Liberty, Equality, and Geology

It's a Branch, It's a Pothole - no, it's an Earthquake!

2012-01-22T00:19:00.000-08:00

For December’s Accretionary Wedge, (#41!) Ron Schott has asked us to describe the most significant or memorable geologic event we have personally experienced. The first thing that sprang to my mind was the 2001 Nisqually Earthquake.

This is the seismograph from Wupatki, Arizona. There weren't many closer, and I quite liked how clearly the P-wave and S-wave showed up in this one.

In February of 2001, I was 13 years old. At that time, I was half-homeschooled – I took a couple classes at the junior high in the morning, and then my mum picked me up for some homeschooling. (Reality: I’d wait until she left on some lawyer-ly errand, and then make grilled cheese and watch Wheel of Fortune. What a rebel.)
On February 28, at 10:54 am, I had just been picked up from school, and we were driving in my mother’s 1870s powder-blue Camaro towards The Big Swoopy Hill. All of a sudden, the car swayed back and forth, the dashboard tilting up and down. It looked like that One Time My Dad Took the Car on the Potholed Forest Service Road Where People Go Mudding.

“Mum, do we have a flat?” I asked.
“No, I don’t think so. We might have run over a downed branch.” My mum looked in the rearview mirror. “Although I don’t see anything behind us…”
“Mum, look at the lady parked on the side of the road!”
“She’s getting back in her car, she’s ok.”

After we got back home, my mother worked on some legal briefs, and I worked on my report on deciduous trees. After an hour or so, the phone rang.
My mum picked it up. “Hello?”
“Are you ok? Is the house ok?” my dad asked, frantically.
“We’re fine… Are you?”
“There was an earthquake!”

We walked around the house, and, sure enough, some of the vases on top of the piano had shifted a little. The dishes had moved.

The next day at school, my classmates regaled me with tales of crawling under their plastic-topped desks, all the while imagining the back half of the portable buildings sinking into the ground. One girl even declared that she’d thought it was the Rapture.

This is from a school near Nisqually. Our school only had a couple lights fall down, and was otherwise fine.

I tried to explain our harrowing tale to them, but even my best retelling didn’t convince them it was cooler than the Rapture.

Well, I tried.

The 2001 Nisqually earthquake only rated a 6.8, with a depth of about 52km, and is an example of normal faulting in a subduction zone – the Juan de Fuca plate was bending (and stretching) as it was forced under the North American plate. This is possibly due to increased warmth near the mantle heating up the subducting plate, dehydrating it and making it more brittle - kind of like baked potato chips.

A fault plane solution for the Nisqually earthquake. The little circles are dilatations, and the little stars are compression - so you can see how part of the plate extended, compressing the material to either side.

A path near the State Capitol. One fellow looks depressed at the thought of all the work he's going to have to do. The other fellow looks like this is the coolest thing to ever happen - definitely a geologist.

Luckily, only one person died (as the result of a heart-attack) and 407 people were injured. It did cause significant damage to roadways near the epicenter (in the Olympia and Nisqually area.)

Highway 101 - nobody really uses the right lane, do they?

Additionally, it caused significant damage to buildings both in Olympia and Seattle – including causing a large crack in the dome of the Washington State Capitol in Olympia.

The exterior of the State Capitol. You can see that some of the bricks are separating from the facade. The building was shut down for quite some time as it was examined for structural stability.

Looters run rampant in downtown Seattle.
These fellows actually just found a co-worker's purse amidst the wreckage of their van.

"Pssh, I've got nine lives, I ain't scared."

It also damaged the Alaska Way Viaduct in Seattle, which led to a decade of plans, negotiations, and general strum und drang about replacing it, as well as this terrifying simulation. Apparently, they’ve now begun construction on a replacement. The earthquake resulted in $3.5 million in repairs to the viaduct, and construction of a replacement/refurbishment/tunnel/etc. is projected to cost $3.1 billion. It’s money well spent, I think, because that sucker looks like a car-sandwich just waiting to happen.

Some fellows braving aftershocks to repair the Viaduct so people can tempt fate.

There were also spots of liquefaction and sand boils in both Olympia and Seattle. Liquefaction is pretty nifty, and luckily didn’t cause much damage in this earthquake. (Many portions of Seattle’s waterfront are built on fill – liquefaction could be a huge problem for those areas.)

A sand boil in Olympia.

While much of the liquefaction seems to have been little sand boils, it also invaded basements. Additionally, there was a large mudslide in the Renton area, which also did significant property damage.

Worst sweeping job ever.

I’m really glad that I was able to experience a medium-sized earthquake, without my family suffering any damages, and without the region suffering many deaths. I do still kind of wish we had realized it was an earthquake when it was occurring – that would have been so much more terrifying and exciting! But it was still a very memorable experience.

In addition to the websites linked through the above photos, here are some websites with information on the Nisqually earthquake:
Some Observations of Geotechnical Aspects of the February 28, 2001, Nisqually Earthquake in Olympia, South Seattle, and Tacoma, Washington
Geodetic Information from Central Washington University
The Nisqually Earthquake Information Clearinghouse, housed by the University of Washington
GPS Analysis of Olympia Quake from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
The Pacific Seismic Network's Nisqually Earthquake Page
USGS's Preliminary Earthquake Report
Washington State Department of Natural Resource's Nisqually Earthquake Page
Identifying the Rupture Plane of the 2001 Nisqually, Washington, Earthquake
A Video Taken Inside Microsoft During the Earthquake
KOMO News Broadcast from February 28, 2001
Car image: http://bit.ly/x4x9RL

This video made me laugh so hard I cried. It's ridiculous!

Fall in West Idaho

2011-11-25T09:00:00.000-08:00

In the past, I’ve waxed poetically (or, at least waxed on endlessly) about the beauty of the eastern Snake River Plain. But the more metropolitan western section is also quite lovely, especially in the fall!

The whole western Snake River Plain at a lower elevation than the eastern half (check out this map from geology.com), which creates a warmer, more temperate climate than the western portion (about ~10 degrees difference.) This makes a great environment for agriculture, and gives the eastern section the nickname “The Banana Belt.”

The name “Boise” is a bit disputed, but the word derives from the from the French “Le Bois,” or, “the trees.” Boise is situated in a wooded river valley, while the surrounding plain is fairly sparsely vegetated with sagebrush.

I’ve never lived in a place with so many deciduous trees – Seattle has them, but the leaves quickly become sodden with rain. It’s quite lovely to walk along the bike path and crunch the leaves.

There’s also some scenic construction equipment. (I’m quite fond of large, colorful machinery, frankly.)

Coring Trees

2011-11-14T07:00:00.000-08:00

This is not how you actually hold a corer – I was too busy posing to keep my hands in the proper position! You’re supposed to have one facing up, one facing down.

My hydrology class went out coring trees to study dendrochronology! Dendrochronology is the study of trees through time . To take a core sample, you gently screw this hollow tube into the tree, and then insert an extractor that much resembles a long-handled ice tea spoon, which grips onto the end of the core and pulls it out.

Much as it seems really invasive, they’ve apparently figured out a way that this doesn’t harm the tree. I like to think of it like getting an ear piercing with a hollow needle, or a biopsy.

Then we let the cores dry out in the lab, and our professor used a planer saw to flatten them out. Then the real work of counting and measuring rings began!

The youngest rings are the smallest, because a tree grows from the inside-out. When the tree has grown larger, the total growth for the tree is spread out over a larger area – this results in smaller rings. In addition to marking the years on the core-holder, you also mark the core with a certain number of dots – one for a decade, two for a half-century, three for a century, etc..

Once you get close to the tree’s center, the rings become much larger. In this picture, you can see how the rings near 1810 are curving, instead of being perpendicular to the core – this means that we missed the core. These rings aren’t very useful to measure, because it’s difficult to get a good reading on their actual width.

We correlated this data with historical precipitation data, to see how the growth reacted to precipitation. Our correlation was quite poor, since our measuring tools were fairly low-grade. (Plus, we’re newbs.) But, with the proper measuring tools, many more data points, and a lot more practice, a good correlation can be established. The relationship from this correlation can then be used as a proxy to establish possible precipitation values for the years before historical measurements exist. In addition to being a useful tool for looking at a particular region’s specific precipitation and plant growth patterns, this is one of the primary methods current climate change studies rely upon to establish past climate figures.

Jurassic Lantern

2011-11-11T19:39:00.001-08:00

As a kid, “Jurassic Park” gave me nightmares. I would lay in bed, and think about how a Tyrannosaurus could totally hide behind my parent’s rhododendron bush. The only consolation was that my bedroom had round doorknobs - and thus was Velociraptor-proof.

Perhaps a Parasaurolophus doesn’t have “a six-inch retractable claw, like a razor, on the middle toe. He doesn't bother to bite your jugular like a lion, oh no … he slashes at you here or here … or maybe across the belly, spilling your intestines.”

Parasaurolophus really isn’t the scariest dinosaur around, even in lantern-form.

But when I was staring at a pumpkin, trying to think of something geological to carve for this month’s Accretionary Wedge challenge , Parasaurolophus seemed fitting:

Especially since I spent Halloween watching Jurassic Park and enjoying some chocolate stout – the intersection of youth & slightly-less-youth.

I hope everyone had an exciting Halloween, filled with (possibly prehistoric) undead (cloned) creatures!

Haitus

2011-09-25T17:23:00.000-07:00

It probably went without saying, but this blog has been on a haitus for some time. (That tends to happen regularly around here.)
I would really like to share some of the exciting things that have been going on, like:
- More about the epic NASA Tweetup
- Closing the season at Craters of the Moon
- A great day agate hunting near Challis with one of my awesome coworkers
- My trip to the Sawtooth Mountains, which started with a free Symphony, and ended with a flat tire off on some BLM roads (and then a trip to the Borah Peak earthquake scarp)
- Coring trees for one of my new classes
- Visiting some awesome lava flows and ash deposits for another class
- My adorable new apartment

But, unfortunately, I've been really busy with:
- Finding and starting two (2) new jobs on campus
- Working weekends at Craters, 3.5 hours away
- Living in hostel and scuzzy motel
- Finding an apartment (and moving)
- Going to the ER
- Cancelling my last cave trip of the year
- A good friend's suicide
- and classes/field labs, of course.

Luckily, things should be easing up soon - the season is over at Craters, I'm almost done moving, and I'm shortly going to quit my soul-sucking, stressful second job.
Once I'm done dealing with the issues of the second list, I plan to write some super-awesome posts about the exciting list.
But, in the meantime, I'm just going to try to keep my head above water and not flunk out of school.

You know, priorities and adult choices, etc.

UPDATE: The next few weeks consisted of:
- Flying home for the funeral
- Maternal visit
- Getting really sick...
- ...during midterms
- Car failure
- Bike theft

But my classes are awesome, my job is fun, and my house is lovely!

NASA Tweetup Pt. 2: Astronauts & Astronuts

2011-08-01T16:47:00.000-07:00

Flying in over the Gulf of Mexico on July 6th, reality hadn't really set in. I tried to convince myself that I was, in fact, going to Florida, to see a space shuttle launch. Despite my best efforts, thoughts of the events to come couldn't quite force out the thoughts of our imminent water landing and demise.

The Gulf of Mexico, from the airplane

After touching (safely) down in Tampa, I met up with a couple of my housemates – @Thatgirlallie and @whoisgregg – who were driving in from Tampa. We talked about how we came to the tweetup, went through the slowest drive-through imaginable, and ended up picking up another one of our housemates who was stranded at the Orlando airport @j4cob). We dropped our stuff off at #DiscoveryHouse, met a few more of our housemates – @MeganPrelinger, @CaliforniaKara, and @LisaAMcGill – and went off to listen to a band at an Irish pub.

Now, I also didn’t understand why we were going to an Irish pub while in Florida, but it turned out that the band has several members who are – I kid you not – astronauts.

That’s when reality started to sink in.

Cady Coleman (@Astro_Cady : STS-73, STS-93) on the flute,
and Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield : STS-74, STS-100) on guitar (left).
Photo graciously from @AdamZ .

We met up with the other houses in the area – #OmegaHouse and #HC39A – as well as our last housemate, @SWGlassPit, and began getting to know each other. It was much akin to meeting any group of people – where are you from, what do you do, what brought you here – except the answers ranged from “I’m just an administrative assistant” to “I’m an engineer for NASA.” There were lifelong space geeks fulfilling childhood dreams, and space enthusiasts there for the conversion - I mean, experience. The diversity of the those attending was impressive, and made for a well-rounded and inclusive community.

One of the most impressive things about this community is its eagerness to teach others and share information, without being condescending or pretentious. (In this manner, I found SpaceTweeps much akin to GeoTweeps.) But what impressed me the most was that, despite wildly disparate backgrounds and knowledge levels, everyone met each other on a (mostly) level playing field: having this incredible opportunity to get excited over the space program, meet incredible people, and watch the historic final launch of the space shuttle.

Much as we had a lot to talk about that night, we ended the evening fairly early: it was time to rest up for the eventful days ahead.

NASA Tweetup Pt 1: Heading Out

2011-07-06T11:16:00.001-07:00

Things have been really busy recently, and I haven’t had a chance to write a post about an important recent development: I got into the NASA Tweetup for the final space shuttle launch!!!!

Over the next three days, I’m going to be meeting all sorts space nerds, scientists, astronauts, and the administrators who make the launches happen. We’re going to take behind-the-scenes tours of Kennedy Space Center, and watch the shuttle launch from 3 miles away (in the press area.) Only 150 of NASA’s Twitter followers were selected to attend this event, so it’s quite a privilege and honor to be able to go.

A little bit of background: the last shuttle launch is scheduled to take place at 11:26am, Eastern Time. The Atlantis (named not after the mythical city, but rather after a research vessel from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute between 1930 and 1966) will be making a 12 day mission to deliver cargo to the Space Station: mainly, the Multi-purpose Logistics Module called Raffaello. This is a pressurized container filled with stuff; in this case, equipment and supplies to provision the Space Station after the Shuttle Program ends. It’s also going to carry up an experimental gadget designed to robotically refuel satellites while in orbit, an autonomous docking gadget, and carry some broken pieces of the Space Station back down to Earth.

Until a week ago, I was uncertain how to make it all work out. Switching shifts when working in a customer service position can be really tough: no one wants to be that jerk who left the visitor center short-staffed, annoying coworkers and bosses alike. My car had a minor breakdown, but for a spell I couldn’t figure out how I’d get to Boise. Both payday and the Flight Readiness Review (one of the final checks before officially setting the launch date) were on the 28th, so I was biting my nails that day. For various reasons, my ticket got booked for the wrong return date – another problem to deal with.

(Note: buying a plane ticket a week in advance prompts the airline to have the stewardesses come check you out personally. Their fears of rampant delinquency were quickly allayed when they realized that the seats surrounding me were filled with National Guardsmen. Who could make any sort of trouble when surrounded by soldiers with guns?)

Because of all the shift-switching, I worked eight 9-hour days in a row, and finally got into Boise last night at 2:30am, where I managed to catch a couple hours sleep in the parking lot of the local Wallmart, before waking up at 4:30a to get to the airport.

Right now, I’m delayed in the Phoenix airport, but hopefully soon I’ll trade this lovely scene:

for this one:

NASA

Is all this trouble (and money) worth the possibility of seeing a space shuttle launch? Totally. I’m so excited I could spit, and the reality hasn’t even really sunk in yet. I’m probably going to cry.

Even if it doesn’t launch, I’m sure I’ll still have a great time geeking out about space, shuttles, and NASA with other like-minded people. I’m staying in one of the group houses, right near the Atlantic ocean (!!) and going to the Everglades post-launch, so it should be a really great experience no matter what.

