Geology News And Research - September 2009 Archives

Unlocking the secrets of the seafloor: The future of scientific ocean drilling (9/30/2009)

Close to 600 scientists from 21 countries met Sept. 23?25 2009 in Bremen, Germany, to outline major scientific targets for a new and ambitious ocean drilling research program. The scientific community envisions that this program will succeed the current Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, which ends in 2013. The outcome of the Bremen meeting will result in a new science plan, enabling scientific ocean drilling to take on a central role in environmental understanding and stewardship of our planet in the 21st century. ...> Full Article

Recovery Act funds will upgrade earthquake monitoring (9/29/2009)

Grants totaling $5 million under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act are being awarded to 13 universities nationwide to upgrade critical earthquake monitoring networks and increase public safety. "These stimulus grants will save lives as well as create jobs," Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said today. "More than 75 million Americans in 39 states face the risk of earthquakes." ...> Full Article

Peruvian glacial retreats linked to European events of Little Ice Age (9/28/2009)

A new study that reports precise ages for glacial moraines in southern Peru links climate swings in the tropics to those of Europe and North America during the Little Ice Age approximately 150 to 350 years ago. The study, published this week in Science, "brings us one step closer to understanding global-scale patterns of glacier activity and climate during the Little Ice Age," says lead author Joe Licciardi of the University of New Hampshire. ...> Full Article

'Rosetta Stone' of supervolcanoes discovered in Italian Alps (9/24/2009)

Scientists have found the "Rosetta Stone" of supervolcanoes. A fossil supervolcano has been revealed in a rare uplift of the Earth's crust in the Sesia Valley of the Italian Alps. The discovery by a team led by geologist James E. Quick at Southern Methodist University will advance scientific understanding of active supervolcanoes, such as Yellowstone, which is the second-largest supervolcano in the world and which last erupted 630,000 years ago. ...> Full Article

End of an era: New ruling decides the boundaries of Earth's history (9/23/2009)

After decades of debate an international body of earth scientists has formally agreed to move the boundary dates for the prehistoric Quaternary age by 800,000 years. ...> Full Article

Study shows disparity of effect of climate change on UV radiation (9/20/2009)

Physicists at the University of Toronto have discovered that changes in the Earth's ozone layer due to climate change will reduce the amount of ultraviolet radiation in northern high latitude regions such as Siberia, Scandinavia and northern Canada. Other regions of the Earth, such as the tropics and Antarctica, will instead face increasing levels of UV radiation. ...> Full Article

Solar cycle driven by more than sunspots; sun also bombards earth with high-speed streams of wind (9/19/2009)

Challenging conventional wisdom, new research finds that the number of sunspots provides an incomplete measure of changes in the Sun's impact on Earth over the course of the 11-year solar cycle. The sun can bombard Earth with high-speed streams of energy even in the virtual absence of sunspots. ...> Full Article

Melting of the Greenland ice sheet mapped (9/17/2009)

Will all of the ice on Greenland melt and flow out into the sea, bringing about a colossal rise in ocean levels on Earth, as the global temperature rises? The key concern is how stable the ice cap actually is and new Danish research from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen can now show the evolution of the ice sheet 11,700 years back in time. The results are published in the esteemed journal Nature. ...> Full Article

Egg-shaped legacy of Britain's mobile ice-sheet (9/16/2009)

The ice sheets that sculpted the landscape of Northern Britain moved in unexpected ways and left distinctive egg-shaped features according to new research. ...> Full Article

Digging deeper below Antarctica's Lake Vida (9/15/2009)

Two UIC geoscientists will lead an exploration of Antarctica's perpetually ice-covered Lake Vida, site of one of the most extreme environments on Earth for living organisms. The team will drill through the lake's ice cap, and take the first-ever samples of the underlying brine and sediment. ...> Full Article

First complete image created of Himalayan fault, subduction zone (9/13/2009)

An international team of researchers has created the most complete seismic image of the Earth's crust and upper mantle beneath the rugged Himalaya Mountains, in the process discovering some unusual geologic features that may explain how the region has evolved. ...> Full Article

More oxygen - colder climate (9/11/2009)

Using a completely new method, researchers have shown that high atmospheric and oceanic oxygen content makes the climate colder. In prehistoric times, the earth experienced two periods of large increases and fluctuations in the oxygen level of the atmosphere and oceans. These fluctuations also lead to an explosion of multicellular organisms in the oceans, which are the predecessors for life as we know it today. The results are now being published in Nature. ...> Full Article

Researchers to explore sacred Maya pools of Belize (9/10/2009)

A team of expert divers, a geochemist and an archaeologist will be the first to explore the sacred pools of the southern Maya lowlands in rural Belize. The expedition, made possible with a grant from the National Geographic Society, will investigate the cultural significance and environmental history and condition of three of the 23 pools of Cara Blanca, in central Belize. ...> Full Article

Making geothermal more productive (9/9/2009)

University of Utah researchers will inject cool water and pressurized water into a "dry" geothermal well during a five-year, $10.2 million study aimed at boosting the productivity of geothermal power plants and making them feasible nationwide. ...> Full Article

Satellites and submarines give the skinny on sea ice thickness (9/8/2009)

This summer, a group of scientists and students -- as well as a Canadian senator, a writer, and a filmmaker -- set out from Resolute Bay, Canada, on the icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent. They were headed through the Northwest Passage, but instead of opening shipping lanes in the ice, they had gathered to open up new lines of thinking on Arctic science. ...> Full Article

Scientists return from first ever riser drilling operations in seismogenic zone (9/7/2009)

The deep-sea drilling vessel CHIKYU successfully completed riser drilling operations on August 31, for IODP Expedition 319, Stage 2, of the Nankai Trough Seismogenic Zone Experiment. The CHIKYU is operated by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology in partnership with the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program. Expedition 319 marks the first riser drilling in the history of the scientific ocean drilling program, and the first subseafloor observatory operations for NanTroSEIZE. ...> Full Article

Methane gas likely spewing into the oceans through vents in sea floor (9/6/2009)

Same mechanism would allow trapped methane to escape in arctic regions ...> Full Article

Shrinking Bylot Island glaciers tell story of climate change (9/5/2009)

University of Illinois geologist William Shilts spent nearly two decades studying glaciers on Bylot Island, an uninhabited island about 300 miles southwest of Thule, Greenland. He, his students and other geologists who followed in his footsteps have chronicled the decline of several Bylot Island glaciers. Photos of the island from the 1940s to the present offer a vivid picture of the changing glaciers and the forces that shape their retreat. ...> Full Article

Study reveals seismic shift in methods used to track earthquakes (9/4/2009)

Scientists have developed a new technique to monitor movements beneath the Earth's surface, helping them better understand how earthquakes behave ...> Full Article

Map characterizes active lakes below Antarctic ice (9/3/2009)

Lakes in Antarctica, concealed under miles of ice, require scientists to come up with creative ways to identify and analyze these hidden features. Now, researchers using space-based lasers on a NASA satellite have created the most comprehensive inventory of lakes that actively drain or fill under Antarctica's ice. They have revealed a continental plumbing system that is more dynamic than scientists thought. ...> Full Article

Opals set to shine with new grading technology (9/2/2009)

CSIRO and a consortium of Australian Opal miners have unveiled the world's first automated device to grade opals using image analysis, at the 2009 National Council of Jewelery Valuers forum in Sydney. ...> Full Article

Connections among solar cycle, stratosphere and ocean discovered (9/1/2009)

Work in sync to generate periodic global weather patterns ...> Full Article