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Geology News And Research - January 2008 Archives
Earthquakes occurring at the edges of tectonic plates can trigger events at a distance and much later in time, according to a team of researchers reporting in today's (Jan. 31) issue of Nature. These doublet earthquakes may hold an underestimated hazard, but may also shed light on earthquake dynamics.
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 | A 35-year University of Salford study into river flow from glaciers in the Swiss Alps has revealed that lack of winter snow as well as warming air temperatures are causing glaciers to melt at an alarming rate - with some smaller glaciers likely to disappear in the next decade. ...> Full Article |
 | A wave of new NASA research on tsunamis has yielded an innovative method to improve existing tsunami warning systems, and a potentially groundbreaking new theory on the source of the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. ...> Full Article |
 | Princeton Earth scientist Frederik Simons believes the answers to questions about such unpredictable and destructive acts of nature as earthquakes and volcanoes might best be found floating in the ocean. ...> Full Article |
Geologists from the University of Leicester propose that humankind has so altered the Earth that it has brought about an end to one epoch of Earth's history and marked the start of a new epoch.
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An ANU seismologist whose work could help forecast the damage path of future earthquakes has been honoured by one of the world's top scientific organisations.
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Natural gas reservoirs in Michigan's Antrim Shale are providing new information about global warming and the Earth's climate history, according to a recent study by Steven Petsch, a geoscientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The study is also good news for energy companies hoping to make natural gas a renewable resource.
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Ice loss in Antarctica increased by 75 percent in the last 10 years due to a speed-up in the flow of its glaciers and is now nearly as great as that observed in Greenland, according to a new, comprehensive study by UC Irvine and NASA scientists.
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 | Ocean surface currents have long been the focus of research due to the role they play in weather, climate and transportation of pollutants, yet essential aspects of these currents remain unknown. ...> Full Article |
 | Since we can't sample the deepest regions of the Earth, scientists watch the velocity of seismic waves as they travel through the planet to determine the composition and density of that material. Now a new study suggests that material in part of the lower mantle has unusual electronic characteristics that make sound propagate more slowly, suggesting that the material there is softer than previously thought. The results call into question the traditional techniques for understanding this region of the planet. The authors, including Alexander Goncharov from the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, present their results in the January 25, 2008, issue of Science. ...> Full Article |
 | The first evidence of a volcanic eruption from beneath Antarctica's most rapidly changing ice sheet ...> Full Article |
 | The most detailed three-dimensional seismic images yet of the Chicxulub crater, a mostly submerged and buried impact crater on the Mexico coast, may modify a theory explaining the extinction of 70 percent of life on Earth 65 million years ago. ...> Full Article |
 | Research has found that a newly identified fault under the Adriatic Sea is actively building more islands off Croatia. ...> Full Article |
 | After enduring months on the coldest, driest and windiest continent on Earth, researchers today closed out the inaugural season on an unprecedented, multi-year effort to retrieve the most detailed record of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere over the last 100,000 years. ...> Full Article |
 | Scientists studying microbial communities and the growth of sedimentary rock at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park have made a surprising discovery about the geological record of life and the environment. ...> Full Article |
 | Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) at Columbia University have found that 2007 tied with 1998 for Earth's second warmest year in a century. ...> Full Article |
Carnegie Mellon University's Jacobo Bielak was awarded $1.6 million over the next four years from the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) PetaApps program to develop earthquake computer simulations that play an important role in reducing seismic risk for large urban coastal cities.