But I really hope the Shuttle launches as planned!

Cinder Cone Hike

2011-06-27T19:08:00.000-07:00

The hazard of living in new places is that, as soon as you step out your door, you see something fascinating. Here, I live atop a volcano that last erupted about 2,000 years ago, so all manner of exciting lava features are present. We have lots of time to explore the lava: we live 18 miles from the nearest civilization, and have no cell service or wifi, so our spare time consists mainly of reading, watching movies, and hiking. (Rough life, eh?)
A couple weeks ago, some of the rangers and I decided to go for a short hike up one of the cinder cones. While we were only out for a couple hours, we saw a huge variety of interesting things.
Wild alium (or onion) grows frequently on the sides of the cinder cones, and was just beginning to bloom. Native Americans used to use the bulbs in soup.
Many of the cinders here exhibit an iridescent, glassy sheen oddly reminiscent of an oil slick. (This iridescence shows up quite poorly in photographs, but is gorgeous in person.) I haven’t yet heard a satisfying explanation of how this happens, but I’m exploring it.
This is a ribbon bomb – the result of a small piece of lava stretching out and cooling as it flew through the air. This one seems to have twisted a little as it flew, resulting in this curled shape. This was the first time I’ve found bombs in the wild, so I stopped to examine every single one.
This is an iridescent ribbon bomb, which was quite exciting to find. Best of both worlds!
This is a type of volcanic bomb called a cow-pie bomb. They’re the result of a glob of erupted lava that began cooling, but was still partially liquid when it hit the ground, resulting in a squished appearance that exactly mimics that of a cow-pie.
When I first saw these cow-pie bombs, I thought “Oh, best not put my foot in that,” and advised my companions of the hazard.
Whereupon, one of the more experienced rangers reminded me that there are no cows in the National Monument.
We’re not in rangeland anymore, Toto.
This is some bitterroot just beginning to grow. Bitterroot has gorgeous white or pink flowers, which are usually between 1 and 2.5 inches across – a little larger than the plant is tall. The roots were used as a food by the Native Americans: the bitter taste disappears when boiled. These are some of my favorite flowers, so I’m quite looking forward to when they bloom.
We found a few chunks of tachylite, a type of volcanic glass that forms when lava cools very quickly, without having time to crystalize at all. This is like obsidian, but basaltic instead of rhyolitic. They’ve found a couple arrowheads made of tachylite here, but most of the arrowheads found here are obsidian from nearby Big Southern Butte, or from an obsidian bed in Utah.
One of the best parts of climbing up the cinder cones is the great view that one gets of the other nearby cones. This one is Inferno Cone, which actually has a short, steep trail up one side for visitors to climb up. Learning the names to so many cinder cones was a little tough at first, but this one is really easy to recognize this one because it’s entirely black, with a lone tree on top.
This is a dwarf monkeyflower, and it’s the another pink flower that favors cinders. These flowers are quite small – between a half inch to an inch. These flowers are growing mainly on the loess that has settled down amidst the cinders, rather than any homegrown soil – not enough time has passed for much of this lava to break down into soil.
Any home-grown soil that is found here owes much of its existence to lichen. We found many delightful varieties of lichen on this hike, in just about every color, including this fuzzy gray one. This lichen actually turns green if you pour water on it – definitely a fun trick. Lichens are a symbiotic relationship between a fungi and a lichen, and they are some of the first organisms to live in lava fields, breaking down the rock and forming soil for first mosses, then plants and animals, to live in.
(I also discovered my camera’s filters that day.)
This is a dead Limber Pine tree. These trees are very bendy, in order to cope with the wind, and frequently only have branches on one side. This one may have been killed by Dwarf Mistletoe, a native parasite that attacks the limber pine.
Living where you work can be kind of strange and stressful, but the location entirely makes up for it. When I have time, I really relish getting out of the house, off the beaten path, and into the sunshine – especially since the rocks and plants are fantastic.

Washington to Idaho Road Trip, Featuring Basalt

2011-06-14T15:07:00.001-07:00

About two weeks ago, in May, my mother and I set off from her house in Seattle to travel to Idaho. I live (and now work!) in Idaho, but was back home to visit my brother and sister-in-law, who were in town for a spell (and newly expecting a baby!) This trip was held together tenuously from the beginning, and quickly began to disintegrate along the way. Luckily, we got to see some awesome stuff along the way.

Our first stop was Mt. St. Helens, always a favorite stop. I’ve never been here so early in the season, so I’ve never seen it so snowy! This iconic view from the Johnston Ridge Observatory really lets you look into the crater and see the lava domes (here, due to the snow, they look like a vague bump towards the back of the crater.) This spot also gives you a good look at the Pumice Plain, (the low area in the foreground) that consists of debris avalanche hummocks mostly covered in pyroclastic flows and ash fall deposits.

This is a nice outcrop near the Johnston Ridge Observatory, that really clearly demonstrates the layered nature of stratovolcanoes. You can see different lava flows (andesitic and basaltic) alternating with layers of ash and possibly pyroclastic flows (in this instance, I’m not sure which it is, or whether it is a combination of both.) All the different colors are a result of hydrothermal alteration on groundwater that seeps into the deposits, is heated by the still warm deposits, and encounters pockets of gas.

Once we left Portland, the cold my mother had been fighting off finally caught up to her. We stopped in a town called Cascade Locks for the night, slept in late the next morning, and then got some restorative chowder before heading out.

We took a short side trip off I-84 on an Oregon 30 between Mosier, OR and The Dalles, OR. When I was first moving to Idaho, we discovered this scenic jaunt, and it was great to see it again. Partway through, there’s an overlook of the Columbia River and the Columbia River Flood Basalts at a place called Rowena Crest.

The road down from the overlook is this delightful road called the Rowena Loops. It’s quite exciting (especially for one’s passengers!)

Somewhere along the highway near Pendleton, we pulled off the highway to look at this cool cement plant. After this, though, we encountered some pretty intense rain, and ended up staying in La Grande for a night.

Once we got to Boise and picked up my car, we joyfully discovered that it had some sort of gas leak. (This heap – I mean, jeep is beginning to get on my nerves.) We dropped it off at the shop, and drove into the foothills above Boise to camp. Along the way, we stopped at Diversion Dam. It was built in 1909 to supply water to another, older system of canals, to irrigate nearby farmland.

One of the cooler things about it was the logway – a special portion of the dam constructed to allow logs from logging upstream to pass through the dam. (The area upstream is the Boise National Forest)

It was interesting to see how the water from the less constricted logway (on the left) interacted with the water that was forced through the dam. Despite having an initially smaller outlet, the greater force enabled it to travel farther & spread out more before the turbulence achieved equilibrium. (I’m sure there’s a better way to phrase that, but my engineering-oriented physics class didn’t cover fluid dynamics… which is what I personally wanted to study! Someday maybe I’ll get to.)

We passed by several reservoirs, including this one. The differential erosion happening in the basalt here was really fascinating – the lower flow must be much harder, to have resisted so much more than the upper flow.

The road passed through areas of this potassium feldspar rich granite. The best exposures were alongside one of the dams, where the road was quite literally one lane carved into the cliffside, frequented by large trucks hauling boats. Needless to say, we didn’t really stop for picture taking.

When we finally began pitching our tent, we realized that the rainfly was still in Washington – and rain was predicted. My mum had this great idea to make one out of free garbage sacks and little bits of tape – which luckily worked pretty well, though it didn’t rain.

After that, we picked up my car (which luckily only had a leak in the fuel lines!) and checked the weather forecast. Since it was predicted to rain more and my mum was still under the weather, we decided to part company that day, instead of camping through the weekend. She headed west to Washington, and I headed east to my summer job. Much as a few days of mother-daughter camping would have been fun, it was nice to just call it quits and end the stress.

Weird AND Scenic: Accretionary Wedge #34

2011-06-05T12:17:00.000-07:00

“… a weird and scenic landscape peculiar to itself” was how President Calvin Coolidge described Craters of the Moon when he proclaimed it a National Monument in May of 1924. For my entry in the Accretionary Wedge #34, hosted by the lovely Dana Hunter over at En Tequila Es Verdad, I'd like to talk a little bit about some of the weird things we have here!

In 2000, the original boundaries of the Monument were expanded to overlap with an area of BLM land, and the area is now managed cooperatively by the NPS and the BLM, and is now a National Monument and Preserve instead. I’m working this summer for the BLM, but am stationed at the NPS Monument, to increase knowledge of this cooperative management. *

The name and managing organization may have changed, but the landscape remains, well, weird. And scenic.

Craters of the Moon is comprised of about 60 lava flows covering 54,000 acres, and spanning 13,000 year of time. This is the most recent area of volcanism on the Eastern Snake River Plain; altogether, the sheer mass of lava erupted throughout the ESRP has depressed the crust, resulting in a (mostly) flat valley 100 km wide. The eruptions at Craters of the Moon are the result of a 52 mile long tear where two plates of the Earth’s crust pulled away from each other, much like in Iceland or sub-Saharan Africa. The volcanoes in this picture are cinder cones that formed alongside the Great Rift.

This picture shows a close-up of the same lava pictured above. This is the Blue Dragon flow, named because it’s spiny texture and blue glass coating reminded early explorers of the skin of a blue dragon. The spiny texture is the result of bubbles in the lava being stretched and popped as the flow moved; the origin of the blue glass is still unknown, although it is suspected to either be the result of higher than normal titanium concentrations or a process similar to “glazing” a pot.

This picture illustrates another reason why Craters of the Moon is weird: bimodal volcanism. In the foreground, we have the fluid basaltic lava flows of Craters of the Moon, and, in the background, the 800 meter tall rhyolitic dome of Big Southern Butte (which lies outside the monument.) This butte was formed when very viscous lava flows piled upon one another. (It is also thought to extend about 1000 meters below the surface of the earth, but has isostatically sunk due to it’s weight.)

The compositions of these two lava types are about as disparate as lava types can get: basalt has low concentrations of silica, and rhyolite has high concentrations of silica. It is suspected that, in this location, the two lavas come from roughly the same origin, but proceeded through different paths through the Earth, which resulted in differing compositions. They both are a result of the Yellowstone Hot Spot heating the asthenosphere as the North American plate passed above it. The rhyolitic lava travelled up through the continental crust above, melting it and absorbing the silica. Later, when crustal extension of the basin and range province stretched the area out, the silica-poor crust melted (mainly by decompression), and cracked open, creating the rift zone at Craters of the Moon. Gravity readings under Craters of the Moon suggest that there may be a thick sill of gabbro, that was once part of a reservoir for feeding the basalt flows above the surface.

Another really weird part of Craters of the Moon are the blocks of lava shown in the center of this picture. One of the more recent flows of the North Crater broke apart the crater wall, and rafted chunks of the wall along the top of the flow. These crater wall pieces dot the landscape in an eerie monolithic fashion, like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And here’s the North Crater itself, with one of the rafted blocks in the foreground. The area where the flow broke out is on the back and right side of the cone seen here. The asymmetrical shape of this cone is due to the cinders accumulating on the downwind side of the vent.

Early emigrants passing through this area by wagon train described this area as “black vomit.” These early emigrants, after travelling across a harsh and demanding area, almost entirely void of water or shelter, were too weary to contemplate appreciate the landscape. Those of us privileged enough to visit in this modern day find it easier to look past the difficult environment to the gorgeous volcanic scenery and awesomely weird geology.

* Normally, I wouldn't say who I work for, however my lawyer-mother recommended I do. Plus, it's pretty stinking obvious. Please don't think anything I say is the official opinion of the BLM or the NPS, and remember that I'm still learning about this area and geology generally. Also, please don't stalk me. If you're in the area, however, please feel free to say hi!

Airplane scenery, Boise–Seattle

2011-05-25T21:59:00.001-07:00

After finals, I decided to visit some family and friends in Seattle for a few days, before travelling out to my summer job. There was much hurried packing and rushing and I barely made it to the airport with an hour to spare.

Which was fine, since my plane was grounded for four hours due to mechanical difficulties.

Once we finally made it into the air, we saw some great airplane scenery.

Sad plane.

Looking at the Snake River Plain from a (snakeless) plane. (The Western Snake River Plain is a large graben.)

Mt. Adams, seen from a distance.

Admiring Mt. Rainier while sipping some (free!) white wine made for the perfect flight.

Then we descended into the clouds, which oddly reminded me of the Titanic sinking…

… and arrived atop Seattle! This is I-90 floating bridge that crosses Lake Washington, with some nice drumlin hills in the background. (Lake Washington is a ribbon lake that formed when the Cordilleran ice sheet was sculpting the region, and acted as a drainage point for the ice sheet as it melted.)

We also got a nice view of Boeing field, a small regional airport used primarily for small airlines, private planes, cargo flights, and military landings. (It was originally used as a place for the Boeing Company to move their planes about, and is still used for tests to this day.)

Then we got a nice view of downtown Seattle and the Puget Sound.

And, last but not least, the Space Needle.

A question for geologists:

2011-05-02T01:23:00.001-07:00

Within the next semester or so, I need to decide whether to major in geology or geophysics. After some deliberation, I’ve decided to proceed with my initial impulse to aim for a career in volcanology, with a specific aim of working in monitoring and eruption prediction. I’ve done some reading about various ways to monitor volcanoes, and I’m getting the impression that a degree in geophysics might be a better preparation than a geology degree for this particular specialty.
My concerns about this thought process are as follows:

I may have no idea what I’m talking about. Perhaps a geology degree would be perfectly fine preparation for volcanology, or perhaps an even better one. Making decisions based on possibly serious misconceptions makes me quite hesitant. (The last time I did that, I ended up two tattoos, several thousand dollars of loan debt, and a personally translated copy of chapter 16 of Homer’s “Odyssey.”)
I’m not sure I can hack higher-level math and computer-based processing. (The difference is 4 credits of multivariable calculus, 6 credits of computer science, and the 16 geophysics credits themselves.)
That being said, I’m also concerned about my GPA: perhaps a higher geology GPA would be preferable to a lower geophysics GPA when applying for graduate school. (And my GPA is already embarrassingly low.)
That I might be talking myself out of something I need to do, or into something I don’t need to do.

I know that the real decision point is grad school, but I need to make this particular choice within a few months. As part of my neurotic research, I was wondering if the geoblogsphere might be so kind as to advise me on the following questions:

Is volcano monitoring and eruption prediction best approached from geophysics or geology?
Which might best prepare me for jobs?
How painful is multivariable calculus? (Where 1 = “Basket-weaving” and 10 = “Ancient Greek.”)
What do grad school programs look for in applicants, generally? And GPAs, specifically?
Am I over-thinking this decision?

In exchange, I offer this song about earthquakes:
I’d like to make a well-informed decision, so I’d appreciate any advice or counsel you can offer!

Back East, Pt I: Baltimore & Atlanta

2011-04-10T23:53:00.000-07:00

I recently spent a few weeks visiting relatives back on the East coast. While that’s not really appropriate fodder for this blog, I also saw some fantastic places that I took altogether too many photos of.

2,500 photos too many.I had never been to the East Coast before, and was most impressed with the great architecture, and the sheer quantity of it. Our first stop was Johns Hopkins University, to visit my sister and wait for her to finish classes, and it didn’t disappoint in architecture either.

My sister took us around to her favorite places on campus, including the building that houses a robot surgeon, and her favorite lecture halls.

After that, we visited the Inner Harbor, where we ate tapas, bought shoes, and touched the Chesapeake Bay/Atlantic Ocean. We also had some strange wafer-like cookie covered with frosting/fudge/ganache called a Berger. These are a regional specialty, but were a little too sweet for even my sweet tooth.

