The power of great art often lies in the way that it can make us see the familiar or mundane in entirely new ways. Which is why when asked to consider works of geological art, one piece springs to my mind above all others:
There’s been a lot of discussion about the effects of the Sichaun earthquake, such as the Tangjiashan ‘quake lake’ which has now been drained in a safe, if not strictly controlled, manner (the BBC also has some cool photos). But aside from Kim’s excellent summary of the tectonic context, we haven’t talked much about the earthquake itself. According to this article in the Washington Post, although the Sichaun region was by no means seismically inactive, no-one was expecting such a large earthquake there:
many scientists were caught by surprise by the magnitude of the China earthquake, estimated at 7.9 by U.S. scientists. Sichuan province has a history of earthquakes, but none so devastating. It was not near the top of anyone’s list of the most likely locations for a great quake. The data from satellites, which can track the motion of vast plates of the Earth’s crust, suggested a relatively moderate amount of strain building up in the rugged mountain front along the edge of the Sichuan basin.
For the benefit of anyone who is new to the geoblogosphere, below is a list of the currently active (defined as ‘posted something in the last 2 or 3 months’) geology and earth science related blogs that are picked up by the feed you see on the left of this page:
For those wanting to hear the latest news about the efforts to drain the Tangjiashan ‘quake lake’ which formed after the Sichaun earthquake, Dave Petley has written a number of posts discussing how the situation has developed over the last few days. It seems that water began to flow through a drainage channel dug by the Chinese Army on Saturday, but it’s too early to say whether this action is successfully going to stablilise or lower the lake levels.
This is not so much a puzzle as a mystery, in that I’m not entirely sure myself what this is:
I do have a guess, of course, but I’ll be interested to see what all you clever folk think. Here’s a wider shot of the outcrop this feature is found in; hopefully you can see that it’s not alone.
Have at it in the comments.
For lot's more videos on soil moisture topics, see Drs Selker and Or's text-book support videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoMb5YOZuaGtn8pZyQMSLuQ/playlists
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Nice plan for content warnings on Mastodon and the Fediverse. Now you need a Mastodon/Fediverse button on this blog.