November 15, 2009
Category: academic life • by Anne • science education
Along with D.N. Lee, I'll be convening a session on Casting a wider net: Promoting gender and ethnic diversity in STEM at Science Online 2010. To start discussion going in preparation for the session, DNL is hosting the next edition of the Diversity in Science carnival, with a theme of "STEM Diversity and Broad Impacts I: Highlights of successful, ambitious STEM diversity programs such as REUs, mentoring programs and scholarships for college under-graduates, graduate students, post-doctoral associates and early career scientists and engineers." The deadline for submissions is today, and the carnival will go up on Friday.
In the United States, we have a diversity problem in the geosciences. Less than 5% of BS degrees in geosciences go to minorities, contrasting with ~15% in science and engineering as a whole (NSF data from 2000). As we move into graduate school the problem remains: 3.3% at the M.S. level and 5% at the PhD level. For the sciences and engineering combined, it's 10.6% for the MS and 8.2% for the PhD. Contrast this with the demographics of the American population, and you see that the sciences in general, and geosciences in particular, are not doing a good job of attracting students that reflect the diversity of our country and are losing out on the discoveries a more diverse scientific community might be able to produce.
NSF has recognized this near-monoculture in geosciences as a problem, and specifically solicits ideas and programs that might improve the situation through its Opportunities for Enhancing Diversity in the Geosciences (OEDG) program. Here's the gist of the program synopsis:
"The primary goal of the OEDG Program is to increase participation in the geosciences by African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans (American Indians and Alaskan Natives), Native Pacific Islanders (Polynesians or Micronesians), and persons with disabilities. A secondary goal of the program is to increase the perceived relevance of the geosciences among broad and diverse segments of the population. The OEDG Program supports activities that will increase the number of members of underrepresented groups who:
* Are involved in formal pre-college geoscience education programs;
* Pursue bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees in the geosciences;
* Enter geoscience careers; and
* Participate in informal geoscience education programs."
The program offers three tracks for funding: planning grants (getting our act together to roll out a new program); proof-of-concept projects (one-time and short-term activities); and full-scale projects (5 years of funding and designed to be self-sustained after the end of the grant period).
The array of projects that have been funded by the OEDG program is inspiring.
- Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland is helping high school students and their teachers connect to the geosciences by giving them hands-on field experiences in Chesapeake Bay in a proof-of-concept OEDG grant.
- Faculty at North Carolina A&T State University, Penn State University, Fort Valley State University, University of Texas El Paso, and California State University Northridge are developing AfricaArray, an alliance that will run summer workshops for high school teachers, create scholarships and high school outreach activities, conduct a summer field course in Africa to recruit and mentor undergraduate students, and provide opportunities for students to participate in research in Africa, in a full-scale project through OEDG.
- The Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology is creating Ocean FEST (families exploring science together) to reach out to elementary-school Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders and their families by creating an evening program to engage them with ocean-environment issues and demonstrate the value of geoscience careers to the local community, in a proof-of-concept grant.
- Lake Superior State University in northern Michigan is creating a two-week summer geoscience field experience targeting Native-American high school students, by engaging them in solving geological problems with faculty, taking them to sites of both geological and Native American significance, and linking ways of scientific thinking and ways of knowing from within their own cultures.
The projects listed above are just a sampling of the sort of programs that OEDG funds. My university serves ~25% minority students, but our upper-level geoscience classrooms are significantly whiter. In my third year at Charlotte, I am still trying to develop my sense of how to get my classrooms to be more reflective of the university's student body and the wider community. How can I cast a wider net?
I am starting to think down the line toward an OEDG proposal aimed at giving urban, minority university students a field geoscience experience and then maybe having them partner with high school students to do geoscience research projects in the local area. I'd be curious to know if any of our readers have experience doing this sort of project or if any of you might be interested in partnering on some future OEDG proposal.