I also tried octopus, which was basically like gnawing on a giant piece of whale blubber. It was good, as long as you didn’t think about the little crispy suckers.

While in Baltimore, we stayed at the Baltimore Hostel, a charming, quiet hostel in a fancy old row-house. It was close to the harbor, and to some nice restaurants, so it made a good home base.

As soon as my sister was done with her classes, we jet-setted off to Atlanta. There, we spent about four days with one of my great-aunts, who is quite ill with Parkinson's. It was stressful being there, but it was really good to visit her, meet a few other family members, and finish up a few school assignments. It would have been nice to stay longer, but we had another aunt to visit before my sister’s break was over.

My great-aunt was quite insistent that we go see Atlanta, so we spent an afternoon in the city. We started out at by visiting the Cyclorama, a circular painting depicting the Battle of Atlanta, which, if lain flat, would cover an entire football field. You sit on a stage inside the painting, and then the stage rotates slowly as a guide points out important facets of the painting. In the lobby of the Cyclorama sits the “Texas",” a steam locomotive involved in “The Great Locomotive Chase” of the Civil War. (The steam engines in this chase typically averaged a whopping 15 mph.)

After that, we really wanted to see an antebellum house, and managed to find one that was still open – the Herndon Home. It turned out that the Herdon Home isn’t just a nice house, but also the home of Atlanta’s first black millionare, Alonzo Herndon. Alonzo Herndon was born into slavery, but became trained as a barber, and eventually opened up his own shop. He then proceeded to become involved in real estate, and then bought what became Atlanta Life Insurance Company. The house was mainly furnished by his first wife, an actress and elocution teacher at Atlanta University, who had great taste in home design. I had honestly just been looking for a pretty house, but the history behind the Herndon Home made it one of my favorite discoveries of our trip.

After that, we headed off to Virginia and Washington D.C., which really warrants a post in of itself!

Scenic South Idaho

2011-03-24T05:00:00.000-07:00

When I tell people that I moved to Idaho, they react in a couple different ways: enthusiasm about the region’s beauty, or badly veiled confusion and disgust.

Sometimes, instead of waxing poetic about rocks and getting eye-rolls, I opt for simplicity and just mention sunsets, big skies, and weird plants.

Yellowstone Pictures, Pt. II

2011-03-23T06:00:00.000-07:00

I’m over on the east coast, doing some family visits, and thought I’d use the occasion to post some photos from this past summer/fall, that have heretofore been unpublished. This first set is from a trip to Yellowstone – there are a few more pictures here.

The entrance sign near West Yellowstone, WY. (Which has an incredible 4th of July fireworks show!)

Mud pots! (I bet that’d make a great face mask… not that I advise trying!)

The view overlooking one of the geyser boardwalks. It was really comforting to think about so many people enjoying and learning about geology!

Spasm Geyser.

Near Prismatic Spring. (I overheard a private tour guide saying that the best viewpoint for Prismatic Spring was actually the parking lot for Fairy Falls, but we didn’t get a chance to check out that tip.)

Sunset Lake.

The Old Faithful Inn’s interior is spectacular! (And the ice-cream is very good also.)

Old Faithful Geyser.

Avoca Spring, possibly.

Hint: Madison campground has no showers - which means that you can frequently get a site without a reservation!

Another hint: Getting a back-country hiking/camping permit is pretty easy, but watching the Bear Country Camping video does take some time. As does buying the required bear spray and ropes for hanging food. Oh, and they like it if you research trails in advance, instead of showing up the day of and asking for whatever slots are open. We got a permit, but by the time we got to the trailhead, realized we couldn’t get to camp before sunset, when the bears come out to rummage through your groceries, and the rangers require you to be off the trails.

Another hint: advance planning is probably a good idea when visiting a major tourist attraction! We had a good time, but that would have made it a great time.

(Another note for unprepared/impromptu travellers: if want to hike the Grand Canyon, but lack the permit/reservations, you can sometimes get cancellations the morning of! My family’s actually had that work out twice. You definitely want to be in sufficient physical condition, however!)

Accretionary Wedge #32: Carnival of Blogs

2011-03-06T00:58:00.001-08:00

Ann at Ann's Musings on Geology & Other Things is hosting March’s Accretionary Wedge, with the special Mardi Gras theme of a parade of favorite geology pictures!

It’s always hard to pick a favorite geology picture, but this wintery Crater Lake panorama tops my list right now. Crater Lake is one of my favorite places, and it was exciting to visit in the winter! The perfect mirroring effect was particularly stunning. In person, the sky and water were the same color, making the caldera look like an arch in the sky.

Caving in Montana: Crystals Galore

2011-02-23T22:20:00.001-08:00

These are well-known caves that are publically accessible with a permit. If you would like more information, or would like to view any of my site-specific references, please feel free to send me an email at helena.heliotrope at gmail.com. If you’d like to visit the caves, please contact the BLM Field Office in Cody at 307-578-5900, and ask about their caves!
In the fall of 2009, I got to go on an epic caving weekend near the Montana-Wyoming border. I talked briefly about some interesting chert nodules here, but I was honestly holding out on the best stuff: the formations.
The caves here are formed in the limestones and dolomites of the Madison group. These rocks formed between 360 to 325 million years ago, in the Mississippian, when a relatively tranquil, shallow sea covered the area. Like most seas, this one was filled with small organisms that had calcium shells or skeletons (such as corals or amoeboids.) When these organisms died, their decaying corpses were slowly compressed into limestone. Above the limestone lies a layer of reddish sandstone called the Amsden laid down in the Pennsylvanian, visible as the red streak in the above picture. After undergoing a sequence of uplift and subsidence, it was uplifted to its current level during the Laramide orogeny, about 70 million years ago. This created joints in the limestone that would someday become caves.
(It’s a really structurally interesting area – some of the nearby mountains are uplifted in a giant anticline, while the ones in the above picture are fault blocks that were tilted upwards.)
The Madison group stretches from South Dakota to eastern Idaho, and from Canada down into Colorado and Arizona, although the name differs regionally. Since limestone is very soluble, it’s chock-a-block with caves, including Lewis and Clark Caverns in Montana. Because of its solubility, it forms a very important aquifer, and has produced a prodigious amount of oil – over 1,400,000,000 barrels. (Pretty impressive for a bunch of dead sea critters!)These caves were eroded as the basin lay beneath the water table, in a process called phreatic erosion. Phreatic erosion occurs as the water flows through cracks and joints, eroding passages through the limestone. This passageways travel in all directions: the above photo shows a vertical, cream colored passage cutting through different bedding planes. Additionally, we saw some collapse along bedding planes, which created some fantastic flat roofs, visible here in the greyish section. Dating caves can be difficult (much like men), however some ash found in these caves is from an Yellowstone eruption 640 thousand years ago.
(I apologize for the poor picture – it’s quite difficult to take decent photos of large cave rooms without secondary light sources.)
This is a trace fossil we found on one of the bedding plane ceilings – it’s where a sea creature was burrowing, or eating, or squirming along. (The paleontologist on the trip provided some more details, but I’ve unfortunately forgotten.) I had never seen a fossil in the wild before, so this was one of the trip’s highlights.
The first cave we went to is the most challenging cave I’ve been in so far, despite being entirely horizontal. The entrance is through a 100’ long crawlway – which sometimes is only 15” tall. (I definitely got stuck a couple times!) The floor of this crawlway is thickly coated with radon-laden dust: to avoid developing radioactive cavers, the BLM limits the time you can spend in the cave each year. We wore dust masks, to cut down on the amount of junk we inhaled, but that only served to make me more claustrophobic. This was even more heightened by the heat – it was the warmest cave I’ve ever been in. It was a pretty rough beginning, but we were richly rewarded for all that effort with masses and masses of my favorite formation – helictites.
I didn’t have my camera that day, but I did the next day, when we visited the second cave. The day of this trip, snow was predicted, so we only spent the morning underground. (The road to the caves requires a 4wd vehicle generally, but is reportedly impassable in bad weather.) Luckily, as we ascended out of the cave right as the snow began falling, and made it to paved roads just in time.
The caves have a wide variety of calcite formations, including helictites, rafts, and some really large cave popcorn. Additionally, they have gypsum flowers and crusts, epsomite crystal curls, and aragonite needles. These all form near each other, making for some truly impressive photographs.
This last photograph is an interesting chunk of yellow and red crystal crust that was forming in a hole in the ground. I still don’t know what it is…
This is the underside of a rock, absolutely encrusted with black crystals.
As we headed back to civilization, there was an antelope hanging out, clueless about what lay beneath its small cloven hoofs.

Amurrica

2011-02-04T23:46:00.001-08:00

This is a map I made for my first GIS class, in 2009. The goal was to subdivide the country into regions, not in accordance to state lines.

My aim was to be sassy, but not wholly offensive.

I should really use my powers for good...

(I’m not sure why it’s stretched – I think the projection is incorrect.)

Claymation, Bicycles, Velociraptors, and my Sister

2011-01-29T16:14:00.001-08:00

This is the video I made for my sister’s cancer charity! The creation of this really was a family effort, involving both my parents, myself, and two of my uncles. Watching the claymation mitosis come together from 175 individual images was incredible. When I was younger, I attended a summer film camp for girls, and it was nice to see that I hadn’t lost all the skills I learned there. It took a looong time to get up to speed on the new editing software, sort through all the clips, and polish it into a finished product, but I’m really quite pleased with the final results.

Even if you can’t afford or don’t wish to donate to her cause, you should follow her twitter or tumblr, because she’s going to be posting exciting things as she travel across the country!

Plus, she’s probably going to cure cancer someday, so you might want to just learn her name now. When they finally name element 118, it’ll be “Rosemarium.”

AW #30: The Moon is Made of Toasted Coconut.

2011-01-29T01:37:00.001-08:00

The Accretionary Wedge #30 was a Geologic Bake Sale! Baking is one of my favorite hobbies, and I wanted to do something new and exciting for this challenge.

When I saw this recipe, inspiration struck. The flakes of coconut lay so lightly atop one another, as though they were gently supporting each other without actually touching…

… which is exactly what happens on the moon!

Regolith is akin to soil on the Earth: it’s the layer of unconsolidated material over the bedrock. The moon’s regolith is composed of bedrock pulverized by meteorites and “micrometeorites” – meteorites that are under a millimeter in size. Over the long life-span of the Moon, these micrometeorites have succeeded in completely altering its surface. (Just goes to show how concentrated effort over time can yield immense results!)

The top portion (3 – 5 m) of the regolith is composed of really fine-grained, loose particles. These sort of “float” on the surface: they are held together in layers by Van der Waal forces. (Van der Waal forces occur when charged molecules are very gently pulled toward oppositely charged molecules, and are very weak.) This is very similar to the uppermost, lightly held together layer of coconut.

The bottom portion of the regolith is more solid, and frequently referred to as the “megaregolith.” This is a layer of very fractured bedrock, 2 – 3 km thick on the highlands, and about 1 km thick on the maria. Here, it’s the more consolidated layer of coconut.

Much as Earth-soil has different varieties, the regolith has two different components: glass spherules and agglutinates. Glass spherules form when melted rock from a meteor impact solidifies in mid-flight, not having enough time to form a crystal structure. (Similar to how obsidian is formed very quickly from lava.) Agglutinates are glassy breccias composed of rock bits and vesicles containing gas from solar winds, all held together with rapidly melted rock.

Under all of that is the bedrock of the moon, anorthosite and basalt. I decided to have a simple basalt/brownie bedrock – this section of the moon is somewhere in a flood-basalt mare (or "sea”,) to account for it’s thin layer of megaregolith.

These are the ingredients needed to create an edible Moonscape. Some of these were doubled, as I needed to make some extra bedrock, which I flavored with two packets of that Starbucks Via instant coffee. Additionally, I used 10 oz of coconut, and an extra splash of milk, to increase the bulk of my regolith.

And this is the Moon, post-baking! Note how that regolith seems soft and fluffy.

This is a futuristic moon bubble, to protect this patch of regolith from any wandering spacemen…

… of which there were several, repeatedly! Colonizing in Moon lava tubes might be a better idea after all…

After everything had a chance to cool, I set about to make the crater. (We’ll discuss actual crater formation in a minute!)

To do this, I punched a hole in the coconut slab, and set it atop the brownie bedrock layer. There was some minor excavation of that layer as well. Using bits of brownie, I constructed the central peak of the crater, and placed some fragmented bedrock inside the crater. Using the extra coconut slab, I carefully compiled a reverse layer of ejecta around the crater.

To prepare the melt for the inside of the crater, I melted a Cookies and Crème bar in the microwave (not for too long or it burns!) and poured it into the crater. After engaging in a little careful destruction to create collapsed crater walls, the Moonscape was done!

Here’s a close up of the side, giving a better look at the overturned regolith/ejecta layer, and the added bedrock.

(A simple line diagram of central peak craters is found here, in case the deliciousness of mine is distracting.)

When a meteorite impacts the moon, the ground is rapidly compressed downwards, away from the incoming meteorite. After the meteorite impacts, this pressure is released, allowing the material to rapidly – and explosively – decompress, creating the crater.

When the crater floor decompresses, the bedrock under the crater rises up to create a central peak – if the crater is larger than about 50 km. (Craters larger than a couple hundred km in diameter are called impact basins, and develop both a central peak and 1+ upraised rings inside the basic. Craters smaller than 50 km are called simple craters, and lack the central peak entirely.)

When the compressed regolith rapidly expands, it blows the surrounding regolith away from the crater, creating a ring of over-turned stratigraphy. Because of this phenomenon, the older and deeper material gets thrown farthest from the center of the crater. This is visible in the layer of brownie bedrock atop the ejected coconut.

Frequently, the bedrock in the crater floor is fractured, and magma seeps through to the surface, creating a puddle of magma-cemented breccia, sometimes referred to as “melt” – or, in this case, the melted chocolate. Additionally, the walls of medium and large craters frequently suffer from landslides, due to their tall, steep walls.

Now, there are two scientific inaccuracies in this edible diagram: 1) there should be a larger cloud of finer ejecta, and 2) for the bedrock to be so exposed, the crater should be larger in diameter.

But, space constraints aside, it was a fairly accurate model, and tasty to boot!

(My main references for this were my notes from a planetary geology class I took a couple summers ago. Since those aren't online, I've merely linked to some informative wikipedia pages. Say what you will about wikipedia's accuracy, it's still a good starting point!)

Montana, Chert, and the 1960s.

2011-01-26T22:33:00.001-08:00

Two years ago, this rock really caught my eye while I was caving in the Madison Group of Montana.
First of all, there’s a nifty calcite or gypsum encrusted pocket, which looks much like a sparkly pothole…

(My assumption is that this formed as water seeped through the limestone into a small hole, and then crystallized on the hole’s walls.)
Then there’s the missing chunk, which gives a nice look at a crazy banded chert nodule.

If that chert nodule embodies John Lennon’s “Magical Mystery Tour” era, this nearby chert nodule is more Jackie Kennedy:

Way to keep it classy, chert.

Two Whirlwind Weeks

2011-01-11T23:39:00.001-08:00

Two weeks ago, I decided to move to Boise. I was accepted into Boise State University in early December, but financial matters kept waffling the decision until immediately before the New Year.

Since that decision, life has gotten pretty wild. There was a pretty epic cousins sleepover, consisting of myself and four teenagers all sleeping in my parent’s living room. (This basically prompted a regression into the depths of childhood.) There were two New Year’s parties, one of which may have involved bottom shelf booze. There was an excessive amount of detail-hammering-out in mundane preparation for the move.

