Stuff we linked to on Twitter last week

Posted on October 17, 2010 by Chris Rowan

A post by Chris RowanA post by Anne Jefferson

DonorsChoose Update

Earth Science Week has been a good week for bringing earth science to school kids. The Highly Allochthonous drive has raised $657 so far from 9 donors and touched the lives of 421 students. Thanks to all who have given and spread the word.

But there’s no time to rest on our laurels, because there are many many more projects out there in desperate need of our help. Today is the very last day to help South Carolina elementary school kids turn into Weather Detectives. They need another $261 to be given by the end of the day. Can you help them reach their goal? (Note: If you give money to a project and it does not end up being completely funded, you’ll be allowed to reallocate your donation to another project of your choice.)

If none of the projects on our challenge page strike your fancy, or you want to share the love even further, please look at the projects that geoblogger and tweeter Maitri Erwin is supporting through her giving page. There are also some great projects on “The Rocks Know” giving page, but I’m not sure which blogger deserves the shout-out for setting up a challenge. If it’s you, please let me know. Of course, if you are all wet, you can support our ocean blogging colleagues through Ocean Bloggers United for Education or The Gam Classroom Initiative.

And now on to the linky goodness…

Volcanoes

Earthquakes

(Paleo)climate

Water

Environmental

Fossils

Planets

General Geology

Interesting Miscellaney

Categories: links

Blog Action Day: Water! (And floods! energy! education!)

Posted on October 15, 2010 by Anne Jefferson

A post by Anne JeffersonSneaking in another Friday Floods post, this time perfectly coinciding with Earth Science Week and Blog Action Day‘s focus on Water. My offering for this day is actually a guest post at AGU’s Geospace blog, where I had the privilege of getting a sneak preview of a paper in press in Geophysical Research Letters. Here’s a teaser:

The number of flood deaths in Africa has gone from fewer than 2000 in 1950-1969 to more than 15,000 between 1990 and 2009. In addition, the number of lives affected and the amount of economic damage have dramatically increased.

What’s behind this trend? Is it a reflection of climatically-driven increases in the intensity of precipitation and magnitude of floods? Is it simply that there are more people in Africa now to be affected by floods? Or are there socio-economic patterns at work that have magnified flood risks?

To read the rest of the post and find out the answer, head over to Geospace.

Of the various water-related posts I’ve read today, the one that sticks out in my mind as an absolute must-read is this post on Columbia University’s Earth Institute blog about the crucial connections between water and energy. Lakis Polycarpou does a fantastic job of laying out these connections under the following headings: “The way we use water consumes energy. Conventional energy production is crucially dependent on abundant supplies of freshwater. The quest for new sources of cheap, abundant energy threatens existing water sources. Use of fossil energy is warming the climate—which disrupts the water cycle and threatens both water and energy resources.” Read it.

Finally, after educating yourself with the posts above, take action. Blog Action Day encourages you to sign their petition for an international water treaty to provide clean water everywhere and to donate to charity: water or water.org. Or if you want to raise water awareness and bring water science to public school kids, consider giving money to some of the water related projects in our DonorsChoose challenge. Wouldn’t it be great if today was the day we helped bring a groundwater model to kids in Charlotte? Or boots and waders for stream science labs in Missouri? Or materials for teaching the water cycle and water quality to students in San Francisco? None of those projects needs more than $200 to become reality. Even donations of $5 or $10 will go a long way toward real action on blog action’s water day.

Categories: by Anne, hydrology, science education

Oregon’s fossil forests

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Anne Jefferson

A post by Anne JeffersonToday is National Fossil Day, and half way through Earth Science Week. In honor of the occasion, I present a few notes and photos from a trip I took with my botanist mother to the John Day Fossil Beds in 2006.

The most complete range of Tertiary fossils found anywhere on earth is found in the John Day Fossil Beds. Rocks ranging from 44 million to 7 million years old contain an amazing assemblage of plants and animals. The rocks and fossils bear witness to evolutionary processes, changing climatic and environmental conditions, and vast volcanic environments. While various Tertiary rocks span much of eastern Oregon, a wide array are concentrated within the three units of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. The monument consists of three disconnected units, and covers far too much ground to be visited in a single day. Fortunately, the main visitor center is has an incredibly informative display of fossils, complete with painted murals and ambient sounds. My friend Regan Dunn was a paleobotanist with the monument at the time I visited, and it was a thrill to see her name on several of the collection tags.

Painted Hills, John Day National Monument, Oregon (photo by A. Jefferson)

Painted Hills, John Day National Monument, Oregon (photo by A. Jefferson)

In the Painted Hills Unit, fossil soils are the main feature that draw the eye. The red bands on the hills (to the right) are fossil woodland soils , while the yellow bands are fossil soils from open woodlands or wooded grasslands. The black streaks represent fossil soils that formed in water-logged environments.

