Geology in the News

This is a selection of stories, subject to the following rules. First, I don't guarantee close daily coverage of everything that happens (because I have things to do apart from maintaining this Web page). Second, the site has to be generally accessible. (Many journals make their pages accessible only to people who have paid a subscription to the written version.) Third, I choose newspapers and news sites that tend to keep their pages accessible for more than two weeks over those that do not. Fourth, I keep older articles archived for varying lengths of time, depending how important I think they are (or interesting, at least); whether they have been updated or made redundant; and whether the site has dropped them. For example, I've had to limit stories from the New York Times. It is a fine paper, but its new policy is to take off its stories within DAYS and then charge for access to them.

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Geology in the News

  • May 7, 2008. Ash eruption increases in intensity at Chaiten, in southern Chile. For Google Earth fans, ask to go to Chaiten. Volcan Chaiten lies in an obvious caldera almost due north of the town, with a newish bare-rock volcanic dome in the center of the caldera.

  • May 6, 2008. Oil prices reach $122 a barrel for the first time. Remember those happy days when oil was only $100 a barrel? Scroll down to January 2, 2008! Reuters.

  • May 5, 2008. Vog effects on the island of Hawaii. AP on San Jose Mercury News

  • May 5, 2008. Oil prices briefly hit $120 a barrel for the first time. BBC News OnLine

  • May 3, 2008. The Deccan Trap eruptions across the KT boundary were very rapid and therefore had dramatic pulsed environmental effects. The paper is in JGR, and I haven't read it: but here is the abstract. JGR abstract

  • May 2, 2008. Mount Ruapehu in New Zealand: higher temperature and increased gas output may signal a new eruption soon. Radio New Zealand

  • April 30, 2008. Mysterious and prolonged earthquake swarm near Reno, Nevada. National Geographic News

  • April 29, 2008. Documenting the global effects of the 1600 eruption of Huaynaputina, in Peru. The effects seem at first glance to be Tambora-like, rather than the smaller effects of Krakatau and Pinatubo. Presented by UC Davis's own Ken Verosub and Jake Lippman. National Geographic News

  • April 29, 2008. When did the Sierra Nevada reach its present elevation? Maybe as long ago as 12 Ma in the central Sierra at least. The question brings implications for continental climate history as well as geophysics. The paper will eventually appear in PNAS. Terra Daily

  • April 29, 2008. Reconciling radiometric dating by different methods. Dating can now be much more precise and accurate. The KT boundary was at 66 Ma and the Permo-Triassic boundary is 252 Ma. And there are implications for the earliest history of the Earth, too. The paper was in Science last week. Terra Daily

  • April 28, 2008. New earthquake hazard maps for the United States. US Geological Survey

  • April 26, 2008. Quick-clay landslides and the city of Gatineau in Eastern Canada. I don't usually look at the Ottawa Citizen, and I don't know how long these stories will last. If you want them, DOWNLOAD THEM NOW!! Ottawa Citizen.
    Previous stories, which likely led to the background review story above:

  • April 24, 2008. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park evacuated because of sulfur fumes. Honolulu Advertiser

  • April 24, 2008. The perils of field geology, # 3245: rabid bobcats. Tucson Citizen

  • April 22, 2008. Alert level raised at Anak Krakatau volcano. Reuters

  • April 22, 2008. The Europeans and natural gas from Turkmenistan. With the US ignoring Caspian oil and gas, the Europeans are going after it on their own. Read this one all the way through: I love the sardonic analysis of this writer. And I wouldn't trust the Turkmens one little bit. Terra Daily

  • April 22, 2008. Oil prices close at over $119 a barrel (another new record). BBC News OnLine

  • April 22, 2008. Large underwater volcano found on the Reykjanes (mid-Atlantic) Ridge, southwest of Iceland. This is old news from earlier this month, but the previous site I used was ephemeral. National Geographic News

  • April 22, 2008. Satellite image of a huge copper mine in Mexico. NASA Earth Observatory

  • April 21, 2008. Oil prices in New York briefly hit $117. BBC News OnLine

  • April 21, 2008. Oil prices and the US dollar. How much is the rise in US oil and gas prices related to the mismanagement that has eroded the value of the dollar over the past eight years? Here are the numbers. Geotimes

  • April 21, 2008. Melting of the Greenland icecap: spectacular and scary. This will eventually be publshed in Science.

  • April 20, 2008. Ancient hematite mining in Peru. Not for making iron, but for grinding ochre. Thousands of tons of it!

