives of Darwin to evolution and medicine.

Labels: evolution, meetings, smithsonian

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Better than me

No need to hear me say it... Get it straight from the source:

Library of Congress Hosts Lecture By Sandra Herbert, Feb. 18

The Science, Technology and Business Division of the Library of Congress will celebrate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth with a lecture by Sandra Herbert, one of the world’s leading authorities on Darwin. She will discuss her book Charles Darwin, Geologist, which explores how geology changed Darwin and how Darwin changed science.

Herbert will lecture at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 18, in the Pickford Theater on the third floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. A book-signing will follow the lecture, and the science reference staff will display Darwin items from the Library's collections. The event is free and open to the public; tickets or reservations are not needed.

In "Charles Darwin, Geologist," Herbert provides a fresh perspective on the life and accomplishments of Darwin, who was born on Feb. 12, 1809 (the same day as Abraham Lincoln) and whose thoughts and theories about the natural world hold true today - 150 years after the publication of his "On the Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection" (London, J. Murray, 1859).

While Darwin is best known for his voyage on the HMS Beagle, his study of finches on the Galapagos, and his theory of evolution, he had wider interests in the field of science, including geology. According to Herbert, "In the 19th century, geology attracted persons of imagination, like Darwin, because of its promise of knowledge of the distant past." Herbert shows how Darwin's study of geology and his developing ideas about geological systems profoundly shaped his creative insight and scientific methods as he worked toward an understanding of evolution and natural selection.

Charles Darwin, Geologist, written largely at the Library of Congress, won the Geological Society of America's Mary C. Rabbitt Award, the American Historical Association's George L. Mosse Prize and the History of Science Society's Levinson Prize for Historical Work in the Life Sciences as well as the Albion Book Prize given by the North American Conference on British Studies.

Herbert recently retired as director of the program "the Human Context of Science and Technology" and professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is also editor of the Red Notebook of Charles Darwin (1979) and Charles Darwin's Notebooks, 1836-1844: Geology, Transmutation of Species, Metaphysical Enquiries (1987).

As a Distinguished Visiting Scholar for 2006-2007 at Christ's College in Cambridge, Herbert assisted the university with its plans to celebrate Darwin's bicentennial. Herbert first saw the Charles Darwin Archives at Christ College when she was a graduate student at Brandeis University. The archives contain Darwin's notebooks, papers and correspondence, and when she discovered the material she remembers thinking "It was like finding out Shakespeare had left unpublished plays behind."

The Library of Congress maintains one of the largest and most diverse collections of scientific and technical information in the world. The Science, Technology and Business Division provides reference and bibliographic services and develops the general collections of the Library in all areas of science, technology, business and economics, with the exception of clinical medicine and technical agriculture, which are the subject specialties of the National Library of Medicine and the National Agricultural Library. For more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech.

Labels: evolution, history, meetings

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Abe Darwin and Charles Lincoln

As promised, here's some details for the event I mentioned the other day:

2:15- 4:45 Lisa Williams: Various displays of models, samples, artifacts, posters.
2:15 - 2:25 Bill Stanclift: Piano
2:25 -2:30 Reva Savkar : welcome and introduction of first speaker
2:30 - 2:45 Ralph Eckerlin: "Review of Darwin's life and accomplishments"
2:50- 3:10 Tom Macke: "Lincoln"
3:15 - 3:30 Karla Henthorn: "Common Misconceptions About Darwin"
3:35- 3:50 Jill Caporale: "The poetry in Darwin"
3:55 - 4:05 Nan Peck: "fun Lincoln-Darwin game"
4:10- 4:25 Bill Gorham: "Thomas Henry Huxley: Bulldog"
4:30 - 4:45 Callan Bentley: "Charles Darwin, Geologist"

200th Birth Anniversary of Lincoln and Darwin Celebration: The event will be held in the Ernst Community Cultural Center Forum on the Annandale campus of NOVA, Feb 12, 2009, starting at 2:15pm.

Labels: evolution, history, meetings, nova

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Upcoming talk: "Charles Darwin, Geologist"

200th Birth Anniversary of Lincoln and Darwin
Celebration Feb 12, 2009 at NOVA-Annandale

My clever & creative colleague Reva Savkar (chemistry) is putting together a celebration of the 200th birthday of two important individuals in the history of the world: Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, both born on February 12, 1809. The event will be held in the Ernst Community Cultural Center Forum on the Annandale campus, starting at 2:15pm.

The details are still being organized, but the event will feature short talks, music, and activities both from NOVA faculty and outside guests. Confirmed so far are: Bill Stanclift, Reva Savkar, Ralph Eckerlin, Tom Macke, Karla Henthorn, Jill Caporale, Nan Peck, and Bill Gorham.

I'll be presenting a 15-minute talk, starting at 4:30pm entitled "Charles Darwin, Geologist."

The event is free & open to the public. Join us!

Labels: evolution, geology, history, meetings, nova

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

AMS seminar on Monday

American Meteorological Society's Environmental Science Seminar Series

Coming to Grips with Sustainable Practices: Where Do We Go from Here?

What are the forces that shaped consumer culture in the U.S.? How does per capita consumption in the U.S. compare with that of other countries, especially in the realm of energy usage? What impact has consumerism had on resources and living standards in the U.S. and elsewhere? What are the implications of maintaining our present level of consumption? What are the implications of other countries aspiring to levels of per capita consumption on a par with ours? How might our society begin to identify and embrace more sustainable habits and practices, and what might such practices be? What policy steps might the new Administration and Congress consider codifying in the interest of promoting a more sustainable lifestyle and economy?

Public Invited

Monday, January 26, 2009
New Time: 12:00 noon - 2:00 pm
Russell Senate Office Building, Room 253 Washington, DC

Buffet Reception Following

Moderator:
Dr. Anthony Socci, Senior Science and Communication Fellow, American Meteorological Society

Speakers:
Dr. Juliet B. Schor, Professor of Sociology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA

Betsy Taylor, Consultant, Breakthrough Strategies & Solutions, Strategic & Philanthropic Consulting on Climate Solutions & Sustainable Development, Takoma Park, MD

Program Summary

Sustainability, Consumption and the Path Forward At the center of the US ecological dilemma lies consumption. We have been a consumer nation for more than a century, having made a directed choice in the 1930s toward that path. Today, in the midst of the simultaneous crises of the economy and the environment, we are again faced with choices about how to move forward. Although it has gotten far less attention, business-as-usual spending is as problematic as BAU energy use. The US ecological footprint, which is twice the level of comparably rich European countries, exceeds the equitable global sustainability level by a factor of 5. Rising per capita consumption underlies the ecological overshoot of the world economy, which now exceeds biological capacity by 40%. In the United States, inflated-adjusted personal consumption expenditures increased 88% from1973 to 2003, which resulted in a 37% rise in our ecological footprint. This is important because it has accompanied decades of attempts to save energy and de-materialize production, all of which have proved inadequate. Fortunately, there is increasing awareness of these issues, and a grassroots movement to transform consumer patterns and habits is underway. However, it has had virtually no legislative presence to date.

