I've always wondered how crazy other geologists have gone with incorporating geology into their homes, offices, gardens, etc. I know we all have a mini rock collection on the shelf, or a rock holding open a door but I'm thinking bigger. For example, I haven't done it yet but when I build the next house, all the window sills will be made out of slate. Share your stories, descriptions, photos of your current or past geology-related embellishments and I'll summarize.
The deadline for this is April 17th, I'll summarize on the 18th. Please post your contributions in the comment section, thanks!
Monday, March 28, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
La Mariposa del Tsunami
After today's 8.9 magnitude earthquake in Japan the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued an alert for many coastal areas bordering the Pacific Ocean, including Chile. After reading the estimates that the waves will likely only crest at 0.25 to 0.5 feet I didn't think they would take the warning all that seriously.
Source: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/newsgraphics/2011/0311-japan-quake-tsunami/tsunami.png
However the memory of last years Chilean tsunami that devastated Constitución is still fresh and I don't think the Chilean or local government wanted to risk any further causalities. Although they canceled school for all the children, there were still people at the beach and shopping downtown like any other day.
However at ~18:00 local time the klaxon went off and the Carabineros began clearing downtown following orders from Santiago to evacuate everyone living within possible inundation zones. I went to my 7:30 Spanish lesson and at 8:30 when I wandered back out onto 21 de Mayo, the primary shopping district, I was astonished at the celerity with which everyone had evacuated the downtown area.
It was difficult catching a collectivo home so I walked about halfway and was again amazed at the migration inland. I saw families pushing strollers filled with children and belongings, 100s of vehicles normally parked in driveways and estacionamentos, and numerous people who had clearly been living on the beach (it is legal to camp on some of the beaches in Arica) just sitting in the park or in the rotundas. The hospital was clearly on high alert, all the Carabineros and their local counterparts were prevalent and they kept their emergency lights on all the time as they drove around the city - the tension was quite tangible and although I've never lived in earthquake or tsunami country before it was very similar to the feeling right before a big snowstorm or strong thunderstorm in the Midwest.
Any resulting waves aren't expected to reach Arica until 23:24 so no word on the impact yet but I will update if anything of interest happens in the next few hours. It's interesting to think that in 1868 an 8.6 earthquake occurred in Chile that affected New Zealand, Hawaii and Japan and now an earthquake near Japan produced a tsunami that is fluttering back across the Pacific - like earthquakes playing ping pong I guess.
Source: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/newsgraphics/2011/0311-japan-quake-tsunami/tsunami.pngHowever at ~18:00 local time the klaxon went off and the Carabineros began clearing downtown following orders from Santiago to evacuate everyone living within possible inundation zones. I went to my 7:30 Spanish lesson and at 8:30 when I wandered back out onto 21 de Mayo, the primary shopping district, I was astonished at the celerity with which everyone had evacuated the downtown area.
It was difficult catching a collectivo home so I walked about halfway and was again amazed at the migration inland. I saw families pushing strollers filled with children and belongings, 100s of vehicles normally parked in driveways and estacionamentos, and numerous people who had clearly been living on the beach (it is legal to camp on some of the beaches in Arica) just sitting in the park or in the rotundas. The hospital was clearly on high alert, all the Carabineros and their local counterparts were prevalent and they kept their emergency lights on all the time as they drove around the city - the tension was quite tangible and although I've never lived in earthquake or tsunami country before it was very similar to the feeling right before a big snowstorm or strong thunderstorm in the Midwest.
Any resulting waves aren't expected to reach Arica until 23:24 so no word on the impact yet but I will update if anything of interest happens in the next few hours. It's interesting to think that in 1868 an 8.6 earthquake occurred in Chile that affected New Zealand, Hawaii and Japan and now an earthquake near Japan produced a tsunami that is fluttering back across the Pacific - like earthquakes playing ping pong I guess.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Desiccation Diversity - Lluta River, Chile
A Photosynth composed while standing in the center of the Lluta River, Chile
I take a lot of mudcrack photos, for some reason I am drawn to them. Fortunately while I wandered the Lluta River this past weekend I discovered quite a diverse number of cracks exposed in recently abandoned channels. I brought my Gigapan robot along to capture the above scene in higher resolution but unfortunately the shutter depressor had fallen off in my Pelican case at the house. So I hope you enjoy these modern dessication cracks; there is an aesthetic quality to them that forces me to stop and take their photo every time!
