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Updated: 4 years 23 weeks ago

Centennial E10 – Volcano Disaster Prepping

Mon, 09/23/2019 - 10:16am

Many people have emergency kits packed to flee or survive forces of nature like floods, hurricanes, or wildfire. But what do you throw in your bag when you expect to rush toward a natural hazard? Geologist John Ewert has his go-kit packed with portable seismometers and gas-monitoring equipment, ready to mobilize when a volcano starts to rumble.

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New study complicates theory that ancient impact pierced Moon’s crust

Mon, 09/23/2019 - 10:00am

A new study finds the crater’s crust mainly consists of a common lunar crustal mineral not detected in earlier analyses. The new results suggest the basin floor may not have exposed lunar mantle material as previously reported. “We are not seeing the mantle materials at the (Chang’E 4) landing site as expected,” said Hao Zhang, a planetary scientist at the China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China, and a co-author of the new study. 

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Covering Climate Now… but what about the future?

Mon, 09/23/2019 - 7:12am

The gatherings will continue, but will strikes and marches move the needle to make a difference when it comes to the climate of our planet? Only time will tell…

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Kerala – the hungry rains

Mon, 09/23/2019 - 2:46am

There is increasing concern about the impact of monsoon-induced landslides in Kerala in southwest India, resulting from poor land use management

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Straight Talk From an Expert on Climate Change

Sat, 09/21/2019 - 12:29am

This is why Katherine Hayhoe got the UN Champion of the Earth Award this month. She deserved it. This is how you communicate science. From her Twitter feed on August 23rd:   And the response when Dr. Hayhoe posts things like this: …and the truth of the matter is that those who claim it is not real are not basing their opinion on fact or evidence. It’s based on FEAR: …

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Sols 2533-2535: SAM’s Starring Role!

Fri, 09/20/2019 - 8:00pm

Planning for this past week has centered on analyzing the high potassium drill sample, Glen Etive 2, using the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument.

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This is an ex-eruption!

Fri, 09/20/2019 - 1:30pm

Recently, as chronicled in Scientific American, I was involved with amending the eruptive record at California’s Mount Shasta to remove an eruption that was supposedly seen by a French mapping expedition in 1786. USGS researchers had already been puzzling over it for years – evidence was slim, since the area was already prone to forest fires and there was nothing in the geologic record to suggest that it happened. William …

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The 1985 Stava tailings dam disaster

Fri, 09/20/2019 - 3:22am

The failure of the Stava tailings dam in Trento, Italy in 1985 generated a mudflow that killed 268 people downstream of the facility.

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Sol 2531 – 2532: Three Portions to Inlet 1 and Straight on till SAM

Thu, 09/19/2019 - 8:00pm

In Monday's plan, we did portion drop tests of our 'Glen Etive 2' drill sample, and this morning we were greeted with nice images of the sample piles.

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How to Take Advantage of Networking and Software Training

Thu, 09/19/2019 - 11:31am

“We’ve had an overwhelming response and fortunately, your application has been successful.” This is the type of favourable reaction everyone wants to achieve. I was fortunate enough to be accepted into a three-day long software training program at Datamine, in order to learn about their new software called Map Info. The knowledge provided throughout the course was exceptional, but the networking expertise gained from this experience was undeniably the most invaluable …

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Storytelling basics: The story arc

Thu, 09/19/2019 - 10:58am

By Shane M Hanlon  All good stories have an arc.* A beginning, middle, end. The action goes up and down. The tension leads to twists and turns. So, what does the basic story arc look like? Well:   This is an arc. Or, at this point, it’s a line. The beginning of the arc is the beginning of the story. Set the scene: where are we? Who are the characters? …

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Mine waste landslides at the Kumtor Goldmine in Kyrgyzstan

Thu, 09/19/2019 - 2:37am

The high elevation Kumtor Goldmine in Kyrgyzstan is subject to unsual, very large, slowish moving landslides consisting of mine waste and glacial ice

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Arctic Sea Ice Melt May be 2nd Lowest On Record

Wed, 09/18/2019 - 6:14pm

The summer melt of the Arctic sea ice is nearly done and the numbers are flirting with being the 2nd lowest on record. 2012  is the lowest and this year will not be as low but still at alarming levels. The real change is the loss of the multi ice that lasts from year to year. This “old” ice is nearly gone and you can see it disappear in this …

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Federal agency moves, vacant science positions create concerns about “brain drain” in the U.S. scientific enterprise

Wed, 09/18/2019 - 3:16pm

Recently, there have been media reports that some federal agencies—namely, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and parts of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)—are planning to move headquarters science staff far outside the Washington, D.C. area, causing many scientists to choose to leave these agencies rather than relocate. Meanwhile, the National Weather Service (NWS) has left hundreds of scientific positions vacant, putting stress on …

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Study Tallies Huge Hidden Health Costs from Climate Change

Wed, 09/18/2019 - 1:43pm

Research sheds light on public health impact from climate-related events, spotlight on CO, FL, MI, NV, NJ, NY, NC, OH, TX, WA, and WI.

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New study suggests gigantic masses in Earth’s mantle untouched for more than 4 billion years

Wed, 09/18/2019 - 12:00pm

Ancient, distinct, continent-sized regions of rocks, isolated since before the collision that created the Moon 4.5 billion years ago, exist hundreds of miles below the Earth’s crust, offering a window into the building blocks of our planet, according to new research.

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Landslides in Art Part 30: Erica Putis

Wed, 09/18/2019 - 3:00am

Landslides in Art Part 30: "Doing the Electric Landslide", an oil painting by Erica Putis, part of her Man Made Destruction series

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Scientists identify weather event behind extreme cold in Europe and Asia during February 2018

Tue, 09/17/2019 - 10:00am

In the new study, researchers tested their hypothesis that a chain of events in the troposphere caused the sudden stratospheric warming and subsequent splitting of the polar vortex.

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Gilkey Glacier Retreat Leads to Rapid Lake Expansion in 2019

Tue, 09/17/2019 - 8:38am

Gilkey Glacier in 1984 and 2019 Landsat images indicating retreat of 4300m, tributary separation and 5 km2 lake expansion. A=Terminus tongue, B=Battle Glacier, G=Gilkey Glacier and T=Thiel Glacier. Gilkey Glacier draining the west side of the Juneau Icefield has experienced dramatic changes since I first worked on the glacier in 1981.   The Gilkey Glacier is fed by the famous Vaughan Lewis Icefall at the top of which Juneau Icefield …

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Landslides and air blasts

Tue, 09/17/2019 - 3:30am

A new analysis of the air blast generated by the 2008 Wenjia rock avalanche suggests that it generated the windspeeds of a Force 12 hurricane, and that the impacts extended far beyond the margins of the landslide

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