In Dr. Schor's presentation, the issue of consumption will be placed into its historical and comparative context. New data will be presented on the magnitude of the 'cheap import' boom in material (and therefore ecological terms) over the last 15 years. Underlying economic factors such as labor market policies and the distribution of income affect the path of consumption and ecological impact. A medium term consumption path will be sketched out, which yields high levels of human well-being, is becoming broadly popular, and is ecologically sustainable.

Ms. Taylor will discuss an array of policy instruments that could promote a more sustainable standard of living and more sustainable consumerism. In the lead-up to address climate change through cap & trade or carbon fees, it would serve our collective interests to simultaneously address the root causes of ecological degradation and collapse. Ms. Taylor will also call for a rekindled debate on policies and programs that might steer our economy and culture in a more sustainable and durable direction.

Labels: climate change, energy, environmental, meetings

Reminder: GSW tonight

A friendly reminder about tonight's meeting of the Geological Society of Washington:

1428th Meeting

Robert Gagosian, Consortium for Ocean Leadership -

A new paradigm for geosciences research funding.

Elizabeth Eide, Board on Earth Sciences and Resources, The National Academy of Sciences -

Geology, energy, and environmental policy at the coastal margins of the northern North Atlantic.

James Day, University of Maryland, College Park -

Evidence for evolved crust formation in the early solar system.

Refreshments start at 7:30 p.m. The formal program starts at 8:00 p.m.
Meetings are held at the John Wesley Powell Auditorium,

2170 Florida Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.

Please join us! The meetings are free and open to the public.

FYI, I'm the Meeting Secretary this year.

Labels: gsw, meetings

Friday, January 16, 2009

Mike Tidwell to speak at NOVA

Following the success of last year's Climate Change Symposium, this year NOVA will host Mike Tidwell, the dynamic director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, for a talk on global warming and what college campuses can do about it. Mr. Tidwell has a reputation as a terrific speaker, so I'm really looking forward to his talk.

He will be speaking at 11am on Thursday, February 5, in the Ernst Community Cultural Center Theater (CE building) on the Annandale campus of Northern Virginia Community College. The event is free and open to the public. I encourage you to attend if you're in town. A booksigning will follow in the Theater lobby.

Labels: climate change, global warming, maryland, meetings, nova

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

January PGS meeting

The January meeting of the Potomac Geophysical Society will be held January 15th at the Fort Myer Officers' Club in Arlington, VA in the Campaign Room.

This month's talk will be: How Deep Was That Earthquake?, by Jack Murphy, SAIC, McLean, VA.

Abstract:
Less than 100 years ago, seismologists were still actively debating whether deep earthquakes existed, and it wasn't until the 1920s that Turner in England and Wadati in Japan confirmed that some earthquakes do indeed occur at great depths below the surface of the Earth. We now know that, while the majority of earthquakes are shallow and confined to the Earth's crust, there are numerous earthquakes every year that occur at depths of hundreds of kilometers below the Earth's surface. Moreover, these deep earthquakes have played an important role in the development of our understanding of plate tectonics in that they mostly are confined to restricted zones along convergent plate boundaries, where their locations as functions of depth map out the trajectories of the descending slabs. However, despite the many improvements in computing power and analysis capability that have been introduced into earthquake location studies in recent years, it is still a challenge in many cases to accurately estimate the depth of an earthquake using commonly available seismological arrival time data. In this talk, the history of earthquake depth determination will be briefly reviewed and some recent research that has led to new approaches designed to address limitations of existing standard analysis procedures will be discussed.

Biographical Information:
Mr. Murphy is the Deputy Division Manager of the Monitoring Research Division of SAIC where he is responsible for managing research contracts with a variety of government agencies. He has had more than 40 years experience as a research seismologist and is an internationally recognized expert in the modeling and analysis of seismic signals produced by explosion and earthquake sources.

Labels: meetings, pgs

Monday, January 12, 2009

Next week's GSW meeting

Wednesday, January 21, 2009
1428th Meeting of the Geological Society of Washington

Robert Gagosian, Consortium for Ocean Leadership: A new paradigm for geosciences research funding.

Elizabeth Eide, Board on Earth Sciences and Resources, The National Academy of Sciences:
Geology, energy, and environmental policy at the coastal margins of the northern North Atlantic.

James Day, University of Maryland, College Park: Evidence for evolved crust formation in the early solar system.

Refreshments start at 7:30 p.m. The formal program starts at 8:00 p.m.
Meetings are held at the John Wesley Powell Auditorium 2170 Florida Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.

Labels: gsw, meetings

New PSW Meeting in DC (UPDATED)

Note - this event is cancelled due to the lousy weather today.

PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON

Movers & Shakers in 20th Century Paleontology: Role of the Smithsonian Community
Tom Dutro, U.S. Geological Survey (retired) and Research Associate, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

7:00 p.m., in the Cooper Room, National Museum of Natural History
10th St. & Constitution Ave. Meet in the Constitution Avenue lobby at 5:00 p.m. if you wish to join us for dinner, at the Elephant and Castle, NW corner of 12th & Penna. Ave., NW

Non-Smithsonian visitors will be escorted to the Cooper Room at 6:30 and 6:55 p.m.

Remaining Dates for 2008-2009 Season: Feb. 18, March 18, April 15, May 13

Labels: meetings, psw

Sunday, December 21, 2008

WIRED covers AGU

A high-definition eruption video is giving clues to how volcanoes work, as reported by WIRED magazine staff attending last week's AGU meeting. Turns out WIRED actually had a big AGU coverage site, which I only just noticed. Some good stuff there, though. Check it out.

Labels: agu, meetings, movies, volcano, websites

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Rock Garden

As I mentioned yesterday, the Virginia Department of Geology and Mineral Resources has an excellent rock garden outside their office in Charlottesville, displaying a diverse suite of large rock samples from across the state's five physiographic provinces.

Here's Rick Diecchio (George Mason University) providing a sense of scale for the rock garden:

Here's a few of the samples that caught my eye, with my shoe providing a sense of scale (size 12, specifically) in each image...