Then there was the move itself, which was honestly the most painful road-trip I’ve ever been on. It began with yowling cats, and ended with driving snow. It was the longest 500 miles I’ve ever driven.

Now I’m settling into my new place in Boise, trying to get a driver’s license, looking for a job, and registering for classes! I got an introductory geophysics class, and an anthropology class, and am very excited to begin classes next week!

Immediately before the move, I helped my sister shoot a video promoting the John Hopkins 4K for Cancer. This summer, she’s going to be riding her bicycle from Baltimore to Seattle, raising money for cancer research and volunteering with cancer patients along the way. She’s a molecular and cellular biology undergraduate student at John Hopkins, and an avid cyclist. She just started a blog chronicling her training, and eventually her ride, at rosemary4k4cancer.tumblr.com.

It’s been some time since I did film editing, so it’s taking longer than expected. But as soon as it’s done, I’ll post it here!

After all, how can you say no to claymation cellular replication?

2010 Travel Meme: The PNW Edition

2011-01-02T13:51:00.001-08:00

This travel meme seems to be a geoblogosphere favorite! This year, Silver Fox started it, and has a list of this year’s participants. I’m a little late, but better late than never, eh? In 2010, I visited a mere 4 states – but lived in 3 of them!

In January, I hiked up Mt. Si with my family and some of my mum’s caver friends. It was a little chilly at the top, but what a view! Also, my family took a day trip to the Portland Art Museum (and Voodoo Doughnuts!) At the time, I lived in Olympia, Wa. (The state capital, 2.5 hours from Seattle, and the hipster-little-sister-city to Portland, much to the chagrin of Olympians everywhere.)

In February, I went to visit Oregon Caves National Monument with the Cascade Grotto for a conservation weekend. I picked some lint, but my father and another power-tool devotee removed a large piece of metal from the cave, dangling on rope, wielding reciprocating saws.

In March, my friend Sarah visited, and we went on a lovely lake hike with her mum near Brown Creek.

Also in March, I visited Discovery Park in Seattle with my school’s geology club. We looked at the glacial deposits there, including the Lawton Clay, Esperance Sand, and the Fraser till. Underneath all the glacial deposits lie the pre-glacial, river-deposited, and highly photogenic Olympia Beds.

In April, I visited Elliot Bay Book Company in their Pioneer Square location, the day before they moved to a new location in Capital Hill. There was a reason – high rent or some hogwash – for the move, but I think the new location is fugly compared to the creaky wood floors and dark, brick-lined basement café. Pfft.

In May, I visited the Columbia River Flood Basalts twice: once on a geology club field trip, where we visited Dry Falls, Grand Coulee dam, and went on a geology hike…

… and once on a Northwest Geological Society field trip, focusing on structural geology. I haven’t studied much structural geology yet, so this basically blew my mind, especially this scenic anticline. Overall, it was a pretty basalt-tastic month.

In June, I had a fun-filled four-finals week, and then packed up my apartment and moved to South Idaho. On the way, I swung by the John Day Fossil Beds in Oregon.

In July, I was busy travelling around Idaho, doing an internship at Craters of the Moon.

In August, I went to north Idaho for a trip through Papoose Cave. We rappelled down a 22’ waterfall, but, unfortunately, the 40’ waterfall had too much water to rappel through. We got to see some great limestone during the short trip, but no formations.

After that, my sister and I took a trip to Yellowstone, where we saw hot springs, microbial mats, and a bunch of animals.

In September, I went to the Northwest Caving Association Regional in Bend, Oregon, and saw even more lava caves (and some long tree roots!) Then I finished up my internship and moved back to my parent’s house in the Seattle/Tacoma suburbs.

In October, I went on the annual bike riding / wine tasting trip in Eastern Washington with my parents and their friends. (I always hope for some hilarious middle-aged drunken hijinks, but they’re all too wise for that nonsense.) Also, my brother graduated from Universal Technical Institute in Phoenix, and we went to see him and his wife. During the plane ride, I got a great aerial view of some nearby volcanoes.

The day after returning from Phoenix, I moved my possessions into my parent’s van, and drove down to Oregon Caves to work on a restoration project.

In November, we visited Crater Lake. We went home to Washington for Thanksgiving, and then returned to the caves for more work.

In December, we travelled back to Washington. Before that massive snows and a power outage made life a little adventurous, but we got to have an active lesson in static and kinetic friction, and how the coefficient of friction of ice is different than that of pavement. Sometimes this was bad…

… but sometimes it was pretty useful.

On our way back, we visited some of the historic covered bridges in Cottage Grove, Oregon.

Before the New Year, we visited Seattle three times. (My mother likens these shipping cranes to Brachiosauruses.) We did a toursity gig – the ballet, Pike Place Market, the waterfront… It was really nice to visit the city a couple times before I move to Boise next week.

Here’s hoping 2011 has some more travel adventures, and that everyone had a happy New Years!

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T17:49:00.001-08:00

(We’re taking the lazy Trendy-Tacky Table-Top Tree Tactic this year.)

Two-sided Dike

2010-12-17T11:45:00.001-08:00

This is one of my favorite cave features here at Oregon Caves National Monument. It’s a quartz diorite dike encrusted with calcite.

Water (carrying minerals) flows through cracks in the marble bedrock. Quartz diorite is less permeable than marble, and when the water is unable to seep through. Instead, it flows down the surface of the dike, coating one side with calcite formations.
This is my favorite example of this, but there’s a much more prominent one along the tour route, so you should visit sometime!
If you’d like to learn more about the caves, you should read Ranger Gaelyn’s fantastic cave tour part one and part two!

Slick-n-slide

2010-12-08T10:16:00.001-08:00

Ok, so the technical name for this is “slickenside,” but I find “slickenslide” easier to remember.

(I loved the concept of slip n’ slides as a child.)

Anyway, a slickenside is created as the two sections of rock alongside a fault move past each other, slowly polishing the surfaces of the rock. This creates smooth, slick rock faces along a fault line. Sometimes you can find “slickenlines” on the slickenside, which are small, directional scrap marks left by the movement.

In the above picture, the slickenside (and fault) cross at about 35 degrees from the left to the right. In the below picture, the slickenside is more difficult to see, but is at about 60 degrees.

That, it should be noted, is the definition of slickenside that I learned on a field trip – if anyone has a more technical definition, I would be really interested to hear it!

Adorable, Rabies-Ridden Critters

2010-12-02T00:23:00.001-08:00

Many years ago, I was 13, and hiking in the Grand Canyon with my family. We paused near a French family: a mother, a father, and a boy – a cute boy. He was feeding trail-mix to a chipmunk, despite the numerous, multi-lingual signs to the contrary. Luckily, my mother is fluent in French, and was willing to explain the problem to him.

“Excusez-moi,” she said. “You are not allowed to feed the animals.”

The boy looked at her like she was crazy. “Pouquoi?” He asked, empty hand dangling in the air.

“Well, feeding the animals can make them sick. Also, it makes them not afraid of humans. They can become aggressive.”

“Agressifs?’ he asked – just as the chipmunk lashed out and bit a chunk out of his hand.

There was shouting, and shooing, and bleeding… and my mother, explaining to his mother how to get rabies shots.

The moral here? Don’t feed the animals, or assume cute French boys are intelligent.

The Upsides and Downsides of Mountains

2010-11-30T22:28:00.001-08:00

I’ve lived in Western Washington for a total of twenty-one years, so it’s really easy for me to answer this month’s Accretionary Wedge (#29!) as posed by Ann at Ann's Musings on Geology & Other Things: "What Geological features about the area you call 'home' do you love? and what do you not like?"

Washington can be divided very roughly into thirds: Eastern Washington, home to the Missoula Flood-carved Columbia River Flood Basalts; Western Washington, with thick glacial deposits and steep stratovolcanoes in the Cascade Mountains; and the Olympic Penninsula, which is an accretionary wedge, with the uplifted Olympic Mountains.

My favorite geological features are the volcanoes. These result from the subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate beneath the North American plate:

Cascades Volcano Observatory

Mt. Rainier

Mt. St. Helens

Mt. Adams

Now, my least favorite geological features of Western Washington are also the Cascades, because they help cause the massive, constant amounts of rain.

sequimwa.com

The Olympics create a rain shadow, but they aren’t so high that all the moisture condenses and falls: the rest is carried over the Puget Sound. As it does so, it picks up more moisture, which then condenses as it rises over the Cascades, dropping all over Western Washington.

That’s why it rains 365 days out of the year (or at least feels like it!)

Thus, my Theory of Seattle: the rain nourishes the trees and shrubbery, which grows profusely and blocks out the light. Between the rain and the trees, everyone wants to stay indoors – thus, the major IT industry begins. Between the masses of commuters and the nasty dim weather, rush hour runs rampant. Since everyone codes late into the night and has to get up early to beat the traffic, the immense coffee culture is started. Thus, the population has a Vitamin D deficiency, stares at computers constantly, is always struck in traffic, and gets regularly strung out on coffee, resulting in perpetual depression and tweakiness. Thus leading to the reign of 90s grunge music, which also contributes to the high suicide rate.

That’s my theory, at least. And I’m sticking to it.

I’ll be honest: I’ve had my fill of the dreary rain and endless rush hour.

So, I’m going to study Geology at Boise State University next year!

Boil, Boil, Toil and Trouble: Lava Cave Features

2010-11-18T19:49:00.000-08:00

Lava tubes frequently show fantastic features, and I saw some really cool features while I was interning through the GeoCorps Program with the BLM at Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. Some of the more decorative formations are the result of boiling gases inside the lava. Honestly, I hadn’t seen many of these formations before this internship, so it was very exciting!

It was interesting to learn more about lava: how the tube walls themselves cool, how secondary flows erode the original tube, how both cohesiveness and fluidity contribute to form features, and how the pressure in the flow creates different landscapes (like pressure ridges and tumuli.) Being able to observe a great quantity of lava over the course of three months was highly educational - even if I can’t cite lava facts of statistics, I know more about the characteristics of lava by seeing so much of it.

I know I haven’t given much information on the region’s geology itself, but that’s because I get too darned excited about lava tubes.

As the ceiling of a lava tube is cooling: first the exterior layers, and then the interior. Once the exterior layer has begun congealing, gases in the interior lava can boil, squeezing lava out through the exterior layers. (Kind of like a pasta machine.) As this lava drips down, the sides of the drip cool, leaving the liquid lava inside. This liquid lava can then flow to the bottom of the stalactite, creating a hollow space. Sometimes the last bit of the drip falls off the stalactite, other times it plugs the stalactite up. The left picture shows some stubby stalactites from Craters of the Moon, and the right picture shows some really delicate “soda straw” stalactites from near Mt. St. Helens.

If the lava inside these stalactites drips onto the ground, it can pile up to form a stalagmite. I didn’t see many in Idaho, but the ones I did see were really tall. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera that day, but I also saw some good ones in Bend this summer.

These are called “stalagpies” by the local cavers, but are more widely known as lava roses, especially when they have a clearly defined series of concentric rings. I think they look a bit gross, but they can form in a really nifty fashion: when lava boils from under a semi-cooled floor, the pressure of the gases pushes the lava up through the floor. As a result, these are also sometimes called “lava volcanoes.” These are identifiably by their “central conduit,” which can be easily seen in the bottom picture. These pictures are from a lava lake, so this explanation makes sense.

Because these don’t have a conduit, I think this is an example of the other way in which lava roses form: when larger clumps or sheets fall from the ceiling, and pile up, cooling, slumping, and cracking as they do so. (I think the right one is especially ugly – it resembles a miniature Horta.) These pictures are from a different cave than the previous lava roses – so a different origin is plausible.

These are lava helictites! These are created in a manner similar to the lava stalactites above, but the lava is pushed through weak spots in the developing crystal structure, forcing it into a twisted shape. Both lava and calcite helictites refuse to obey gravity.

References:

If you want to learn more about lava caves and their features, here are some great resources:

The Virtual Lava Tube is an easily accessible resource, complete with beautiful pictures. This site is run by Dave Bunnell, editor of the National Speleological Society News. He also published the information in a book called Caves of Fire: Inside America's Lava Tubes, which is gorgeous.

Nomenclature of Lava Tube Features is an older article, but describes a greater number of features than the Virtual Lava Tube, including many different types of stalactites and pahoehoe lavas. It’s available in print form in the proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Vulcanospeleology, and in illustrated form as An Illustrated Glossary of Lava Tube Features. (I wish I’d found the online copy earlier – I accidentally left my print copy in storage!)

An aside: nothing I say on this blog represents the opinion of Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, the BLM, the NPS, the Geological Society of America, GeoCorps, or the National Speleological Society and its internal organizations. I will not disclose any cave locations, but if you wish to go caving in Idaho, please visit Craters of the Moon National Monument (NPS,) the Shoshone Field Office (BLM), or get in touch with your local caving club.

The People of Armero, 25 Years Later

2010-11-14T13:32:00.001-08:00

It’s been 25 years since Nevado del Ruiz erupted on November 13, 1985. Despite being a relatively small eruption (VEI 3), this phreatic (magma + water) created a massive lahar (mudslide) and managed to wipe out an entire town, killing 23,000 people in the process. Good descriptions of the eruption can be found on History of Geology and Eruptions, so I’m not going to reinvent that wheel.

From the USGS

Last spring, I researched Armero in the present day for a cultural project in Spanish class. The assignment was to communicate with a native Spanish speaker in Spanish, so I sent a (painstakingly composed) email to Observatorio Vulcanológico y Sismológico de Manizales, one of the volcano observatories set up after the 1985 tragedy.
Now, it has been 25 years since Nevado del Ruiz erupted, and, in the aftermath of eruptions, frequently people return to the destroyed area. There could be a variety of reasons for this – they don’t think it’s likely to erupt again, they have nowhere else to go, for religious reasons, or they simply want to be “home.” A great example of this is Merapi, in Indonesia, which seems to erupt roughly every ten years, and its lahar deposits re-liquify into new lahars every monsoon season. That people still live nearby to be affected by the current eruption is a horrific testament to misplaced perseverance, determination, and religious conviction. After the 2002 eruption of Mt. Nyiragongo, in Congo, people moved back to the destroyed town of Goma before the lava had even finished cooling. However, habitation in an area previously destroyed by recorded natural disasters isn’t relegated to what we would consider “third-world” countries: people still live in New Orleans and near Mt. St. Helens, astonishingly enough. As time passes after an eruption, people are increasingly more willing to return to these areas – the valleys surrounding Mt. Rainier are filled chock-a-block with farms, industrial complexes, and towns.

From here

In light of that, my curiosity about Armero was regarding where in that process the government and people were – had they begun to forget, or did the scale of the tragedy make it more difficult to ignore the hazard? Had I known more vocabulary, I might have asked more specific questions, but the ones I managed to include were thus: what is the town of Armero like today? How many people have returned to live there, and how do they perceive Nevado del Ruiz?
I got a fantastic response back from the volcano observatory, which, after some I looked up several words, answered most of my questions. The representative explained how the old site of Armero had been declared a National Cemetery, and habitation was no longer permitted there. Now, the survivors and municipal administrators had moved to the town of Guayabal, now called Guayabal-Armero. Apparently the area has become a destination for over 35,000 tourists a year, and there are volunteers available to provide tourist guidance.

From the USGS

That led to some more focused googling, with the result that I found out about the Fundacion Armando Armero, an organization devoted to preserving the cultural heritage of Armero. They’ve set up an interpretive site in the old town, focusing on people and places found in Armero before the eruption. In addition, they are working on building a cultural-tourism route through Guayabal-Armero and Armero. One of their other projects includes collecting photos and stories of old life in Armero, some of which are available on their website.

