The BLM released the Scoping Report today for the Environmental Impact Statement process they are carrying out on the proposed withdrawal from mineral entry of nearly 1 million acres of federal lands in Northern Arizona."The EIS wil...

Apologies: I had intended to post more about the ongoing activity at Eyjafjallajökull this weekend, but there hasn’t been time. I hope to catch up with things in Iceland (and elsewhere) tomorrow, but in the meantime I recommend the ...

Here's a brief essay by Martin Schwartz, published in the Journal of Cell Science. The title really says it all: The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research. There's not much more that I can say, except that I think Dr. Schwa...

Areas of hypoxia, or low oxygen, have long existed in the deep ocean. These areas — in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans — appear to be spreading, however, covering more km², creeping toward the surface and in some places, suc...

This is an ongoing exploration of the "Other California"; the wonderful geological places in our state that are rarely found on a postcard. After some geological distractions (like giant earthquakes in Chile and tsunamis in Hawaii),...

One intriguing table at the rock show last weekend was full of boxed rock collections, like the ones that so many of us had as kids. These were good ones: decent-sized specimens, sturdy cases, explanatory material, inexpensive, geol...

The Colorado Dept. of Transportation is posting updates and great photos of yesterday's rockslide in Glenwood Canyon that damaged and closed I-70. Crews were scaling the cliff this morning to either pry loose an unstable rock about ...

Aldous Huxley described Lake Atitlán as "Como with the additional embellishment of several immense volcanoes. It really is too much of a good thing." I completely disagree on the "too much" part, because Atitlan is stunning (and, in...

When we took a trip up Turnagain Arm to Girdwood the other day, we were lucky enough to spot a couple Dall sheep on the rocks fairly close to the road. In this first view I got with a quick point-and-shoot while driving past, the t...

A few days ago Turkey was struck by a strong earthquake at the East Anatolian fault. As you could see on the USGS tectonic map that I showed in my post on that occasion, the Anatolian block is bounded on the southeast by the East An...

Yesterday was the last day of the big local gem and mineral show. I'm not a big mineral collector, but there are some things I buy and lots of things I'm always tempted by, like bricks of raw jade. But I got two nice little things, ...

Let’s face it. There has been no big increase in the number of magnitude 6.0 earthquakes in the past decade - and not in magnitude 7.0 earthquakes either. Todays earthquake in turkey was magnitude 5.9. According to USGS data, the w...

You shouldn’t call a town Bingo I thought, when I saw a report from USGS on a strong Earthquake in eastern Turkey. My new glasses are apparently not good enough, as it turned out to be Bingöl - and I apologise to my Turkish frien...

Sometimes I go out of town. Today I visited the annual show of the Mineral and Gem Society of Castro Valley, held down in Newark this year. For me, coming from the geological side of things, it’s dazzling kind of place. The hall wa...

The U.S. Dept. of Energy completed removal of the first one million tons of uranium tailings from along the Colorado River near Moab last week, leaving 15 millions to go, according to the Grand Junction Sentinel.  The tailings are h...

The February 26 cover of Science is provided by Olaf Zielke and Ramon Arrowsmith in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at ASU.  It accompanies their co-authored paper on rupture history of the San Andreas fault. Cover caption...

National Groundwater Awareness Week starts today. Or tomorrow, depending which page on the National Ground Water Association web site you want read.But regardless, NGWA points out that 90% of all fresh water in the world is groundwa...

Some great news from Geospectrum - the latest Ed Roy Award winner is Jason Pittman, the lead science resource teacher at Hollin Meadows Elementary School in Alexandria, VA. This has me completely excited, because Hollin Meadows was ...

The East Valley Tribune tells the story of the Kent Decree, issued by Judge Edward H. Kent of the District Court of the Territory of Arizona, on March 1, 1910.    Reporter Ed Taylor makes the case that this decision resolved numerou...

NOAA's prototype Web site for the new Climate Service is now online with a Global Climate Dashboard, that allows you to look at a variety of climate indicators over different periods of time.    The chart at right show sea level cha...