Aquia Formation sandstone with Turitella fossils (Paleocene); King George County:

Balls Bluff Siltstone with mudcracks (Triassic); Culpeper County:

Conococheague Formation collapse breccia (Cambrian); Augusta County:

Cranberry Gneiss (?) showing well-developed lineation (Mesoproterozoic); Grayson County:

Kyanite quartzite (probably Ordovician metamorphic age); Prince Edward County:

Fossil Sigillaria tree trunk from the Wise Formation (Pennsylvanian); Wise County:

Unakite, the state rock of Virginia according to some (Mesoproterozoic); Rockbridge County:

Here's a link to the PDF (1.82 MB) with all the details about all the rocks in the garden, an impressive achievement just like the symposium.

Labels: conferences, fossils, igneous, meetings, metamorphism, primary structures, sediment, virginia

Monday, December 15, 2008

DGMR Symposium report

I spent this past Friday (12/12) at a symposium put on by the Virginia Division of Geology and Mineral Resources, in Charlottesville, Virginia. This excellent branch of our state government just had their budget disproportionately slashed, but they aren't letting it bring them down. In fact, they're breaking new ground in their unparalleled service to the geological public. In honor of the groundbreaking Virginia geologist Tom Gathright (who was in attendance), they organized a day of scholarship and conversation about recent advances in the geology of the Blue Ridge and Valley & Ridge physiographic provinces.

Rick Diecchio (of George Mason University) and I drove down together, getting up at the unholy hour of 5am in order to get there on time. Once there, we trundled past their excellent outdoor rock garden (about which I will post tomorrow), and inside to join the gaggle of more than a hundred geologists from the USGS, Virginia universities and community colleges, transportation agencies, environmental agencies, and the DGMR itself.

The morning session consisted of a series of talks about the Blue Ridge. We heard from Bob Millici (USGS), Scott Southworth (USGS), Chuck Bailey (W&M), Mark Carter (DGMR), Bill Henika (Virginia Tech), and Karen Rice (USGS). I won't post any of the juicy data details we heard, for fear of spilling any unpublished beans, but there was some cool stuff we learned about. There was also a poster session in the well-appointed library. Pete Berquist (Thomas Nelson Community College) and I had lunch out in the rock garden, where I chatted with three undergrads from our alma mater.

The afternoon session was given over the the Valley & Ridge province. We heard from Scott Eaton (JMU), Steve Whitmeyer (JMU), Dave Weary (USGS), Randy Orndorff (USGS), Joel Maynard (Virginia Department of Environmental Quality), and Wil Orndorff (Virginia Department of Conservation & Recreation, Division of Natural Heritage).

My favorite part of the day, though was a break-out session to discuss unresolved issues. There were three break-out groups: one for water issues, one for the Valley & Ridge, and one for the Blue Ridge. I went to the Blue Ridge one, and really enjoyed this unique setting. I mean, here I am in a room with a bunch of people who spend the majority of their professional time trying to understand how the Blue Ridge got put together, and we're just brainstorming together, thinking about big unknowns, big gaps in our understanding. The DGMR staff is compiling these results, and once they're distributed out to the participants, I'll post them here on NOVA Geoblog. We've been asked to share the results. Since there were two geobloggers in the room (me and Chuck), we reckoned that's a quick way to disseminate some of our ideas.

I'd like to thank the DGMR for putting on such a great meeting, in particular during such lean and uncertain times. The day was positive, affirming, and valuable on many levels. Readers, remember that you (yes, you) can still write to the governor and other state officials to protest the crippling 75% reduction in the DGMR staff.

Labels: blue ridge, conferences, geologists, meetings, valley and ridge, virginia

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Paleontological Society of Washington

PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON

Climatic Cooling and Body Size Evolution in Deep-sea Ostracodes
by Gene Hunt
Curator of Ostracoda, Department of Paleobiology
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

7:00 p.m., in the Cooper Room, National Museum of Natural History
10th St. & Constitution Ave.
Meet in the Constitution Avenue lobby at 5:00 p.m. if you wish to join dinner at the "Elephant and Castle," NW corner of 12th & Penna. Ave., NW

Non-Smithsonian visitors will be escorted
to the Cooper Room at 6:30 and 6:55 p.m.

Labels: meetings, psw, smithsonian

Monday, October 27, 2008

Green Arlington workshops

Starting this month and going into January, Arlington County, Virginia is hosting a series of free workshops designed to help citizens make more environmentally-sustainable choices in their homes and workplaces.

For more information, click here.

Labels: environmental, meetings, nova, virginia

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Chesapeake Society for Microscopy meeting

The Chesapeake Society for Microscopy Presents:

The 2008 Fall Dinner Meeting

6:00 pm Thursday, November 6, 2008

Dr. Henry Teng, The George Washington University
Department of Chemistry

Kinetics, Surface Charges, and Biological Effect during Crystal Growth and Dissolution: Application of AFM and Other Microscopic Techniques*

Tragara Ristorante
4935 Cordell Ave
Bethesda, MD 20814
(301) 951-4935

Social Hour: 6:00 pm
Dinner: 7:00 pm----$ 35 members ($ 25 for post docs, $ 45 non-members)
Talk: 8:00 pm

Directions: a short walk from the NIH campus into Bethesda, a short walk from the Bethesda Metro station on the red line, or an easy parking spot with the Free Valet Parking offered by the restaurant. Type address into your favorite web browser for directions and map.

Please come and join us for the first event of the 2008-2009 year. Bring friends, colleagues, spouses, students…the more the merrier!!

RSVP by November 3 to Chris Brantner. Phone (301) 435-2803, email, or via US mail by folding and taping this notice. We need a head count so this is critical!!

* See their web site for presentation abstract

Labels: maryland, meetings

Monday, October 20, 2008

This week's DC-area geology activities

I was reminded this morning to update the list of activities for the coming week, including the Billy Goat Trail hike scheduled for Friday:

Wednesday evening: GSW. Free and open to the public.

Thursday: James Ussher's "birthday of the Earth." How will you be celebrating?

Friday afternoon: I'll be leading a public geology hike along the Billy Goat Trail, starting from the Great Falls Tavern Visitor Center (C&O Canal NHP) at 12:30pm, going til 4:30pm or so. Maybe 5pm. Free and open to the public.

Saturday: GSW Fall Field trip: "Tidewater Geomorphology at George Washington's Birthplace National Monument, Westmoreland County, VA." RSVP.