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Accretionaly Wedge #32: Uncertain Unconformity
Posting late for this Accretionary Wedge and I was a little overwhelmed by 'favorite' geology photo; I wasn't sure how to decide on my favorite of all time, so I narrowed down my favorite taken during the the last year...
Last summer I drove out to Bozeman, Wyoming for a GIS conference and took a rather circuitous route both outward from and back into Vermont. We decided to camp at Buffalo Bill State Park along the reservoir and then return to Cody after setting everything up. On our way back into Cody, just before the famous rodeo stadium, the setting sun illuminated this fantastic angular unconformity exposed in the Shoshone River. Based solely on the descriptions found in Torres and Gingerich (1983) I think the lower reddish unit is the Eocene Wildwood Formation overlain by the volcaniclastic Aycross Formation. I haven't done any work at all, so this is solely based on reading geologic descriptions, hope I'm close.
View Angular Unconformity in a larger map
Last summer I drove out to Bozeman, Wyoming for a GIS conference and took a rather circuitous route both outward from and back into Vermont. We decided to camp at Buffalo Bill State Park along the reservoir and then return to Cody after setting everything up. On our way back into Cody, just before the famous rodeo stadium, the setting sun illuminated this fantastic angular unconformity exposed in the Shoshone River. Based solely on the descriptions found in Torres and Gingerich (1983) I think the lower reddish unit is the Eocene Wildwood Formation overlain by the volcaniclastic Aycross Formation. I haven't done any work at all, so this is solely based on reading geologic descriptions, hope I'm close.
View Angular Unconformity in a larger map
And here is a closer view of the contact; again I 'think' my interpretation is correct but please advise if I'm off base here!
Friday, March 4, 2011
Living in a Seismic Gap Isn't So Bad... Yet.
After the magnitude 8.8 (MM) occurred just north of Conception Chile many friends, family, and colleagues were concerned my trip could be canceled. After quelling those fears, many became concerned about the idea that I would be living in 'earthquake and volcano country' with the added threat of possible tsunami activity. So I thought I would create a few maps to hopefully minimize concern while being honest, keeping in mind that anything is possible when you live on an active subduction zone. Subduction in this area occurs between the Nazca and South America Plates, producing dramatic topography, explosive volcanoes and powerful earthquakes.
Arica is a coastal city with approximately 190,000 residents located at 18° south latitude on the extreme northwestern edge of Chile. While historical earthquakes have indeed occurred within this region, little seismic activity has occurred here since 1877 because Arica resides within a seismic gap. This is generally not settling news since it represents a region where strain is and has been accumulating without release - meaning a considerable earthquake could hypothetically occur and Spence et al. (1999), and Berrocal et al (2004) have suggested that earthquakes in the late 1990s were precursors to a major event in the Arica 'elbow.' This is illustrated below as white ellipses, representing sections along the subduction zone that haven't experienced slip in the last century.
The last major event occurred in 1868 and completely leveled Arica and numerous coastal cities. This earthquake also produced a tsunami that added to both the local devastation and caused damage in New Zealand and Hawaii. This tsunami also left numerous ships stranded on land - similar to the events following the eruption of Krakatoa - such as the U.S. Wateree:
So I created some simple maps illustrating the tsunami inundation zone and historical earthquakes in the Arica region. To accomplish this I downloaded an inundation map produce by the Chilean Navy, exported the PDF as a tiff file and georeferenced it. Then I digitized the approximate boundary of the inundation zone and draped it over the topography (in relation to where I'm living and working) in ArcGIS and ArcScene to produce the following visualizations:
A simple 3D model illustrating how far both work and home are from the predicted inundation zone. The red flag represents the house, which is approximately 2.0 miles inland and the green flag is work and approximately 0.8 miles inland.
