peru

Greenpeace names names

gregladen — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 09:48:06 +0000

Greenpeace names names

You'll recall that a while back, Greenpeace activists entered a restricted zone in Peru, where the Nasca Lines are preserved, and messed with that important archaeological site. I wrote about it here.

At the time, the individuals who had carried out this unthinkable act managed to drift off into obscurity, and Greenpeace seemed unwilling to provide Peruvian authorities with their names.

Now, they have done so. Partially.

From Bloomberg Businessweek:

Greenpeace has provided Peruvian authorities with the identities of the four foreign activists principally responsible for vandalizing the Nazca Lines heritage site during last month’s international climate negotiations in Lima, Bloomberg Businessweek has learned. ...

“Lawyers representing Greenpeace are driving from Lima to Nazca now to deliver our report to the Peruvian prosecutor,” Mike Townsley, the chief spokesman for Greenpeace International, said on Monday evening. “We have said from the start that this action was wrong, it was crass, it was insensitive, it shouldn’t have happened, and we would cooperate with Peruvian authorities to set things right.”

The mastermind of the Nazca Lines action was Wolfgang Sadik, a veteran campaigner with Greenpeace Germany, the Greenpeace report reveals. Two of the other three activists named in the report also work for Greenpeace Germany: Martin Kaiser, who was responsible for all of Greenpeace’s actions at the Lima summit, and Isis Wiedemann, Greenpeace’s chief communications officer at the summit. The fourth individual is Mauro Fernandez, a staffer with Greenpeace Argentina who served as an interpreter during the Nazca action. Fernandez told Peruvian television on Sunday night that Sadik had not “fully informed” him regarding the sensitivity of the Nazca site or the illegality of Sadik’s proposed action.

Greenpeace—whose global budget of €300 million and offices in 45 countries have long made it a force that governments and corporations must reckon with—has suffered heavy blows to its reputation, external support, and staff morale. Donors have withdrawn grants, supporters have canceled memberships, and street canvassers have been harassed, Greenpeace USA executive director Annie Leonard wrote in an e-mail earlier this month.

...

Sadik and his team went ahead with the action even as others in Greenpeace strongly advised him against it, Townsley confirmed. “The decisions were taken by those responsible while they were in Peru. At that point, there was no recourse back to Greenpeace International in Amsterdam or Greenpeace Germany in Hamburg. ... Certainly there are many people [within Greenpeace] who think that our internal processes weren’t followed properly and if they had been, this activity would have been caught and stopped.”

Neither Kaiser, Wiedemann nor Fernandez were involved in “the design or the delivery of the Nazca Lines action,” Townsley said, adding that Sadik was “the principal architect and coordinator, and he himself has volunteered that information to the prosecutor.”

...

The report apparently does not name roughly 20 additional activists from seven countries who helped Sadik and his team place their message...

gregladen Tue, 01/20/2015 - 04:48

Tags

Yeah, that's the way to win hearts and minds.

Destroy a global wonder of the world.

Morons.

Politicians & CEOs used to be forced to resign if they publicly embarrassed their own governments or organisations by doing something extraordinarily stupid.

That happens less often these days, and it is a pity to see Greenpeace following the new ways of doing things.

Closing ranks to protect the guilty, while publicly committing to bring wrongdoers to justice ... worked well for the Catholic Church, didn't it?

Greenpeace should be seen to be purging its own organisation.

toby52: Used to be? My impression is that they still are in many cultures, but not this one. I'm willing to have that impression corrected.

I'm not sure how I feel about that strategy. Mixed feelings, anyway.

Thinking Nasca - its prob'ly sickly sentimental (mea culpa) but I love this cartoon (fond childhood memories) and the mini doco on the Nasca plateua at the end (23 minutes mark) :

http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/374047299712/mysterious-cities-of-…

Where'd all the other comments go? Coulda sworn they were there before!

Christopher Columbus was a brutal, evil monster who committed genocide against peaceful people who did him no wrong whatsoever - historical fact. Pizzaro , Courtes and many (almost all?) of the other conquistadores were equally or almost as bad :

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-kasum/columbus-day-a-bad-idea_b_7427…? fb_action_ids=10153010740889088&fb_action_types=og.likes

D'oh! Take II Make that link :

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-kasum/columbus-day-a-bad-idea_b_7427…

Or / & google 'Columbus Day? True Legacy: Cruelty and Slavery' Eric Kasum for a horrific yet informative and memorable article online.

Gotta love glow "worms"!

dr. dolittle — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 16:52:56 +0000

Gotta love glow "worms"!

Jeff Cremer, a nature photographer, discovered mysterious tiny glow worms (~0.5 inches long) in Peru near the Tambopata Research Center a couple of years ago. Scientists still have not identified the species of these glow "worms", but suspect they are actually click beetle larvae. Entomologists Aaron Pomerantz, Mike Bentley, and Geoff Gallice from the University of Florida decided to go to Peru to investigate the worms. Here is what they found:

dr. dolittle Fri, 11/21/2014 - 11:52

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New species of "glass frogs" discovered in Peru

dr. dolittle — Sun, 31 Aug 2014 13:24:11 +0000

New species of "glass frogs" discovered in Peru

Researchers in Peru have discovered four new species of tiny so-called "glass frogs" (family: Centrolenidae).

Centrolene charapita: with the yellow splotches on its back, this species was aptly named after little yellow chili peppers. Their hindlegs also had fleshy little zigzag-like protuberances whose purpose is unknown.

Figure 4 from Twomey et al. Zootaxa, 2014.

Cochranella guayasamini: This species is mostly green with yellow encircling its eyes. Interestingly, the tadpoles begin as a reddish pink color. Since they live in streambeds that are low in oxygen, this coloration may reflect the numerous blood vessels in their skin, although that remains just a hypothesis as studies of glass frog tadpoles are rare.

Figure 19 and 21 from Twomey et al., Zootaxa. 2014

Chimerella corleone: Yes, it is indeed named after the famed character from The Godfather. This tiny frog is only 2cm long and has green bones, which they suspect may arise from build-up of the green pigment in bile, biliverdin.

Chimerella corleone photograph by Evan Twomey

Hyalinobatrachium anachoretus: This new species was discovered in the cloud forest of Peru at 2,050 meters (6,725 feet), which is reportedly an unusually high altitude for other frogs in this genus.

Photograph of Hyalinobatrachium anachoretus by Evan Tworney

What is currently unknown is why these species evolved transparent bodies.

Sources:

National Geographic

Twomey E, Delia J, Castroviejo-Fisher S. A review of Northern Peruvian glassfrogs (Centrolenidae), with the description of four new remarkable species. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3851.1.1

dr. dolittle Sun, 08/31/2014 - 09:24

Tags

Amazing discovery
Yet another proof of how adaptive organisms become over millions of years…
Hard to believe sometimes but absolutely true to me.
There is a common theme of utilizing the animals natural proteins to enhance its camouflage, in this case the green bones!