Also at the Painted Hills Unit, the Bridge Creek Flora is exposed. It is a 34 million year old assemblage of fossil plants preserved in volcanic ash claystones. The assemblage is dominated by broad-leaved deciduous plants (alder, beech, etc.) along with roses, grapes, and dawn redwood, and most of the genera are no longer found in the Pacific Northwest. Instead, these forest types are now found in China – where the climate is warmer and wetter than eastern Oregon.

Trail through the Blue Basin of John Day National Monument (photo by A. Jefferson)

Trail through the Blue Basin of John Day National Monument (photo by A. Jefferson)


The Sheep Rock Unit of the Monument contains the visitor center, the namesake rock with great stratigraphy exposed, and the Bue Basin trail whick wanders through a fossil-rich badlands environment (to the right). The Blue Basin exposes the Turtle Cove formation, dating from 28-33 million years ago, when the area was covered by woodland and wooded grassland. This formation is fossiliferous and mammals, turtles, snails, and hackberries are just a few of the remains that have been found in these layers. Winter rains and summer thunderstorms erode the sediment layers exposing new fossils on a regular basis. Once exposed to the elements, however, the fossils degrade fairly quickly. Although the area is rich in fossils, they are hard to spot from the trail, and I made the one and only find of the hike. Two small fragments of fossil wood are directly below and below-right of my extra memory card.

Fossil Wood in the Blue Basin, John Day National Monument (photo by A. Jefferson)

Fossil Wood in the Blue Basin, John Day National Monument (photo by A. Jefferson)

After the hike, we drove to the town of Fossil (their gas station is called Fossil Fuel), where you can collect fossils (for a nominal fee) behind the local high school. We spent ~3 hours digging and looking at all sorts of wonderful flora from the Bridge Creek Flora and came away with some nice specimens of metasequoia, alder, and sycamore leaves and wood prints.

Alaska Cedar in the Oregon Cascades (photo by A. Jefferson)

Alaska Cedar in the Oregon Cascades (photo by A. Jefferson)


On the way back to Corvallis, we stopped in Echo Basin in the Cascades Range to to visit some living trees – a disjunct population of Alaskan cedar (to the right). Disjunct means that these trees are isolated from the main range of their species, and are able to survive only because of very special environmental conditions. These trees towered up to 100 feet over us and got up to 4 feet in diameter. We wandered through the natural cathedral and contemplated climate change on a range of time scales.

35 million years ago, eastern Oregon was warm and wet – today it is a desert with frigid winters. 15,000 years ago glaciers covered the area where we visited the cedars, and they were left in a pocket of cold air drainage as the climate warmed into the Holocene. And what will happen to the cedars as climate warms even further, thanks to CO2 levels that haven’t been experienced in the past 25 million years?

Liked this post? Then how about helping 2nd graders in Indiana get their hands on fossils through our Earth Science Challenge?

Categories: by Anne, Cenozoic, fossils, outcrops

Quick programming notes

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Anne Jefferson

A post by Anne JeffersonIt’s Earth Science Week. I hope you all are busy spreading the fun and science of the Earth this week. Chris is in the lab dungeon collecting paleomagnetic data and I’m alternately in proposal purgatory and grading jail (i.e., the middle of the semester).

But there’s good stuff going on and more good stuff coming.

First, Bora Zivkovic has just posted an interview with me about my interests and approach to on-line science communication and experience at the ScienceOnline 2010 conference. I also wax lyrical about my research. Two bonus points to the first person who correctly identifies the location of the picture included with the post.

Second, our DonorsChoose Challenge has gotten off to a strong start. In honor of Earth Science week and recognizing the value of reading and making maps for earth scientists of all stripes, I think it would be great to make two mapping projects a reality this week. Colorado students want a GPS unit to help with their geologic mapping project. Students in Oregon need help making the translations between 2D topographic maps and the 3D Cascades Mountains and their teacher has identified some resources to help them.

Third, This Friday is Blog Action Day and the theme this year is water. The event includes thousands of blogs and they’re looking for as many blogs to participate as possible, regardless of their size and focus. Learn more at http://blogactionday.change.org/. Personally, I’ll have a post about the connections between flooding, climate, and population growth.

Categories: bloggery, by Anne

Stuff we linked to on Twitter last week

Posted on October 10, 2010 by Chris Rowan

A post by Chris RowanA post by Anne Jefferson

DonorsChoose

In addition to giving to the Highly Allochthonous Earth Science Challenge, please support Maitri’s efforts in the Science Bloggers for Students challenge!
http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/viewChallenge.html?id=73292&max=10

Volcanoes

Planets

Fossils

(Paleo)climate

Water

Environmental

General Geology

Interesting Miscellany

Categories: links