Author Archives: Chris Rowan

All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again: an introduction to How the Earth Works

For a couple of years now, I’ve been telling a story at the beginning of the introductory geology course I teach, called How the Earth Works. I like to think it gives a flavour of the kinds of stories you can tell about the Earth, if you know how to look: stories of how the world slowly remakes itself over hundreds of millions of years, of how the very high was once the very low, and will be again. This is that story. Continue reading

Categories: academic life, basics, deep time, geology, geomorphology, ice and glaciers, outcrops, past worlds, rocks & minerals, science education, tectonics

Earthquake warning systems are hard, but not having one is worse.

The premise of earthquake early warning systems is simple. An earthquake produces several different kinds of seismic waves that race away from the rupture point. Because they are different kinds of vibrations, they travel at different speeds; and the farther … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, geohazards, geophysics, links, society

A Seismic Summary of 2017

Why 2017 was a quiet year – and an examination of the provocative hypothesis that 2018 may not be. Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, geohazards, geophysics, tectonics

2017 in Review

Not much may have made it onto the blog, but it’s been a busy year for both Anne and Chris in 2017. Here’s a brief summary of what we’ve been up to – with pretty pictures where appropriate. Continue reading

Categories: academic life, bloggery, by Anne, publication, teaching

317 years since the last rupture of the Cascadia megathrust

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