As a lover of nature it is really amazing to hear that in the century we live in with all the global warming, animal poaching and pollution with hundreds of species becoming extinct each year that there are still new species developing and being discovered making our ecosystems grow.
It truly blows my mind how adaptive species are to their environment and that species are still evolving in our modern lives.
15004512

Possible origin of tuberculosis in the Americas

dr. dolittle — Sat, 30 Aug 2014 22:57:45 +0000

Possible origin of tuberculosis in the Americas

Image of seals from
www.fanpop.com/clubs/the-animal-kingdom/images/14060694/title/seal-wall…

Paleogeneticist Dr. Johannes Krause (University of Tübingen, Germany) and colleagues were interested in the origin of tuberculosis (TB) in the Americas. Since strains of TB found in the Americas are related to strains found in Europe, prior theories held that Spaniards may have introduced it to the Americas while colonizing South America. The problem with those theories is that pre-Columbian skeletal remains showed signs of TB much earlier.

Dr. Krause was quoted in Scientific American, “Pathogens don’t leave fossils, but they do leave their DNA in the skeleton, teeth and bones of the victims of the disease.” So the research team sequenced M. tuberculosis bacteria that were extracted from 1,000 year old skeletal remains of humans in Peru. They calculated the rate that TB strains evolved from 1,000 years ago to today. What they discovered was that the most recent common ancestor of all current strains of M. tuberculosis had evolved only 6,000 years ago. According to a quote in Scientific American by Dr. Terry Brown (biomolecular archeologist at University of Manchester, UK), “This is a landmark paper that challenges our previous ideas about the origins of tuberculosis, not just in the Americas but in the Old World too.” These calculations suggest that the bacteria arrived in America before the Europeans did but sometime after 11,000 years ago (after the land bridge between Asia and North America had already disappeared). Moreover, the strains from Peru were not like human-adapted strains.

If it was not brought across from the land bridge, as was previously thought, where did it come from? To help solve this puzzle, they also sequenced strains of TB that infect animals and discovered that the strains from Peru were quite similar to Mycobacterium pinnipedii, the strains that infect seals and sea lions. Since people at zoos have contracted this strain from seals, it seems reasonable to speculate that perhaps early seal hunters in the Americas were likewise infected by their prey. Although others suggest that perhaps we may not have sampled enough potential hosts in the Americas to find the real ancestor of human TB in America. It is also not clear whether seal-transmitted TB could be passed from human to human. But it is an intriguing theory.

Sources:

Scientific American

Bos KI, Harkins KM, Herbig A, Coscolla M, Weber N, Comas I, Forrest SA, Bryant JM, Harris SR, Schuenemann VJ, Campbell TJ, Majander K, Wilbur AK, Guichon RA, Wolfe Steadman DL, Collins Cook D, Niemann S, Behr MA, Zumarraga M, Bastida R, Huson D, Nieselt K, Young D, Parkhill J, Buikstra JE, Gagneux S, Stone AC, Krause J. Pre-Columbian mycobacterial genomes reveal seals as a source of New World human tuberculosis. Nature. In press, 2014. doi:10.1038/nature13591

dr. dolittle Sat, 08/30/2014 - 18:57

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Watch out for those flies!

dr. dolittle — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 23:59:57 +0000

Watch out for those flies!

A fly landing in the ear of a tourist visiting Peru turns out to be more than just annoying. The screwworm fly had sufficient time to lay eggs that hatched flesh-eating maggots in her ear canal.

Warning: the video may be disturbing to some viewers

As strange as this sounds, it is not that uncommon

Fortunately the screwworm fly has been effectively eradicated in the United States since the 1960's by releasing sterile male flies resulting in fewer and fewer offspring. This work was conducted by the USDA as you can imagine how this fly would decimate livestock.

dr. dolittle Fri, 07/26/2013 - 19:59

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Facing up to 4 degree C?

stoat — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 06:40:40 +0000

Facing up to 4 degree C?

In stark contrast to the hard liberalism of TW is one of the worst pieces of woolly-thinking soft liberalism (well, actually the Green Party, of which I'm a member and supporter, if you care. It is from their mag). And yet somehow it seems all too typical.

Life in the Peruvian Andes is hard... blah blah... Recently, these communities have experienced the worst winter to hit Peru in nearly 50 years with temperatures plummeting to a deadly minus 24ÂºC Oh dear. Well, clearly they could do with a bit of warming, then, no? Or are we really obliged to pretend that all climate change is necessarily bad?

I want to talk about the climate change issues of this piece, but as an aside I should point out that these people's real problem is poverty, as the piece itself quite happily points out: Poverty is the real issue here. The people have no resources. They don't have electricity or heating. And indeed the solution proposed is for them to get richer (though it isn't put in those terms): Our mission is to support the people of the high Andes to obtain the skills and resources to survive the harsh winters, to make them more resilient... build solar, wind or hydroelectric power generators... find the best crops to grow. Ah, it would all warm the cockles of TW's heart.

Somewhere towards the end of the piece it must have occurred to the writer that they needed to make at least some effort at explaining why global warming was making the place colder:

It's assumed that climate change means everywhere will get hotter, but that's simply not the case. In places like Peru, it will get much colder, and the recent weather has been a stark reminder for the indigenous people of the reality of climate change.

But this isn't very convincing. First of all, the fact that the coldest winter in 50 years is quite cold shouldn't be terribly surprising. that is what is meant by extremes, after all. There is no evidence at all presented that there is any link to long-term climate change, that this is anything other than weather. But secondly is that In places like Peru, it will get much colder. Well, that is an interesting assertion. No source, of course, so we look to our authority the IPCC AR4.

That looks like the obvious image to go for. Err... can you spot the cooling n the Andes? No? Well done, your grasp of reality is rather better than Abbie Upton's. Still, those are the global maps. Perhaps I should look at the regional ones?

Nope, fail again. Do I need to taunt her any more?

Refs

* What does one summer make?

stoat Tue, 12/14/2010 - 01:40

Tags

climate tripe

Andes

peru

Some time before, I really needed to buy a building for my firm but I didn't earn enough money and could not order something. Thank heaven my colleague suggested to try to get the loan at reliable creditors. Thus, I acted that and was satisfied with my commercial loan.

It's good that people can take the personal loans moreover, this opens completely new possibilities.

> Do I need to taunt her any more?

Nah. Just make the link work :-)

[Oops, fixed, thanks -W]

Nice analysis of the garbage.

btw?
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/08/what_does_one_summer_make.php

see comment 17/18

[Hmm, interesting. I've added the post as a ref. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/rnl/sfctmpmer_30a.rnl.html does currently show a very cold Andes (archived as http://www.flickr.com/photos/belette/5260644743/ for convenience). With characteristic carelessness the article doesn't tell us which winter it means, but maybe it means this one -W]

I am pleased to give credit where credit is due.
Thank you, Mr. Connelley for making science a higher priority than your politics.

Do you consider yourself a climate hawk?

http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/10/22/will-climate-hawks-take-roost/

{I'm someone who likes his name spelt right and the title correct: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_M._Connolley/For_me/The_namin… . As for hawks: This means that Roberts, in choosing the climate hawk totem, has limited the applicability to a U.S. audience. But if you care to translate the question from Foreign into Queen's English I can attempt to answer -W]

I think it's important to smack down silly emotionalism from the activist types. Well, somebody should. I prefer to roll my eyes or ignore them.

Dieses Video enthÃ¤lt Content von montypython. Es ist in deinem Land nicht verfÃ¼gbar.

Well I think its fair to say that cooling in the Peruvian Andes was not predicted. But an interesting question is 'is there a real cooling', and 'is it caused by Co2'.