  • April 18, 2008. Another new record high for crude oil price: it closed at over $115 a barrel. OK, trivia time. What was the price of oil when the Bush administration took over? Less than $40/barrel. BBC News

  • April 18, 2008. Earthquake in Illinois! (And on the anniversary of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.) Fortunately it was about magnitude 5. National Geographic News

  • April 17, 2008. Satellite imagery of isostatic rebound. Akimiski Island in James Bay (part of Hudson's Bay) has rebounded so much since the Laurentian Ice Sheet melted that there are terraces along its spouth coast clearly visible from satellite. (You could probably use Google Earth to scan many other appropriate coastlines: especially the west coast of Finland.) NASA Earth Observatory

  • April 17, 2008. Mysterious swarm of (small) earthquakes off the Oregon coast. It's happening in a "quiet" part of the ocean crust. These swarms occur on land n "quiet" areas: a classic is the Geysers geothermal field in Northern California, where there is a lot of hot-spring activity but no fault activity. Maybe this is a new hot-spring area (one still asks why). We will be able to find the answer, but because of the location and the depth of water, it won't be cheap or fast. National Geographic News

  • April 16, 2008. Another new record high for oil prices: over $114 a barrel. BBC News OnLine

  • April 16, 2008. Eruption of Mount Egon, on the Indonesian island of Flores.

  • April 15, 2008. Eruption of Nevado de Huila, in southern Colombia. Thousands of people have been advised to evacuate. BBC News OnLine

  • April 14, 2008. Update on probabilities for major California earthquakes. The expectation is for at least one in the next 30 years. Of course, it could be zero, or four: but the likeliest case is one, and a slightly higher probability that it will hit Southern California rather than Northern California.

  • April 14, 2008. The (man-made) subsidence of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. AFP story on Terra Daily

  • April 14, 2008. Wonderful image of Lonar Crater, in India. NASA Earth Observatory
  • April 11, 2008. Ice-dammed lakes are unstable. This example is from southern Chile. National Geographic News

  • April 11, 2007. A new small explosion at Halema'uma'u crater. Hawaii Volcano Observatory press release

  • April 10, 2009. Volcanoes National Park remains closed because of volcanic fog (vog) with high-sulfur fumes. AP story on National Geographic News

  • April 10, 2008. Some precursors to the Grand Canyon may date back to 50 Ma. National Geographic News

  • April 9, 2008. Another new record high for oil prices. AP

  • April 9, 2008. Remember the Indonesian mud volcano? Now it's emitting methane... AFP

  • April 7, 2008. Water, volcanoes and ecology in the Canary Islands. Chesapeake Bay Journal

  • April 1, 2008. Kilauea's sulfur plume. Image from NASA satellite sensors

  • March 31, 2008. 1.2 billion year old meteorite impact identified in Scotland. National Geographic News

  • March 27, 2008. Concerns about health hazards from the gas-rich eruption of Halema'uma'u. The satellite image from NASA was taken earlier this week, when the trade winds were blowing the vog out to the southwest, as usual. The concern is what happens when the trade winds slacken. This happens occasionally, and at those times the city of Hilo gets "vog" or volcanic fog. Vog is part of the local TV weather forecasts.

  • March 25, 2008. The Three Gorges Dam: an environmental disaster. Scientific American

  • March 25, 2008. The gas vent in Halema'uma'u crater is now blowing out ash and little gobs of lava. This is the first lava erupted from Halema'uma'a since 1982.

  • March 21, 2008. Who swindled the Ethiopian government out of $17 million in fake gold? Workers from the Ethiopian Geological Survey! Really, who can you trust? Reuters Previous story: Ethiopia's national bank has been swindled: someone sold them gold-plated steel rather than gold bars. It doesn't take rocket science to weigh one and find it's fake!!! This was an inside job. BBC News, March 13, 2008.

  • March 21, 2008. Revised estimates for earthquake damage on the Hayward Fault in the San Francisco Bay Area. $1.5 trillion, probably. US Geological Survey

  • March 21, 2008. Venice turns to really bad ideas to solve its problems. Ask an engineer why this latest idea not only won't work, but can't. Terra Daily

  • March 21, 2008. Update on Kilauea's volcanic activity.

  • March 19, 2008. Small explosion at Halema'uma'u Crater: usually there are NONE.

  • March 19, 2008. A huge volcanic eruption in AD 536 is detected in ice cores. It had been suspected from ancient chronicles. National Geographic News

  • March 18, 2008. Meteorite crater discovered on Google Earth. Science Alert Australia

  • March 15, 2008. Halema'uma'u crater is emitting sulfur dioxide at record rates from a new gas vent. It's not clear what it means, but it's not good for tourist lungs. Previous story: March 11, 2008. Honolulu Advertiser.

  • March 14, 2008. First reports are positive on the Grand Canyon flood. National Geographic News. For previous stories, scroll down to March 6, 2008.

