Since Tuesday’s big earthquake, we’ve had 5* aftershocks in the same area (and possibly on the same fault). The most recent one popped off last night at 1am. Here’s a plot showing the size of the events (moment magnitude) relative to the passing of time: Note that the quakes that came after “the big one” … Read more
Fellow geobloggers Brian and Eric have been getting all flutey on us lately, so I figure it’s a good time to show my best photo of flute casts: As the annotated copy suggests, this was taken on the side of the Pennsylvania Turnpike back in March 2008, when four Honors students and I drove up … Read more
These are the geobloggers that I was privileged enough to hang out with this last week, in chronological order: Steve Gough of Riparian Rap: Ed Adams of Geology Happens: Evelyn Mervine of Georneys: Alton Dooley of Updates From the Vertebrate Paleontology Lab: Garry Hayes of Geotripper: Geobloggers are good people. They blog because they like … Read more
A few items for your perusal… Simon Winchester wrote an article that made a lot of geologists cringe; then he wrote another that dug the hole deeper. If you haven’t been following the conversation on Twitter, then you can play catch up. Some of us geobloggery types are submitting a letter to the Newsweek editor … Read more
Visitation statistics for Mountain Beltway over the past month and a half. Interesting to think about the implications… Should I do more current events blogging?
This is a friendly reminder that you have one more week to prepare your brownies, cakes, puddings, eclairs, gumballs, gobstoppers, and cookies for the Accretionary Wedge Bake Sale. The deadline for the submission of entries is a week from tomorrow, next Friday, January 28. Leave a link in the comments here, or at the original … Read more
Join me in nominating David Bressan’s History of Geology blog for the Geological Society of America’s Mary C. Rabbitt History of Geology Award. To my knowledge, this would be the first time a blogger has won that honor. Every time I read one of David’s posts, I learn something new. I think it’s a wonderful … Read more
Recent discussion of the geologically incorrect cake t-shirt at Threadless (earlier take-down here) and the actual baked equivalent have inspired me to issue a call for Accretionary Wedge #30: Let’s have a Bake Sale! I hereby challenge my fellow geobloggers (and any newbies who want to participate) to explore the interconnections between geology and food. … Read more
I’ve been asked to put up a post detailing travels from the year now concluding. You got it! The first day of January dawned for me in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I had just gotten done with one of the best trips I’ve ever taken, to Patagonia in December 2009. The capital of Argentina was a … Read more
My final day at AGU was Thursday, and I spent a lot of it working on school stuff, but I did zip down to the Moscone Center for a session on communicating science to the public in an age of increased public scrutiny. Michael Mann of Penn State was the big draw here, discussing his … Read more
Hey there, If you’re a geoblogger or in charge of a geology website, please consider updating your blogrolls. There’s been a lot of turnover in URLs this year, and I notice that a lot of the “Mountain Beltway” links are out of date. Thanks, C
Geobloggers, Anyone else ever get notes like this in their email? Hello, I was reading http://mountainbeltway.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/rocks-of-glacier-national-park/ and had a comment from the piece. The image of the Belt rocks of the Altyn and Appekunny formations was really helpful in understanding how the cliffs are formed. This piece had a lot of really interesting and indepth … Read more
Others have started announcing our move to a new blog consortium hosted by the American Geophysical Union, so I suppose I will go ahead and reveal that I, too, am part of this scientific cabal… Sometime before the end of the month, Mountain Beltway and six other top-notch earth and space science blogs will relocate … Read more
I really appreciated the feedback everyone contributed regarding the river evolution graphic I posted a week and a half ago. The latest offering is from Kyle House, who linked to a couple of nice summary images derived from Stanley Schumm. Because the images were low-resolution, and black and white, I decided to do some re-drafting. … Read more
Lockwood started it. He grabs two new lists from National Geographic “Our Amazing Planet“: the Ten Most Visited National Parks and the Ten Least Visited National Parks. Says he: Bold the ones you have visited, and italicize the ones you’ve never heard of before. Most visited: 10: Glacier 9: Acadia 8: Grand Teton 7: Cuyahoga … Read more
World! …I have an announcement! Three of my structural geology students from this past semester are now geoblogging… can’t say I had anything to do with that, but there it is. They are: Joe Maloney at Fossiliferous Weekly Aaron Barth at Got The Time and “AlanP” at Not Necessarily Geology Please check them out, and … Read more
In January, a large landslide occurred in the Hunza Valley of Pakistan’s Karakoram Range, near the village of Attabad. Like the Madison River landslide in Montana (1959), or the Gros Ventre landslide in Wyoming (1925), a river was dammed by the slide debris, and the impounded waters began to rise. At Gros Ventre, the landslide-dammed … Read more
For the twenty-fourth edition of the Accretionary Wedge, I selected “heroes” as the theme. For those of you new to the geoblogosphere, the Accretionary Wedge is a ~monthly geoblog “carnival,” wherein various and sundry geobloggers write posts on a common theme. Broadly speaking, submissions to this edition fell into three categories: (1) professional heroes, (2) … Read more
A friendly reminder that I’ve volunteered to host the next edition of The Accretionary Wedge, and I’ve chosen “heroes” as the theme. I invite all participants (geobloggers and geoblog readers alike) to contribute stories of their heroes. It’s time to pay tribute to the extraordinary individuals who helped make your life, your science, and your … Read more
Ed at Geology Happens recently hosted the twenty-third edition of the geoblog carnival The Accretionary Wedge. I’ve volunteered to host the next edition, and I’ve chosen “heroes” as the theme. I invite all participants (geobloggers and geoblog readers alike) to contribute stories of their heroes. It’s time to pay tribute to the extraordinary individuals who … Read more