Checking GISS trend maps since 1980 there does seem to be a thin strip of cooling along the South American west coastline. There is also a cooling of the key ENSO regions and the ocean near this coastline. Perhaps this a multi-decadal variation in ENSO activity. Or is it possible that a warming planet somehow shifts the ocean into a more La Nina like state and this is enough to cause cooling in this area?

One valid explanation for recent cooling trends in eastern boundary upwelling regions such as in California, Peru, Namibia and Mauritania was proposed by Andy Bakun. It is based on the prediction that continental temperature should rise more rapidly that ocean surface temperatures, so that the air pressure difference between continents and ocean would tend to decrease and intensify the equator-ward winds along the meridional coastlines. The wind forcing would then drive a more vigorous upwelling (... and hence favour sea surface temperature to drop, I just quoted the remark from one reviewer in a recent paper published in Ocean Science). It is indeed one counter-intuitive local cooling response to a more regional warming.

Here is the link to the above-mentionned paper:

http://www.ocean-sci.net/6/815/2010/os-6-815-2010.pdf

Not only such a trend is seen in data, but it is also already recorded in geological data (marine sediments) from all those places.

The question on whether such anomalies will persist over the next decades remains of course unanswered, but the fact that GCMs cannot capture those local oceanic freatures may be due to the fact that such small-scale processes in coastal environments are not adequately resolved in GCMs.

Oops, I may mention the sources:

The original publication on that mechanism, focusing on California upwelling mainly:

Bakun, A.: Global climate change and intensification of coastal ocean upwelling, Science, 247, 198â201, 1990.

The effect as seen in Namibia:

Leduc G., Herbert C., Blanz T., Martinez P., Schneider R. Contrasting evolution of Sea Surface Temperature in the Benguela upwelling system under natural and anthropogenic climate forcings. Geophys. Res. Lett. 37, L20705, doi:10.1029/2010GL044353, 2010.

Mauritania:

McGregor, H. V., M. Dima, H. W. Fischer, and S. Mulitza (2007), Rapid 20thâcentury increase in coastal upwelling off northwest Africa, Science, 315, 637â639, doi:10.1126/science.1134839.

Peru (abstract from AGU fm09, but peer-review paper in the pipeline):

Bouloubassi, I., et al. (2009), Cooling trend and enhancement of productivity in the upwelling off Peru since the late 19th century, Eos Trans. AGU, 90(52), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract PP41Bâ1520.

Houses and cars are quite expensive and not everyone is able to buy it. Nevertheless, business loans are created to help people in such kind of cases.

Some time ago, I did need to buy a building for my business but I did not earn enough cash and couldn't buy something. Thank God my comrade suggested to take the loan from trustworthy bank. Hence, I did that and used to be satisfied with my credit loan.

I took 1 st personal loans when I was a teenager and that aided my business very much. Nevertheless, I need the commercial loan once again.

Climate, volcanism and the Andes

eklemetti — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 02:28:52 +0000

Climate, volcanism and the Andes

The northern Chilean and southern Peruvian Andes are full of volcanoes that look stunning - I mean, jaw-dropping details of volcanism litter the landscape. The reason for this is two fold: (1) there is an awful lot of volcanism in the northern Chilean/southern Peruvian Andes (as known as the Central Volcanic Zone) - and has been that way for over 10 million years and (2) it has also been very, very dry in the area (most of which is known as the Altiplano-Puna Plateau) for at least a few millions years as well - it is the home of the Atacama Desert! So, this means you get lots of volcanic eruptions that don't have to face the rigors of weathering - so the stunning volcanic landforms are preserved. Let us look at an example of this:

Volcano #1: North Sister, central Oregon Cascades

Click on the image to see a larger version.

Dissected with lava flow and pyroclastic deposit layering along with magmatic dikes exposed. The original flow features are rarely preserved and the volcano's shape is dictated by glacial erosion. In other words: Beat the heck up.

Volcano #2: Volcan Aucanquilcha, northern Chilean Andes

Click on the image to see a larger version.

I like to trot Aucanquilcha out for many reasons, but here, notice how you can still seem many of the flow features, especially in the middle - with levees and pressure ridges on the dacite flows. Most of the dacite lava flows are preserved with little erosion to expose the innards of the volcano

Now, lets guess how old these edifices are. Any ideas?
Well, according to work by Mariek Schmidt, the oldest observed lava flows on North Sister are ~400,000 years old, with some volcanic activity as recently as 55,000 years ago - in other words, pretty young, geologically speaking.

Aucanquilcha, on the other hand, has been dated by, well, me, and the youngest flows are potentially ~200,000 years old.There are some features that suggest a few younger than that, but something like 90% of the volcano was constructed between 1.05 million and 600,000 years ago, including those lava flows in the center of the image. So, most of Aucanquilcha was built before North Sister was even started - and North Sister looks much older!

This is (mostly) all thanks to the very different climates of the Cascades versus the northern Chilean and southern Pervuian Andes. Whereas North Sister has had to survive glaciations, wet climates, vegetation, snow and more, Aucanquilcha has mostly lived in a very dry climate, with some minor snow, very minor evidence of glaciation and little precipitation in the form of rain over its history. So, these gorgeous features are preserved at Aucanquilcha, while at North Sister, we get to examine the insides of the volcano - both equally fascinating things to study.

So, why bring this up now? Well, the NASA Earth Observatory posted an image of Sabancaya in the southern Peruvian Andes - and boy, is it dazzling. The lava flows on the volcano look like they might have erupted yesterday, however, a majority of the activity at Sabancaya didn't happen yesterday (shockingly) - the youngest lava flow dated from Sabancaya is ~5,400 years old. However, the volcano did experience almost constant explosive eruptions between 1990 and 1998 - with small explosions as recently as 2003 - all vulcanian and phreatomagmatic (if you can believe that in the high Andes). The name of the volcano does mean "tongue of fire" in Quechua, which implies that the natives around the volcano had experienced eruptions as well. The lava flows that make up most of the edifice do appear to by Holocene or older, but again, the climate of this area of the Andes has preserved them stunningly, with very obvious levees on the sides of the flow - especially noticeable on the lava on the top center (labeled "lava flow") and pressure ridges on top of the flow - see the flows directly to the right of the summit. These sorts of images make me pine for the Andes and the ability to see volcanoes preserved like this, although the rarified air of the Altiplano might make up for the lack of thickets.

eklemetti Sun, 07/25/2010 - 22:28

wonderful post Erik!

Renato posted a link the other day to absolutely stunning photography from the Atacama desert.

http://www.atacamaphoto.com/atacama/atacama-1.htm

Highly recommended.

The power of our favorites.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1297706/Endgame-Pictu…

off topic - What's with all the deep earthquakes (500+km depth) in the Phillipines? Does the Asian continental plate go down that far? I thought continental plate thicknesses were only 70 - 100 km thick. Can any geologists hazard a guess as to what's happening there?

@ Chris #4

someone posted a link to this at the weekend:

http://all-geo.org/highlyallochthonous/2010/07/fridayish-focal-mechanis…

This will give you a good summary of what's happening. Go through the last couple of threads here too. There's been some good discussion on it.

Erik,
Somebody should pull the carpet from under that "Neodymium Magnets" creature; it's spamming all over...