Labels: coastal plain, field trips, gsw, meetings, piedmont

Friday, October 17, 2008

Two Months of Rock and Road

Today's science seminar went well. There was a reasonably full house (maybe 150 or 200 people?) and most of them looked reasonably awake all through it. Afterwards, I had some new folks express interest in my Rockies field course for next summer. Additionally, a bunch of the audience stuck around to look at some rock and fossil specimens I had brought along. When I got back to my office, there was a nice note in my in-box from the provost, who had attended and complimented the talk. And then I got a free lunch with three of my colleagues! Chinese food... makes me sleepy, but dang, it was good.

Here's the slideshow I gave, via SlideShare.net (The embedded version below doesn't seem to be working for me, so here's a direct link to the PPT on SlideShare):

Two Months Of Rock And Road

View more presentations from guest02f41. (tags: canyon grand)

Labels: food, fossils, geology, grand canyon, meetings, travel

Friday morning roundup

A reminder to NOVA students, faculty, and interested area geophiles: I'll be giving a talk entitled "Two Months of Rock and Road: A North American geological road trip" today at noon as part of the Science Seminar series. It's in the CE Forum on the Annandale campus. Free and open to the public; light refreshments served.

McCain and Obama having fun: After all the rancor, this makes me happy.

If you're planning on going on the GSW Fall Field trip, let them know ASAP. They need a headcount.

The slate of speakers has been announced for next week's GSW meeting: Leonard Konikow, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston: "Ground-water depletion: National assessment and global implications;" Dionysis Foustoukos, Carnegie Institution of Washington Geophysical Laboratory "Energy sources in dark abyssal waters;" and Igor Puchtel, University of Maryland, College Park "Re-Os isotope systematics and HSE abundances of the 3.5 Ga Schapenburg komatiites, South Africa." 8pm next Wednesday at the Cosmos Club. Free and open to the public; refreshing beverages served starting at 7:30pm.

Virginia's a swing state... unbelievable and amazing.

Radioactive granite countertops cartoon caption contest reminder.

JPL has launched a new climate site:

...And congratulations to Walter Alvarez for being awarded the Vetlesen Prize.

That's all I've got. Have a good Friday!

Labels: field trips, gsw, meetings, news, politics, travel

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Fossil Freeway: east coast tour

This spring, I mentioned reading Kirk Johnson and Ray Troll's book Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway, and then stopping in and visiting with Kirk in Denver one evening on my summer road trip.

Now, my friend Michelle (who both loaned me the book and introduced me to Kirk) has forwarded me an announcement: Ray and Kirk are coming east!

Labels: dinosaurs, fossils, humor, meetings

Sunday, October 12, 2008

ScienceOnline '09

Geo-bloggers: It's your last chance to sign up for Science Online '09.

Chris Rowan and I are both planning on attending. Hopefully some other geo-bloggers too?

Got this today from the conference organizers:
"Registration is almost full! We are already at 196 registrants - and the capacity is 200. Counting on some people to unregister or not show up, we will cap at 230, but we expect to get there within the next day or two - so it is the last chance to register right now. If something comes up later, you can unregister easily...."

Labels: blogs, conferences, meetings

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Cream, sugar or geoblogosphere?

Would you like a little geoblogosphere with your coffee this morning?

There's some great stuff out there today...

Andrew Alden (Geology.About.com) showcases the Fransiscan melange on a trip to Shell Beach.

Watch Perito Moreno glacier do some AWESOME calving at En Morrenas (Spanish-language geoblog). Watch the whole thing for perspective (3 minutes), but the really spectacular collapse occurs at ~2 minutes into the video. Watch the splash and watch the huge chunks of ice go zinging off into the surrounding air. Wild!

Dave Petley (Dave's Landslide Blog) reviews the dangers of a collapse of a volcanic flank in the Canary Islands, and what it means for Atlantic Ocean tsunami risk.

And for the geobloggers in the house, Chris proposes getting together in January at a science blogging conference in North Carolina. I think this could be cool. I just signed up.

Time for another cup of coffee... Good morning!

Labels: blogs, california, geology, glaciation, landslide, meetings, north carolina, south america

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Upcoming lectures at the Carnegie

Capital Science Lectures upcoming at the Carnegie Institution in northwest DC:

Thursday 10/16/2008 - 6:45pm
Cooperation and Collective Behavior, from Bacteria to the Global Commons
Simon Levin, Princeton University,
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Center for BioComplexity
A sustainable future for humanity will require finding a way to share our complex environment. Learn about the evolution of cooperation in non-human populations, and what must change in our own behaviors if we are to have a common future.

Wednesday 11/12/2008 - 6:45pm
Geysers of the Solar System
Susan Kieffer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Center for Advanced Studies, Department of Geology
What would Old Faithful look like if it erupted on Io, the hot moon of Jupiter, or on Enceladus, the frigid moon of Saturn? What can the towering geysers on Io and Enceladus tell us about the interiors of these moons?

Labels: dc, meetings

Upcoming PGS meeting

FYI, all you DC-metro-area-geophysicist types:

The October meeting of the Potomac Geophysical Society will be held October 16th at the Fort Myer Officers' Club in Arlington, Virginia in the Campaign Room. This month's talk will be: Infrasonic studies in the atmosphere using gravity wave models and a study of the 1988 PEPCON chemical explosion, by Dr. David Norris of Applied Physical Sciences.

Reception at 6:30. Dinner at 7:30. Talk at 8:30 PM. Allow 15 minutes for security entering Ft. Myer as all civilian vehicles are searched. To ensure access to and from Fort Myer use the Hatfield Gate. If you wish to attend dinner ($25), please make reservations with Joydeep Bhattacharyya at 703-284-1219 or via e-mail at jbhattac@bbn.com. If you wish, please feel free to attend the talk without dinner. Non-members and guests are welcome. Visit the PGS web site for new meeting announcements, etc.

Labels: meetings, pgs, virginia

Monday, October 6, 2008

Upcoming talks

Here's two events you might be interested in, if you live in the DC area and are into the Earth sciences...

1) I'll be giving next week's Science Seminar at NOVA Annandale. I'll be discussing my geological experiences out west this summer in a talk called "Two Months of Rock and Road." It starts at 12noon on Friday, October 17 in the CE Building Forum, and will conclude by 1pm. Light refreshments served starting at 11:45am. Free and open to the public.

2) American Meteorological Society Environmental Science Seminar Series: "Ecosystem Health in a Climatically-Altered World: Is 'Species Rescue' Part of the Prognosis for the Future?" by Dr. Camille Parmesan, University of Texas, Austin, Texas. Friday, October 10, 2008; New Time - 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM, in the Russell Senate Office Building, Room 253 Washington, DC. Free and open to the public.