From Wikipedia

It was interesting to learn a little more about how this area is recovering from such a devastating incident. It sounds like the government has more respect for volcanoes, that the people are coping, and the efforts of the Fundacion Armando Armero are laudable. Still, I wonder whether the cooperation of the people will last, or whether they will someday decide to reclaim their town.

Other Resources:
Observatorio Vulcanológico y Sismológico de Manizales
USGS: Nevado del Ruiz
Global Volcanism Program: Nevado del Ruiz
No Apparent Danger, Victoria Bruce, HarperCollins Publishers, 1st Ed., 2001

A Couple Nice Eastern Washington Pictures

2010-11-03T15:03:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago, I spent a weekend near Prosser, WA with my parents and their friends. This was their annual bicycle-riding and wine-tasting weekend, so most of my pictures feature middle-aged folks in spandex. Much as I’ve become desensitized to such retinal injury, it seems rude to inflict it upon the internet. I did take some decent travel photos, however:

The last one shows some hop trellises. Washington state produces much of the world’s hops, believe it or not.

Accretionary Wedge 28: Familial Bookcase-crop

2010-10-30T06:45:00.001-07:00

This Accretionary Wedge, hosted at Research at a snail's pace, is focused on desk-crops. Normally, this would be very exciting – I have a healthy assortment of rocks. But, unfortunately, I put all my rocks in my storage unit when I moved to Idaho for the summer.

I only remembered about this Accretionary Wedge once I arrived in Oregon with four boxes, none of them containing rocks. Luckily, before I went to Phoenix last week, I was helping clean a bookshelf at my parent’s house in Washington, and happened to take some pictures of my mother’s minerals.

My mother (a painter of caves – seriously!) has a soft spot for colorful minerals and rocks. These are actually examples from her stash of minerals inherited from my grandfather, who was into rock-hounding. My mum has some great childhood stories from these trips, including “Terrifying Mine Experiences Involving Cupcakes,” and “Innocent Encounters with Canadian Mounties.”

I haven’t studied mineralogy much yet, so I’m mainly going to reference that bastion of scientific accuracy: wikipedia.

This Death Tribble is a piece of dogtooth spar, or dogtooth calcite. This usually consists of acute scalenohedrons: twelve triangular faces roughly making up scalene triangles. They need standing water to allow them to grow, and so are frequently found in limestone caves. (My grandfather, I’m sure, found this in a rock shop – he wasn’t a caver, much less a cave-vandal.)

The only spooky thing about orpiment is that it’s a highly toxic cocktail of arsenic and sulfide, originating through the rapid solidification of hot gases at fumaroles, hot springs, and hydrothermal veins. It can also occur as the decay byproduct of realgar, a mineral of a similar composition that is frequently also found in conjunction with orpiment. (I’m wondering if realgar is in this sample, based on its appearance in google images.) Orpiment has historically been used for poision, medicine, and paint pigment; its present uses include semiconductors, firework pigments, and as an ingredient in Indian depilatories. (Perhaps: “Extreme Hair Remover: Now with Arsenic!” ?)

Summer GeoCorps Internship: Or, Caveapalooza 2010

2010-10-26T09:13:00.001-07:00

This summer, I was an intern at Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve with the Bureau of Land Management in Idaho, through the Geological Society of America's GeoCorps Program.
It was a fantastic experience, but I haven’t previously discussed it here mainly because of uncertainties regarding legalities and whatnot. (My mum’s a lawyer: paranoia is in my genes.) So, let it be stated: nothing I say on this blog represents the opinion of Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, the BLM, the NPS, the Geological Society of America, GeoCorps, or the National Speleological Society and its internal organizations. Caves are a federally protected resource, and thus I’m not going to disclose any cave locations, names, or, really, more information than is necessary.
If you are in south Idaho and would like to visit wild lava caves, that’s great! First, get your gear, read up on White Nose Syndrome, and then visit the Shoshone Field Office to request a list of caves open to the public.

All that might seem kind of stern, but this is what happens when caves are destroyed:

The left picture is from a cave heavily vandalized for its entire length, most of it vile in content, all of it lacking in artistry. The right picture shows detritus left behind by people who were clubbing and shooting pigeons in a cave; we also found two dead barn owls this summer. During my internship, several damaged cave gates were discovered as well: not only is this blatantly disrespectful, but also incurs an expenditure of governmental time and money, and frequently results in other cave damage.
Should someone committing acts of this nature be found, legal action can be taken against them under the 1988 Federal Cave Resources Protection Act. FCRPA states, essentially, that caves are super-awesome resources that should be protected, through inclusion in federal land management planning and communication between land management officials, cavers, and visitors. It also outlines punishments for those who damage or remove items from the cave: up to one year in prison and a fine for first time offenders, and up to three years for second time offenders. (Since many cave restoration projects take longer than this, I think this is a pretty light sentence.)
Rampant destruction of a sensitive and delicate ecosystem annoys the crap out of me. Not only is cave vandalism destructive to life-forms, but it also damages scientifically valuable features, cultural artifacts, pollutes aquifers, and ruins the cave for other visitors. In addition, partying in caves is unsafe – I watched a sober, helmeted person get a concussion this summer. The addition of booze, much less drugs, could create a much more serious situation, and result in a risky rescue situation. Also, it should be noted: caves don't clean themselves – someone else has to.
Cave vandals make me irrationally angry.

Craters of the Moon is run jointly by the National Park Service (NPS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM.) My position was with the BLM, and focused mainly on cave conservation: completing the process to ensure legal protection under FCRPA, placing outreach/educational signs, and conducting cave surveillance. Additionally, I met the local caving club (grotto) members, led several tours through the caves, compiled a long-winded informational guide for interpreters, and found caves whose locations had been lost.
I thought that, in the next couple of posts, I’d share some of the cool things I saw and learned this summer. Frequently, caves seem to be misunderstood, feared, and ignored by the general public: this is a shame, because they’re really scientifically valuable, and provide recreational and educational opportunities for people of all ages, sizes, backgrounds, and experience levels.
(Unless otherwise noted, these pictures are from Craters of the Moon.)

The most common process for a lava tube’s formation is thus: a smooth, laminar flow of pahoehoe lava travels across a landscape with a certain slope – not too steep, or it will turn into a’a lava, and not too shallow, or it will fail to flow. (I’ve been told between .5 and 1.5 degrees: the validity of this is uncertain, however.) Frequently, these lava flows will form channels, as seen in the above picture from Jordan Craters, OR. As the lava flows in these channels, it begins to form chunks of crust: these raft along the flow, stick to the sides, and bunch up against one another. Eventually, a roof is formed over the channel: this continues to cool and thicken, while the lava underneath is still flowing. Frequently, the lava in the tube will cool and block the tube; if the flow is diverted or ceases, the lava may flow out, leaving behind a lava cave.

As the lava cave cools, the molecules in the lava are pulled towards one another, causing the lava to cool and contract. (This is standard for all liquids as they freeze, with the notable exception of water.) As it contracts, cracks form: it you’re lucky, a spot in the cave roof is weakened enough to collapse. This creates skylight entrances into the tube, like the ones in the above picture from Lava Beds, CA. (Skylights can also be formed when a section of roof fails to cool, although I have yet to see an example of this at a lava cave.) Skylights provide access to the cave for both organisms and cavers.

This is a good example of a primary lava tube: it has a simple oval shape, indicating that a secondary flow hasn’t travelled through and eroded the floor. This cave also had very few features, which can indicate that there were few lava flows in the tube. In places, we saw chunks of pahoehoe that stuck to the walls as the flow cooled; however, the majority of the floor was thickly covered with fine sediment. Uptube, it was possible to see where loess from the surface was washed in with small rocks: these quickly settled out, and, at the downtube end, blocked the passageway. We followed an old record to this area on my last field day, and it really panned out: we found seven caves, all erupted from the same vent. It was a pretty great way to end my internship.

This is the granddaddy of caves in the area: it’s the longest, and contains some really unique features (and some Silver Sage Grotto members for scale.) On the left, you can see an area where a secondary flow travelled through the cave, thermally eroding down the floor in the process, and thus increasing the tube’s height. This picture also shows a feature called benches/curbs/ledges: these show that a secondary lava flow travelled through the original tube, cooling onto the sides in the process. Benches frequently are characterized by their rectangular cross-sections, but they can have different shapes: in the right picture, you can see how there are benches stacked atop one another, and undercut at the bottom by a final flow. Also, the top of the right picture shows an spot in this cave where the secondary flow began to roof over, in a similar fashion to the creation of the original tube, creating a multi-layered tube. Depending on how you count, this lava tube has between three and seven levels.

These two pictures are from my favorite grotto trip: we rappelled into a lava lake through a gas vent. As the lava in the lake cools, it contracts and cracks (much like the infamous columnar joints,) creating a sunken lake. The left picture shows what may have been the original level of the lake, and a caver perched on its present level – quite the change! The right picture shows how the lake cracked and collapsed as it contracted. This was a great cave!

These are great examples of some important mineral deposits inside lava caves: gypsum, on the left, and calcite, on the right. These form as water drips through cracks in the cave’s roof, eroding it and picking up calcium and carbon. When this reaches the cave, the water evaporates, leaving behind the mineral. The calcite is a type of formation called coralloids, or popcorn.

Caving isn’t all cool rocks, however: sometimes, the rocks really suck. As the pahoehoe flow in the tube begins to cool down, it begins transforming into a’a: this can create a clinker floor, such as the one in the left picture. Most people know that clinkers are kind of lame to walk over, but only after belly-crawling over them do you truly realize just how painful they can be. (I lost two shirts while at the Northwest Caving Association regional in Bend!)

I had a great time this summer, learning first-hand about lava caves, lava fluid dynamics, cave management, and the BLM. The cavers in the area were really a treat, and the caves were fantastic!
I have another post about Idaho's lava tubes here.

Sight-seeing, Airplane Style

2010-10-22T22:55:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, my family flew down to Phoenix to watch my brother graduate from UTI (at the head of his class, no less.) Our plane flight was luckily during the day, so we got an aerial view of some great mountains:

Mt. St. Helens

Mt. Hood

The Three Sisters.

I think this is Mt. Wheeler.

I’ve always wanted to see Mt. St. Helens from the air, and I was so excited to spot it!

A Hornito and Cow Walk Into a Bar

2010-10-05T23:03:00.001-07:00

What do you call a cow that’s just given birth?

Decaffeinated.

What do you call a cow with two legs?

Lean beef.

What do you call a cow with no legs?

Ground beef.

Stalagmite: definitely not limestone.

2010-10-04T01:25:00.001-07:00

In a lava cave roof, hot gases boil and push molten lava through cracks in the roof’s cooled crust. This lava can spooge out of its stalactite and drop to the ground, creating a stalagmite like this. This formation has a really nice metallic glaze to it, and I saw it in a cave near Bend, OR.

Columbia River Basalt Columns

2010-10-03T22:20:00.001-07:00

Much as the heyday of the columnar jointing meme seems to be past, I’d like to jump on the bandwagon in support of Washington’s columns as championed on Northwest Geology Field Trips.

Washington is home to what I would argue is some of the raddest columnar jointing around, as it’s easily reached and highly extensive. And by “highly extensive",” I mean Spans-63,000-Square-Miles extensive.

These columns (near Grand Coulee, WA) show an unevacuated lava tube.* The arch of columns would have been the tube’s roof, as those cooled and cracked perpendicularly to the cooling surface (the air.) Underneath this is a layer of lava that cooled in the tube, and beneath that are more columns from the bottom of the flow. Above this tube is the middle section (the entablature) that cooled in a different fashion and thus has some ~~pretty fugly~~ hackly jointing.

Dry Falls, whose walls are composed of columns. You just can’t tell that because it’s so stinkin’ huge from this vantage point.

These columns are the Ellensburg formation, and this exposure is over near Naches, WA.

This is Frenchman Coulee, and is once again composed of columns too distant to see.

But here they from a closer viewpoint – in addition to the columnar joints, you can see horizontal weak areas perpendicular to cooling along the column’s side.**

Oh, and you know what else Washington has that’s better than anywhere else?

Plaid-clad junkies who don’t shower.***

My advice: visit the Columbia River flood basalts, but avoid Aberdeen after dark.

*At least, that is what an unevacuated lava tube has been pointed out to me as. As always, I could be really incorrect.

**I think.

***I really like plaid.

Yellowstone: Some Initial Pictures

2010-08-28T10:27:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately, my sister and I traded SD cards, and forgot to switch back, so I have only a handful of pictures from my recent vacation. Here are a few of the best:

Grand Prismatic Spring: the orange and brown colors come from different microbial mats, different kinds of which live at different temperatures. The turquoise color at the center of the pool comes from particles suspended in the water. This shot came out a little artsy-er than intended.

As the water flows away from the pool, terraces form as minerals collect on little imperfections. These areas collect the microbes.

This is the water from the Grand Prismatic Spring and Excelsior Geyser into the Iron Spring Creek. You can really see how the microbial mats form in water flowing at just the right temperature and velocity.

This was a sweet restored car in West Yellowstone.

They Say You Can’t Break a Nalgene…

2010-08-28T10:25:00.001-07:00

…they’re wrong.

After being my go-to caving water bottle for some time, all the bumping, throwing, shoving, and general abuse this water bottle suffered, it finally broke after I chucked it off a eight foot drop, soaking the contents of my pack.

Granted, it wasn’t an official “Nalgene” bottle – it was a little dorkier than that:

After spending the rest of the cave trip thirsty, I decided to remedy that unfortunate and unsafe situation by acquiring the following:

Not only is it excessively shiny and ruggedly handsome, but it’s also supposed to dent instead of breaking.

I’m prepared to put that claim to the test.

Geology of Idaho

2010-08-26T15:46:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, the computer I'm can't access Twitter, or else I'd tweet this:

http://geology.isu.edu/Digital_Geology_Idaho/Module1/mod1.htm

This website contains exactly what I've been trying to learn for a couple months now - the geologic history of Idaho.

Oh what wonders the internet brings us.

Caving: The Gear

2010-08-12T17:23:00.001-07:00

So, you decide to go caving. Hoo boy, isn’t that fantastic.
But first, you have to gather together all the gear that separates true cavers from losers – or, as cavers are wont to call them, in a voice dripping with derision, “spelunkers.”