Posted by Anne Jefferson at 10:18 AM • 10 Comments
November 11, 2009
Category: Proterozoic • geology • geophysics • palaeomagic • past worlds
Interpreting the record of the Earth's magnetic field preserved in rocks - palaeomagnetism - is a complicated business, but at the heart of it is one very simple assumption: except when it is reversing, if you average over a few thousand years or so, the geomagnetic field resembles a dipole aligned with the Earth's geographic poles.
This relatively uncomplicated shape means that there is a very simple relationship between latitude and the magnetic inclination (the angle magnetic field lines make with the horizontal); it is zero at the equator, and gradually increases to 90 degrees at the poles. If you measure the direction of the fossil field direction carried by rocks at a particular site, a simple formula converts the inclination of this ancient magnetisation into the palaeolatitude of that particular chunk of crust at the time the rocks formed. Because the field is symmetric, a reversal changes the polarity, but not the shape, of the field; for example, an inclination value of 50 and -50 degrees both always correspond to a latitude of 30 degrees.
But what if our simple assumption is wrong, and the Earth's magnetic field has not always been a dipole? There are more complicated quadropole and octopole components in the present geomagnetic field, but they are fairly minor and, except during a magnetic reversal, seem to average out to zero over a few thousand years. But what if at some point in the geological past these components were not only a more significant part of the geomagnetic field, but also did not average to zero over geological time? This would produce an asymmetric long-term field geometry, as in the figure below, where 15% of the earth's magnetic field energy is in the quadropole component. For a point at mid-to low northern latitudes, rocks forming in a normal polarity field would have a shallow magnetic inclination, whilst rocks forming in a reversed polarity field would have a much steeper inclination. The warped field geometry means that there is no longer a one-to-one relationship between inclination and latitude, which makes working out the plate motions recorded by all of those ancient magnetic directions much more difficult.
Read on »
Posted by Chris Rowan at 12:00 PM • 7 Comments
November 8, 2009
Category: links
More interesting links that I've shared via Twitter over the past seven days. If I had to highlight just one you should really click on, take some time to be wowed by the HiRISE imagery of Mars over at the Big Picture - they are jaw-droppingly beautiful. And seismogenic - also known as Julian from Harmonic Tremors - earned all the geonerd cred, and everyone's insane jealously, by filming his encounters with Hawaiian lava.
Bill Bryson's Notes from a Large Hadron Collider Manages to convey excitement without any destroy the Earth!! nonsense.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/eureka/article6899505.ece
Zuska explores cultural parallels between scientific and religious institutions.
http://scienceblogs.com/thusspakezuska/2009/11/can_we_talk_about_science_i_me.php
(via @ScienceBlogs )
35 beautiful landscapes selected from HiRISE imagery at The Big Picture. Coffee table book out when?
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/11/martian_landscapes.html
(via @HiRISE)
Philippines: Mayon 'may explode anytime', heavy rains mean lahar risk remains.
http://www.manilatimes.net/index.php/component/content/article/42-rokstories/5412-mount-mayon-may-explode-anytime--phivolcs-official
(via @volcanismblog)
Dr. Albert Bartlett's "Laws of Sustainability".
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5925
(via @TheOilDrum)
Geoengineering in the House. Of Congress, that is. Seems testimony was sensible, at least.
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/11/geoengineering_in_the_house.html
(via @NatureNews)
Some beautiful images of islands from space. No. 10 us the coolest.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/islands-space/
(via @geographile)
MESSENGER Rewrites Mercury Textbooks Even Before Entering Orbit: Lots of iron, but not in silicates...
http://www.planetary.org/news/2009/1105_MESSENGER_Rewrites_Mercury_Textbooks.html
(via @elakdawalla)
The World's Costly Nitrogen Addiction: 80 megatons of fertiliser used/year; only 17 gets into food.
http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2207
(via @YaleE360)
Unsettled Youth: Spitzer Observes a Chaotic Planetary System Dust cloud formed by lots of proto-planetary collisions?
http://www.physorg.com/news176576185.html
Another example of synthetic aperture radar data being used to track volcanism in the African Rift Valley.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091104123027.htm
Solar power generation around the clock . Heat stored in molten salt -> electricity as needed.