What sorts of climate-related and compound stresses are various wild ecosystems encountering? What impact are these stresses having on these various ecosystems? How might one characterize the resilience, or lack thereof, of these ecosystems to these stresses. For those with the capacity to do so, how are ecosystems adapting to changes brought about by climate change and other stresses such as development? What is happening to those ecosystems that are showing signs of being incapable of either adapting in place or moving elsewhere? How do the rates of climate change and other stresses affect the odds that certain ecosystems will adjust and ultimately, survive? Are there ecosystems that now require, or will require, special human interventions in order to prevent their collapse and/or demise? What would these interventions look like and are they governed by existing national policy?

Buffet Reception Following; More information online at http://www.ametsoc.org/seminar

Labels: dc, meetings, nova

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Rise of the Geoblogosphere

The Geological Society of Washington was founded in 1893, and during its 115 years of history, has seen presentations by some of the greatest geologists of all time. Over that time, the stage has been graced by the likes of Charles Walcott, Alfred Brooks, Grove Karl Gilbert, John Wesley Powell, M. King Hubbert, J. Harlen Bretz, Bailey Willis, Nelson Horatio Darton, and (more recently) Richard Fortey. It was with humility I took the podium last night to give a talk entitled "Rise of the Geoblogosphere."

My PowerPoint slideshow is online here for your viewing pleasure, but I'll also embed it here (works in Firefox, but it doesn't seem to work in Internet Explorer):

Bentley Gsw Geoblogosphere V2

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

I began with a definition of the terms blog, blogger, blogging, and blogosphere, then added the prefix "geo-" to indicate the subset of total blogs that dealt with the earth sciences.

I shared examples of some of the more well-read blogs, the blogs I read regularly, specialist blogs like Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week, expedition blogs, commercially associated blogs. I discussed some trends in the geoblogosphere, including the Accretionary Wedge, Where on Google Earth?, Chris Rowan's "geopuzzles," and the PodClast.

I then discussed my own experiences with geoblogging. I started this blog in December of last year as a means of informally sharing interesting information with my students. That intended audience, however, was very quickly supplanted by a globally-dispersed readership. I don't think I really would have known how many people were reading my blog unless Ron Schott had encouraged me to turn on the comments option. I'm so pleased I did, and was gratified to see that so many people in so many places were interested in what I had to say.

When I installed a counter and Sitemeter on the blog, I got a better sense of the large number of visitors, and thus some read on the vitality of geoblogs as a medium of communication. This, it would appear, was a big deal.

Thus, when I was asked to give a talk at GSW for the first time, I thought that perhaps discussing the growth of the geoblogosphere would be a bigger contribution than, say, rehashing the research I did for my master's thesis. So I committed to giving a talk about the state of the geoblogosphere as it stands in late 2008. As many readers will know, to generate data for this talk, I conducted a survey of geobloggers, and got 47 responses. By my estimates, this is probably about 50% of the geoblogosphere as I am aware of it, and perhaps 70% of the English-language geoblogosphere.

Data from the survey occupied the rest of my presentation. The majority of my geoblogger respondents indicated that they used Blogger as their blogging platform. Most geobloggers are either graduate students, consultants in industry, university faculty (teaching + research), or educators (teaching only). Popular topics for geoblogging included geology, personal stories and anecdotes, personal research, travel, and current geological events.

I shared a map of the geoblogosphere (insofar as it was determined from my survey), which I reproduce here as a Google Map (drag it around to see the whole thing):

As you can see, the geographic distribution of geobloggers is strongly Anglo-centric, and very strongly focused on the United States of America.

I then presented data about when my survey respondents began their blogs, and pointed out the explosive growth in the geoblogosphere over the past two years in particular. Taking a page from Andrew, I compared this explosive growth to the Cambrian "explosion" of animal diversification. (This was a big hit with the GSW audience!) Next, I offered a plot of how many posts each geoblog had posted compared to its length of existence. The average rate of posting was about one post every couple of days, though the spread of data indicates some real outliers too: some blogs have been around for a couple of years with relatively few posts, while others enthusiastically put up multiple posts per day (like Laelaps, for instance).

In my survey, I had asked geobloggers what they like about the geoblogosphere, what they dislike, and why they blog in the first place. The answers to these questions were the final pieces of information I presented, both in the form of "word clouds" and histograms. Geoblogger respondents indicated overwhelmingly that they enjoyed the geoblogosphere's sense of community, as well as access to news, perspectives, and insights that they might have otherwise missed. Some comments from the survey:

"Once I graduated from Graduate school it was tough to really hang out with an entire group of people who like to talk about geology...the geoblogosphere is like a group of friends who like to talk geology...I just wish there was such thing as cyber-beer to go along with the blog-o-sphere ."
"It's an expanding, welcoming community. You get to experience all sorts of fieldtrips and research through the eyes of other geologists."
"I have met many professionals in the process of blogging who have given me lots of great help and advice. It has served as a great introduction to specialists I wouldn't otherwise be in touch with."
"The geoblogosphere connects together a community that otherwise only gets together at a meeting or two per year."

As far as dislikes, there were fewer responses, and many respondents simply said "I like it. No problems." A few offered criticism along the lines of "there's too many blogs; they're too dispersed." Interestingly, the second-most-common complaint was that there weren't enough geobloggers; these respondents felt that more geoscientists should get in on the game. Some comments from the survey:

"It has grown so much and so fast. It is difficult to keep up."
"Another issue which may arise is priority of ideas. There are now written records of what, in the past, would have been "debates over a beer". Will this lead to debates about who originated an idea, or who has priority on a description?"

As for why geobloggers bother with blogging, the most common response was that they wanted to share information and perspectives with others, followed closely by the sense of connecting with other interested individuals and public outreach. A significant minority also mentioned the pleasure they take in the act of writing, or a desire to practice/improve their writing skills. Some comments from the survey on why geobloggers blog:

"Narcissism"
"It's a good outlet for my geological musings, and can really help to jumpstart a day of geo-thinkin'..."
"An increasingly effective method of public outreach, which is part of my responsibilities as a publicly funded researcher; a way of clarifying my own thoughts on geological topics and issues."
"Stop mom from emailing me for news all the time"
"Cogito Ergo Blogo"
"I like to share what I think is interesting but don't like 'bothering' people. I see blogging as the modern equivalent of the person who tacks magazine/newspaper articles outside their office, but with a much bigger/wider audience."