Helmet: For your first couple trips underground, a bicycle helmet or hard-hat will suffice. However, an actual climbing helmet is really important – it can take repeated hits, won’t fall off when you crawl, will protect your head from falls, and gives you that cool caver cachet.
3 sources of light & spare batteries: Underground, it’s dark. Very dark. Lose-your-way, break-a-leg, starve-to-death-while-being-eaten-by-packrats dark. You really don’t want to be caught without a light in a cave. And, as everyone knows, technology breaks – especially when you throw your pack around while climbing through tight spaces. Hence, it’s important to have multiple sources of light, and batteries for each. At least two of them need to be helmet-mountable, so you have your hands free.
First aid supplies: Everyone should have some basic stuff – bandaids, heat packs, space blanket, etc. If you have first aid training, you should bring supplies equivalent to your level of training. I usually also bring gauze, tape, a splint, an ace bandage, pills, a first aid reference, a pocketknife, and webbing/carabineers for carrying people. If I don’t know the people I’m caving with well, I bring a CPR mask as well. No need to be kissing strangers.
Pee bottle: I’m sure you can figure out what that’s for.
Gloves: You never want to forget your gloves. Not only would that be painful, but it’s also harmful to the cave: oils and skin particles from your hands can destroy cave fungi, provide a food source for biota, and irrevocably prevent further formation growth.
Vertical gear: You’ll know if you need it.
Rugged clothes: Many people, in warm, dry caves like lava caves, choose to wear jeans and a trashed tee shirt. Cave suits can be fancy things made of cordura costing over $100 – I personally find my $1 used coveralls perfectly effective.
What you wear underneath all this depends on the cave you’re visiting: a cold cave necessitates thermal underlayers, a warm cave necessitates merely something to cover your bum on the drive over.
Thick socks: In a cold/wet cave, these are necessary to stave off hypothermic wet feet. In a warm cave, they more provide cushioning.
Stout boots: This is a matter of personal choice, but you’ll find the support, cushioning, and protection of a boot worthwhile. Some highly experienced cavers do use tennis shoes or sandals, but they’re definitely in the minority. It should be noted: lava rips up boots like none other, so using either a really cheap or a really hefty pair of boots is recommended in lava caves.
Kneepads: When faced with a long crawlway, you’ll wish you’d brought them. Even if they pinch and keep sliding down to your ankles.
Extra clothes: These should be made of wool or a synthetic material – no cotton. Should you be injured, or just take an extended break, an extra set of clothes and a hat will keep you cozy and stave off hypothermia. Which I hear is important.
Pack: This can really be any pack you don’t mind destroying, and doesn’t have too many straps. You can use some old daypack, but eventually the zipper will gum up with dirt. Then you’ll want to invest in a specialized cave pack – they start at about $50.
Water: Caving is tough work, so it’s important to stay hydrated.
Camera: For all the baller cave pictures you’ll take.
Paper, pencil: This is mainly for use in emergency situations – to leave notes for your rescuers. However, you can also use it to make notes about your epic cave adventure.
Emergency food: It’s not entirely kosher to eat in caves – you drop crumbs, which provides a foreign food source for the biota. However, when it’s necessary, you eat non-crumbly, non-drippy food while hunching over a ziplock bag or your cave pack. In addition, it’s really important to always have extra emergency food in your pack. I recommend those obnoxiously expensive Cliff/Power/Lara/Whatever bars/gels/jelly beans/cubes. Other options would be carrot sticks, not-toasted PB&J, apple slices, etc.
Chapstick: Being distracted by chapped lips is lame.
Bandanna: This is a multi-purpose piece of equipment: keeps your hair back, keeps your head warm, serves as a sling, gathers sweat, and, in a pinch, can be used as a dust mask.
Trash bag: (Not pictured.) To collect your trash, and trash from the losers who visited the cave before you.
ADDENDUM:
Duct tape: (Not pictured.) This is best stored wrapped around your water bottle. This is really useful for emergency repairs, like when your underwire snaps, or you crush your cell-phone in a tailgate.

I'm Lichen It

2010-07-18T14:29:00.001-07:00

South Idaho

2010-07-18T14:16:00.001-07:00

Home on the range cows, wandering around the sagebrush, munching on cheat grass. Pretty happy cows, who like to stare down your truck in an endearingly benign fashion. Ranching is a large industry here, with herds of cows dotting the landscape.

(Sometimes, the cattle trucks park for a rest outside my open window. That particular scent is less than endearing.)

This is where milk comes from. Or some variety of dairy product, at least. Dairy is another large industry here, responsible for other herds of cows.

Native bunch grass, which grows abundantly in Laidlaw Park. Laidlaw Park is a very large area completely surrounded by lava flows, so it’s had some natural protection from invasive species.

Virga, a kind of rain that falls, but evaporates before hitting the ground.

In the middle ground, those dark areas are lava flows from the Great Rift, and some small cinder cones dotting the horizon.

The Snake River canyon, at sunset (obviously.)

This is the Snake River, farther upstream, cutting through basalt flows.

Cheat grass is a non-native species found all over. Before it dries out for the summer, it turns this nice purple color. Then it dries out, the seeds get caught in the undercarriage of your car, lights on fire, and torches the desert. (I hear that’s not appreciated.)

I know some people don’t like it, but I rather enjoy the desert, mainly because you can see the sky. Though I do wish it would cool off a little – it’s getting well over 90 degrees, and there's really only so much water one can drink!

Craters of the Moon NM: A Quick Trip

2010-07-10T15:07:00.001-07:00

A couple weekends ago, I drove up to Craters of the Moon National Monument. It was a nice trip, though a vague out-of-sorts feeling and a late departure led to a fairly short trip.

I’m not too worried about scheduling a return trip, however, since it’s closer than the grocery store. For serious.

On the drive up, I was really impressed by the erosion of the nearby hills, and the really nice alluvial fan beneath them.

On the other side of the road was this really nice tumulus.

When I first arrived, I took a short, quarter-mile walk along the North Crater Flow Trail.

These large blocks are pieces of the North Crater that broke apart, and were rafted along in the lava flow. This may look like a really flat expanse of lava, but it’s much more textured in other areas.

This is some ropy pahoehoe lava from that same area. This forms when the lava has a very low resistance to flow and is also flowing relatively quickly, usually near the beginning of the flow. The skin that forms on top the flow gets pushed forward by the onset of more lava, much like when you stir cold hot chocolate. (My advice: pull that off. Nasty.)

Do you see the extrustion of lava flowing towards you here, across the top of a flatter section of lava? This is called a squeeze up, and occurs when the pressure inside a flow forces lava through the thick crust above it. In this case, it occurred at a pressure ridge – a section where the pressure inside a flow built up, and created a ridge.

After that, it was time for the ranger-led tour of Indian Tunnel, a lava tube. My first experience with lava tubes was here, so I was intrigued to see if it measured up to my remembrances. When I was 13, it was the coolest thing ever – I took notes the whole way, complete with sketches. (For serious.)

I’ll be honest, since I have more lava cave experience now, it wasn’t overly impressive – there are much cooler caves elsewhere on the Monument/Preserve, including some of the best lava caving I’ve done.

However, Indian Tunnel definitely is a good one for kids – the cave segments aren’t long enough for natural light to disappear, and it’s an easy walk. The children on my tour seemed totally excited, especially two boys who made Good Photo-Ops For Mommy a goal. (“Get a picture of me up here, Mom!” “Come take it from over there!”)

The cave is in a part of the Blue Dragon flow, named because it has this crazy blue sheen to it – it’s much brighter in person. It’s rather strange looking, and apparently scientists don’t know why it occurs.

This is about the longest section of darkness, and the end of the tour. You travel along the flat floor of the tube up to this point, where crossing some breakdown is necessary at a skylight.

This is a small example of a bench at the skylight. This occurs as the tube curves, and the inside edge slows down enough to cool somewhat. They can be much more dramatic than this, but this also showcases some nice lichen formation – that green stuff on the wall.

(The white sections are either secondary mineral deposits – probably calcite – or pigeon poop. Here’s something I learned on this tour: pigeons aren’t native to Idaho – they were brought in by the US Calvary, as carrier pigeons. If I ever meet a US Calvary man from that era, there are a few choice words I’d like to say to him.)

This is an example of the ceiling in Indian Tunnel. You can see the white calcite deposits on the ceiling here, which made the ceiling look like meringue to me as a child. The floor was much more brownie-like. (I might have been hungry…)

This is looking back at the skylight, after crossing the small pile of breakdown. Skylights are places where the tube’s roof has collapsed, which can occur in a variety of ways. If it occurs after the roof has cooled, but while the lava is still flowing, the breakdown can be rafted away from the entrance. If it occurs after the roof has cooled and the lava has stopped flowing, it creates this pile of breakdown, which is a joy and a pleasure to clamber over.

After you cross beneath the skylight, you enter another short period of cave, and then climb out another skylight. Viola! The cave is over.

Your reward for making it to the end is a short hike across a barren lava field, where you can admire some more flow features.

All in all, it was an enjoyable trip. Next time, I’m planning on leaving earlier, so I can hike some of the longer trails, check out some other caves, and get a better look at the spatter cones and tree molds.

Note: I'm trying Windows Live Writer out. I'm hoping it will enable me to draft posts off-line, and then quickly post them when I can get on-line. That's why the pictures are small in this post.

When to Tattle on Professors: An Example

2010-07-03T16:55:00.000-07:00

I’ve had my share of awesome professors, and more than my share of hateful professors. Only occasionally, when it was warranted, did I complain. Recently, I discovered that, if you complain like a mature adult with dignity, you garner more respect from the administrator. (Funny, that.) I’m actually really proud of the way I handled the situation – it’s given me a standard to live up to the next time I need to complain about a superior.
The situation was this: I made an honest scheduling mistake, not realizing that this professor required special treatment for this procedure. When this issue became apparent, they got very angry, and said some harsh words. I chalked it up to finals week stress, and made alternate scheduling arrangements. I then sent an email to said professor, apologizing for the problem, accepting responsibility for it, and purposing the alternate solution. Professional, calm, apologetic, and proof-read by someone other than myself.
In a nutshell, the email I received back was less than professional, and basically demonstrated some egomaniacal shit-flipping of the highest order. A highly inconvenient solution – but my only one – was laid forth: take the final three hours from when I read the email, two days earlier than anticipated.
When I went in, I was honestly scared I was going to be slapped. Instead, the professor was calm, collected, and explanatory – though not apologetic in the slightest, of course.
After the final, I went to the Dean. I brought our email exchange, and explained that the problem was resolved, but someone needed to speak to this professor about his attitude toward students – preferably after grades were finalized. He said he would, and I moved on, despite knowing that my final was a disaster due to this issue.
If this had been the first time he’d been a jerk, I would have let it slide – we’re all human, right? But I’ve seen enough of his behavior to know that this isn’t the first, or last, time he treats a student like a lesser being.
And that right there is the line of appropriate behavior between students and professors – how you treat not just another human, but someone who is trying to learn from and look up to you, and someone who has put their time, effort, and future into your hands. It’s a mutual bond of respect that requires compassion on both sides, and occasionally some self-control.
When that line is crossed, I think it’s acceptable to rat out the professor to an administrator. Respect may be earned, but there’s a basic level we all deserve – even we lowly students.

A caveat: complaining about professors is unwarranted when you really did screw up. I’ve heard stories from professors about students who go to the president of the college because they didn’t pass a class, despite flunking all the tests. As an easily distracted under-acheiver, I’ll just say: put on your big boy/girl britches and deal. If you didn’t read the syllabus correctly, didn’t study hard enough, or didn’t withdraw in time, you made your own grave. Learn from your mistakes, but don’t put the burden of your failure on the professor.
The same goes for students who approach the professor after every test, trying to explain why they deserve those two points they missed on question four. Seriously? Get some dignity

Road Trip Photos: Painted Hills, John Day Fossil Beds, OR

2010-06-23T20:26:00.000-07:00

The contents of my apartment, minus one Jeep-ful. Where did this all come from?

Replica of Stonehenge on the banks of the Columbia River, near Maryville. (Vaguely, in the distance, lie the Columbia River flood basalts.)

The Painted Hills section of the John Day Fossil Beds. This lame picture really doesn't do the colors justice. Now one of my favorite places, this was totally worth the long drive. (Old car + lots of stuff + mountain passes = 25mph.)

The Painted Hills are a layers of volcanic tuff that were protected by basalt flows. Eventually, they were tilted and uplifted to expose these red/tan/yellow/green/pink layers. (Seriously. It's awesome.)
Is the Jeep for scale, or just to show it off? You decide.

After visiting the Painted Hills, I was pressed for time, and discovered that said Jeep can go 70mph without disaster, or photographic evidence.
But, suffice it to say: I made it to my internship, and it is beautiful out here - lots of basalt flows and sagebrush. Today was a really laid-back first day, just checking out files on the nearby caves, which look awesome. I'm really looking forward to visiting them this summer.

Columbia River Flood Basalts: A Few Pictures

2010-06-15T23:02:00.000-07:00

I've been on two trips to the Columbia River Flood Basalts recently, including a really awesome one looking at structure/stratigraphy of the basalts, and the recent landslide there.

These are a few pictures from the other trip - I haven't been able to upload the others.

Pillow basalts that formed when the flows encountered ground water. The surrounding material is palagonite, formed when the basalt fractured into dust as it entered the water.
The Grand Coulee Dam, which supplies a lot of power for Washington, in addition to having a dramatically negative effect on salmon spawning habits. Also home to the funniest laser show ever.
An oddly Grecian structure at the dam overlook.
Porphoritic rhyolite found in a river bed, washed down from Missoula Flood deposits.
A lava flow, complete with columnar-jointed bottom layer and hackly-jointed top layer. The top layer cools most quickly, which leads to the imperfect jointing. The bottom layer is insulated, and thus cools slowly, allowing columns to form.

Dry Falls, the largest waterfall ever. During the Missoula Floods, this was about ten times larger than Niagra Falls.

My week consists of: spanish, physics, calculus, and chemistry finals, moving my entire apartment into a storage unit in one day, annnnd moving to Craters of the Moon, via the John Day Fossil Beds.

It's a tough life, but somebody's got to do it, right?

Favorite Geology Picture: Kings Canyon National Park

2010-06-01T17:02:00.000-07:00

This is a late entry (and my first ever) for the Accretionary Wedge, hosted at Highly Allochthonous. I was on a geology field trip, so hopefully not too late!
Too high up to get scale - see below.
This is my favorite geology picture because it represents an "A-ha" moment.
When I took 101, I basically ignored sedimentary and metamorphic rocks. I figured I had to merely pass those sections, in order to continue learning about volcanoes and earthquakes and cool stuff. My 101 class didn't have any field trips, so this preconception wasn't really challenged. Of course I'd seen rocks of that sort before, but somehow had never paid attention, even to the Grand Canyon.
This lame attitude tapered off, but did persist for several years.
Until I drove through King's Canyon National Park in California. The rocks there were so incredible, and you could really see them: not something that happens much in tree-covered western Washington. There were quartz veins and exfoliation and uplift and craaaazy deformation.
It really opened my eyes to aspects of geology I had brushed off, and helped me realize that the importance of being receptive to learning and curious about the world (instead of being a pretentious dilettante.) It illustrated how all the processes that create rocks and shape our landscape are dynamic and fascinating and exciting, even if they aren't sexy or dramatic or catastrophic.
I don't know what kind of rock this is or how it came to be here (I couldn't stop for more than a minute.) But I look forward to learning enough to be able to discuss it!

With some bushes for scale.

Mt. St. Helens Pictures

2010-05-22T23:43:00.000-07:00

May 18th was the 30th anniversary of the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens!

Mt. St. Helens erupted prior to my birth, and I actually only saw it once before I turned 16. But, since then, I've been trying to make up for lost time. Living within a few hours of it makes that pretty easy!
These pictures are all from within the last year.

Memorial Day Weekend:

(I can't lie - this sign is always exciting!)

Still snow-covered.

Older flows contain the majority of Washington caves, including the ever-popular Ape Cave, open to tourists in the summer, and Gueller Ice Cave, a personal favorite.

August:

Without the snow, it's much easier to see the effects of the devastation.

Immediately after the eruption, there were large chunks of the mountain's glacier interspersed with this material. When these melted, they left behind hummocks, or piles of volcanic debris, including ash and large blocks from the cryptodome (the bulge.) The orange coloration is from geothermal alerting before the eruption - as they were heated and exposed to heated water and gases, the chemistry was altered.

Here you can see two different types of lava that were being mixed together when they erupted.

Spirit Lake: Even to this day, there's a layer of logs on the surface of the lake. They float around the lake when the wind blows.

September:

The wind picking up ash on the crater.

The lava domes! The old one is in the foreground, the new one in the background. Should you decide to climb Mt. St. Helens as a tourist, you'd hike up the back side, and summit at the crater wall seen in the background.

A concentrated pyroclastic density current near the crater, with hiking staff for scale.