As Bruce says, wonderful post Eric! I'll latch onto the linguistic aspect of volcano names: The native name for Sabancaya Volcano, translated as "tongue of fire" coupled with the visual appearance and the photographic evidence of thick dacite lava flows, possibly hundreds of metres thick (recalling your previous topic on such flows), would suggest the natives actually saw such a flow, hence the "toungue of fire" (coming out of the mouth of the volcano). Do you know if there has been any research of (native) names for volcanoes from a linguistic point of view?

I would expect the first ojection to such an interpretation to be that the flows are much too old to have been seen and be remembered by humans. Against that I would put forward suggestions made that our legends of giants, trolls and dragons etc have foundations in reality: Giants - (Homo) Gigantopitheucs c 1,000,000 - 300,000BP up to 3m tall and 500+ kg (1000+ lb). Trolls - Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis, troglodytes extinct c.30,000 BP. Dragons - the dinosaur bone field intersected by an ancient Bedouin trade route through the Sahara, the stories therof brought to us by merchants.

If there is a connection between the native name and the dacite flows, the implications thereof are very interesting no matter which explanation you prefer.

Henrik: I've thought of a couple of other examples (not from the Andes, though

There's the "other Merapi" in Java -part of the Ijen complex
Merapi means fire/fiery red, obvious for the famous active one...but the 'other' Merapi has no historic eruptions. Its name however surely indicates activity since the Javanese civilisation got started. And famously there's Mont Pelee, "Bald Mountain". Unvegetated when named, in an area where eruption products are heavily overgrown within a few decades; obviously erupted only a few years before the French settlers arrived (and had a Carib Indian name meaning 'fire mountain')

@Dennis, I noticed some comments at the bottom of the report about Gary's house going up. The first one was obviously somebody who doesn't understand volcanoes at all. Check it out. I had to laugh a bit and was tempted to set him straight, but decided against it. He doesn't get it that at the moment, there isn't any ash with this.

>I would expect the first ojection to such an interpretation to be that the flows are much too old to have been seen and be remembered by humans.

Huh?? You're confusing your volcanoes.

Sabancaya is an andesite/dacitic stratovolcano that has recent (1350, 1695, 1750, 1784, 1986 (start of fumerolic emissions), 1990-1998, 2000, 2003) and is clearly historically active.

>Until 1990, much of the volcano was hidden from view by a permanent ice field. As a consequence of ash induced melting this ice has now largely been removed.

ANALYSIS OF SABANCAYA VOLCANO, SOUTHERN PERU USING
RADARSAT AND LANDSAT TM DATA.

Aucanquilcha is the dormant Pleistocene-era dacite volcano whose eruption would not have been witnessed by humans.

Erik, interesting article. It really shows what happenes according to what the enviornment does to volcanoes and mountains in general. Thanks for posting the contrasts. There is so much to study and so little time. :-D

Hihi Diane, didnt read the comments before, funny thing :), but thanks for the heads up,

The pictures speaks for itself, that was my intention.

But another question, how much energy was revealed in the last week with all these quakes? there was this big swarm in Alaska and now this strong deep quakes (3x7) must be a small rise in intensity over the week.

I quite agree Mike. If we credit the idea that there is some logic behind human name-giving of geographic features, conclusions such as yours seem inescapable. That said, there are examples where the logic isn't straightforward such as with Himmelsbjerg, "Heaven's Mountain", the highest hill of Denmark - which struggles to top 600 ft or thereabouts.

Passerby, thank you. In my excitement, I did indeed confuse the two as you correctly point out. Unfortunately (for me that is), I cannot claim that Kultsi hacked the Mulakot site as an excuse. ;) ;)

I must have gotten my brain baked in the sun when sailing. I cannot for my life find the tremor-plots and gps-stationspage for TFZ (TjÃ¶rnes Fracture Zombie).
I wanted to go into the depth with it since it is in the habit of producing nice 3+ quakes nowadays. Anyone with a working brain or a good link-archive..?
http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/tjornes-large/

Would be nice with a new Island next to Iceland;)
(I know, if wishes was horses)

@Dennis #11 yeah, that one guy just doesn't get it. And the pictures do speak for themselves.

As for the recent quake activity, a lot of energy was released in a lot of areas. The Alutians have the Pacific plate diving under them and there was a lot of energy released there as well as the Phillipines. My guess is the energy release from the subduction in the Phillipines was more than the Alaskan quakes. The scale is logrithmic and each magnitude from 1 on up is 31 times stronger than the before it. In other words, a mag of 2 is 31 times stronger than a mag 1. I wouldn't even want to try to guess at the TNT levels here. I bet someone here has a very good idea and could calculate it. That would be an interesting project. NOT one for me. LOL

OT question: what is the spam thing that has been mentioned? Not that I want to see it, I just want to avoid it! Is it that little thingy at the bottom right of the page?

@Lurking et al:

I just want to make yet another comment on the 60+ uplift largish pent-up energy-potential thingy that I otherwise answered in the former thread.

Even if Iceland burst out in a 5400 cubik-kilometre lava eruption it would still be small compared to the Siberian Trap (1 million cubics) and Deccan Trap (0,5 megacubics).
Nice with something that makes the coveted Yellowstone supervolcano look like a pile of flubber being eaten by a Graboid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps (I know it is wiki, I am schnappsed up and lazy)

The spam was removed.

Tjornes Transform data
GPS: The station at Ãrholt is located on the TjÃ¶rnes peninsula in North Iceland, between the HÃºsavÃk-Flatey transform zone and the GrÃmsey fracture zone.

Data not available.

Grimsey tremor plot
hraun.vedur.is/ja/oroi/gri.gif

Flatey tremor plot
hraun.vedur.is/ja/oroi/fla.gif

Others:
Hedinshofdi tremor plot
hraun.vedur.is/ja/oroi/hed.gif

Brettingsstadir tremor plot
hraun.vedur.is/ja/oroi/bre.gif

Turrialba may have some ash in it plume.

http://www.ovsicori.una.ac.cr/videoturri.html

okay i knew it was logarithmic calced but had forgotten how big that is :)
Im exiting to see what will happen, we got some eruptions true, but all this noise for this ? sorry im not horny for something devastating just curious how nearly the whole earth is on rumble mode and its not only because we now have the tech to know whats going on around the world.
The whole Tech is wonderful but it also make you think (http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=55023).
But thanks to this blog for some great answered about the deep quakes.

The Siberian and Eimeran (China) flood basalts date to 250 MYA and the Deccan Traps to 60-68 MYA.

The Columbia Flood Basalt group date contemporaneously with the Yellowstone hotspot and Afar Flood Basalt Event, 15-18 MYA. These date from near the end of the Antarctic Sheet interglacial period. The start of the most recent Antarctic Sheet reformation corresponds roughly to major climate cooling and drying, catalyzing the dessication of the Atacama, Saharan and Namib regions.

Large igneous province formation is not random; most of it occurred long ago during major continental mass flux. rearrangements. Two spots, Iceland and Afar region, hold potential for minor flood eruptions.

Doubtful there would be anything like a major basalt flood event in the near future.

Henrik: I think that the 600-foot 'Heaven's Mountain' shows that the Danes have a finely-tuned sense of irony :o)

Dasnowskier 18: Saw the dark plume for a minute or so, then darkness obscured everything. Is it the result of ash production: or just a pretty lousy weather system at the moment?