http://www.physorg.com/news176632405.html
(via @physorg_com)
Haunting outlines of bones and plastic highlight impact of plastic on albatrosses.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2009/nov/03/albatross-plastic-poison-pacific
(via @BobOHara, @edyong209)
Blog post from @brianshiro about his work at Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre.
http://www.astronautforhire.com/2009/11/tsunami-kind-of-month.html
Not pretty at all: Athabasca Oil Sands: open-pit mines and tailings ponds line the Athabasca River.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=40997&src=iotdrss
(via @EarthObser)
Fibre optic solar cells.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8341186.stm
(via @suehutton)
Even if all other CO2 emissions stopped, fully exploiting Canada oil sands -> 2C global warming.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article6902006.ece
(via @twitoil)
CO2 from forest destruction overestimated.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/03/forest-destruction-co2-overestimated
(via @guardianscience)
Video of lava flows on Kilauea from @seismogenic. Not jealous not jealous not jealous...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqj_VGQUC8g ,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnbcYtgDwCw
Run don't walk to Cassini raw images site for new pics from Enceladus flyby e.g.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/?start=1 ,http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGFullS54/N00145397.jpg
(via @elakdawalla)
Nice discussion of the Shiva Crater palava by Suvrat.
http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2009/11/end-cretaceous-how-many-impacts-how.html
'Ultra-primitive' particles found in comet dust Including lots of 'pre-solar' grains.
http://www.physorg.com/news176400764.html
(via @physorg_com)
New PNAS study lists 17 easy household changes that would reduce US ems by 7%
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/10/23/0908738106.abstract
(via @KHayhoe)
Atacama mudflows may be equivalent of controversial recent flow deposits on Mars.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/02/2730988.htm
(via @geologynews)
Geological Society of London on fossil webs found in amber: wow!
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/geoscientist/geonews/fossilwebs
(via @geosociety)
Coping With Climate Change: Which Societies Will Do Best?
http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2205
(via @YaleE360)
Solar power from Sahara a step closer CSP network aims to provide 15% of Euro power by 2050. Ambitious...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/01/solar-power-sahara-europe-desertec#
Planet hunt delayed by noise problems with Kepler. Fixable though.
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091030/full/news.2009.1051.html
(via @NatureNews)
Posted by Chris Rowan at 7:01 AM • 4 Comments
November 6, 2009
Category: earthquakes • geohazards • geology
Ed has already given the lowdown on a new study in Nature which might lead to a rethink on earthquake hazards in the continental interior. Plate tectonics treats plates as entirely rigid entities, but continental crust is too weak, and too riddled with faults left over from when it was close to a plate boundary, for it to entirely hold up when subjected to the stresses of plate motion. So although a very large proportion of the Earth's earthquakes occur at plate boundaries, there is also some seismicity - including some very large shocks - within plate interiors. The problem is working out where this intraplate deformation is going to occur, and to do so seismologists rely on data which serve them well at plate boundaries - the historical record of large earthquakes, and the location of low-level seismic activity which indicates the build up of tectonic strain.
What Stein and Liu argue in their paper is that away from the plate boundaries, these tools provide a very misleading picture. In apparently active parts of the continental interior like the New Madrid area, all the abnormal seismicity can be regarded as a long-lived aftershock sequence; rather than indicating any new elastic strain being built up by external forces, which could eventually produce another large earthquake in the future, the seismicity is just a local tectonic response to a historically recent large earthquake (in New Madrid's case, it was a series of magnitude 7-8 earthquakes in late 1811 and early 1812), and will eventually die off with time.
This conclusion is a little worrying, since it implies that the next big intra-continental quake might well occur in what presently seems to be a seismically inactive region, which, given the density of old faults cutting through your typical chunk of continental crust, could be almost anywhere. We already know the difficulties of predicting when big earthquakes are going to occur, but it seems that in the middle of plates, predicting where they are going to happen might also be a bit more tricky than we thought. However, a caveat remains: the proposed length of a typical intra-continental aftershock sequence is hundreds of years, which is much longer than our instrumental records, and even historical records in many places. The authors do point out that earthquake patterns in China, which has the best historical record, is of single large quakes in different areas (with last year's Sichuan quake being the most recent) rather than a series of large earthquakes associated with a particular fault; perhaps palaeoseimology can show whether a similar pattern holds further back in time and on other continents.