Gas escape pipe in another pyroclastic flow. After the eruption, the gas that was in the flow needed a way to escape, and formed these pipes to the surface.

Spirit Lake, again, as seen from the Pumic Plain

Older uplifted flows

Pumice (with frog for scale)

This is a small hole dug into the pumice plain. You can see the layer of pyroclasic flow, with the pumice that was rafted to the top. Then, immediately on top is the layer of ash deposited from the ignimbrite cloud. (A layer of very fine ash that rose from the pyroclastic flow, then fell after the flow was deposited.)

Debris avalanche deposits are visible here, seen as the triangle of rising ground in the center. On May 18th, there was a 5.1 earthquake that released the largest landslide in history. This landslide released the pressure in the cryptodome, which trigged the eruption, and the pyroclastic flow. The pyroclastic flow traveled faster than the landslide (or debris avalanche) so the debris avalanche deposits are on top of the pyroclastic flow deposits.

When the pyroclastic flow overran a small lake, the water was flash boiled, creating an explosion pit. This one has been subsequently filled by water.

This is a sample of the dacite cryptodome from the 1980 eruption.

This is obviously my favorite.

References: I learned most of this in the class I took last summer, and the brief fieldwork I did with that professor. They were both pretty awesome experiences!

Jordan Craters

2010-05-19T19:19:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, my post on Mt. St. Helens isn't quite ready yet - I spent yesterday going to a lecture on geomorphology on Mars at the Northwest Geological Society in Seattle, and have a big test tomorrow to study for. (Those lectures make my month, and this one was really great. And an added perk: the school pays for our gas and the fancy buffet dinner. Swanky!)

In it's stead, here are some pictures from Jordan Craters, a small volcanic area in Eastern Oregon.

"The 27-square mile olivine basalt lava flow is estimated to be between 4000 and 9000 years old, based on the degree of lichen development on the rocks. An 18-acre flow within the field is thought to be less than 100 years old because not even lichens have begun to colonize."

It's fairly petite, as lava fields go, but really cute. (Bonus: the surrounding countryside is gorgeous.) This picture encompasses about half of the lava field. The foreground is a line of spatter cones. In the mid-ground, you can see the largest of the cinder cones - Coffee Pot Crater. The background are the lava flows themselves.

(Adapted from: Bruce R. Otto and Dana A. Hutchison, The Geology of Jordan Craters, Malheur County, Oregon, The Ore Bin, Vol. 39, No. 8, August 1977)

Coffee Pot Crater, from the rim. The detached wall block is on the right.

These are the reddest scoria I've ever seen - it really resembled raw hamburger at times. In other places, the scoria is a dark black. I hadn't seen this concentration of scoria before, but since it's a cinder cone, scoria is everywhere! It makes climbing out of the crater a bit tortuous.

This is the detached wall block, seen from the side.

The crater floor.

This is the side wall of the crater, with some stratigraphy present.

FYI: There are signs saying that all wheel drive is necessary, but if you're an awesome driver like me, the minivan'll make it.

View Larger Map
Unfortunately, we didn't get to explore the whole lava field, because I had to drop my mum off in Boise because her uncle died unexpectedly. After that, the stalwart minivan died in the deserts of Nevada. But that's another story.

Mt. St. Helens Day tomorrow!

2010-05-17T06:47:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of the May 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens!
To say Mt. St. Helens makes me really happy is an understatement.

Fort Rock Pictures!

2010-05-05T23:54:00.000-07:00

Obligatory Retina Update: My eye is doing well, and I even managed to pass the Driver's Licensing eye test. It only gets tired after studying/being in class for several hours. That makes life a little difficult, but hey, I'm not blind. (!)

These are all from Fort Rock, a really nice tuff ring out in Eastern Oregon. It's the remnants of a volcano that erupted many times through a lake, producing a ring of layered tuff that was then eroded by the lake. I visited there last summer on the way to Jordan Craters (a small lava field with several cinder cones, also in Eastern Oregon.) It was fascinating to learn more about phreatomagmatic (lava + water) eruptions. Also, it was gorgeous!

Retina update holla.

2010-04-07T06:22:00.000-07:00

So, my surgery was good and really, quite painless. (It was my first surgery, so I didn't know what to expect from the whole procedure.)
It's the recovery that's being a pain.
Not even the pain, so much, as the inconvenience of a large gas bubble floating about my eye, the pain of the swollen eye-lid, and the bright-red blood-shot eye that oozes grossness.
I also get these wicked headaches in class: it starts as mere confusion, in my first class. Then, after my second, the headache begins in my front right cortex, pain being send directly from the eye that pissed at having to focus on white boards coated in light. Eventually, it begins to feel as though someone has hit me with a brick. I'd like to look away, buuut I can't be rude and stop paying attention, especially with the chem professor who already hates me. Next, the headache progresses down into my jaw, driven by the Tylonol-Ibepropheun combo I've downed, and will linger there until bedtime. By evening, even a dose of hated Percoset doesn't cut the pain in my jaw.

But, on the upside, I can see the board. We started electricity, which I'm finding surprising interesting, as well as the new-fangled integral in calculus class. Chemistry will never not suck, but I'm determined to get my C without letting another professor who hates me give me another head trip. If it were really that hard, it wouldn't be a 100-level class.
Necessary as all those might be, none of them are as interesting as the GSA bookstore magazine. I'm REALLY excited to buy "Kinematics and Dynamics of Lava Flows." How awesome is that?

Technically, that's algebra.

2010-04-03T19:37:00.000-07:00

Best laid plans of mice & men

2010-03-30T16:12:00.000-07:00

There were a number of things I was planning on doing over spring break, including a massive spring cleaning, studying chemistry, reading a Pacific Northwest Geology textbook, going on a hike, and generally laying about in bed.
However, two days into spring break, my retina detached.
How awesome is that?!
It's fairly amusing actually - the timing is perfect (three days after my last final, and probably completely recovered from surgery by the first day), and the location is perfect (at my parent's house, with people to drive me about), I have insurance (we had thought it ended at 23, but it goes until 25!), and the only downside (other than, um, surgery and a possible permanent decrease in vision) is that I already used up my correction coverage getting glasses, so I'll have to get new lenses after the surgery. Luckily, my optometrist mentioned the risk of this at my appointment last year, so, when I saw flashes, I knew what was what, and got to the doctor 16 days sooner than the average American.
Booyah, average American!
The reason this happened to me is because I'm horribly, horribly near-sighted in one eye, and, while they're a bit unsure of this, it stretches the retina, which causes tears (I have 5 - jackpot!) Eye fluid then creeps behind the retina, and pushes it away from the back of the eye. It's a bit odd for a 23-year-old to have this happen, as it usually happens to old people.
Frankly, I'm going to blame last week's study marathon.
So, they're going to fix the holes, and then attach my retina to a piece of flexible plastic called a scleral band (a lot bigger than you'd think!) placed behind my eye. (Or above. Not entirely sure. Don't really care, as long as it works.) Which is some crazy, vaguely repulsive medicine.
I'm going to ask them to take pictures.
Speaking of pictures, this is a picture of my retina, before it went AWOL:

(This is a picture of what my retina looks like now:

Picture from here, as I neglected to get my doctor to email me a copy of yesterday's picture.)
That whole missing section on the left is where the retina has detached - just like mine. You can't see out of that portion of your eye - meaning that 1/4 of my vision has gone blind.

I'm just hoping that, afterward, I get to wear an eye-patch to class.
Might buy a pirate hat, too.

Early Spring Finals Music

2010-03-21T17:48:00.000-07:00

Just deserts.

2010-03-17T13:46:00.000-07:00

Where I am:

Sault HS Library - it seems like bad form to post an actual picture of our library, given what I'm about to say: it sucks. Hardcore. Too few books, too many people talking, answering cell phones, playing computer games, or eating aromatic soups.
Where I'm supposed to be:

Perhaps it would've been wise to be here earlier, so I could have gone there.

A Few Thoughts For the Day:

2010-02-26T09:32:00.000-08:00

Craters of the Moon National Monument, ID, 2008.

Mars!

2010-02-20T12:03:00.000-08:00

What happens when you take super-accurate HiRISE data and make a movie out of it?

Via Wired: Science
So this is a really accurate view of the surface of Mars, in particular the Athabasca Valles, including an interestingly eroded volcanic cone and some dunes. How awesome is that?

HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) is a camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that takes incredibly detailed images - down to a scale of 1m. It also takes stereo images to create these DEMs (Digital Elevation Model). Also, the public is allowed to submit requests of areas to be imaged, so it's a touch democratic. If you want a gorgeous desktop, google HiRise.

The HiRISE DTM page the animation was based on
A series of interesting HiRISE images regarding volcanic processes on Mars
NASA's HiRISE page
A brief description of Mars volcanism

Also, googleMars is awesome, but jMars offers a much more technical approach, even to the layperson. As this program is used by actual Mars scientists, it can be quite complex, so a gander through the tour/tutorial pages is helpful.

Spider Fossil

2010-02-20T09:10:00.000-08:00

165 Million Year Old Spider Fossil Found

This picture completely blows my mind, because the fossil is of such great quality. As a layman, I frequently look at fossils in situ and scratch my head. But this fellow is undeniably a spider. And here's why:
"Spider fossils from this period are rare, because the arachnids’ soft bodies don’t preserve well. The pristine fossil pictured in these photos was probably created when the spider was trapped in volcanic ash. The ultrafine clay particles squashed the spider without breaking up the animals’ delicate cuticle as more coarse sediment would, Selden said."
Read the rest of the article here. It also discusses the spider's evolution (or lack thereof) and change in habitat, possibly relating to previous climate change. It's an incredible find, even if you're not too keen on spiders.

Fun Fact: At a young age, my mother taught me about scientific classification, and the arthropod family. Noting the close relationship between spiders and crustaceans at a young age has kept me from ever, ever wanting to eat them.
That, and the funny smell.

Freeze Your Computer

2010-02-06T17:13:00.000-08:00

Some pictures from the last few months, in roughly chronological order:
My mum's post-Thanksgiving table.
It's becoming difficult to remember who the baby is.
These days, I hardly eat anything I don't cook myself. Hence, if I don't want to cook, I don't eat, and my pants are starting to not fit.
As a early christmas present, my parents got me a new computer! Thank god, as the old one was taking ~15min. to boot!
Discovery Park with the geology club.
The Olympia Formation, as seen at Discovery Park.

Trains on the way to Eugene.
The Eugene train station bathroom combines some of my favorite tile patterns: hexagonal honeycomb, greek key, wee squares, and subway.
A farm in the fog, on the way to the caves.
Learning lessons the hard way: don't mix concrete with bare hands.
Bought my dream car for $500! Granted, it needs a new fuel pump. But it's so exciting!
Knit woolen wristwarmers, in the only variegated yarn I've ever really liked. Learned how to use double pointed needles!

Gave up on carrying around a stylish messenger bag, and instead acquired a 32liter daypack for $50 (1/2 price!) It carries everything imaginable, without giving me scoliosis.

Geology and Politics

2010-02-06T15:14:00.000-08:00

This is the niftiest blog post I've read in awhile:
The Relationship Between Today's Political Map, the Economy, and Geological Time
It simply demonstrates the connection between decreasing sea levels, slave ownership, and a line of counties in the South that voted for Obama, not McCain. It's based off this article, and both are well worth a read.

A Hike on Washington's Coast: or, What Do Sandstones and "Twilight" Have in Common?

2009-11-09T23:04:00.000-08:00

When I was young, my sister and father and I went on a hike on Washington's coast.
It was pretty great - the first day was sunshine, and the next two or three were miserable rain. Other than packs and boots, we had no gear to speak of - just some vaguely rain-proof jackets from Goodwill, and jeans. ("Now girls, you might want some waterproof pants, too." "Those look dumb! It's not going to rain! Jeans are great for hiking!") We resorted to wearing ziplock bags around our multi-socked feet, and didn't get warm or dry for the whole trip.
Between the physical discomfort of hiking oh-so-immense distances (say, three miles) and the subversive thrill of eating meals out of pots and mugs, it was the Best Hike Ever.
We went on to repeat this for at least two more summers - though we eventually got some rain proof fpants. (Luckily, as one trip it rained for five straight days.)

(I'm on the left, my sister on the right. Check out that 1990s bucket hat! Upon closer inspection, that's also a tie die shirt.)

This series of miserable, fantastic hikes has acquired a certain hard-core nostalgia for my sister and I.

(A sea stack near Rialto Beach.)

After my classes were done this summer, and before my sister left for her first year at college, we decided to do it again - but this time, a longer distance at a faster pace. Our mother was quite concerned that we wouldn't be able to do it, and insisted we build in an extra day, and bring an extra day's food, in addition to our regular emergency supply.

(An annotated map.)

However, this time our dad was too busy at work to come with us. Being intrepid young ladies, we decided to go anyway. Also, we decided to start much farther South (at Rialto Beach,) and work our way North to more nostalgic environs.
Unfortunately, the tides during our chosen dates were very unfavorable: high tide was at mid-day. Our plan was to get up early, hike until lunch, have a seista, and then get started again.
As will be seen, the best laid plans of mice and young women hiking oft go astray.

(Lake Crescent)

The first day, we drove out, passing Lake Crescent. This is a gorgeous glacier carved lake, as you can see from the U-shape of this valley. There were packs of cyclists on the roads, and the lake looked perfect for kayaking. We really wanted to stop, but we were already late getting underway.
When we picked up our permit at the NPS office, the vaguely good-lookin' fellow behind the counter felt obligated to consult with us about the tides.
NPS Fellow: "Counter-intuitively, the empty moon means a full moon, but a filled in moon means a new moon."
Me (in an attempt to be amusing): "And next Edward Cullen is going to show up."
(The NPS fellow got this strained look on his face.)
Sister: "Who?"
Me: "You know, that dude from the Twilight books... the second one's called New Moon... Ha ha?"
(The NPS fellow still looked pained, and finished with us quickly.)

(What the...?)

We drove out to the trailhead, and along the way, were confused to see a bunch of signs saying things like "Hungry? Stop in for a Bite!", "Bella eats here!", and "Treaty Line!"
Turns out "Twilight" was shot over near Forks, WA, and the nearby areas have been simply mobbed with fans. Which would explain why the NPS fellow looked so horrified at a pair of young women talking about Edward Cullen.
Both my sister and I think "Twilight" is an abomination, so the Pacific Northwest was safe from any more fan-girl drool.

(The back of our minivan (with no seats) before packing. Yikes.)

As we got older, we started accumulating hiking stuff: fancy sleeping bags and thermal long-johns and whatnot. At the trailhead, we were confronted with the challenge of forcing all this gear AND the bear cans filled with food fit in our packs.
Huh.
At least we didn't have any plates.

(Finished packing! Mine on the right, my sister's on the left.)

Eventually we managed to fit (most) everything - though it bears note that my sister's pack was much larger than mine. All throughout the hike, she was pulling out clean tee-shirts and extra, unneeded layers, whereas I only had one of everything.
I made up for this by making her carry the tent and the stove.

(Right: Another sea stack. Left: Hole in the Wall)

The first day was one of the best. There was some great geology to be seen - awesome wind-carved sandstones, vertical layers of what appeared to be mudstones, and huge conglomerates. It was one of the cooler areas of sedimentary geology that I've seen. Unfortunately, being late and low on camera batteries, we didn't take pictures.

(The beach at Chilean Memorial.)

After about 3.7mi, we arrived at Chilean Memorial, a beach near the site of some old shipwreck far offshore, and a memorial somewhere in the woods. There were also some some campsites dug vaguely out of the bank.
All of which were unfortunately taken.
My sister and I ended up camping in the following spot:

(Ouch.)

