Geology

Mountain-Building And The End Of An Ancient Ocean

When and where did the ancient Iapetus Ocean suture (the most fundamental Appalachian structure) form? Is part of New England made up of ancient African-derived rocks? What is the Moretown terrane?  Mountain-building events, called "orogenies," ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 28 2014 - 9:32am

Earthquake Science: Magnitude Scales With Maturity Of Transform Faults

The oldest sections of transform faults, such as the North Anatolian Fault Zone and the San Andreas Fault, produce the largest earthquakes, putting important limits on the potential seismic hazard for less mature parts of fault zones, according to a new p ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 30 2014 - 11:01am

We Can See The Bedrock For The Trees

University of California, Berkeley, geologist William Dietrich pioneered the application of airborne LIDAR, light detection and ranging, to map mountainous terrain, stripping away the vegetation to see the underlying ground surface- but he still couldn� ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 30 2014 - 10:30pm

Frictional Melting May Help Predict Volcanic Eruption Behavior

A new discovery in the study of how lava dome volcanoes erupt may help predict how a volcanic eruption will behave. Volcanologists say a process called frictional melting plays a role in determining how a volcano will erupt, by dictating how fast magma ca ...

Article - News Staff - May 4 2014 - 3:00pm

Winter Rains And Groundwater Depletion Change Height Of Sierra Nevada Mountains

Can using a well move a mountain? It will if the well is big enough. Winter rains and summer groundwater pumping in California's Central Valley make the Sierra Nevada and Coast Mountain Ranges sink and rise. How much? A few millimeters each year. Tha ...

Article - News Staff - May 14 2014 - 2:38pm

Record Number Of Oklahoma Tremors: Is A Big Earthquake Coming?

Since October 2013,  the rate of earthquakes in Oklahoma has been up by about 50 percent, which has geologists thinking about the chance for a damaging quake in central Oklahoma. A joint statement by the U.S. Geological Survey and Oklahoma Geological Surve ...

Article - News Staff - May 15 2014 - 5:00am

The Earth Is 60 Million Years Older Than Thought- So Is The Moon

How were the earth and the moon formed? A giant impact between Earth's ancestor and a planet-sized body occurred At the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Conference in Sacramento, researchers from the University of Lorraine say that occurred 40 million years ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 10 2014 - 2:53pm

How Did Earth Avoid Runaway Global Warming In The Past?

There have been times in our geological history when CO2 levels were 10X what they are today, yet warming was only slightly higher. Unlike what you often read in simplistic media accounts, there are a lot of variables in climate and weather and temperatur ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 11 2014 - 4:31pm

The Movement Rate Of Continents Has Not Been Constant- And What That Means For Studies That Use It For Data

Two studies  presented today at the Goldschmidt 2014 geochemistry conference in Sacramento show that the movement rate of plates carrying the Earth's crust may not be constant over time. That could provide a new explanation for the patterns observed ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 13 2014 - 8:07pm

Extreme Fracking: Drilling To The Earth's Core

Activists who are against natural gas in the United States have invented a variety of problems; flaming tap water, earthquakes, headaches, even that it will cause the earth to deflate. Good thing they don't live in Norway, where energy extraction by t ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 17 2014 - 6:21pm