Stein, S., & Liu, M. (2009). Long aftershock sequences within continents and implications for earthquake hazard assessment Nature, 462 (7269), 87-89 DOI: 10.1038/nature08502
Posted by Chris Rowan at 8:11 AM • 4 Comments
November 5, 2009
Category: earthquakes • geohazards • tectonics
The Guardian reports that the Iranian government has approved plans for a new capital city. It seems this decision was at least partially driven by fears that the present capital, Tehran, is facing some serious earthquake hazard in the future:
Plans for a new capital were first drawn up 20 years ago, but officials only gave them serious consideration after the 2003 earthquake that devastated the south-eastern city of Bam and killed an estimated 40,000 people. Experts warn that Tehran sits on at least 100 faultlines - including one nearly 60 miles long - and that many of its buildings would not survive a major quake.
Iran is part of the Alpine-Himalyan Belt, formed as the African, Arabian and Indo-Australian plates all push northwards into Eurasia. In Iran, seismicity is concentrated in the Zagros mountains in the south and the Alborz mountains in the North, with both of these mountain belts apparently being actively uplifted as they accommodate plate convergence.
Tehran, with a population of about 12 million people, is located just on the southern edge of the Alborz mountains, and a map of the major faults in the area shows that it is surrounded on all sides by sizeable thrust faults.
So, at first glance a relocation seems like a fairly foresighted strategy, even if a cynic (who, me?) might wonder if the move encompasses more than the political elite and their associated minions. But population centres do not generally spring up at random; there are usually strategic and/or economic reasons that people have settled in a particular location, and once established they tend to suck in ever more people and investment as time goes on. Add to that our general inertia in the face of abstract future risk (just look at the response to climate change) and you have to wonder if people will be all that willing to move. There's also the question of how the cost of abandoning all the infrastructure incorporated into a large city like Tehran, and building a whole new infrastructure in your new city, compares to the cost of increasing peoples' safety by enforcing robust building codes: after all, earthquakes don't kill people, collapsing buildings do*.
In the long term, of course, it makes sense to move as much of your population as possible from areas of high seismic risk to low risk areas, by encouraging investment in geologically safer areas and letting economic migration rebalance the population over a generation or three. Sadly, I suspect urban planning is generally driven by somewhat narrower, short-term factors; if building houses on flood plains is waved through without blinking, I can't see nearby faults giving people much pause.
*and tsunamis. But not in Tehran.
Geotagging (View all geotagged posts)
Posted by Chris Rowan at 7:30 AM • 8 Comments
November 2, 2009
Category: public science
Getting involved in science policy is a tricky business. For the most part, a statement made by a scientific expert is taken as more authoritative than a statement by a government minister, even when the expert strays away from talking about data and evidence and probabilities - the input into a policy decision - and starts talking about translating those data into action - the decision itself. I don't think scientists shouldn't suggest courses of action, but they shouldn't do it in a unilateral way. It's the difference between 'studies show x, and y appears to be a promising approach to dealing with this' (ok) and 'studies show x, so we must do y' (not so ok). A fine distinction, perhaps, but one worth trying to make as hard as possible.
Of course, in the case of David Nutt's forced resignation from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD - see also here and here), it appears to be more a case of 'studies show x, it would be sensible to do y, but government has not only done z, which is silly/unworkable, but claims its policy is evidence-based.' Untangle that, if you dare.
It's obvious that scientific evidence is just one of the things that ministers take into account when making policy decisions. When it comes to drug regulation, for example, beyond issues of harm there are questions of social impact on particularly at-risk groups, and (when it comes to alcohol and tobacco) long-standing societal mores, which also have to be considered when formulating policy, and perhaps might justify going against the recommendations of a body like the ACMD. As a scientist, I have no problem with that - as long as the decision to go against such advice is justified in those terms. Where it does become a problem is when, for whatever reason, a recommendation based on the best available science is ignored, yet the government continues to assert that it is following an 'evidence-based' policy, rather than acknowledging that its decisions are clearly being driven by other concerns.