I created the earthquake magnitude maps by draping a Landsat image over a 30-m Aster-derived DEM and incorporating historical seismic data obtained from the USGS. This isn't very helpful other than illustrating how few earthquakes have occurred in this region since 1877. The large earthquake depicted in the center of the map represents the 1868 earthquake that caused so much devastation as depicted below:
So, while the images are visually jolting there's no real way of predicting when an earthquake will occur so I won't - and hopefully friends and family won't - spend too much time worrying about what might happen. I would be more concerned if I was living in San Francisco given the height of their buildings; it is rare to find buildings over 3 stories in Arica and they are all downtown. I'm also confident that if an earthquake occurs that produces a tsunami, even if I'm within the inundation zone, I will have plenty of warning and time to flee the mile inland necessary to avoid harm. After living in Vermont for the last 7 years, I'm a little excited about living on an active margin and embrace all the possible processes that are at work beneath the city. So, to anyone out there who is worrying, don't!
Arica is a coastal city with approximately 190,000 residents located at 18° south latitude on the extreme northwestern edge of Chile. While historical earthquakes have indeed occurred within this region, little seismic activity has occurred here since 1877 because Arica resides within a seismic gap. This is generally not settling news since it represents a region where strain is and has been accumulating without release - meaning a considerable earthquake could hypothetically occur and Spence et al. (1999), and Berrocal et al (2004) have suggested that earthquakes in the late 1990s were precursors to a major event in the Arica 'elbow.' This is illustrated below as white ellipses, representing sections along the subduction zone that haven't experienced slip in the last century.
"as the only segment of the Chile-Peru Subduction Zone not to have ruptured within the last 100 years, the north Chile segment is now considered to be a region at high risk from an earthquake similar to, or larger than, the 1877 Tarapaca or Iquique earthquake (Mw 8.3)" - (Benfield 2010)
The last major event occurred in 1868 and completely leveled Arica and numerous coastal cities. This earthquake also produced a tsunami that added to both the local devastation and caused damage in New Zealand and Hawaii. This tsunami also left numerous ships stranded on land - similar to the events following the eruption of Krakatoa - such as the U.S. Wateree:
So I created some simple maps illustrating the tsunami inundation zone and historical earthquakes in the Arica region. To accomplish this I downloaded an inundation map produce by the Chilean Navy, exported the PDF as a tiff file and georeferenced it. Then I digitized the approximate boundary of the inundation zone and draped it over the topography (in relation to where I'm living and working) in ArcGIS and ArcScene to produce the following visualizations:
A simple 3D model illustrating how far both work and home are from the predicted inundation zone. The red flag represents the house, which is approximately 2.0 miles inland and the green flag is work and approximately 0.8 miles inland.I created the earthquake magnitude maps by draping a Landsat image over a 30-m Aster-derived DEM and incorporating historical seismic data obtained from the USGS. This isn't very helpful other than illustrating how few earthquakes have occurred in this region since 1877. The large earthquake depicted in the center of the map represents the 1868 earthquake that caused so much devastation as depicted below:
So, while the images are visually jolting there's no real way of predicting when an earthquake will occur so I won't - and hopefully friends and family won't - spend too much time worrying about what might happen. I would be more concerned if I was living in San Francisco given the height of their buildings; it is rare to find buildings over 3 stories in Arica and they are all downtown. I'm also confident that if an earthquake occurs that produces a tsunami, even if I'm within the inundation zone, I will have plenty of warning and time to flee the mile inland necessary to avoid harm. After living in Vermont for the last 7 years, I'm a little excited about living on an active margin and embrace all the possible processes that are at work beneath the city. So, to anyone out there who is worrying, don't!
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Norte Chile - A Lesson in Pisco
I was fortunate enough to receive a Fulbright to spend three months teaching and conducting research associated with the Chinchorro culture in northern Chile this spring. I will cover the specifics about the research in a future post. I arrived February 24th, traveling from Albany to Atlanta, Santiago and finally landed in Arica where I will spend most of my time. I don't necessarily just want this to become a travel blog with tips, but if you are thinking of traveling with a lot of camera equipment and a laptop I HIGHLY recommend the Naneu K4L bag, I picked this up for the trip and so far it is just awesome!