  • March 13, 2008. Oil prices close at another new record, over $110 a barrel. AFP on Google

  • March 13, 2008. The price of gold reaches an all-time high of $1000 an ounce. Don't forget that the dollar is dropping against other currencies. At this rate we'll see more "record" prices that simply reflect our lousy economic situation rather than a "real" price. Side story: Ethiopia's national bank has been swindled: someone sold them gold-plated steel rather than gold bars. It doesn't take rocket science to weigh one and find it's fake!!! This was an inside job. BBC News, March 13, 2008.

  • March 12, 2008. Oil prices close at another new record, at over $109 a barrel. International Herald Tribune

  • March 11, 2008. Visitors swarm to Kalapana lava flow on the Hawaiian coast. The lava is currently reaching the sea in four diffferent places. Honolulu Advertiser. Previous story: March 7, 2008.

  • March 11, 2008. Oil prices close at another new record, at over $108 a barrel. BBC News

  • March 11, 2008. More about the meteorite that hit Peru last year. National Geographic News. Previous story: National Geographic News, September 21, 2007.

  • March 10, 2008. Oil goes over $106 a barrel, another new record. BBC News

  • March 8, 2008. Update on Montserrat, still dealing with an active volcano after eleven years. BBC News OnLine. The real story is the visit of Prince Charles to the island: BBC News

  • March 7, 2008. Lava from Pu'u O'o reached the sea yesterday. The Royal Gardens subdivision is toast.

  • March 7, 2008. Evacuation exercise for Auckland, New Zealand. The back story is the recent discovery of a potentially dangerous volcanic vent under the city. The whole city is built on recent volcanics, but there has been no eruption nearby since Anglos arrived. Stuff website

  • March 6, 2008. Crude oil reaches another new record of $105 a barrel. Voice of America

  • March 6, 2008. Sending a flood down the Grand Canyon.

  • March 5, 2008. Crude oil reaches another new record of $104 a barrel. Voice of America

  • March 5, 2008. Purple diamonds discovered in Quebec, Canada. Allheadlinenews.com

  • March 5, 2008. Remember the Java mud volcano? It's leaking methane now... Reuters

  • March 5, 2008. Russia resumes gas supplies to Ukraine, after Ukraine threatened to cut Russia's pipeline supply to Europe. More crude Soviet-style power politics, and a clever response by Ukraine designed to get Europe to help it.

  • March 3, 2008. "Water flows" on Mars were probably dry debris slides. The paper is in Geology, which does not make its papers generally accessible on the Web.

  • March 3, 2008. New record oil prices.

  • March 3, 2008. Missing the boat on Iranian gas. UPI story on Terra Daily

  • March 3, 2008. Spectacular images of a 2006 rockfall in Yosemite National Park. Geology.com site

  • March 2, 2008. Why gold mining should not be done by ignorant amateurs. Mount Diwata in the Philippines. AFP story, Terra Daily

  • March 1, 2008. Removing the Marmot Dam in Oregon. Geotimes, March 2008

  • February 29, 2008. Three abandoned homes covered by lava in the Royal Gardens subdivision on Hawaii. Honolulu Advertiser

  • February 28, 2008. A looming flood of toxic waste threatens Leadville, Colorado. MSNBC.com

  • February 27, 2008. Supercomputer models an M9 superquake on the Cascadia subduction zone in the Pacific Northwest. Terra Daily

  • February 27, 2008. The Big Hole that used to be the great diamond mine in Kimberley, South Africa, is now a geological hazard. Story with Google image. GeoPrac site. Previous story from Geoprac, February 11, 2008: Seven Amazing Holes, three of them diamond mines.

  • February 27, 2008. A British earthquake. Mild and restrained, of course. BBC News

  • February 24, 2008. Evidence from the floor of Hudson's Bay about the draining of Lake Agassiz. The paper is in Nature Geoscience, whoch doesn't place its papers on the Web. Terra Daily

  • February 24, 2008. The human cost of uranium mining in the State of Washington. Seattle Times

  • February 21, 2008. Terraced deltas on Mars: formed in very early, very short-lived, very small floods. The paper is in Nature, which does not place its papers for general viewing on the Web. New York Times

  • February 21, 2008. The dome in Mount St. Helens' crater has stopped growing (for a while, at least). USGS press release

  • February 21, 2008. Meteor shower in the Pacific Northwest. National Geographic News

  • February 20, 2008. Oil prices reach another new all-time high, $100.74 a barrel.

