Ents, orcs and hobbits may have trod upon New Zealand soils, but beneath the Southern Island lies a giant earthquake fault that may help seismologists understand how the Earth moves and bends, according to a Penn State seismologist.
“One of the issues that makes the Alpine fault interesting is that while it is a strike slip fault for most of its length, it begins in a transition from a subduction zone to a strike slip fault,” says Dr. Kevin Furlong, professor of geosciences. “Most o
A team of international researchers working on the North Greenland Ice Core Project recently recovered what appear to be plant remnants nearly two miles below the surface between the bottom of the glacial ice and the bedrock.
Researchers from the project, known as NGRIP, said particles found in clumps of reddish material recovered from the frozen, muddy ice in late July look like pine needles, bark or blades of grass. Thought to date to several million years ago before the last i
These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show the Dao Valles and Niger Valles, a system of outflow channels on Mars.
The images were taken during orbit 528 in June 2004, and show the Dao Valles and Niger Valles areas at a point where the north-eastern Hellas impact crater basin and the Hesperia Planum volcanic region meet.
The images are centred at Mars longitude 93° East and latitude 32° South. The image re
Suspected large lakebeds that once were scattered on the planet Mars have not yet been found, say the research team that operated the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Their work appears in the current issue of Science magazine.
Members of the team have written several articles in the magazine, among them “The Spirit Rover’s Athena Science Investigation at Gusev Crater” that deals with the search for water on the red planet, and “Pancam Multispectral Imaging Results from the
University of Nevada, Reno researchers have for the first time recorded a cluster of nearly 1,600 small earthquakes 20 miles beneath Lake Tahoe — the world’s second-largest alpine lake. Based on observations from the university’s Nevada Seismic Network and an ultra-sensitive Global Positioning System (GPS) station at Slide Mountain, the researchers believe the quake cluster coincided with an unprecedented 8-millimeter uplifting of the ski resort mountain in the Sierra Nevada.
EarthScope Project Scientists Lead Modern-Day ’Journey to the Center of the Earth’ In a modern-day journey to the center of the Earth, geologists are exploring the structure and evolution of the North American continent at scales from hundreds of kilometers to less than a millimeter – from the structure of a continent, to individual faults, earthquakes and volcanoes. The project is called EarthScope. With approximately $200 million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), EarthScope wi
Scientists at Stockholm University in Sweden may have developed a new method for predicting earthquakes with the help of geochemistry. The method involves metering the content of certain metals in underground water, which changes before and after an earthquake.
The team of researchers behind these discoveries, presented in the latest issue of the scientific journal Geology, is led by Alasdair Skelton, professor of petrology and geochemistry at Stockholm University. An other member o
Originally developed to pinpoint attacking aircraft during World War Two, today’s advanced radar technology can detect a very different moving target: shifts of the Earth’s crust that occur as slowly as the growth of your fingernails.
Radar data from satellites such as ESA’s Envisat are used to construct ’interferograms’ that show millimetre-scale land movements. These rainbow-hued images provide scientists with new insights into tectonic motion, and an enhanced ability to calculate
In a new study, NASA and United States Geological Survey (USGS) scientists found that retreating glaciers in southern Alaska may be opening the way for future earthquakes.
The study examined the likelihood of increased earthquake activity in southern Alaska as a result of rapidly melting glaciers. As glaciers melt they lighten the load on the Earth’s crust. Tectonic plates, that are mobile pieces of the Earth’s crust, can then move more freely. The study appears in the July issue
Some people think cities and nature don’t mix, but a new NASA-funded study finds that concrete jungles create warmer conditions that cause plants to stay green longer each year, compared to surrounding rural areas.
Urban areas with high concentrations of buildings, roads and other artificial surfaces retain heat, creating urban heat islands. Satellite data reveal that urban heat islands increase surface temperatures compared to rural surroundings.
Using information
Scientists have pinpointed the source of a meteorite from the moon for the first time. Their unique meteorite records four separate lunar impacts.
They are the first to precisely date Mare Imbrium, the youngest of the large meteorite craters on the moon. That date, 3.9 billion years ago, is a new key date for lunar and even terrestrial stratigraphy, the scientists say, because life on Earth would have evolved only after heavy meteorite bombardment ended.
Geologists who fou
A new study of California’s southern Sierra Nevada range by a University of Colorado at Boulder research team has located a massive body of rock that sank into Earth’s mantle some 3.5 million years ago, allowing the mountains to pop up.
Undertaken with a high-tech suite of instruments designed to probe the geology to roughly 125 miles below Earth’s surface, the study illustrated the mountain building process in the southern Sierras with unprecedented detail.
Robert L. Fisher, research geologist emeritus at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, has been awarded the inaugural Drake Medal by the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) organization. Fisher received the medal at a reception hosted by the Ocean Studies Board of the National Academies on July 7 in Woods Hole, Mass.
The Drake Medal was created specifically to honor Fisher and is a replica of the medal given to Sir Francis Drake by England’s Qu
BU team shows so-called urban heat island effect influences onset of ’greenup,’ dormancy
Summer can sometimes be a miserably hot time for city dwellers, but new research shows that an urban setting allows plants to bask in a hot-house environment that keeps them greener longer.
Recent NASA-sponsored research from a team of geographers in Boston University’s Center for Remote Sensing shows that the growing season for vegetation in about 70 urban areas in Nort
The next time the New Madrid fault zone produces a strong earthquake, buildings in the Midwest may see less damage if they use a new device developed by a researcher at the University of Missouri-Rolla.
Dr. Genda Chen, associate professor of civil engineering at UMR, has spent the past five years developing a “smart” damper that can adapt to external disturbances such as earthquakes and keep buildings from shaking as much. His most recent findings are included in an upcoming issue of the Jo
Researchers from around the globe participating in the world’s largest environmental science experiment, the Large-Scale Biosphere Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA), will, fittingly, convene in Brazil this week.
From July 27-29, some 800 researchers will attend the Third International Scientific Conference of the LBA in Brasilia, Brazil, to discuss key findings on how the world’s largest rainforest impacts the ecological health of Amazonia and the world. Never before has so mu
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