View Larger Map
View Larger Map
After spending the day exploring downtown Arica, I traveled to Putre, a quaint Aymaran village in the highlands to visit my friend Angel. Putre is just outside Lauca National Park and a gateway to the higher elevation, snow covered Andes. The areas surrounding Putre is dominated by exposures of Holocene and Pleistocene age pyroclastics, Miocene andesites and dacites, and ignimbrites of the Oligocene Oxaya Formation. I made a quick geology map of the area surrounding Putre from a paper map I georeferenced but haven't yet digitized so there isn't a legend for the geologic map (but you'll get the gist).
And here are just a few photos taken in the Putre area, mostly focusing on geologic landscapes.
While I was obviously fascinated with the landscape and the completely impenetrable Aymaran language, I was most taken with a short-course delivered by my hosts on the importance of pisco in the Peruvian/Chilean culture. I have had pisco many times, I even have a bottle at home in the US, but I had never been properly educated about the varieties, the distillation process or even how one might 'properly' drink it. I was incredibly fortunate that two of my hosts, Angel's girlfriend and her brother, are part of the Parede's family and originally from the Moquegua Valley in southern Peru. As it turns out, the Parede's operation is 'famous' in Peru for making exquisite pisco and the family has won numerous awards.
The particular bottle we enjoyed was 'Pisco Paredes 4' named for the 4 Paredes brothers who run the business. I was given the honor of first taste by filling the cap and instructed to let the pisco sit on my tongue and then exhale through my nose as I swallowed to enjoy the aromatic nature. It was a very smooth and semi-fruity sensation with none of the burning I've experienced with other piscos. Their favorite family cocktail includes a healthy pour of pisco topped off with ginger ale and a squeeze of lime. Marie and her brother also explained the bottle insignia, which includes a single cowboy riding a horse pressed in a copper color. This copper color is tied to the rich history of copper mining int he Moquegua Valley - dominated by the Cuajone Copper Mine.
View Larger Map
Interestingly, many of the gold and silver mines of the Moquegua region are US owned (in some form or another) and this fact is not lost on the locals. However, they still have a close connection with the mining community and are proud of their natural resources - even if Peru is not reaping the majority of the benefits. And yet, they seem more proud of their pisco and after helping them finish a bottle at ~8,000 feet I can assure you they have every right to be proud!
For those more geology-minded you can learn more about the Cuajone mine here:
And here are just a few photos taken in the Putre area, mostly focusing on geologic landscapes.
While I was obviously fascinated with the landscape and the completely impenetrable Aymaran language, I was most taken with a short-course delivered by my hosts on the importance of pisco in the Peruvian/Chilean culture. I have had pisco many times, I even have a bottle at home in the US, but I had never been properly educated about the varieties, the distillation process or even how one might 'properly' drink it. I was incredibly fortunate that two of my hosts, Angel's girlfriend and her brother, are part of the Parede's family and originally from the Moquegua Valley in southern Peru. As it turns out, the Parede's operation is 'famous' in Peru for making exquisite pisco and the family has won numerous awards.
The particular bottle we enjoyed was 'Pisco Paredes 4' named for the 4 Paredes brothers who run the business. I was given the honor of first taste by filling the cap and instructed to let the pisco sit on my tongue and then exhale through my nose as I swallowed to enjoy the aromatic nature. It was a very smooth and semi-fruity sensation with none of the burning I've experienced with other piscos. Their favorite family cocktail includes a healthy pour of pisco topped off with ginger ale and a squeeze of lime. Marie and her brother also explained the bottle insignia, which includes a single cowboy riding a horse pressed in a copper color. This copper color is tied to the rich history of copper mining int he Moquegua Valley - dominated by the Cuajone Copper Mine.
View Larger Map
Interestingly, many of the gold and silver mines of the Moquegua region are US owned (in some form or another) and this fact is not lost on the locals. However, they still have a close connection with the mining community and are proud of their natural resources - even if Peru is not reaping the majority of the benefits. And yet, they seem more proud of their pisco and after helping them finish a bottle at ~8,000 feet I can assure you they have every right to be proud!
For those more geology-minded you can learn more about the Cuajone mine here:
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