It is this lack of transparency that worries me; and a scientist who actually faces the paradox of being consulted by the government to provide a veneer of scientific authority, whilst having their actual opinion on the issue at hand ignored, is perhaps justified in getting a little annoyed .
I once described Tony Blair's attitude to science thusly:
...he does not seem to want a electorate that is truly scientifically literate, but one that will accept scientific authorities as expert witnesses in support of government policy.
It seems that this attitude is still prevalent amongst politicians here in the UK; and if David Nutt did sail over (or very close to) the line between advice and outright advocacy, I think it's at least partly because we have a government which refuses to discuss complex and controversial issues in a grown-up manner.
Posted by Chris Rowan at 6:07 PM • 1 Comments
Category: bloggery • science education
Geoblog readers are truly amazing. Between you, you gave $8660, making earth science a hands-on reality for 1270 students. Forty-three of you, with a little help from HP, gave more than readers of any other ScienceBlog. Thank you. Your generosity humbles me.
A few weeks ago, during Earth Science Week, I offered up posts by Chris and I on topics of our readers' choice. Then Kim willingly jumped in to help. We promised to write one post for each project completely funded during the week with help from geoblogs readers. By the end of the week, you all had funded five amazing projects:
Check out the links above to see thank you notes from the teachers and photos of the projects in action. Seeing the students excitedly looking at rocks is the biggest reward I can imagine. But, if you want us to reward you by producing posts on topics that get you excited, here's your chance to nominate the topic.
In the comment thread below, make your requests, and Chris, Kim, and I will look through them and select five topics that we feel most able to answer. Then we'll get to work fulfilling them as we can manage in our busy schedules. Maybe we'll get inspired and pick up even more of your ideas for future posts.
Posted by Anne Jefferson at 9:59 AM • 3 Comments
October 26, 2009
Category: bloggery • public science
Registration is now open for ScienceOnline2010, the fourth annual science communicators conference, being held January 14-17 next year in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina.
Please join us for this free (but donations are accepted) three-day event to explore science on the Web. Our goal is to bring together scientists, physicians, patients, educators, students, publishers, editors, bloggers, journalists, writers, web developers, programmers and others to discuss, demonstrate and debate online strategies and tools for doing science, publishing science, teaching science, and promoting the public understanding of science.
I'll be there, but that's probably a rather dubious temptation; however, if you check out the numerous interesting discussion topics enshrined in the semi-finalised programme you'll see that there is a session entitled 'Earth Science, Web 2.0+, and Geospatial Applications', being run by Jacqueline Floyd with back-up from yours truly. That's right, a specialised session which doesn't involve biology.
Hopefully this might tempt some of the rest of the geoblog/tweetosphere to attend as well. Even if you can't attend, Jacqueline and I are keen to get as much participation from all of you as possible. Feel free to get in touch with any ideas you might have, but in a perfect world we'd have you all there participating - and if you're physically there, I can buy you a beer. Places are vanishing fast, so don't ponder too much: Register today!
Posted by Chris Rowan at 12:20 PM • 1 Comments
October 24, 2009
Category: by Anne • conferences • geomorphology • hydrogeology
Last week was the Geological Society of America meeting in Portland, Oregon. Just below t is a view of Mt. Hood looking from the north, which I might have seen if I were not busy in and around the convention center the entire time. What follows are some brief notes from my activities on Monday and Tuesday of the conference. 
Monday
On Monday morning, I attended a couple of talks and browsed the deserted poster aisles, since I knew I would be in a session all afternoon and unable to attend the designated poster time. Of the talks I attended, the one that sticks most in my mind was one by Karen Gran, who opened with an eloquent argument for why geomorphologists should care about the landscape evolution of very flat places, in her case, the Le Sueur River in southern Minnesota. Here the sudden base level drop triggered by the draining of Lake Agassiz down the Minnesota-Mississippi River system has triggered 11,000 years of knickpoint retreat and bank erosion that has been exacerbated by modern agricultural practices, such as tile drainage.
