Geobulletin alpha

Monday's Minor Mystery Solved Pretty Quickly: Poles with no Shadows in Hawai'i 

You can't mystify scientists of the Earth with questions of latitude. I had numerous answers pretty darn quick about why this stop sign reveals my location. The sign pole is casting no shadow! The only way that can happen is if the sun is directly overhead, and that can only happen if one is within 23 degrees of the equator, and only at noon. I have never thought to seek such a picture on

Just for Fun, a Minor Monday Mystery 

Where am I and how do you know? There is the obvious clue provided by the street signs, but if they weren't there, would you have any way of knowing something of where I spent the day? A clue: the picture was taken at lunch

How to create mountain ranges in QGIS? 

Last time we had the task to create mountain ranges polygons for the whole world. I prepared a small tutorial referred to that. Maybe you can find something interesting for you. It will show you a model on how to select defined regions, slicing raster, smoothing and also exporting desired features. Enjoy! Location and data The first step is to find a location. It’s always useful to check wikipedia in order to do this, but also there is a very interesting website: [...]

Weather Delay 

Well, our flight was delayed due to bad weather at the field site. Because the plane has to land on a glacier, rather than a proper runway, the weather needs to be perfect. Since we're hanging out around Rothera Station for yet another day, I have more time to tell you about where we're going.Over the two years of the project, we will be sampling along a "latitudinal gradient". That means that we'll be taking soil samples at sites at regular distances along the length of the entire Antarctic [...]

Two in Row- September Follows August as Hottest on Record. 2014 May Be Hottest Ever. 

Just like August, September was the hottest on record globally (according to NASA). NOAA maintains a different record, and will report their number any day now. The data sets use slightly different methods, but it’s a good bet that they will show a new record as well. NASA also has a graph showing the heat anomalies by latitude: NOAA’s National Climate Data Center created a very good info graphic that

Latitude and its affect on solar radiation 

The latest ELI is 'Hot or not? - investigating how latitude affects the amount of solar radiation received'. After doing the activity, pupils will be able to:- • explain that the rays of the Sun will be most intense and so the surface of the Earth will be hottest when the Sun’s rays apparently come from directly overhead; • explain that as the Sun’s rays move away from overhead, they

Navigation 

When you stand outside, on a ship, in the middle of a vast expanse of water, you become completely disorientated because there is nothing in any direction with which to orientate yourself. On land you are nearly always within sight of something notable – a hill, a copse of trees, a road or a church tower – something that can help you to know where you are. read

Dome gneiss hill near Ranchi city of India. 

It is formed mainly by weathering and erosion.byDr. Nitish PriyadarshiGeologist. Above pictures are of Dome gneiss hill. This typical dome-gneiss (locally known as dongris) 26 km from Ranchi on Ranchi-Bundu highway (850 27” longitude and 230 14” latitude) has slopes on all sides (the average inclination being about 40 degree to 50 degree). There is little soil but oozing moisture from rock foliae supports tuft grass except the entirely bare rocky surfaces. A dome is a curved formation or [...]

Interim Geologic Map of the Cedar City 7.5-Minute Quadrangle, Iron County, Utah 

By: Tyler R. Knudsen The Cedar City 7.5′ quadrangle is roughly centered on the rapidly-growing community of Cedar City in Iron County, Utah. It straddles the boundary between the Basin and Range and Colorado Plateau physiographic provinces, which at the latitude of the quadrangle, is defined by the north-south-trending Hurricane fault. The eastern half of

Pollen Evidence of a Drying Climate in Albian Cretaceous Australia/Gondwana 

High latitude Albian climate variability: palynological evidence for long-term drying in a greenhouse world Authors: 1. Barbara E. Wagstaff (a) 2. Stephen J. Gallagher (a) 3. Martin S. Norvick (a) 4. David J. Cantrill (b) 5. Malcolm W. Wallace (a) Affiliations: a. School of Earth Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia b. National