I concluded the talk with an image of the (non-geo-)blogosphere (as depicted by Discover magazine a few years back) and some thoughts about what I personally would like to see in the future: more geobloggers more evenly distributed over the planet Earth, including voices from major metropolitan areas, hinterlands, and in particular China. I also would like to see some geoscience/policy blogging, and more blogs coming out of the US Geological Survey.

I would like to thank everyone who took the time to contribute their perspective to the survey, and to the gracious members of the GSW audience last night at the Cosmos Club. Thanks!

Labels: blogs, gsw, meetings

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

DC area: Two other upcoming talks

What're you doing on Friday? There are two excellent-sounding earth science seminars inside the Beltway: The University of Maryland Geology Department's weekly seminar, and the American Meteorological Society's monthly seminar for policy makers. Both events are free and open to the public. AMS is at 10am, UMD at 11am. You can't do both -- you must choose...

AMS: Friday, September 26, 2008New Time - 10:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room G50 Washington, DC

Accelerating Atmospheric CO2 Growth from Economic Activity, Carbon Intensity, and Efficiency of Natural Carbon Sinks

What is the relationship between economic activity and CO2 growth? What is carbon intensity and how does it relate to economic activity? What are the trends in CO2 growth, carbon intensity, and changes in the efficiency of natural reservoirs to store carbon? How does the growth in CO2 compare to the various estimates of CO2 growth contained in the most recent IPCC assessment of climate change? What is permafrost and what is the extent of permafrost thaw in the Arctic? Is permafrost thaw a response to global warming and if so, what is the future likely to hold? Will permafrost thaw result in the release of additional CO2 into the atmosphere from Arctic soils? If so, what is the impact likely to be on global warming? How much carbon is stored in Arctic soils? Assuming that the Arctic continues to warm well above the global average, what is the likely fate of that soil carbon and how might it influence climate in the future?

Public Invited; Buffet Reception Following

Moderator: Dr. Anthony Socci, Senior Science Fellow, American Meteorological Society

Speakers:

Dr. Josep (Pep) Canadell, Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) Marine and Atmospheric Research, Canberra, Australia
Dr. Vladimir Romanovsky, Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, A
Dr. Howard E. Epstein, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

Program Summary

How Fast is Atmospheric CO2 Growing and Why, and Does it Suggest Ways to Mitigate Climate Change?

The increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is the single largest human perturbation of the climate system. Its rate of change reflects the balance between human-driven carbon emissions and the dynamics of a number of terrestrial and ocean processes that remove or emit CO2. It is the long term evolution of this balance that will determine to a large extent the speed and magnitude of climate change and the mitigation requirements to stabilize atmospheric CO2 concentrations at any given level. Dr. Canadell will present the most recent trends in global carbon sources and sinks, updated for the first time to the year 2007, with particularly focus on major shifts occurring since 2000. Dr. Canadell’s research indicates that the underlying drivers of changes in atmospheric CO2 growth include: i) increased human-induced carbon emissions, ii) stagnation of the carbon intensity of the global economy, and iii) decreased efficiency of natural carbon sinks.

New Estimates of Carbon Storage in Arctic Soils and Implications in a Changing Environment

The Arctic represents approximately 13% of the total land area of the Earth, and arctic tundra occupies roughly 5 million square kilometers. Arctic tundra soils represent a major storage pool for dead organic carbon, largely due to cold temperatures and saturated soils in many locations that prevent its decomposition. Prior estimates of carbon stored in tundra soils range from 20-29 kg of soil organic carbon (SOC) per square meter. These estimates however, were based on data collected from only the top 20-40 cm of soil, and were sometimes extrapolated to 100 cm. It is our understanding that large quantities of SOC are stored at greater depths, through the annual freezing and thawing motion of the soils (cryoturbation), and potentially frozen in the permafrost.

Recent detailed analysis of Arctic soils by Dr. Epstein and his colleagues found that soil organic carbon values averaged 34.8 kg per square meter, representing an increase of approximately 40% over the prior estimates. Additionally, 38% of the total soil organic carbon was found in the permafrost.

A total of 98.2 gigatonnes (1015 grams) of carbon is estimated to be stored in the soils of the North American Arctic tundra. An area-based estimate for the entire Arctic suggests the presence of approximately 160 gigatonnes of carbon. The annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is roughly 2% of this amount, so small changes in Arctic carbon storage could have substantive impacts on atmospheric CO2. The future of this stored carbon is, however, largely uncertain in the face of a changing Arctic environment. Climate change and resulting increasing temperatures in much of the Arctic could increase the decomposition rates of soil organic carbon (producing atmospheric CO2), and increase permafrost thaw, which would expose more soil organic carbon for decomposition. On the other hand, increasing temperatures could also lead to greater sequestration of atmospheric CO2 by tundra vegetation. Actual changes will be the result of complex interactions between processes that sequester carbon and those that release it.

Past, Present and Future Changes in Permafrost and Implications for a Changing Carbon Budget

Presence of permafrost is one of the major factors that turn northern ecosystems into an efficient natural carbon sink. Moreover, a significant amount of carbon is sequestered in the upper several meters to several tens of meters of permafrost. Because of that, the appearance and disappearance of permafrost within the northern landscapes have a direct impact on the efficiency of northern ecosystems to sequester carbon in soil, both near the ground surface and in deeper soil layers. Recent changes in permafrost may potentially transform the northern ecosystems from an effective carbon sink to a significant source of carbon for the Earth’s atmosphere. Additional emissions of carbon from thawing permafrost may be in the form of CO2 or methane depending upon specific local conditions.

Dr. Romanovsky will present information on changes in terrestrial and subsea permafrost in the past during the last glacial-interglacial cycle and on the most recent trends in permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere. He will further discuss the potential impact of these changes in permafrost (including a short discussion on potential changes in methane gas clathrates) on the global carbon cycle. Dr. Romanovsky’s research suggests that permafrost in North America and Northern Eurasia shows a substantial warming during the last 20 to 30 years. The magnitude of warming varied with location, but was typically from 0.5 to 2°C at 15 meters depth. Thawing of the Little Ice Age permafrost is on-going at many locations. There are some indications that the late-Holocene permafrost started to thaw at some specific undisturbed locations in the European Northeast, in the Northwest and East Siberia, and in Alaska. Future projections of possible changes in permafrost during the current century, based on the application of calibrated permafrost models, will be also presented.

