Rock Blog

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.

From The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco comes a first hand account of the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire:

Jack London and the Great Earthquake and Fire.

THE STORY OF AN EYEWITNESS
By Jack London,
Collier’s special Correspondent

Collier’s, the National Weekly
May 5, 1906

Upon receipt of the first news of the earthquake, Colliers telegraphed to Mr. Jack London–who lives only forty miles from San Francisco–requesting him to go to the scene of the disaster and write the story of what he saw. Mr. London started at once, and he sent the following dramatic description of the tragic events he witnessed in the burning city

Way cool!

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.

Ice Age Learning Module.

This module, created at the University of Minnesota (team of people including Kent Kirkby, Paul Morin, and Heidi Kamp) builds upon the information in Dr. W. Peltier University of Toronto ‘s publication cited below, to create a compact lesson about the processes and impact of the last major glaciation. The animations (visualizations), as regular QuickTime and Quicktime VR, provide a good learning pathway for visually oriented learners, with good text explanations as well.

The authors provide nice “self checks” for students, to prompt their understanding.

Peltier, W.R., 1993, Time Dependent Topography Through Glacial Cycle. IGBP PAGES/World Data Center-A for Paleoclimatology Data Contribution Series # 93-015. NOAA/NGDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA.

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).

This site contains a very well done animation of Glaciation – Inundation of the Bering Land Bridge.

From 21,000 to present.

Animation from the Quaternary GIS Library at INSTAAR, University of Colorado.

This is a very nice site for those that need both text and visual elements to understand a process. The Puget sound area was affected in a similar way to the How Sound Region during the last glaciation. In effect, we are looking at the southern end of BC’s glaciation.

The
Glaciation of Puget Sound site provides text and an animation of glacial advance an retreat.

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.

One of the biggest natural tragedies in British Columbian/Canadian history occured in 1903, when half a Mountain slide on top of the town of Frank, Alberta. The “Frank Slide” has been studies widely, and its study continues.

The article, Implementation of a State-of-the-Art Monitoring system on Turtle Mountain announces the Alberta governments monitoring program, as well as proving a nice succinct summary of the geological conditions that lead to instabilty of the rocks of Turtle Mountain.

This article in the CSEG Recorder, bt Dave Russum (Geo-Help Inc., Calgary), provides a timeline on the development of Canadian Natural Gas Industry.

A Brief History of Canada’s Natural Gas Production</a.