@Passerby, just finished the Rusov, Vaschenko et al paper which I had to read twice and am rather astounded by a couple of things. First the basic rigid coating soft substrate (RCSS) concept makes sense intuitively and places the focus on deeper convection currents in the asthenosphere. As I understand it, the lithosphere is merely along for the ride. That said, the whole hypothesis is based upon compressive deformation of a coupled lithosphere/upper mantle complex (i.e. slab) as it ploughs into the transition zone between upper mantle and lower mantle. If this is right, the observed pattern in the frequency of deep quakes at intervals of 50 km would be evidence that the transition zone must indeed mark a hard boundary forming one end of the deformation of the lithosphere with subduction at the surface marking the other, with the crumpling taking a sinusoidal shape determined by (if I understood correctly) the thickness and relative strength of the lithosphere.

What really surprises me is the depth distribution charts they derived from NEIC data (Fig 5) with pronounced spikes at these 50 km intervals. That data looks too good to be true and I wonder why nobody ever commented on it before. If Lurking or any other whizz at plotting this stuff is perhaps interested I'd like to see if the USGS data corroborates this pattern. (y axis: frequency of deep quakes, x axis depth for the period 1973 to 2009 or similar).

Definitely very interesting stuff!

18 & 21 - I noticed that Turrialba plume has been well defined over the last few days. Currently obscured by cloud. Visibility is often poor, but I haven't worked out if that is due to cloud as today, or to wind direction pushing plume towards webcam when there tends to be a darker colour of cloud.

Bruce, the model is for bending stress modulus determination of a stiff laminate-softer body system (2 layers). You cannot disregard the soft layer. From the paper:

>From Fig. 5 follows that this distribution has clearly
defined periodical fine discrete structure with period L=50 km.

That's the minimal discrete structure within the deforming body.

Sometimes it's determined by the measurement method physics (lower boundary of physical measurement possible) and sometimes you see this type of repeating structural unit in datasets from boundary error / confidence interval estimates (central value +/- some #, the smallest interval that can be reliably assessed).

Note also the smearing of EQ data near the floor of the lower mantle (550-700Km). I would guess that is a second major bending deformation of a semi-stiff body that still has some cohesiveness, entering into a looping circuit of purported large circulation patterns - a physical explanation. However, it may also reflect differences in material chemistry (melt temperature, crystalline properties) of various subducting crust/lithosphere combinations.

We still see a tight clustering of Lurkings plotted EQ data centered about 600 klicks, which made me a very happy person because it fit the sensible/intuitive multilayer bending model.

Very tidy approach to understanding deep focus earthquakes.

I think now the dark color of the plume was due to bad weather as stated by mike don.
The glow in the predawn has been very strong at times leading me to think magma is still pushing to the surface. This could get interesting but is taking its own sweet time in human terms

P.S. A clear shot of the plume now shows it is very vigorous but doubtful that is is ash laden....at this time.
http://www.ovsicori.una.ac.cr/videoturri.html

@Dennis and all 'yall.

A question of power came up regarding the Moro Gulf quakes and the Alaskan quakes. Fortunately, I was able to grab the data before it evaporated to the ephemeral world of the archives...

Eh... long day.

Here ya go, Moro Gulf and Fox Islands quakes as discrete power plots... with a couple of notable nuclear explosions for comparison.

http://i25.tinypic.com/2qiocxw.png

Continuing our discussion of the Mechanism of Deep Focus EQs paper.

L = cracking (stress-strain release) minimum length. For energy release equal to the earthquakes ranging from 3.9 to 5.3, L=50 and for all larger quakes > 5.4, L=100.

Indeed, if we look at Figs 5 and 6, the fine shape of the curve describing the plotted EQs with depth (regardless of magnitude) has has fine structure that changes about every 100km, with a clear secondary structure emerging for smaller energy earthquakes at 50Km (those spikes).

The characteristic folding length is 200km for both magnitude sets.

The authors don't say much about Fig 5, but I think we will.

We're very much interested to see when the L=50 signal spikes are prominent and when they are minimal in the curves for various time periods.

What do you see for this set of graphs that stands out?

Something is interesting about the time period after 1992 through 2002, a data period with a strong L=50 signal. The fine structure signal weakens from 2003-04 and diminishes in 2005-06, and is very low level in 2007-08.

That means the L=100 predominates, we have much more energy in the deep focus earthquakes in the past few years.

So now we will do a bit of razzle dazzle, for our paper's authors, who must have missed this next article. Not only does this Nature article support our Russkie model and our plotted data of Philippine EQs (USGS dataset) with actual report of a slab discovered located at deep depth, the study results affords the same characteristic folded length, lambda, value of 200 km.

The folded length of the slab is also equal to the depth of D Region, the bottom of the mantle, which is characterized by a change in crystalline phase change of the folded slab. (There is a world of science in that last sentence, too much detail to go into here.)

This news brief and similar graphic in the Nature letter-article provide an excellent graphic of their finding, so you know what we are on about when we talk about characteristic folded length.

The news brief describing the Nature paper:
Giant Slab of Earth's Crust Found Near Core.
Live Science May 2006
www.livescience.com/environment/060517_inside_earth.html

LiveScience's graphic for their news article
www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=060…

The letter-article in the journal, Nature May 2006:

Seismic detection of folded, subducted lithosphere at the coreâmantle boundary. Nature 441z:333-336 (18 May 2006) doi:10.1038/nature04757

www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7091/full/nature04757.html

The paper's graphic of the folded 'taffy' slab.
Fig 4. A cold buckled subducted slab (blue) in the lowermost mantle may account for the thermal structure that results in a step in the perovskite/post-perovskite phase transition.
www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7091/fig_tab/nature04757_F4.html

*satisfied sigh*

Necessary explanatory graphics of the earths interior, for the D" layer at the deep mantle-core interface:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantle_(geology)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coreâmantle_boundary

eyjaf is sending a modest plume skyward and it appears as if there is a reflected red glow in it
this could well be a anomaly in the cams reaction to the low light or---

Those last two links... are the levels authoritative?

If so I may incorporate those levels in a quake plot or two.

#30 @Yes, Lady E is showing a vigorous steam plume. But I don't see the red glow you mentioned. Couldn't it be a sunrise light trick?
@passerby #28 I think Bruce stout has grasped much on those articles. I'm a slow pupil. Still have to do a lot of my homework. But just keep posting. Cool stuff, indeed.

@passserby (and lurking):

Nice work with the deep quakes folding slab theory! I really think you are on to something. Would be nice with a good provable/refutable prediction hooked onto it. Keap it up!

Just wanted to point out also that I in no way think we will have an event like the Siberian Trap in the near geological future. I just wanted to point out to lurking that Iceland isn't that big on a bigger scale. Sometimes I even wonder if we ever again will due to that the energy has dropped in the system (eg. earth). Even the likelihood of a 5000+ Icelandic flood basalt is rather unlikely I think.

hi all http://www.time/health/article10,8599,2006195,00.html Deep underground, miles of hidden wildfires rage hope you find this link is intresting..

hi all,,again the page appears to be broken that no problem still click on it and scroll down the page and click on to 3 your looking for Time magazine US Edition August 2010 vol 176 no5 click Health and there's the story on the above link @34

@34, leon, this link works: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2006195,00.html That's bad news, "more than 100 fires are burning beneath nine states." Worse: "But geologists say many fires go unreported, driving the actual number of them closer to 200 across 21 states. Most have burned for years, if not decades." Not only are the fires burning up coal reserves uselessly, but they're polluting. A question for geologists: is there no way to put out the fires (or remove the coal)?