The next seminar is tentatively scheduled for October 10, 2008.
Topic: Ecosystem Health in a Rapidly Changing Climate

Please see the AMS web site for seminar summaries, presentations and future
events: http://www.ametsoc.org/seminar

For more information please contact:
Anthony D. Socci, Ph.D. Tel. (202) 737-9006, ext. 412 socci@ametsoc.org

UMD: 11:00am - 12:00pm at 1121 Computer Science Instructional Center

Internal flow and extrusion of the Greater Himalayan Slab, Mount Everest Massif: a tour of the world's highest rocks
Dr. Rick Law from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

If you are interested in meeting with Dr. Law please sign up online. You also may delete an appointment from this page. Please join the faculty and students for refreshments in the Geology Building foyer at 10:30 am.

Seminar series web page for UMD-College Park Geology.

Labels: climate change, CO2, geology, global warming, maryland, meetings

Monday, September 22, 2008

GSW reminder

Geological Society of Washington
Meeting 1424
Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Sarah Penniston-Dorland, University of Maryland, College Park - "Multiple sulfur isotopes reveal a magmatic origin for the Platreef PGE deposit, Bushveld Complex, South Africa"

Callan Bentley (me!), Northern Virginia Community College - "Rise of the geoblogosphere"

Matthew Jackson, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (Carnegie Institution) - "The fate of subducted continental crust in the Earth's mantle"

*********************************
Refreshments start at 7:30 p.m. The formal program starts at 8:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public.

Meetings are held at the John Wesley Powell Auditorium (go in via the fenced-in parking lot on the corner of Florida Ave and Massachusetts Ave, NW) of the Cosmos Club, 2170 Florida Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.

GSW Web Site address: http://www.gswweb.org/
Future meetings: Oct. 22, Nov.12, and Dec. 10

Labels: blogs, dc, geology, gsw, meetings

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Blue Whales at the Paleontological Society of Washington

PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON

The Blue Whale's Tale: Fathoming the Origin of Baleen Whales
Erich M.G. Fitzgerald
Postdoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian Institution
Research Associate, Museum Victoria & Monash University
Wednesday, September 17, 2008

NEW TIME: 7:00 p.m., in the Cooper Room, National Museum of Natural History
10th St. & Constitution Ave. Meet in the Constitution Avenue lobby at---5:00 p.m.---if you wish to join us for dinner, at the 'Elephant and Castle,' NW corner of 12th & Penna. Ave., NW
Non-Smithsonian visitors will be escorted
to the Cooper Room at 6:30 and 6:55 p.m. [New Times]

Remaining Dates for 2008-2009 Season: Oct. 15 (coincides with Society of Vertebrate Paleontology), Nov. 19, Dec. 17, Jan. 21, Feb. 18, March 18, April 15, May 13

Labels: fossils, mammals, meetings, oceans, psw, smithsonian

Friday, May 16, 2008

Volcano monitoring: last night's PGS meeting

Last night I attended my first meeting of the Potomac Geophysical Society (PGS). The PGS meets on Thursday nights, and I usually can't make it because I teach on Thursday nights. (I do however attend meetings of the Geological Society of Washington quite regularly, but those are on Wednesday nights.) Now that the semester is over, I was able to make it to the final PGS meeting of the spring.

The meeting was held at Fort Meyer Officer's Club. It's on a military base adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery, and before entering, my Prius had to be searched for bombs (as did all other civilian vehicles). The Officer's Club was about what you would expect, I guess -- kind of 1950's decor, elegant once. I noticed they had compact fluorescent light bulbs in all the sockets, which pleased me. PGS meetings consist of: (1) beer downstairs in the lounge, (2) dinner upstairs in the "Campaign Room," (3) business details, and (4) a talk by a guest speaker.

Last night's speaker was Bill Burton, from the USGS's volcano hazards and monitoring program. Bill's office will be launching a comprehensive new volcano website later this year, and he gave us a brief preview of its features in last night's talk. If you'd like a look for yourself, they have a beta version of the site online now.

Bill reviewed the efforts of his office to monitor a whole lot of volcanoes in U.S. territory (including the protectorate of the Mariana Islands). The map above shows how they've got their work cut out for them.

I was struck by two things about Bill's talk. First, that the volcanoes that the USGS has fully equipped with monitoring instruments (high-precision GPS, seismographs, etc.) provide a wealth of information which makes it relatively easy (relative to say, earthquakes) to predict eruptions. We've learned enough that we can use subtle signals to issue eruption watches and warnings, for both people on the ground and planes in the air.

But the second thing I noted is that they don't have every volcano in their area of responsibility fully instrumented. In fact, they don't even have every "dangerous" volcano in their areas fully instrumented. A striking example of this was a story Bill told while showing us this image:

That's Cleveland Volcano, one of the Aleutians. The photograph was taken by an astronaut, who then called the duty officer in the Alaska Volcano Observatory and told them "Cleveland's erupting." The AVO doesn't have instrumentation on Cleveland, so this phone call (from space!) was the first they knew about the eruption! That's a pretty big gaping hole in the program, it seems to me. We should know at the very least when our volcanoes are already erupting. Even better would be to fully instrument all our potentially-dangerous volcanoes to the fullest possible extent, so we can predict in advance when they will erupt.

At the end of the talk, I asked Bill about this: "How much more money would your office need to outfit the under-instrumented volcanoes to the level you think they need?" Bill estimated $80 million, both for installation and the constant upkeep these instruments require. This morning on the drive into work, I heard that the new farm bill has $450 million set aside for Chesapeake Bay environmental work, so while $80 million seems like a lot to me, I guess it's not all that much in the grand scheme of things. In a post this morning, Nicholas at The Critical Zone examined this issue of huge numbers, and all the science that could get done with that money.

In the wake of the recent tragedies in Myanmar and China, it seems like the US would be wise to invest some money in outfitting our volcanoes with the full suite of monitoring equipment. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Who knows how many human lives an ounce of seismograph is worth? When a destructive eruption does happen, we're going to wish we had spent that $80 million when we had the chance.

Labels: gsw, meetings, pgs, volcano, websites

Friday, April 25, 2008

The map

Here's a photo of one of the cool things that my Honors students and I got to see on our recent trip up to Buffalo, New York (for the northeastern section meeting of GSA ):

That's an original, signed edition of the William Smith geologic map, brought to the meeting courtesy of the Buffalo Library. It is one of only two in the United States; the other is at the Library of Congress. The map found a home in Buffalo (of all places!) thanks to Chauncey Hamlin, the head of the Buffalo Museum of Science (then called the Buffalo Society of Natural Science) from 1920 to 1948. During his tenure, he assembled a collection of first editions of many seminal scientific works. First editions of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology and Herbert Hoover's* translation of Agricola's De Re Metallica were also on display at the conference.

