Author Archives: Chris Rowan

317 years since the last rupture of the Cascadia megathrust

Posted on January 26, 2017 by Chris Rowan

At around 9pm on the 26th January 1700, the Cascadia subduction zone – a shallowly dipping thrust fault that runs more than 1000 km north from Cape Mendocino in Northern California to the vicinity of Vancouver Island, ruptured in an estimated magnitude 9 earthquake. Continue reading →

Categories: earthquakes, geohazards, society

Visualising Earth Structure, redux

Posted on January 20, 2017 by Chris Rowan

Last semester, when teaching my intro class about the composition and structure of the Earth and how we know, I went a bit overboard in producing a snazzy Earth cross-section: I’m still pretty proud of this, but one of its … Continue reading →

Categories: basics, geology, teaching

Venus stays out in the cold

Posted on January 11, 2017 by Chris Rowan

We basically have a huge generation gap with Venus, and we really need something to launch in the early- to mid-2020s so we can maintain some kind of continuity.” I’m not a planetary scientist, but I’m still disappointed that two … Continue reading →

Categories: planets, tectonics

An unremarkable year – seismically, anyway.

Posted on January 1, 2017 by Chris Rowan

Political pundits seem fond of geological metaphors such as ‘earthquake’, ‘seismic shift’, ‘tectonic shift’ and ‘tsunami’ – and they’ve certainly had plenty of reasons to use such metaphors in the past 12 months, as both my birth country and my … Continue reading →

Categories: earthquakes, geology, tectonics

A cross-section through the Earth

Posted on September 2, 2016 by Chris Rowan

One of the first things I do in my introductory geology class is talk about the structure of the Earth. Knowing the names, composition and physical properties of the different layers is an important foundation for the rest of the … Continue reading →

Categories: basics, geology, geophysics, planets, teaching