  • February 15, 2008. Pacific Gas and Electricity buys more geothermal energy. (Because it has to!). The crazy thing is that this is not NEW geothermal energy: it just means that Calpine will sell more geothermal to PG&E and less to its other customers. The Geysers geothermal field is maxed out. The only thing this new deal will do for the environment is perhaps to encourage NEW geothermal plants: certainly there are plenty of potential sites in California, Oregon, and Washington. San Francisco Chronicle

  • February 13, 2008. The water supply of the American Southwest is in deep trouble. Even Lake Mead may lose all its useful stored water, and may eventually dry up. It is almost too frightening to think about the consequences, especially for Southern California. National Geographic News

  • February 11, 2008. The structure of the iron molecules in Earth's inner core. The neat thing is that experiments and computer models now explain the puzzling fact that seismic waves travel faster north-south through the inner core than they do in any other direction. Terra Daily.
    I wrote a short review on the Earth's inner core back in May 1998, which I include here in its entirety:

    It has its own spin (gyroscopic),
    It's seismically anisotropic,
    It's one giant crystal,
    It's as hot as a pistol,
    And so is this whole research topic.

  • February 9, 2008. Tungurahua in Ecuador increases activity still further.

  • February 8, 2007. Pungualuit Crater in Quebac, Canada: a beautiful meteorite crater about a million years old. NASA

  • February 6, 2008. Volcan Llaima in Chile increases activity.

  • February 3, 2008. Moderate earthquakes in the African Rift area. BBC News

  • February 1, 2008. Exxon Mobil reports record profit for 2007. The company made over $40 billion, the largest profit ever made by an American company. In perspective, the company has not paid any of the $2.5 billion it was fined for the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. BBC News

  • February 1, 2008. Alcoa and the Chinese both buy a stake in Rio Tinto. Most significantly, the Chinese now have a 10% stake.

  • January 31, 2008. Jack Thompson's house is threatened by the Hawaiian lava flows, as they reach the Royal Gardens area. KGMB TV

  • January 30, 2008. Another Chinese coal mine blows up: at least 25 illegal miners killed. Terra Daily

  • January 28, 2008. The behavior of faults off the coast of Washington and Oregon is more complex than we thought. But we don't yet know what that means. The paper is said to be coming out in Geology, which does not make its papers generally accessible. Seattle Times

  • January 24, 2008. New information and speculation on the K-T asteroid. Who knows when we'll see the actual paper.

  • January 23, 2008. Brazil strikes big offshore gas field. This follows their big strike of offshore oil last year. Energy Daily. Previous story: CNN

  • January 23, 2008. Close miss by an asteroid next week. Asteroid 2007 TU 24 will be about as close as the Moon on its nearest approach. There won't be another so close and so large until 2027.

  • January 21, 2008. Why the Hayward Fault in the San Francisco Bay Area is more dangerous than we thought. Densely written, no images. But the geophysicists involved are very good scientists. San Mateo County Times

  • January 21, 2008. Officially ignoring official maps that showed landslide dangers: a case study from Oregon. (Thanks to Al Frank for this URL.) OPB News

  • January 21, 2008. Small eruptions frm Anak Krakatoa. Antara

  • January 21, 2008. Prehistoric eruption from under the Antarctic ice. National Geographic news

  • January 18, 2008. The geopolitics of oil and gas pipelines, XIII: Russia scores another victory with the South Stream pipeline. BBC News OnLine. Previous story: December 31, 2007.

  • January 18, 2007. Eruption of Galeras, in Colombia. 8,000 people evacuated. CNN

  • January 17, 2008. A little bit of action at Mount St. Helens. National Geographic News. Previous story: Seattle Times, September 27, 2007.

  • January 14, 2008. Gold reaches $900 an ounce, an all-time high. (Some of that is because the dollar is so low compared with other international currencies.) MSN

  • January 13, 2008. People are nuts, episode #4753. The State of Hawaii subsidizes an insurance prgram that encourages people to build homes in places most likely to be covered by lava. Honolulu Advertiser

  • January 9, 2008. Asteroid 2007 WD5 will miss Mars. JPL. Previous stories:

  • January 5, 2008. Small but spectacular eruption of Popocatepetl. AFP/Google

  • January 4, 2008. Indonesia's mud volcano breaks its levees and spreads further. International Herald Tribune. Previous stories:

  • January 3, 2008. Twenty-five years of eruption at Kilauea. Honolulu Advertiser

  • January 2, 2008. Oil trades briefly at $100 a barrel, a new all-time record. Happy New Year! BBC News OnLine

    For news items archived from 2007, see Geology News from 2007.

    For news items archived from 2006, see Geology News from 2006.

    For news items archived from 2005, see Geology News from 2005.

    [For news items archived from 2004, see Geology News from 2004.

    [For news items archived from 2003, see Geology News from 2003.

    [For news items archived from 2002, see Geology News from 2002.

    [For news items archived from 2001, see Geology News from 2001.

    [For news items archived from 2000, see Geology News from 2000.

    [For news items archived from 1999, see Geology News from 1999.

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