Geobulletin alpha

Geosciences column: Rainfall and climate – a dynamic problem 

“Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.” – John Updike Rain quenches the thirst of soils and vegetation, fuelling ecosystems and much of the world’s agriculture. Whether it ruins a day on the beach or destroys a season’s harvest, it makes humans deeply aware of

How the Mammals Inherited the Earth, a Lecture from the Royal Tyrrell Museum 

Box Rock Circus - official opening 

BOX ROCK CIRCUS OFFICIALLY OPENED BY PROFESSOR IAIN STEWARTPhoto credits Charles HiscockOn a rather damp Tuesday May 14th 2013 a large number of people from the village of Box, near Corsham, Wiltshire, pupils from the local schools, members of the Bath Geological Society, and many other interested folk gathered at the Selwyn Hall recreation field for the official opening of the Box Rock Circus. The Circus, the brainchild of local geologist and Earth Science Educator Elizabeth Devon, which [...]

Close Encounter with a Big Asteroid on May 31 

Earth’s May 31 “close call” with a 1.7 mile-wide asteroid has radio astronomers excited. Fortunately it is going to miss Earth by over 3 million miles. “Whenever an asteroid approaches this closely, it provides an important scientific opportunity to study it in detail to understand its size, shape, rotation, surface features, and what they can

The Oklahoma Tornado: Some Facts and Pictures 

First of all, this tornado was not the biggest and strongest tornado ever recorded on Earth, as one Oklahoma City weather-caster said. We don’t know the wind speeds yet, and until then it cannot be given an EF Scale rating. I’ve seen some things (on the video of the damage) that make it clear that this was very likely an EF 4, and I’ve seen one thing that makes me

Bag of Rocks: Turns Out They're Not That Dumb 

Jordon's log. May 18th, 2013. It's the first full day aboard the science research vessel, the JOIDES Resolution. It's mission: take core samples from the deepest regions of the sea and analyze them for valuable information concerning climate change, the earth's history, and what living things dwell 2 miles below in the cold dark sediment. read

Mount St. Helens – 23 Years 

“Mount St. Helens seized the world’s attention in 1980 when the largest historical landslide on Earth and a powerful explosive eruption reshaped the volcano, created its distinctive crater, and dramatically modified the surrounding landscape.” Quoted from the USGS Fact Sheet titled…. Mount St. Helens, 1980 to Now—What’s Going

Have a cuppa'.....2-billion year old water?? Probably best not to drink.... 

Gas bubbles out through water inthe bottom of a deep mine in Timmons, Ontario, This imageis from the CNN blog site found here.Unless you want a dose of salt and probably copper and zinc as well, you wouldn't want to drink this stuff. And, instead of the nice fizz of carbon dioxide used in soda pop on earth, this gas is a nasty mixture of methane, hydrogen, nitrogen and helium. Probably stinks.     While the CNN blog (referred to in the figure caption) plays up the implications [...]

Grains of sand 

How many grains of sand are there on earth?  That is a good question.  But a ball-park estimate is fairly simple. We will look at fine sand (grain size = 100 microns), and coarse sand (grain size = 1 mm). So a cubic mm can hold 1000 grains of fine sand, or 1 grain of course sand.  Obviously grain size is important. There are 1x1018 cubic millimeters in a cubic km. How many cubic

Ablation in Argentina 

NASA’s Earth Observatory has a satellite image showing how strong winds in Argentina are removing dust from inland lake beds and streaming it out over the

Space Weather and Us 

NASA art rendering of the systems affectedby space weather: aircraft, satellites, astronauts,and the earthSource: NASA here gives "fun facts" about the sunLet me preface this with a disclaimer: I took a graduate level course in "Electricity and Magnetism" from one of the most fearsome texts ever inflicted on a student, the infamous "Jackson's E and M." It's still used to this day, and everyone that I've met has agreed with me on the difficulty.***See footnote! I not only took it once (in [...]

More Biomakrer Data Characterizing the Ediacaran PaleoEnvironment From Argentinian Sediments 

Stable isotope (S, C) chemostratigraphy and hydrocarbon biomarkers in the Ediacaran upper section of Sierras Bayas Group, Argentina Authors: 1. M. Bagnoud-Velásquez (a) 2. J.E. Spangenberg (a) 3. D.G. Poiré (b) 4. L.E. Gómez Peral (b) Affiliations: a. Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland b. Centro de Investigaciones Geológicas,

MapBox Earth: das neue Handspielzeug 

Die meisten von euch kennen und lieben wahrscheinlich Google Earth. Es ist immer wieder wunderbar, neue Gegenden zu erforschen, Länder und Städte zu entdecken oder Naturwunder in 3D zu bestaunen: Dieses Programm gibt es natürlich auch für iOS und Android Geräte und versüßt die Fahrt mit der Ubahn oder dem Bus. Nun betritt ein neuer [...]Related Posts:Tilemill Tutorial – Teil 2: Darstellung von…short announce: Google Maps – the treasure mapModerne Kartographie für das [...]

A New Way to Assess Ecological Diversity from Ichnological Fossils 

Vertebrate footprints from the Kem Kem beds (Morocco): A novel ichnological approach to faunal reconstruction Authors: 1. Matteo Belvedere (a, b) 2. Nour-Eddine Jalil (c) 3. Anna Breda (b) 4. Giovanni Gattolin (b) 5. Hélène Bourget (d) 6. Fatima Khaldoune (c) 7. Gareth J. Dyke (a) Affiliations: a. Ocean and Earth Sciences, University of Southampton, European Way,

Geological State Symbols Across the US - #4 Arkansas 

The next state up is Arkansas. Here are the stats:                                                                                        [...]

Possible meteorite from Mercury donated to ASU 

A piece of what may be the first meteorite from Mercury found on Earth has been donated to the ASU Center for Meteorite Studies in Tempe. ASU's School of Earth & Space Exploration reports that meteorite enthusiast Fredric Stephan donated two pieces of specimen NWA 732, a green meteorite recovered in Morocco, totaling 10 grams. CMS now holds 10 grams of the 345 grams found. [Right, 

Flooding Around Fargo 

NASA’s Earth Observatory has satellite images that display flooding in the area around Fargo, North Dakota from early and late April 2013. They show waters of the Red River covering farmland around the

Earth's core far hotter than thought 

New measurements suggest the Earth's inner core is far hotter than prior experiments suggested, putting it at 6,000C - as hot as the Sun's surface.Read

Archosaurs Recovered Quickly After Permian Mass Extinction in Anisian/Olenekian Triassic Tanzania 

Many scientists have thought that dinosaur predecessors missed the race to fill habitats emptied when nine out of 10 species disappeared during the Earth's largest mass extinction, approximately 252 million years ago. The thinking was based on fossil records from sites in South Africa and southwest Russia. It turns out that scientists may have been looking for the starting line in the

Temperature at the Center of the Earth? 

Using diamond anvils and powerful laser beams, researchers have simulated the conditions believed to be present at the center of the earth. Their estimated temperature of that location is 6000 degrees Celsius – 1000 degrees hotter than previous experimental