* Yes, that Herbert Hoover, at least according to Wikipedia.

Labels: geology, history, maps, meetings, nova

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Some more photos from the Buffalo trip

A few more photos from the Buffalo trip last week... All of these were taken by Victoria, my Honors student.

Here's some malachite in the sandstone of the Whirlpool Formation: the field trip leader suggested this was due to brine flow through these rocks during the Alleghanian ("Alleghenian") Orogeny:

Herringbone structure ("reverse cross bedding") in the Gasport Formation, overlying the DeCew Formation, which appears flat-lying and calm in this photo, but just below this shows disrupted bedding suggestive of seismic activity:

I showcase a sample too big to lug back to the van (ripple marks):

Watch where you stand! In the Niagara Gorge, we see some evidence that the Gorge is widening through mass wasting processes. Here's a small gap / scarp opening up as a block of rock to the right slumps down into the Gorge:

Lastly, on the trip home, we had an obligatory getting-stuck-in-the-mud moment:

Eventually, we got unstuck and headed back down the road!

Labels: geologists, mass wasting, meetings, nova, primary structures, sediment, teaching, travel

Friday, March 28, 2008

Silurian sequence stratigraphy trip

On Wednesday, two students and I participated in an excellent field trip examining the sequence stratigraphy of the Niagara region. We saw uppermost Ordovician rocks (the Queenston Formation) and then a dozen Silurian formations, some of them only 3 meters thick, stacked atop on another in a stereotypical layer cake fashion.

The trip was led by Carl Brett, who did a great job. I wanted to showcase here a few of the photos I took that day. Here's Carl showing us Arthophycus trace fossils (interpreted to be the burrows of polycheate worms):

At Outwater Park, we found fossil stromatoporoid reefs. Stromatoporoids were primitive, layered sponges. These ones show glacial striations across their surface, a result of the outcrop being scraped by glaciers during the recent Ice Ages:

At another stop (on Lockport Junction Road) , there was a Leperditia ostracode-rich layer. Ostracodes are small arthopods, kind of like krill, but with bean-shaped shells.

At Pekin Hill, we looked at the Goat Island Formation, which showed ripped-up stromatoporoids deposited within it.

Here's a stromatoporoid that tumbled loose from the slope. I'm bringing this one back to Annandale to use as a teaching specimen. Note the upward-bulging dome of the stromatoporoid's internal layers.

One of our most amazing stops was hiking up into the Niagara Gorge. This is at the downstream end of the Niagara Escarpment, where the Falls once were. The adjacent town is Lewiston.

Here's Laura and Victoria in the Gorge, overlooking the Niagara River:

Now for some fossils from the Rochester Shale and other units exposed in the Gorge. Carl brought these out to show us what we might find. Here's a mouthwatering slab showing Dalmanites trilobites:

And a golf-ball sized cystoid (relative of crinoids, blastoids, and other echinoderms):

He had some Lingula dwelling traces, too. Lingula is a common inarticulate brachiopod that dwells / dwelled in vertical burrows beneath the seafloor mud:

Here's a shot of a crinoidal grainstone. This limestone is almost entirely made up of "sand" generated by broken up crinoid skeletons:

Some spectacular trace fossils (ichno-genus unknown) on a slab that was catching the rays of the sun just right:

And a close-up of the same slab:

And lastly, a nice slab showing tool marks:

It was really a great trip -- perfect weather, fascinating rocks, good company, and I felt nice and tired at the end of the day.

Labels: fossils, meetings, new york, nova, primary structures, sediment, silurian

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Sedimentary structure photos

On Tuesday afternoon, four students and I drove from Annandale, VA, up to Buffalo, NY, for the NE section meeting of the Geological Society of America. On the way, we crossed the Pennsylvanian Appalachians, and pulled over to examine some beautiful redbed exposures on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I think these are in the Hampshire Formation, but I could easily be wrong about that, considering I've never been here before. Here's a few photos. First, some beautifully rhythmic alternations between sand and mud, now preserved as alternating layers of sandstone and mudstone:

Then, some nice "ball and pillow" structures, as heavy sand sank downward into squishy mud. In places, the mud skooshes upward in "flames":

And lastly and most amazingly (for me), some awesome exposures of flute casts. These are erosional scours into a layer of sediment by a current, which then fills in the scours (called "flutes") with sand, making these flute casts on the underside of the overlying layer of sand:

The flutes "point" upstream, and open up (and shallow) in the downstream direction. More later!

Labels: appalachians, meetings, nova, pennsylvania, primary structures, sediment, teaching

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Other samples from the ultramafics trip

Cool folds (in metamorphic foliation) in this sample:

Here's the real prize: a big chunk of peridotite (upper right) that's partly surrounded in a crinkly foliated matrix of chlorite schist (lower left):

I'm off to Buffalo, NY today with four Honors students to attend the northeastern section meeting of the Geological Society of America. If anyone from the geoblogosphere happens to be up there, I hope you'll say "howdy." Posting may be sporadic over the next few days... we'll see what the Internet connectivity issue is like up there.

Labels: appalachians, iapetus, meetings, nova, piedmont

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Northeastern GSA section meeting

The Northeastern section meeting of the Geological Society of America will be held March 27-29 in Buffalo, New York. I plan on attending it, and I can provide transportation for NOVA students up to the meeting and back. I think it would be awesome to get a whole van-full of people (Honors students and interested others) to take a little roadtrip up there and go to the meeting. The cost for students to attend the 3-day meeting is $45 if you are already a GSA member, or $55 if not. That's a great deal. Other costs: lodging and food. (I'm planning on staying in the hotel where the conference is being held, but there are undoubtedly cheaper options nearby...) I've reserved a NOVA van for us to drive up in, so transportation costs would potentially be zero.

I plan to go up one day "early" for the March 26 field trip to look at the rocks of the field trip: "Silurian - Early Devonian Sequence Stratigraphy, Events, and Paleoenvironments of the Niagara Peninsula Area of New York and Adjacent Ontario, Canada." (Full-day trip, Wed., 26 March. Cost is an additional $30 for students. Lunch provided. Participants must have passports to cross into Canada.)

More information on the meeting is here: http://www.geosociety.org/sectdiv/northe/08mtg/. If you are a NOVA student, let me know as soon as possible whether you want to go up for this meeting/trip. I think it'll be a lot of fun.

Labels: geology, meetings