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 | Natural gas distributed throughout the Marcellus black shale in northern Appalachia could conservatively boost proven U.S. reserves by trillions of cubic feet if gas production companies employ horizontal drilling techniques, according to a Penn State and State University of New York, Fredonia, team. ...> Full Article |
 | Participants in a summer course for educators used ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to locate a pair of lost graves at an abandoned cemetery outside Houston. The site might become a historical monument. ...> Full Article |
 | A University of Colorado at Boulder study indicates meltwater periodically overwhelms the interior drainpipes of Alaska's Kennicott Glacier and causes it to lurch forward, similar to processes that may help explain the acceleration of glaciers observed recently on the Greenland ice sheet that are contributing to global sea rise. ...> Full Article |
 | Cool, wet conditions in the Northwest, frigid weather on the Plains, and record dry conditions in the Southeast, all signs that La Niņa is in full swing. ...> Full Article |
 | A four-man science team led by British Antarctic Survey's (BAS) Dr Andy Smith has begun exploring an ancient lake hidden deep beneath Antarctica's ice sheet. The lake -- the size of Lake Windermere (UK) -- could yield vital clues to life on Earth, climate change and future sea-level rise. ...> Full Article |
Deal Will Help Students, Researchers in Key Energy Disciplines
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An international team of scientists, led by Dr Edward Hanna at the University of Sheffield, has demonstrated that recent warm summers have caused the most extreme Greenland ice melting in 50 years. The new research provides further evidence of a key impact of global warming and helps scientists place recent satellite observations of Greenland's shrinking ice mass in a longer-term climatic context.
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 | A University of Alberta Arctic ice researcher is closing in on some real understanding about the process that might be feeding rising sea levels. ...> Full Article |
 | Study upsets long-held image of volcanism-driven hydrothermal vents ...> Full Article |
Geologists search Nankai Trough for quake clues
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 | Six to eight million years ago, the Western Region of the Abu Dhabi Emirate was a lush landscape teeming with subtropical wildlife, according to Andrew Hill, the Clayton Stephenson Class of 1954 Professor of Anthropology at Yale. ...> Full Article |
 | A new study indicates older, multi-year sea ice in the Arctic is giving way to younger, thinner ice, making it more susceptible to record summer sea-ice lows like the one that occurred in 2007. ...> Full Article |
Large ice-sheets existed on Earth about 91 million years ago, during one of the warmest periods since life began, an international team of scientists, including members from Newcastle University, has found.
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 | Zigzagging some 60,000 kilometers across the ocean floor, Earth's system of mid-ocean ridges plays a pivotal role in many workings of the planet: in plate-tectonic movements, heat flow from the interior, and the chemistry of rock, water and air. ...> Full Article |
 | New research indicates glacial ice existed on earth during intense period of global warming ...> Full Article |
 | Computer model analyses trace hydrological trends to human causes with unprecedented robustness ...> Full Article |
 | New Theoretical Model Suggests Plate Tectonics May Be On-Again, Off-Again Process ...> Full Article |
 | Shine a white light on the Hope Diamond and it will dazzle you with the brilliance of an amazing blue diamond. Shine an ultraviolet light on the Hope Diamond and the gem will glow red-orange for about five minutes. This phosphorescent property of blue diamonds can distinguish synthetic and altered diamonds from the real thing, and it may also provide a way to fingerprint individual blue diamonds for identification purposes, according to a team of researchers from the Naval Research Laboratory, the Smithsonian Institution and Penn State. ...> Full Article |
 | Wind isn't acting alone in the geological process behind erosion, sand dunes and airborne dust particles called aerosols. The other culprit is electricity. By taking both factors into account, researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a new model that matches real-world measurements of "saltation" better than the decades-old classical theory. ...> Full Article |
 | Plate tectonics, the geologic process responsible for creating the Earth's continents, mountain ranges, and ocean basins, may be an on-again, off-again affair. Scientists have assumed that the shifting of crustal plates has been slow but continuous over most of the Earth's history, but a new study from researchers at the Carnegie Institution suggests that plate tectonics may have ground to a halt at least once in our planet's history--and may do so again. ...> Full Article |
But global warming may be at play elsewhere in the world's oceans, scientists surmise
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 | Virtually all of Canada's high-temperature geothermal resources are under B.C. In the next 15 years they can supply 30 per cent of our power needs with the cleanest form of energy known. ...> Full Article |
 | More than 100 scientists and educators from the United States and abroad will gather Jan. 10-13 in Yellowstone National Park to share their findings on the unique biology and chemistry of geysers, hot springs, mud pots and steam vents. ...> Full Article |
Using a novel device that simulates earthquakes in a laboratory setting, a team of researchers have shown that seismic waves - the sounds radiated from earthquakes - can induce earthquake aftershocks, often long after a quake has subsided.
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