@Jane

If you open up the seam so that you can get at it.... you introduce Oxygen.

Fire = Fuel + Oxygen + Heat

More recently that triangle has been updated to include "chain reaction" but the triangle will work for our purposes.

Dumping copious amounts of water will yield CO and other combustible gases... plus you may get a geyser effect, or possibly a small steam explosion.

Either way, you get a liability issue if property or residents in the place that it comes out are harmed or injured.

You can also find another feature at Derweze (the gate) in Turkmenistan.

"While drilling in 1971 geologists accidentally found an underground cavern filled with natural gas. The ground beneath the drilling rig collapsed, leaving a large hole with a diameter of about 70 meters at 40Â°15â²10â³N 58Â°26â²22â³Eï»¿ (The Door to Hell). To avoid poisonous gas discharge, it was decided to burn the gas."

It's ahh... still burning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_to_hell#The_.22Door_to_Hell.22

This is a topic I've been following for most of the past decade.

Wiki page has a reasonably complete intro to the subject:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_seam_fire

Recent 2010 article on the long burning Centralia PA coal fire and discussion on a new approach, employing technology developed for fighting forest fires with injectable foams:

www.earthmagazine.org/earth/article/33d-7da-5-5

Anupma Prakash's website at the Univ Alaska:
www.gi.alaska.edu/~prakash/coalfires/coalfires.html

Some of her links are out of date.

Sort of a diversion... and something to mull over.

I have long read that the Little Ice Age was the little ice age in part, because of the much increased volcanic activity of the time. I've pretty much accepted that... and saw it as an augmentation of the Maunder and Dalton minimums of the time. Never really had a way to find out one way or the other.

I ran across the Large Holocene Eruption list over at www.volcano.si.edu a few weeks ago, and grumbled at how hard it was to make use of the data other than looking at the columns and reading about the events.

What I have done, is to force the data into a usable form. REMEMBER, that a lot of the volcanic data is from various sources and have date accuracies of up to hundreds of years... the intensity of the eruptions is also prone to wide inaccuracies...and to make it worse, where there was just a Plinian or Caldera forming event noted, it didn't make it into the plot. The VEI info was averaged across 21 events with a central moving point average. This is what I plotted.

Civilization data was picked off of entries in Wikipedia, so take that with a grain of salt. These were place on the plot just to get a frame of reference for what was going on in the world while the average world wide volcanic intensity was at that level.

Enjoy.

http://i32.tinypic.com/f44i8x.png

@Lurking and Passerby, thanks for the links.
These photos show why Darvaza is called The Mouth of Hell. http://johnhbradley.com/pictures2.asp?var=070707darvaza
A coal seam fire in Germany has been burning for more than 400 years, since 1668!

@ Lurking. jaw just dropped. off to kitchen to get salt... what an amazing plot!!

Do you think the downwards slope might be due to a greater number of VEI 4 eruptions getting recorded in the last 1000 years or so when people were around to record them?
Other than that, do you have any ideas why the plot exhibits such a pronounced wave form?

@Lurking: Interesting plot indeed. Thanks once more.

BTW: Have you people noticed that Lady E has been exhibiting an unceasing, robust steam plume these days?
I love this volcano.

Ho-hum. Three years ago, I plotted the entire GVP catalog. Binned the eruptions by VEI. A rather interesting pattern emerges.

What was your point in adding the Middle Eastern and Western civilizations. Leaving out Asia removes....interesting perspective of cause and effect.

No, the volcanoes didn't was not responsible for causing the LIA or the Medieval Warming that proceeded it. But glacial rebound had a hand in pushing eruption probability in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Larger drivers were at work: large, multi-decade to centuries of climate instability by large solar fluctuations with feedback loops in the oceans and large climate ensemble cycles. These were aided and abetted by major volcanic eruptions.

Makers and breakers of empires. Plot human population on your graph.

@Passerby,

"What was your point in adding the Middle Eastern and Western civilizations. Leaving out Asia removes."

Mainly ethnocentrism. There was a significant dynasty change (Xia Dynasty) shortly after Thera... probably associated with that whole "mandate of heaven" thing and a slight conflict with the rising Shang Dynasty.

I concur with the LIA not being in that cause and effect chain, but it didn't help. Mainly I did to plot in order to be able to throw the B/S flag at what I have heard.

Your GVP catalog binning sounds like a really interesting data snag. Is that info online? It sounds like it would have higher resolution than mine.

@bruce stout

"Do you think the downwards slope might be due to a greater number of VEI 4 eruptions getting recorded in the last 1000 years or so when people were around to record them?"

Yes. I strongly believe that. Remember that the older the data is, the more that it's a matter of a geologist out in the field puzzling over the landscape.

Okay... same plot, added global population estimates (from www.census.gov) made it less ethnocentric by adding a few Chinese Dynasties and a rough track of Sumeria / Babylonia.

(Note: Babylon didn't get taken over by Rome, the line just ran into Rome. At the time, the Etruscans were running the show in Rome. The Persians are the ones who took over Babylonia at about this time)

Other than that it's pretty much the same plot.

http://i26.tinypic.com/ru9mk1.png

Good Morning everyone

It's a nice day in southern iceland and you can see a wonderfull steamplume rising up from EyjafjallajÃ¶kull. Looks quite amazing that even after the eruption is over for some time, there is still this steamplume

In order to keep anyone from getting the impression that volcanic activity is much much lower than in the past, here is a plot of the raw data from my last plot. Take note of the increase in sample, and that the relative number of large events isn't that different over time. I'm pretty sure that as the population went up, the number of eruptions that were noticed went up also.

http://i32.tinypic.com/30upwqp.png

.. on this correlation between volcanic activity and population (I think I have mentioned this before) but there have been pretty advanced civilizations living in the Bismarck archipelago since the Lapita cultural complex arrived at about 1600BC. This region is where an awful lot of these VEI 4 or higher eruptions have taken place. This makes me kind of optimistic that humankind is pretty adept at adjusting to the impact of large eruptions.

That's why we have legs.

"...run Forrest!! Run!!"

As primates go... I think we may have a speed/distance advantage.

OT - As a follow up to a previous discussion several months ago, and for those who may be interested. Spacequakes have been discovered, and could potentially contribute to the total energetics of the earth, in however small a manner; there is a lot that is unknown. See http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/27jul_spacequ…

@ 50 :lol: Head for the hills!!!
(think) No wait, don't head for the hills!!!

#50 #51 You guys don't have to worry about quakes. I'm more concerned about the development of Korea crisis and increase of international economical failure that might lead to a period of anarchy/dictatorships. We're back to pre-Holocene times in human History. :(
@Lurking: your plots are great!

@Renato Rio [53]

Well, it's supposed to get worrisome for the US Admin in August, and things are supposed to get really Nasty in Nov. That is, if you follow the alternative fringe. Dunno what, dunno how.

