For the past two weeks, unusually heavy monsoon rains have deluged Pakistan, resulting in flooding and landslides. Pakistan is heavily populated all along the Indus River valley, so this is a slow-moving disaster of epic proportions. The latest news reports estimate that flooding has displaced 14 million people – more …
Cross-posted at Highly Allochthonous The geo-image bonanza of this month’s Accretionary Wedge gives me a good reason to make good on a promise I made a few months ago. I promised to write about what can happen on the flanks of Pacific Northwest volcanoes when a warm, heavy rainfall hits …
Cross-posted at Highly Allochthonous It seems that whenever a natural disaster (or other tragedy) strikes, there is but a short delay before someone with a megaphone and an axe to grind points his finger at an entirely innocent group of people and blames them as the cause of the tectonic …
The eruption of Eyjafjallajokull (which means Island Mountain Glacier in Icelandic) started out in March as a relatively quiet and tourist-friendly Hawaiian style eruption. That petered out and then a few days later, the magma reemerged subglacially, producing the spectacular ash-producing phreato-magmatic eruption that has transfixed the world and stranded …
I’m a little biased here, I know, but if you want a quick, well-written and well-illustrated description of the geology behind the Haiti earthquake, do like the BBC and Nature News and read this post from Chris Rowan. Also check out a nice early morning news summary and video clip …