Geology

Colorado Front Range Storm In 2013 Caused 1,000 Years Of Erosion

We can be concerned about erosion due to man-made causes but it is nothing like what nature will randomly do in a single year, without ever once consulting Natural Resources Defense Council or other industry-funded groups. The historic September 2013 stor ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 28 2015 - 7:00am

Plumes and Volcanoes

This morning, in that!terrible! right-wing rag, the Daily Mail, I was intrigued to read this: How Hawaii and Iceland were born: Stunning 'CT scans' of the Earth's interior reveal vast plumes under the ocean feeding volcanic hotspots ...

Blog Post - Robert H Olley - Sep 3 2015 - 1:28pm

California Drought: Sierra Nevada Snowpack At 500-Year Low

In the Mediterranean climate of California, with its warm, wet winters and hot, dry summers, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains plays a critical role. It serves as a natural water storage system that feeds waterways and reservoirs during the dry ...

Article - The Conversation - Sep 15 2015 - 7:30am

Unexpected Information About Earth's Climate History From Yellow River Sediment

By meticulously examining sediments in China's Yellow River, a Swedish-Chinese research group are showing that the history of tectonic and climate evolution on Earth may need to be rewritten. Their findings are published today in the highly reputed j ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 13 2015 - 7:51am

Here's The Source Of The Northwest's Next Big Earthquake

Scientists have nearly completed the first map of the mantle under the tectonic plate that is colliding with the Pacific Northwest and putting Seattle, Portland and Vancouver at risk of the largest earthquakes and tsunamis in the world. The new report des ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 8 2015 - 12:31pm

Earthquakes Recorded Through Fossils

The Cascadia subduction zone (CSZ) has captured major attention from paleoseismologists due to evidence from several large (magnitude 8-9) earthquakes preserved in coastal salt marshes. Stratigraphic records are proving to be useful for learning about the ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 8 2015 - 8:00am

10,000 Earthquakes Each Year Just In Southern California

Oklahoma is in the news a lot for earthquakes because of activist claims about hydraulic fracturing, the modern process of natural gas extraction. In reality, the earthquakes may be linked to conventional drilling but the numbers are nothing out of the or ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 12 2015 - 7:00am

Nature Can Grind Mountains Faster Than Nature Can Rebuild Them

Researchers have attempted to measure all the material leaving and entering a mountain range over millions of years and discovered that glacial erosion can, under the right circumstances, wear down mountains faster than plate tectonics can build them. A s ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 24 2015 - 9:36am

No, Earth's Magnetic Field Is Not About To Flip

The intensity of earth's magnetic field has been weakening in the last couple of hundred years, leading some to claim that its polarity might be about to flip. But the field's intensity is coming down from an abnormal high rather than approachin ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 25 2015 - 3:59pm

Volcanic Event Caused Ice Age During Jurassic Period

Pioneering new research has shed new light on the causes behind an 'ice-age' that took place on Earth around 170 million years ago- evidence of a large and abrupt cooling of the Earth's temperature during the Jurassic Period, which lasted m ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 12 2015 - 7:30am