Five new GigaPans from Thoroughfare Gap 

Yesterday, I took five new GigaPans at Thoroughfare Gap, a water gap where Broad Run cuts through Bull Run Mountain, the eastern limb of the Blue Ridge Anticlinorium at my latitude. The rocks here are the Cambrian-aged Chilhowee Group, with bedding tilted moderately to the east during Alleghanian mountain-building in the late Paleozoic. To the west is the crystalline core of this massive regional fold, and to the east is

Aerial Imagery 1954 to 2004: Cutoffs and Lateral Migration 

This will be a short post. I georeferenced an image from 1954 ordered from the USGS last semester and digitized the centerline of the Tickfaw River in ArcGIS. Comparing this route (1954) with the more recent route (2004) I do a lot of my analysis with was really interesting. I already knew about the giant cut-off that occured sometime in the 1980s or 1990s, but when I overlaid the digitized routes, it really pops visually. Also of note is the lateral migration of the river. With these two [...]

Where will one find freshwater in 2050? 

I was reading a review of the book, The World in 2050. The book is by UCLA geographer Laurence C. Smith; the review is by Gregg Easterbrook, himself an author. Easterbrook shares Smith’s contention that “a warming world is likely to cause the high-latitude land farthest from the equator to become desirable. By an accident of the shifting of the Earth’s plates, nearly all our high-latitude land is in the Northern Hemisphere.” The low latitudes are those less than the Tropic of Cancer in [...]

Glaciers Help High-Latitude Mountains Grow Taller 

“Glaciers can help actively growing mountains become higher by protecting them from erosion, according to a University of Arizona-led research team. The finding is contrary to the conventional view of glaciers as powerful agents of erosion that carve deep fjords and move massive amounts of sediment down mountains. Mountains grow when movements of the Earth’s

A comment about comments and commenting 

I know many of you have been a little frustrated by the transition here and especially your ability to leave comments effectively. I understand and appreciate your frustrations - any time there is a change like this, it isn't really until the shakedown that real problems come out, and that is what we're seeing. I can give you at least some guidance here if you haven't figured it out already (however, it seems many of you have). A lot of basic HTML works in the comment boxes:   Bold is [...]

Zonas de perigosidade geológica na cidade de Leiria 

Guilherme, J; Marques, H; Silva, F. Palavra-chave: Geologia; Risco; Desabamentos; Fluxos; Deslizamentos A cidade de Leiria (fig.1) fica situada na Estremadura Portuguesa, a 39º 47′ 37” 7” de latitude Norte, a 0º 18′ 8” de longitude Este e a 113m de altitude. Capital do distrito com o mesmo nome, é limitada a Norte pela freguesia

The Atlantic Garbage Patch 

There has been a lot of talk about the Pacific Garbage Patch, in fact I have written (at least) three posts on the subject myself, the first one here. Seen the way oceanic gyres work, it comes as no surprise that there is also an Atlantic Garbage Patch. Both gyres are areas of little to no ocean currents, surrounded by strong ocean currents that prevent trash from escaping once it arrives. Worldwide, there exist five major oceanic gyres and it is hypothesized that all of these gyres will [...]

Where on (Google) Earth #188? 

Dan was kind enough to post a WoGE near the Somali coast last week without invoking the Schott Rule, so I got a chance to play once again and I didn’t waste any time in recognizing that distinctive low-latitude north facing escarpment. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with WoGE (who dat?), the object

The amazing disappearing asymmetric magnetic reversals 

Interpreting the record of the Earth's magnetic field preserved in rocks - palaeomagnetism - is a complicated business, but at the heart of it is one very simple assumption: except when it is reversing, if you average over a few thousand years or so, the geomagnetic field resembles a dipole aligned with the Earth's geographic poles. This relatively uncomplicated shape means that there is a very simple relationship between latitude and the magnetic inclination (the angle magnetic field [...]

40 Degrees of Latitude 

Photo courtesy of zachd1_618 The Rocky Mountains, vast yet quietly humbling, define this part of the world. Vertically, they soar above 14,440 feet(4,401 m). Spanning 40 degrees of latitude, some 4,800 kilometres((2,980 mi), they run the length of North America from Liard Plain in BC’s north to the Rio Grande in New Mexico. The mountains