Rock Blog

I’m not sure where I originally found this, but its been listed as an unpublished entry on another blog of mine.

Census of Marine Life:

This site:

The Census of Marine Life is a growing global network of researchers in more than 70 nations engaged in a ten-year initiative to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine life in the oceans — past, present, and future.

UBC Aerial View

Originally uploaded by mnlamberson.

This photo shows some of the elements that need to be considered when describing the erosional dynamics of Point Grey.

Ranier

Originally uploaded by mnlamberson.

Mount Ranier, Washington — a 14,000+ ft stratovolcano located in Washington state, USA. Note Mt St Helens in the distance a haunting shadow of this giant volcano.

Dune

Originally uploaded by mnlamberson.

I am just testing the link from Flickr to this weblog….

Big Dune in Imperial Valley, CA (I think)

Very nice overview of the methodology and applications of ice core research can be found in this short overview article on NASA’s Earth Observatory site:

Frozen in Time: the Ice Core Record
by Holli Riebeek· design by Robert Simmon· December 19, 2005.

This version has the glossary turned on….

Nice article from Wired News, Carbon-Dating Cloc Reset that outlines work to extend the useful range of carbon-14 dating from from 21 ka max to 23,000. The article provides a good overview of the limitations and strengths of the method.

Just ran across this resource link, Predicting Volcanic Eruptions . The module is media rich, and flash based.

The intended audence is somewhat younger than the university age students that I teach, but I believe the principles and concepts are good ones – and sometimes, its not a bad idea to have things simply explained.

As described:

This presentation uses data from several eruptive episodes of Mount St. Helens in the 1980’s to show the way in which a series of eruptions were accurately predicted by USGS scientists as far as 3 weeks before eruptive activity occurred. Several modules demonstrate the use of earthquakes and deformation of a volcano for predicting eruptions and allow you to predict an actual eruption of Mount St. Helens using data collected by scientists of the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory. Choose the screen size to fit your computer.

athy Hickson was there in 1980 when Mount St. Helen’s blew out its side and its top. Of course, its active again. The Discovery Channel Canada – Daily Planet interviewed Kathy about this… and you can access that interview here.

The Animated Cordillera, Animation, by James W. Sears (University of Montana) is a nice animated gif that shows the plate motions 220-60 Ma, and covers much of the western US and Canda.

Accompanying test provides point form information about each site. The perspective is interesting:

“The lines are actual geological features such as the lower-middle Cambrian paleo-shoreline position or the zero edge of the Belt Supergroup (see legend). The map implies that the accreted terranes of the Cordillera are not far travelled wanderers, but have origins in an Aleutian-type arc and its collapsing marginal sea.”

(from http://www2.umt.edu/geology/faculty/sears/animation/aboutanimated.htm).

The CSEG article by Monger and Price, The Canadian Cordillera: Geology and Tectonic Evolution provides a really good overview of the evolution of the Canadian Cordillera. The article is not for the “geology neophyte”, but the figures will prove quite useful for explaining the geological history.