Monday afternoon I helped convene a session on "Stream-Groundwater Interaction: New Understanding, Innovations, and Applications at Bedform, Reach, and River Network Scales" sponsored by the Hydrogeology division. We had a great line-up of speakers, from undergraduate to professor, that are actively pushing our understanding of how streams and groundwater interact in environments from the hydropower-generating diurnally-fluctuating Colorado River in Austin, Texas (Bayani Cardenas, Katelyn Gerecht) to the possibility of modern recharge to the Great Artesian Basin in the center of Australia (Brad Wolaver working on the Finke River). We heard about a new smart tracer for quantifying the metabolically active transient storage (Roy Haggerty), radium as a tracer of groundwater inputs to the Sea of Galillee and North Carolina's Neuse River (Hadas Ranan), electrical resistivity for mapping saline upwelling in Nebraska wetlands (Ed Harvey), and lots about using temperature as a tracer of groundwater-stream interactions (John Selker, Christine Hatch, Laura Lautz, Jeannie Barlow). We contemplate the effects of our common simplifying steady-state assumptions (Jesus Gomez) and marveled over a flume and numerical investigation of hyporheic exchange caused by a simple log (Audrey Sawyer). The questions from the audience were provocative and the conversations during our breaks were enjoyable and stimulating. It was my first time chairing a session, and I couldn't have been more pleased with the day it turned out.
Monday evening brought the usual round of alumni receptions and the geoblogger/tweeter meet-up. Much has been said about that elsewhere, but I'll add that I greatly enjoyed making the acquaintance of so many interesting people and renewing my friendship with others. There were definitely a couple of small-world moments over the course of the evening, and I'll hazard that it was the largest geoblogger/tweeter meetup on record. Shall we aim to break the record next year?
Tuesday
On Tuesday, I did not go to a single talk. There are no geomorphology sessions on Tuesday because of the Kirk Bryan field trip, and the hydrogeologists have no oral sessions because of their afternoon banquet. So I spent the morning over a wonderful breakfast with wonderful friends and attended the hydrogeology banquet almost immediately thereafter. In the late afternoon, I presented my poster and missed Kim's talk and then meandered my way over to the Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology (QG&G) award ceremony and mixer.
Please don't ask me to say who knows how to have more fun: the hydrogeologists or geomorphologists. All I'll say is that singing was involved at one event and very clever photoshopping at another. At least one set of geologists believe it is perfect acceptable to receive a major professional award while wearing jeans and holding a beer.
For me, the single best highlight of the entire week was talking to Reds Wolman, my academic grandfather and undergraduate geomorphology professor. Reds is an amazing teacher, magnificent scientific mind, and a caring person who mentored many of the leading geomorphologists of the last half century. Though he's gotten to be quite elderly, he attended much of the meeting and I got the chance to chat with him and hear his stories several times. I'll also got to hear a very nice, if cheeky, tribute to him by Reds' former student, John Costa, who was awarded the QG&G distinguished career award.
In my next post, I'll finish out the meeting by talking about what happens when it rains a lot about this time of year and the mountains fall down. Plus, I'll show some pictures of really big rocks.
Posted by Anne Jefferson at 6:06 PM • 2 Comments
October 23, 2009
Category: by Anne • conferences • geomorphology • hydrogeology • volcanoes
Like many North American geobloggers, I've recently returned from the Geological Society of America meeting in Portland, Oregon. It was a bittersweet trip for me, as it was a return to my spiritual homeland, where I spent five happy years working on the rocks and waters of the Cascade Range. Since then, I've felt a bit exiled on the Eastern Seaboard, so it was perhaps apropos that the trip back was a bit of a tease...in my four days in Oregon, I did not manage to see a single mountain. The picture to the right is the Hood River, draining the north side of Mt. Hood, about 45 minutes east of Portland. It was taken in April 2007, during field work for my post-doc.