As an antithetical Frank Boman from 2001 Space Odyssey would say "Something Horrible"

@53 & 54:

I guess they are refering to two large loans that will be out-standing during the fall without any chance of the US being able to pay them.
Well, it is not any big news that the US cannot pay it's debts any longer, the US haven't paid mortgages and in many cases interests for quite some time now. Problem is that nobody will give any extensions anylonger, or for that matter, give new credits. So it is time to actually try to get the economy to get into ballance, but the likelyhood of that is slim to say the least.
But it is not as large a problem for the world economy any longer since the US ecnomy is falling in importance. Pretty much the EU together with China and India have taken up the slack by now. But it might not be that fun for those here that are americans...

Heh. The MÃºlakot pic shows a plane in the bushes.

@56: they moved it out of the way to cut the lawn.

@Carl on Economics

"...Pretty much the EU together with China..."

Ummm yeah. Ever check out that PIIGS acronym?

China refuses to pony up and let it's currency float so good luck with that one. My guess we are sitting at a precipice staring strait down at the bottom of Kondratiev cycle 5. Perpetually over extended and bloated to keep the money flowing... never letting the natural economic flow and contractions occur.

So... here we are, hovering right over the pit bottom of where the depression/contraction phase would have started it's upward turn.... but we never traveled gently down that path. The only way to get there now is a near vertical drop.

Yee Haw...

Okay... 3rd version.

Passerby and bruce stout's comments prompted me to rethink that average global VEI number. With the increase in population and expansion of civilization, more eruptions would be noted and recorded. This is evident in the number of events in the rawplot in post [48].

I went back and binned the data at 100 year intervals, summing the VEI and dividing by the number of events. This yields an overall average VEI by century. There is still room for error, but it's gonna be less glaring than the previous versions of this plot.

http://i28.tinypic.com/15ejoyp.png

That's closer to reality. You can double check it by superimposing a transparency copy of the raw data over the last graphic.

dr. erik klemetti.
your blog looks very interesting to us, we are college students chile, you give information from our mountains of the Andes is extremely important and a great pleasure for us.
the information provided in this article you realize their great work and research in relation to volcanology.
Finally we put the following question, Dr klemetti, compared with last earthquake occurred on 27 February in our country, will it have any implications the volcanic activity of the Andes with the seismic activity?
was a pleasure to leave this message, wait for your answer
good bye

Josefina PeÃ±aloza and Andres Rojas
science student teachers Universidad Catolica del Maule, Talca, Chile.

#61 Buenas tardes de Rio a los hermanos en Chile!
@Josefina and Andres: there was much speculation here and in other related blogs over the subject "quakes and volcanic implications" when February EQ occurred in Chile. Right now, in another thread, a similar discussion is taking place on correlations between tectonism and volcanism in the Pacific microplates, maybe it would be interesting if you take a look there, although mechanisms involving Nazca plate subducting under S. America are far easier explained.
We have the example of Puyehue-Cordon Caulle back in the 60s that erupted just after the big Chilean EQ, as well as other volcanoes. So I think (but I'm no expert) that there may be a "help" from an earthquake, if the volcanoes are close to an eruption. But this is still a very debatable matter.
You came to the right place: Dr. Klementii has worked in Chile and is very well acquainted to Chilean volcanism.
I must confess, that, in a way, Chilean volcanoes are "my" volcanoes, since in Brazil we have none, so the subject is of most interest to me (I saw Villarica erupting back in 72). Saludos!

408Wolcott@yahoo.com

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Stress is an old, old companion

ddobbs — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 06:03:41 +0000

Stress is an old, old companion

A nice short piece on "The Prehistory of Stress" by Matt Ford at Ars Technica (newly designed site worth checking out).

I have heard people say, on multiple occasions, that they think stress is a modern, Western phenomenon. While the psychological phenomenon known as stress has only had a formal name for just over 80 years, knowing when it was first suffered by our ancestors is a daunting task. Was life really better in the past? Is stress an entirely modern phenomenon?

Using modern forensic technology and a decidedly modern understanding of biochemistry, researchers from The University of Western Ontario have taken a look at stress levels in pre-Colombian Peru; their findings are summarized in an upcoming edition of the Journal of Archaeological Science. They found that stress has plagued humanity for at least 1500 years. The researchers were able to get the dead to give up not only their final secrets, but an understanding of their life for a few years before they shuffled off this mortal coil.

When humans get stressed, our bodies release a chemical known as cortisol, which appears in our blood, our urine, and even our hair. Of those three, hair is only one stands the test of over 1000 years of time, and provides a short history of the last years that its owner had. By examining hair strands from 10 individuals at five different dig sites in Peru, the researchers were able to determine how stressed people were, using the levels of cortisol in segments of their hair.

The team found that the time just before the individuals passed away was a stressful one--not an overly surprising result. But the majority of the individuals had lived through stressful periods in the years leading up to their death, suggesting that stress was a regular part of life in the pre-modern period. Perhaps this can be filed under "the more things change, the more they stay the same."

This shouldn't be a surprise. Yet, like Ford, I am surprised at how many people assume that life in earlier times was less stressful. This colors our view of our typical reactions to stress -- withdrawal, aggression -- which we tend to see as anomalous and define as maladaptive. But as the orchid or sensitivity hypothesis suggests, it makes much more sense to view these reactions as adaptive in many situations and maladaptive in other situations. Their value depends on their context. Quitting school and doing a youth gang, for instance, can be a pretty adaptive move considered from a local context -- one's prospects in the immediate neighborhood and social structure -- but a lousy move considered from a broader societal context. And all sorts of behaviors that are considered maladaptive within the particular constraints and values of our culture make sense when viewed with more sensitivity to human history.

The paper, by Emily Webb and others at the University of Western Ontario, is at the Journal of Archeological Science. You can find some other write-ups here.

ddobbs Fri, 12/18/2009 - 01:03

Tags

Brains and minds

History/philosophy of science

Thanks - really enjoyed reading about stress and not only the impact on our lives today, but also our ancestors. I always thought stress played a huge part in our history and the evidence of stress found in 1000 year old hair is quite interesting.

Why would this be surprising? My, we have a short time line we're thinking on.

Maladaptive stress would be driven by maladaptation. That would be most likely to happen under conditions that differ significantly from the ancestral state over a short period of time.

Ergo, you would expect maladaptive stress -- long term elevated cortisol levels, for example -- just as much under agricultural as industrial conditions.

It's no more natural to be a farmer than an office worker. Both'll drive you crazy -- unfortunately, returning to nomadism isn't an option, either.

How can anyone suppose that stress is an exclusively modern phenomenon?

Let's see:
War
Rape
Famine
Disease
Political oppression
Violence
Poverty

Any of these stressful, by chance? Any shortage of these in earlier centuries? I think not.

I think the (perceived) difference is the ongoing stress that many people accept as normal in their jobs especially - stress in bad situations is one thing, but stress all the time is another entirely. Of course, to see if this is actually the case, we'd need samples of hair from modern people too, and then compare the stress levels /between/ the bad-stuff peaks.

Tsunamis, climate, seamounts and impending disaster ... !

eklemetti — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:40:45 +0000

Tsunamis, climate, seamounts and impending disaster ... !

There have been a number of articles floating around the popular press for the last week that I thought I would touch on briefly ... always fun to decipher the real news from the hype.

Active fumaroles on Datun Mountain in Taipei.

