Geology News And Research - March 2009 Archives

Dust may settle unanswered questions on Antarctica (3/31/2009)

Dust trapped deep in Antarctic ice sheets is helping scientists unravel details of past climate change.Researchers have found that dust blown south to Antarctica from the windy plains of Patagonia -- and deposited in the ice periodically over 80,000 years -- provides vital information about glacier activity. ...> Full Article

Deep sea floor mining is subject of international colloquium at WHOI (3/30/2009)

Scientists, policymakers, environmentalists, and industry representatives will gather next week at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to discuss the issue of mining precious metals from the seafloor. ...> Full Article

UK robot sub searches for signs of melting 60 km into an Antarctic ice shelf cavity (3/29/2009)

Autosub, a robot submarine built and developed by the UK's National Oceanography Center, Southampton, has successfully completed a high-risk campaign of six missions traveling under an Antarctic glacier. Autosub has been exploring Pine Island Glacier, a floating extension of the West Antarctic ice sheet, using sonar scanners to map the seabed and the underside of the ice as it juts into the sea. Scientists hope to learn why the glacier has been thinning and accelerating. ...> Full Article

Rotation is key to understanding volcanic plumes, scientists say (3/28/2009)

A 200-year-old report by a sea captain and a stunning photograph of the 2008 eruption of Mount Chaiten are helping scientists at the University of Illinois better understand strong volcanic plumes. ...> Full Article

Finding trapped miners (3/27/2009)

Utah scientists develop new approach to mine disasters ...> Full Article

Deep-sea rocks point to early oxygen on Earth (3/25/2009)

Red jasper cored from layers 3.46 billion years old suggests that not only did the oceans contain abundant oxygen then, but that the atmosphere was as oxygen rich as it is today, according to geologists. ...> Full Article

'Ice that burns' may yield clean, sustainable bridge to global energy future (3/24/2009)

In the future, natural gas derived from chunks of ice that workers collect from beneath the ocean floor and beneath the arctic permafrost may fuel cars, heat homes, and power factories. Government researchers are reporting that these so-called "gas hydrates," a frozen form of natural gas, show increasing promise as an abundant, untapped source of clean, sustainable energy. The study is scheduled for presentation in March at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society. ...> Full Article

Great Basin's Bear Lake reveals records of past climate (3/23/2009)

The Geological Society of America presents a new Special Paper, Paleoenvironments of Bear Lake, Utah and Idaho, and Its Catchment. This volume is the culmination of more than a decade of coordinated investigations aimed at a holistic understanding of the long-lived Bear Lake, which is located 100 km northeast of Salt Lake City, along the course of the Bear River, the largest river in the Great Basin of the western United States. ...> Full Article

Scientists cable seafloor seismometer into California's earthquake network (3/22/2009)

Earthquake monitoring stations are almost always on land, but what about the 70 percent of the Earth's surface under water? California's first permanent seafloor seismic station has now been linked real-time into the Northern California seismic network, allowing scientists to get a more complete picture of the state's fault system -- especially the San Andreas Fault, which runs along the coast. The seafloor seismometer, built by UC Berkeley, was placed on the ocean bottom by MBARI. ...> Full Article

West Antarctic ice comes and goes, rapidly (3/21/2009)

Researchers today worry about the collapse of West Antarctic ice shelves and loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet, but little is known about the past movements of this ice. Now climatologists from Penn State and the University of Massachusetts have modeled the past five million years of the West Antarctic ice sheet and found the ice expanse changes rapidly and is most influenced by ocean temperatures near the continent. ...> Full Article

Ocean's journey towards the center of the Earth (3/20/2009)

A Monash geoscientist and a team of international researchers have discovered the existence of an ocean floor was destroyed 50 to 20 million years ago, proving that New Caledonia and New Zealand are geographically connected. ...> Full Article

Earth's crust melts easier than thought (3/19/2009)

Earth's crust melts easier than previously thought, scientists have discovered. In a paper published in this week's issue of the journal Nature, geologists report results of a study of how well rocks conduct heat at different temperatures. They found that as rocks get hotter in Earth's crust, they become better insulators and poorer conductors. ...> Full Article

New Madrid fault system may be shutting down (3/15/2009)

The New Madrid fault system does not behave as earthquake hazard models assume and may be in the process of shutting down, a new study shows. ...> Full Article

Fledgling mantle plume may be cause of African volcano's unique lava (3/14/2009)

Nyiragongo, an active African volcano, possesses lava unlike any other in the world, which may point toward its source being a new mantle plume says a University of Rochester geochemist. The lava composition indicates that a mantle plume -- an upwelling of intense heat from near the core of the Earth -- may be bubbling to life beneath the soil of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The findings are presented in the current issue of the journal Chemical Geology. ...> Full Article

Leading geoscientists to discuss alternative energy, water, health and public policy issues (3/6/2009)

UT Dallas hosts Geological Society of America South-Central Section Meeting March 16-17 ...> Full Article

First English-language account of scientists' quest to measure the globe (3/5/2009)

"Full Meridian of Glory: Perilous Adventures in the Competition to Measure the Earth" by Paul Murdin is an adventure story of the Paris Meridian and the scientists who worked through revolution, war, rebellion, piracy, fire, shipwreck, blockade, snow, tropical heat, kidnapping, murder and turbulent love affairs to pursue an intellectual problem of mapmaking and science. ...> Full Article

Wenchuan earthquake mudslides emit greenhouse gas (3/4/2009)

Mudslides that followed the May 12, 2008, Wenchuan, China earthquake may cause a carbon-dioxide release in upcoming decades equivalent to two percent of current annual global carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion, a new study in Geophysical Research Letters shows. ...> Full Article

US-led international research team confirms Alps-like mountain range exists (3/3/2009)

Flying twin-engine light aircraft the equivalent of several trips around the globe and establishing a network of seismic instruments across an area the size of Texas, a US-led, international team of scientists has not only verified the existence of a mountain range that is suspected to have caused the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet to form, but also has created a detailed picture of the rugged landscape buried under more than four kilometers (2.5 miles) of ice. ...> Full Article

Oceanic seesaw links Northern and Southern hemisphere during abrupt climate change (3/2/2009)

Very large and abrupt changes in temperature recorded over Greenland and across the North Atlantic during the last Ice Age were actually global in extent, according to an international team of researchers led by Cardiff University. ...> Full Article

Intelligent use of the Earth's heat (3/1/2009)

Enhanced geothermal energy using modern research methods ...> Full Article