Off again

Posted on July 11, 2008 by Chris Rowan

Well, after just enough time to get all my laundry done and sort the chaff from my e-mail account, I’m off on another field trip. This time I’m heading to north-west South Africa for a week and a bit with the 4th year students. It should be fun – if possibly a little chillier than balmy Barberton (to my English seasonal tastes, there’s something faintly wrong with being able to wear just shorts and t-shirt less than a month after the winter solstice).
So apologies for the extended hiatus – although hopefully I’ll have some cool photos to show off when I get back. In the meantime, fell free to continue the geological variant of Mornington Crescent – I’m finding it entertaining, even if no-one else is. There’s also a couple of items for discussion popping up in the next couple of days: one frivolous, one less so…

Categories: bloggery

Sinkhole in Johannesburg

Posted on July 9, 2008 by Chris Rowan

I heard about this on the radio whilst driving back in from Barberton today:

jozisinkhole.jpg

This collapse appears to be related to tunneling for the Gautrain project. The drillers apparently – and unexpectedly – hit soft, unconsolidated sediment and closed off the road before part of it disappeared, so fortunately nobody was injured. The water in the hole is from a burst main. Has someone not been doing their ground surveys properly, I wonder? And what are they going to do if this unconsolidated stuff goes deeper than the depth of the current tunnel?

Categories: geohazards

How to stop worrying and love your mapping project

Posted on July 3, 2008 by Chris Rowan

Since I’m currently away teaching mapping, this seems an opportune moment to fill everyone in on exactly what that entails, with this repost from ye olde blog. This advice is chiefly based on my own experiences in the field and extensive supervision, marking and viva-ing of undergraduate mapping projects back in my Southampton days. Things are actually a bit different in South Africa – the four or five day exercise I’m currently helping to supervise is the most advanced mapping students here will ever do, rather than acting as preparation for four or five weeks of independent mapping – but most of this advice still applies. Since the geoblogosphere is much bigger and wiser nowadays, perhaps other geologists will be willing to chime in with their own insights in the comments.

Continue reading →

Categories: basics, fieldwork, geology

Absences and silly games

Posted on July 2, 2008 by Chris Rowan

I’m out of town for a week, supervising student mapping in the Barberton greenstone belt. Some scheduled stuff may or may not appear over the next few days.
People have previously tried to start games of Mornington Crescent in the comments whilst I’m away, but it seems that – shockingly people are bemused by the rules. So how about a geological word association game? I’ll start topically, with ‘komatiite‘. No target, beyond perhaps showing your mastery of geonerd terminology.
And if anyone does fancy a game of Mornington Crescent, make it easier to follow by sticking to the International Idiot Savant Variant, which forbids cross-hopping and counterclockwise movements on the Circle Line.

Categories: bloggery

California gears up for the largest earthquake drill in history

Posted on July 1, 2008 by Chris Rowan

Thermochronic has already written about this, but just in case you missed it, the Great Southern California Shakeout, an interesting exercise in raising earthquake awareness amongst the denizens of Los Angeles and its environs, is taking place in November. The centrepiece of this event is a massive earthquake drill:

At 10 a.m. on November 13, 2008, millions of southern Californians will “Drop, Cover, and Hold On.” Why? An enormous earthquake is in our future, and the ShakeOut Drill is our chance to practice what to do when it happens. Individuals, families, businesses, schools and organizations will join firefighters, police officers, and other emergency responders (involved in the statewide “Golden Guardian” exercise) in our largest-ever earthquake preparedness activity. Don’t miss out!

ShakeOut is based on a potential 7.8 magnitude earthquake on the southern San Andreas Fault. This type of earthquake occurs in southern California every 150 years on average, and the last was 151 years ago! Dr. Lucy Jones of the U.S. Geological Survey has led a group of over 200 scientists, engineers, and others to study the likely consequences of this enormous earthquake in great detail.

Of course, you’d hope that the people living in California are at least marginally aware that they’re not living in the most tectonically stable region on the planet, but there’s a whole world of difference between knowing that earthquakes can happen, and knowing – without thinking about it too much – how to react when one hits. Such awareness saves lives, and events like this could make all the difference for thousands when the geologically invevitable finally happens; not just in California, but in Japan, New Zealand, Indonesia, and all the other places where we’ve planted large cities on top of plate boundaries.
The Shakeout people have a blog, which I’ve added to the general feed; so no doubt we’ll all be reading more about this iniative in the coming months. As for the rest of the geoblogosphere, it occurs to me that we could quite easily time an Accretionary Wedge to coincide with this…

Categories: earthquakes, geohazards, public science