An article out of the Taipei Times suggests that the city of Taipei in Taiwan is in great peril from Datun Mountain/volcano. The volcano, which was previously thought to have erupted ~200,000 years ago is now thought to have erupted only 5,000 years ago. That 195,000 years really does make a difference in terms of worrying about potential future eruptions, but there are few details about what sort of eruption there might have been 5,000 years ago (beyond the TV reports that "NTU professors said that if Datun erupts, its impact would be even worse than the devastating 921 Earthquake." Nothing like some good fear mongering.) They also attribute any seismicity today to "cooling magma" for what its worth - however, with any volcano with active fumaroles (above), the idea that it could still be considered "active" is no surprise.
Another article makes it seem that the potential for a future eruption from the volcano is low, but the mayor of the city still plans to construct a contingency plan if the volcano reactivates (which is still a good idea). Meanwhile, the GVP page on the "Datun Volcanic Group" suggest that the volcanic region was active as recently as the Pleistocene (<20,000 years ago). Most of the group are andesite stratocones or domes.
The New York Times has a report on the potential tsunami generated by the great Thera eruption between 1630 and 1570 B.C. The eruption likely generated a tsunami that swept across eastern Mediterranean Basin. These findings are based on sediments found at excavations on the shores of the Mediterranean in Israel. Although it is not shocking that an eruption the size of the Minoan eruption at Santorini/Thera would produce a tsunami, finding evidence of the wave is always nice to back up the theory.
A deep sea expedition to the Casablancas seamount 300 km off Morocco in the Atlantic has turned up evidence for fresh eruptions from the seafloor volcano. What appears to be fresh lava flows and craters were discovered by the submersible HyBIS. Of course, the submersible was at the seamount in hopes that there was life - not fresh evidence of eruption - which shows you can never guess what you might find in explored regions at the seafloor.
I stumbled across this excellent image of El Misti (the volcano) and Arequipa (the city) in southern Peru. It shows clearly how close to the active volcano the city of over 1 million people is creeping. El Misti last erupted in 1985, producing a small (VEI 1) explosive event, with the last known significant eruption in 1784.
Finally, there has been a lot of discussion in the comments by readers about the study have claims that a mystery volcanic eruption might have played a significant role in climate during the early 1800s. It definitely is a quandary how such a prominent SO₂ signal could be found both in ice from Antarctica and Greenland yet no obvious candidate for an eruption easily identified. However, remember that even in 1809-1810, great swathes of the world were unpopulated and unseen, so an eruption such as the Kasatochi eruption in the Aleutians, which released huge amounts of sulfur dioxide last year, might have never been recognized due to its remote location. The same might be said for eruptions along long stretches of the Andes in Chile. There are multiple, uncorrelated spikes in the sulfur dioxide record in the ice cores over the past few thousand years, which makes it all the more interesting to determine what volcanoes might be hiding significant eruptions in the relatively recent past.

eklemetti Tue, 11/03/2009 - 04:40

That El Misti image very definitely needs a scale bar.

Scale bar? Here you go.

Anne, in 'The Volcanism Blog' (sorry Erik) is the same image with a scale bar.

Guillermo - I have no problem with anyone pointing people towards Ralph and the Volcanism Blog! I love his site.

Here's the link with the picture (and scale bar!)
http://volcanism.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/el-misti-at-the-nasa-earth-ob…

I assume that all they find in the ice core samples is elevated CO2 and not ash? Are they totally confident that CO2 doesnt mix better across the equator than ash? Or that their dating is completely accurate?

Maybe it wasn't your typical eruption. Could have been major rift flood basalt/venting event, similar to recent activity at Afar.
http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3486

Just kidding. Both two pages are excellent for non-geologists like me.

Thanks, Erik and Guillermo! And thank you Erik for your great volcano blogging here at Eruptions. This blog is certainly an essential resource for me.

Hi. First of all - nice blog! Secondly this article was also good and interesting to read, but I don't think everything you have said is real truth. I will need to google about few things you have mentioned in your artcile to make sure. But anyway thanks for taking your time to write intresting artciles and good luck on writing other articles. P.S sorry for bad English, I aren't English native speaker.

Greetings. First of all - wonderful blog! Secondly this information was also good and interesting to read, but I don't think everything you have said is real truth. I will need to google about few things you have mentioned in your artcile to make sure. But anyway thanks for trying and good luck on writing other articles. P.S sorry for bad English, I aren't English native speaker.

Preparations to Visit Manu, Peru: Vaccinations

grrlscientist — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:20:34 +0000

Preparations to Visit Manu, Peru: Vaccinations

tags: Manu, Peru, travel, birding, eco-tourism, vaccinations, Kolibri Expeditions

I was contacted by Gunnar Engblom (Kolibri Expeditions), whom I've been casually acquainted with online for years, asking me if I'd like to be the "official blogger" for a birding trip to Peru. Yeow, would I?!? This unexpected offer surprised me, to say the least, but it didn't take too long for excitement to set in after I realized this was a serious offer: I would get to observe and photograph wild parrots!

Unfortunately, I have recently been preoccupied with several seemingly insurmountable tasks, including applying to the USFWS for CITES permits to export my five parrots from the USA, trying to locate a veterinarian in Germany who can help me import my parrots, as well as moving myself to Germany (projected departure: ASAP, but probably mid-to-late November), and I've also had the added stress of caring for a seriously ill parrot (she apparently has diabetes), so I've been frustratingly slow in meeting all the challenges and time demands that confront me, including preparing for this trip.

But in preparation for my upcoming trip to Peru, I managed to go to the NYC Travel Clinic today to consult with the nurse there about which vaccines I need in preparation for this upcoming birding expedition to Manu (ma NOW) and Tambopata, Peru, which will depart in roughly one month (the dates are estimated to run between 23 October - 1 November). I ended up getting;

Yellow fever (one injection into the fat of the upper arm; stings like hell; booster required every ten years): $140
Hepatitis A (first of two injections into the muscle of upper arm; cold feeling reaching down the arm, followed by roughly 20 minutes of an intense feeling that I would pass out and vomit at the same time; booster required after six months for life-long immunity): $95
Tetanus/Diptheria (one injection into the muscle of the upper arm; then, starting tomorrow and ongoing for 4-5 days, the injection site will hurt as if I'd been punched hard in the arm by someone who deserves to be punched in the mouth; booster required every ten years): $65
Typhoid (live oral vaccine, 2 tablets every other day on an empty stomach for 8 days [four doses total]; booster required every five years): $90

Because I've received the Hepatitis B series twice, I did not get HepB ($80 per injection for a series of three over a total period of six months), even though it was recommended that I get a booster, nor did I get rabies ($245 per injection for a series of three total over a period of 21/28 days), nor did I get the influenza vaccine ($30, also recommended -- I forgot to ask for this one, but I think I can get it cheaper elsewhere). In addition to the vaccines, I got a DEET kit with sunblock, spray, etc., ($35) to deter biting insects and a diarrhea kit that contains antibiotics ($32).

In total, this visit cost $520! Very expensive for an unemployed person without any form of health insurance. [Between my sick parrot and myself, medical bills have cost more than rent this month, and the month is only half over!]

After all these vaccinations, I went home and fell into bed, exhausted. I am not sure precisely why I was so tired, but certainly my ongoing lack of sleep (due to stress) played a role and I suspect the vaccinations also affected me.

One more thing that has been recommended is that I purchase is a portable water purifier (I prefer battery-free models), but the expense has made me cautious about this purchase, even though the one I am considering appears to be top-quality.

grrlscientist Fri, 09/18/2009 - 16:20

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