Sunday
After an unexpectedly long layover in Phoenix and an entirely unexpected layover in San Francisco (thank you, US Airways), I arrived in Portland at 1 am local time Sunday morning. With any potential time-change/jet-lag problems thus mitigated, I arrived bright eyed for the first talks on Sunday morning.
The main order of business on Sunday morning was the Pardee Keynote Symposium on "The Evolution of Basaltic Landscapes: Time and River and the Lava Flowing." I arrived in time to hear a fascinating talk on "Impacts of basaltic volcanism on incised fluvial systems: does the river give a dam?" by blogger/tweep/mapper extraordinaire Kyle House. He was talking about the lava dams, debris flows, and river incision of the Owyhee River of eastern Oregon. After a few gorgeous photos accompanied magnificent Lidar images, I was thoroughly convinced of the utility of Lidar for high-resolution geological mapping. I was also salivating at the thought of a whole day of water + lava talks full of gorgeous volcano photos.
After Steve Ingebritsen gave a lovely overview of the hydrogeology of basalts, Dennis Geist convinced me that I absolutely have to go to the Galapagos Islands, by showing pictures of volcanoes with whales for scale. His talk focused on the connections between geology and biology in the Galapagos, and got me thinking about the implications of volcanic emergence and subsidence for the evolution of the creatures of the famous archipelago. While Geist tried to convince his audience that the vegetation of the Galapagos is supported with basically no soil, neither I nor the next speaker, Oliver Chadwick, quite believed him on that point.
Indeed Chadwick talked about the patterns and processes of soil development on basaltic landscapes, where weathering rates depend not only on the usual climatic factors but also on the flow texture - with aa and pahoehoe flows exhibitting different patterns and timescales of soil development. For my own work, one key point that Chadwick made was "At some point in the history of lava flows, the surface becomes less permeable than the whole..." I think that statement has implications for the way we think about drainage development in basaltic landscapes, but I'll wait to say more about that until my publication and/or funding record bear me out.
I spent my afternoon thinking more about basalt hydrology, in a session on "Hydrologic Characterization and Simulation of Neogene Volcanic Terranes." I've got lots of notes from that session that are probably of interest only to me, but I will say that it was exciting to hear one of the grad student speakers say to me "I've been reading your dissertation" and to hear my work cited more than once. It is such a relief to know that people working in the field actually find my work interesting or useful. Towards the end of the session, I gave a talk on the geomorphic and hydrologic co-evolution of the central Oregon Cascades Range. My talk was based on a paper that has undergone several major revisions since my Ph.D. days, and it was a pleasure to share the latest and greatest incarnation of my thinking on the subject. The pleasure was immeasurably increased by a recent letter from the journal editor giving me only very minor revisions to do before acceptance.
On Sunday evening, the attendees of the morning talks reconvened for a wine tasting with a geological theme - the terroir of taste of Oregon wines grown on basalt versus sandstone. The wine was donated by Willamette Valley Vineyards (basalt) and King Estate (sandstone), and we got to hear from the wine makers as we sipped their wares. According to them, if you see a 2008 Willamette Valley appellation Pinot Noir or Pinot Gris, snap it up. They reckon it will be the best year ever for Oregon wines. That's saying quite a bit, since Oregon is consistently recognized as one of the world's best Pinot producing regions.
After a day of stimulating talks and invigorating conversation, I was ready to dive into two days focused on groundwater-surface water interactions and a day of snow, mega-floods, and debris flows to round out my conference. But my notes on those days will have to wait for now, as those paper revisions are not taking care of themselves.
Posted by Anne Jefferson at 10:55 PM • 5 Comments
Chris Rowan is a geologist specialising in the dark arts of paleomagnetism, and getting people to pay him to travel to exotic destinations for fieldwork. Having drilled up New Zealand during his PhD, and South Africa in his first post-doc, he now works at the University of Edinburgh.
Anne Jefferson has a love of all things water-related and blends hydrology, geomorphology, geology, and climate change in her work. She has a Ph.D. from Oregon State University and is now an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
