Geobulletin alpha

The Hawai'i That Was: The Abode of the Gods and Creation at Kilauea 

The ongoing eruptive activity at the summit caldera of Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawai'i. You aren’t hearing this from me (well, okay, you are), but sometimes teaching is just a little bit like carnival barking. You have to be entertaining about something that actually isn’t all that unusual or interesting. And sometimes you have to reveal just a little at a time to keep the interest

Cape Town Tie Up 2 

Lately its been a little bit bothersome just getting around in the lab stack and leaves us feeling as if we are mice in a maze and simply "can't get there from here."  The top of the main stairwell has been closed off for some repair work. read

A little bit of Mexico earthquake activity 

The poor Mexicans are trying to fend off earthquake panic.  They've had a few little earthquakes and people naturally associate 'momentum' with this, especially after the recent events. I love this area, as it has some of the cleanest subduction zones in the world.  This is one of the 'ripest' areas for M9's, but they are every 500 years, with an uncertainty of 500 years.  So I

Katabatic winds 

We’ve been trucking right along with our sampling! Our sampling at Elephant Island was quite a challenge. The katabatic winds coming down the cliffs made it difficult to get the zodiacs in. Katabatic winds are created by cool air masses rushing down a slope. They rush downslope because cold air is denser than warm air. The cold air is at high altitude because of the height of the island, but at the coast (where the island stops), the air is so dense that gravity causes it to rush down to sea [...]

First day sampling 

Today we made it to our first sampling site! As you read in an earlier post, we are looking at soil biodiversity at many stops all along the entire Antarctic Peninsula. Today's stop is at Biscoe Point on Anvers Island, one of the most southern of our sampling sites this year (and about halfway down the entire gradient we're sampling). When we sample at a site, we collect soil from under five different types of plant cover: grass, moss, lichen, algae, and bare soil. We want to know how [...]

Marvel et al (2015) Part 2: Media responses 

This is a second post related to the new paper. The first post dealing with the substantive content is here. What with #AGU15 going on, and a little bit of overlap in content with Shindell (2014), NASA wasn’t particularly keen to put out a press release for the paper, but we did get a ‘web

Driving to the Center of the Earth in Del Puerto Canyon...Piercing the Ocean Crust 

Rugged terrain in the upper Del Puerto Canyon just beyond the Tesla-Ortigalita fault (on the right near the people) As in the last post, I'm exaggerating a little bit. We're not going to the center of the Earth, we are instead using California's unique geology to explore the mantle, the layer that extends from 20 miles to about 1,800 miles depth, about half way to the center. These rocks

Hitting the wall 

I’m fifteen days into NaNoWriMo, and have written twenty one thousand words. That’s a world record for me, although I won’t hide that I’m jealous of people who have already broken fifty thousand. Yes, I am a little bit behind target, but I’ve had a rather demoralising experience. Not because of any incidents in real

Being objective (with yourself) 

I recently recorded a podcast with Chris Jones of Rock Your Research (check out that website – he’s had some great guests on so far!) The very first question I got to answer about grad school was what I struggled the most with, and all those of you who’ve gone through grad school can probably guess that I said “impostor syndrome”. I’ve written a little bit about it before, but it’s

Jaw Dropping Ignorance Versus Science Fact 

How ignorant people see the world: How someone with a little bit of critical thinking ability sees it: This ends today’s lesson. Note: I’m at the National Weather Association conference here in Oklahoma City, and I’ll have more to talk about regarding that later tonight. The guy below hired me (here in OKC in Jan. 1980) for my first on-air weather job. Why does Merrell Teller have less gray hair

Exp359. 18th Oct. Terre !!! 

6 in the morning!  I saw the  islands !  Those of the night shift had to see the firt one  a little bit earlier in the rising sun.

Castles, Kings, and Ice: A Whirlwind Tour of Latvian Geology 

Our own RQ tormented me a little bit this summer. She kept sending nifty tidbits of geology from her summer excursions in Latvia. And she's got lots! By popular demand*, we're going to have a... -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says 

Exciting news from NASA this Monday morning! Scientists find strong evidence of water on Mars. Read more about it! nytimes.com Despite its reputation as a forebodingly dusty, desolate and lifeless place, Mars seems to be a little bit wet even today. READ

A new tool for the interpretation of palaeomagnetic data 

As part of my PhD research, I spent quite a lot of time at the Fort Hoofddijk (informally known as The Fort) – the palaeomagnetic laboratory of the University of Utrecht (in the Netherlands). For a little insight into what carrying research out in a 19th Century bunker, housed within the grounds of the botanical gardens of the University of Utrecht is like, take a look at this blog post that I wrote a while back. I digress, The Fort is a pioneer when it comes to palaeomagnetism, not only [...]

A Bird Shangri-La No More: The Moas of New Zealand 

Blogging always involves a little bit of free association, where inspiration comes from numerous unrelated events over the course of a few days. I've started my fall semester, and I've met 170 new people over the last week. I've given introductory presentations that describe the reasons a person might want to pursue studies in geology and the earth sciences including a rundown of some of

The Open Research Glossary round 2 

A few months ago, we published the crowd-sourced Open Research Glossary, details of which can be found here. We’ve taken this to the next level now, and published the updated and much prettier version of this resource on Figshare. This means it is now openly licensed for re-use, and can also be cited like any normal research article. We also popped it on Zenodo, because why not! The original document can be edited here, and remains an open crowd-sourced initiative, which means anyone can [...]

Better know The Asterinidae: Familiar & Unfamiliar! 

A lot of times on the blog, I talk about weird and often unfamiliar groups of echinoderms. But today I thought I would talk a little bit about a family of sea stars, the Asterinidae, which its most likely that most people have seen at some point. They're familiar and as a result, we know quite a lot about some of them.. Members of the Asterinidae include some 150 species in over 25

Drotops megalomanicus trilobite from Morocco 

I'm not sure why but this trilobite makes me giggle a little bit when I hold it. Droptops megalomanicus is the largest trilobite species that I own and it is really cool to look at.This specimen comes from Jebel Mrakib near Alnif in the Tafilalet region of Morocco. The sheer size is rather amazing and reminds me of the Phacops rana trilobites that come from the Silica Shale. However the P. rana from the Silica Shale would get to be around 3-4" in length for a larger specimen while the one [...]

Nice Quake Swarm At Salton Buttes Volcano 

Well it looks like a little bit of action is happening just East of my hometown of San Diego, as a vigorous quake swarm is occurring at the Salton Buttes volcanic field at California's Salton Sea. The largest quake is a magnitude 4.1 quake, with two others registering 3.3. The shallow depth of about 3.5km suggests this is probably tectonic, but it is too early to know, and USGS does not issue frequent updates on CALVO's website.Google Earth snapshot with USGS Real-Time Quake overlay.The quakes [...]

Is This the Best View from a Tunnel Anywhere? And Other Slightly Unfamiliar Views of Yosemite (and Gratuitous Bear Cub) 

I did something a little different this last weekend for Mother's Day. I found there was a single campsite available in Yosemite Valley on Sunday night, so we headed there for a little explore. I also did something just a little bit different at Tunnel View, and walked a bit into the tunnel to get the iconic view of Yosemite Valley framed by the arching granite of the tunnel entrance. Is