Now, camping behind the log on top of some rocks was not our first choice. We had originally camped on the nice sandy spot in front of the log, but it looked a little close to the high tide mark...

(Our tent was in the sandy spot.)

And, as we found out at about 2am, it really was.
Luckily we woke up before the tide started creeping into our tent.
But it wasn't exactly pleasant to wake up at 2am, argue about which rocky bit to move the tent to, move the tent over the log, fight off the sand-fleas and moths drawn to the headlamps, and then crawl back into said tent. Where we then had to try get cozy on the rocks and fall asleep, all the while wondering if the tide was going to come into our new campsite.

(Right: The view from our rest spot. Left: My sister, doing the soduku.)

The next morning we awoke slightly sore and grumpy, and left camp a few hours later than anticipated. After rounding Cape Johnston, maybe a mile from camp, it was time to wait out the high tide.
We climbed up on some rocks on the point of a little headland, made a little food, napped a bit, I read "Notes from Underground", my sister played sodoku.
(Like I said, we're not big fans of Twilight.)
After the tide had lowered a bit, we set out to finish the day's 4.7 miles.
We were rounding a small headland (marked with a red dot on the map,) the last before the next camp's beach, when calamity struck again.
It was getting dark, and the next high tide was threatening to arrive. My sister (in much better shape than I) was leading at a brisk pace over some large, slimy, algae covered rocks.
I stepped off a rock, and my right foot lost its footing. My top-heavy pack began to pull me backward. I fumbled with my right foot, trying to gain traction, turning myself in a 180 degree turn before my pack pushed me over and I started to fall, face forward, toward the pointy tip of a rock.
As my chest rushed toward the ground, the only thought going through my head was "I am going to die. The force of this blow will stop my heart, and I will die. This is it."
Luckily, when I hit the rock, only the wind was knocked out of me, not my life.
After I had recovered said breath, I lay there, pinned by my pack, in a lot of pain, and yelled (probably more like squealed, to be honest) for my sister.
She helped me up, and we surveyed the damage. No broken ribs, but some nasty bleeding contusions on my knees. We decided to finish getting around the headland, and then deal with the damage.
As we walked away, going much more slowly, I asked her: "So, when I fell, did I flail around? Or was I more like a sack of potatoes?"
"Well, kinda both. With a little twirl."

(This is nothing compared to how my sternum felt.)

I had bruises for a few weeks, and, several months later, still have scars on my knees. My sternum (where I hit the rock) never really bruised up, but it hurt to breathe for several weeks. It kinda sucked.

(It took us a few minutes to figure out what that was.)

It was all worth it soon, when we got to see these fantastic sea stacks rising out of the fog, backlit by the sunset.

(Mmm...now this is more like it!)

Our campsite that night made up for it too: right on the beach, not too close to the waves, not too many sand fleas, and cheerful neighbors. Inland, in the forest, there's an actual campground (Cedar Creek Campground,) an old mine, and, some years, a seasonal ranger station. But the forest is creepy, the weather was nice, and the beach fantastic: so we camped there.

(You'd think it'd be impossible to get lost on a beach, but...)

The next day was crazy. We took way too long packing up camp, and so were frantically rushing to beat the tides to our next siesta spot - a place we'd been before, called Norwegian Memorial. It was a good campground, immediately before a long, hard stretch of rocky beach, followed by one of our favorite campgronds: Yellow Banks. Ahead of us, we spotted a group travelling at a pace just slightly faster than ours, and so we decided to follow them.

We booked around each and every headland, waiting to spot Norwegian Memorial, catching glimpses of the people ahead of us, worrying about the incoming tide the whole time. We didn't look at our watches, didn't stop to eat or rest or drink much water.

Eventually, the tide had risen so much that we were scrambling over the logs right next to the bank, covering our faces to escape the thick cloud of sandfleas that were frantically fleeing the tide themselves.

When we rounded that headland, we decided to give it a rest, even though we hadn't made Norwegian Memorial.

(We were so exhausted and hungry, we just chucked stuff about.)

We took the first campsite we saw, and dropped our packs in relief. We cooked some food, drank some water, and put our feet up for a bit.

Then we checked our watches, and realized that we'd hiked completely through the high tide. And this beach didn't really look like Norwegian Memorial, but it was the first campground we'd seen.

Huh. How odd.

(I can't say my shoelaces fared well on this venture.)

I walked down the beach, and found the group we'd been following around all the headlands.

"Excuse me, but do you know how far it is to Norwegian Memorial?" I asked.

"Oh, it's about four miles that way." they responded, pointing to the way we'd come.

"Oh. But, where are we?"

They looked at me like I had recently escaped from the psych ward.

"This is Yellow Banks. See?" They pointed to the other end of the beach. "The Yellow Bank?"

I stared at it.

Then I thanked them, and went back to my sister.

"Hey, come look at this." I said, and pointed down the beach. "What color would you say that bank is?"

"Um, I don't know - yellow?" she said. "Are we at Yellow Banks?!"

(My sister was very happy to stop walking!)

We were so excited to have hiked our day's allotment before lunch that we decided to just hike out that night. We were pretty impressed with ourselves.

Cocky little brats.

Actually, we decided that, since there were only six miles left - three of them on the boardwalk - to hike out that night so my sister could have more time to get ready for her departure. We ended up booking through most of the spots we remembered, reached our car well after dark, and eventually had to stop and sleep in the car at a Park and Ride.

(I can't say my fashion sense has improved much since I was a child.)

It was a pretty great trip.

Even if I didn't collect any rocks, and Edward Cullen was no where to be seen.

1a: Truth (with Guest Speaker.)

2009-06-15T20:50:00.000-07:00

What follows is a conversation between two giants - nay, legends - of philosophy, regarding the fundamental difference between two distinct perspectives of Truth: the Fluid Conception, and the Concrete Conception.
(Note: Neither of these Conceptions have anything to do with the Immaculate Conception, or the technical aspects of the origin of Souls in Aristotle's "On the Soul." Give me a break.)
Thusly, I present:

On Truth
With the Pinnacles of Modern Philosophy:

Helena The author of this blog. Studied philosophy for two wretched years before disserting to the Elyssian Fields of Geology.
SD: My ~~beastie~~ bestie (best friend). Studied philosophy for 1.5 even wretched-er years before fleeing to a land of ~~paint & puppies~~ Art & Animal Advocacy.

12:35am: Helena: But I don't possess social graces?
12:35am: SD:Nah, still assert you're socially adept, babe.
12:43am: Helena: Socially lame.
12:43am: SD: Only so if you think so. Think otherwise & it'll be so. We create our own cosmos. (Realizing this is one source of my recent optimism.)
12:44am: Helena: WHAT?
12:44am: SD: What what?
12:44am: Helena: The cosmos does not bend to the will of individuals.
12:45am: SD: That it does, love, that it does.
12:45am: Helena: There are facts and laws upon which the world is based.
12:45am: SD: Your age-worn empiricism'll do nothing to cripple that unerring beauty that one woman can create.
12:45am: Helena: One of which happens to be that I am socially inept.
12:45am: SD: Make it otherwise!
12:45am: Helena: But, by your own assertion, there is beauty in truth.
12:45am: SD: But truth is relative.
12:48am: Helena: Most truths are not relative, however.
12:48am: SD: Would argue that truths about one's person who most always subject to flux.
12:49am: Helena: (Give me about 10 min: kitten has pooped in corner again. Must point fellow to box & clean up.)
1:08am: Helena: Anyway.
1:09am: Helena: Truths about one's person may slowly change over time, based on outside interferences: that does not mean that truthful perceptions of said truth at any given time can vary.
1:11am: Helena: WHY ARE YOU IGNORING MY BRILLIANCE? God. It's like you have a life and hobbies other than me.
1:30am: SD: (decided to take a walk in my absence, some such nonsense.)
- Fini -

We're like the next Plato/Socrates.
But who gets to be the Overbearing Wino Boy-lover, and who gets to be the Silent Transcribing Wino Boy-lover?

I live on a glacial garbage dump.

2009-06-01T03:18:00.000-07:00

Geologic Map of Tumwater

My house lies on the Qgo section:
"Vashon recessional outwash—Recessional and proglacial
stratified, moderately to well-rounded, poorly to moderately
sorted outwash sand and gravel of northern or mixed
northern and Cascade source, locally containing silt and
clay; also contains lacustrine deposits and ice-contact
stratified drift. Some areas mapped as unit Qgo may instead
be advance outwash (unit Qga) because it is difficult to tell
the difference between the two without the presence of an
intervening till."

In other garbage-dump news, a fellow is Tacoma is building condos on the foundations of an old copper/arsenic plant, now a Superfund site.
This is apparently old news, but I only found out today, via Text Message from a Toxic Waste Site on the Stranger.
Recovering viable land from our past mistakes seems like a noble ambition (despite being aimed only at the rich) however the ecological aspects are slightly concerning.
My knowledge of the issue is, admittedly, fairly limited.

An Overview Of the Geomorphology of the Arabian Peninsula

2009-05-19T22:07:00.000-07:00

(Written for my Physical Geography class. This is by no means definitive. In fact, I can already pinpoint several errors: there is no mention of volcanism, the ongoing rifting process separating the peninsula from Africa, etc. It satisfies its "Overview" classification. In addition, it's also been several years since my last geology class, so there's much roughness around the edges.)

When one hears about Arabia, one pictures a desolate land of sand dunes, filled with oil refineries. But the origin of that landscape is not frequently questioned: how did it come to be, and why does it look as it does? The answer to that question lies in the region's tectonic history, its climate, and the weathering that therefore ensues.
One of the persistent topics that must be addressed is the presence of oil on the Arabian peninsula. Before deformation, these oil reserves were estimated to be 2,000km wide, 4,000km long, and 3,000m thick. (Alnaji) Most of these come from carbonates deposited on a continental shelf during the Mesozoic, next to a passive margin. (Alnaji) (A passive margin is a tectonic plate boundary that is neither subducting or colliding. It leads to a flat landscape, upon which quite a lot of sedimentary material can accumulate. (Strickler, M.)) Carbonates form from the skeletons of algae, invertebrate shells, or coralline reefs, or precipitated out of coralline reefs. Common carbonates on the Arabian peninsula are limestone (CaCO3) and dolomite (CaMg(CO3)2). Oil reservoirs are formed in the following fashion: hydrocarbons leak out of sedimentary, organic-rich rocks. Due to their light density, they float to above the interstitial watery sediments around them. The oil rises upward, and, if a layer of impervious rock (called a seal, usually concave from below) lies above the oil, it is contained, forming an “oil trap.” Eventually, most of the water is forced out, leaving behind a reservoir containing oil, and possibly natural gas as well.(Shelton, J.)
To understand the high propensity of oil reservoirs on the peninsula, a look at the geologic history of the area is necessary. During the Precambrian time, a collection of island arcs and small crustal fragments that formed an accretion against a segment of older continental crust, forming the continent Gondwana. This continent was partially covered by glaciers, some reaching as far as Western Arabia, during the Lower Ordovician. (Alnaji) During the Silurian, the glaciers melted, raising the sea level. While the peninsula was underwater, various sediments accumulated and compressed, creating some shale sedimentation. (Alnaji, N.) The peninsula was completely connected to Africa, and formed part of the coastline of a large landmass called Gondwana. (See Fig. 1)

Fig. 1: Gondwana and the Paleo-Tethys ocean can be easily seen. Arabia's present position is outlined, and its Silurian position in Gondwana can be interpolated. (Credit: Scotse,C. )

Eventually, Gondwana rotated and moved northward, where it intercepted Eurmerica and formed Pangea. (Blakey, R., 2006) The pressure of these two continents colliding created the Hercynian orogeny (mountain building event,) during the early Permian. (Fig. 2) This orogeny is not only responsible for several mountain belts, but also a large percentage of the oil reserves found on the peninsula: the compression forced hydrocarbons (many from the Silurian) to move, and also formed some seals over the reservoirs. (Faqira, M.) The Hercynian orogeny contributed to large oil reservoirs by moving hydrocarbons along the edge of the Central Arabian Arch and along faults, and created some new reservoir seals. (Fagira) Another notable aspect of the Carboniferous is the pre-Unayzah Uncomformity (Alnaji) – an unconformity is when deposition is stopped, erosion takes places, and then depostion begins again, leaving a missing section of time. (Shelton, J.) This is important because it shows that deposition had stopped during this portion of time, and erosion was instead occurring.

Fig. 2: By the Early Permian, Pangaea has formed. The Hercynian orogeny is centered. Despite its distance from the actual orogeny, the collision affected the Arabian peninsula greatly. (Credit: Blakey, R.)

Next, during the Middle Jurassic, Pangea broke up into the continents we now know today. (Fig. 3) The Arabian peninsula entered a tectonically stable time period during the Jurassic, and developed a continental shelf near the Neo-Tethys Sea, right next to a passive margin. In addition, at this time several intrashelf basins, including the Gotnia, South Rub' AlKhali, and Arabian Basins, formed, as a result of tectonic differentiation and rising sea level. These basins accumulated a lot of organic-rick rocks during the Late Callovian, when the peninsula was inundated by an oxygen-poor ocean.(Alnaji)

Fig. 3: During the Middle Jurassic, Pangaea has begun to split into its constituent parts. Africa is beginning to rotate, and will soon intercept Asia. (Credit: Blakey, R.)

During the Late Cretaceous, the Neo-Tethys sea was closed due to further tectonic action. Also, at this time, the pre-Aruma Unconformity was created, showing another period of stopped sedimentation. This action also remade the Hercynian Orogeny features and formed the major oil reserves we now use. (Alnaji)
Another orogeny, the Zagros orogeny, happened during the Tertiary when Asia and Arabia were thrust together. When this happened, the Arabian plate was subducted under Iran, where it still lies with one corner underneath. (Alnaji) This series of long, tectonically inactive times and brief periods of compression served to deposit, manipulate, and contain hydrocarbons, leading to major oil reservoirs throughout the peninsula.
The Arabian Peninsula may contain the Arabian Desert: one of the largest deserts on the planet, with an approximate area of one million mi2(Geology.com), however, unlike what one might suppose, it is not entirely sand dunes and desolation. The peninsula is composed of a plateau, sloping north-east from the Red Sea to the eastern lowlands by the Persian Gulf, and its elevation ranges from 37m below sea level, to 3,660m above sea level.(De Pauw, E.) As a result, it has a variety of localized climates within its overall climate, which is very arid. This is mainly because of the large distance between it and major weather systems (like the North Atlantic depression,) and its propensity towards receiving continental air from Africa and China during the winter and summer. (De Pauw, E.) Precipitation (and therefore vegetation) is very sparse and patchy in general, and greatly affected by the terrain.
As the peninsula is located in the Northern Hemisphere, its winter occurs at the same time as winter in North America, Europe, and Asia. The coldest time of the year is between December and Feburary, (De Pauw, E.) when the earth rotates the Northern Hemisphere away from the sun. In addition, during the winter polar continental air blows down from Central Asia, resulting in lowered temperatures, clear skies, and dry weather. “Lowered” temperatures are, of course, relative – average winter temperatures across the peninsula range from 41 to 81.5 degrees Fahrenheit. (Fig. 4) Any winter precipitation comes from moist polar maritime air that moved through North Africa and the Mediterranean. (De Pauw, E.) Snow has occasionally fallen in the Yemeni and Asir highlands, as a result of their increased altitude.

Fig.4: Mean temperatures during the coldest and warmest months of the year. (Credit: De Pauw, E.)

Springtime is when the majority of precipitation falls in the Arabian Peninsula. This is due to the Indian Monsoon's influence: (De Pauw, E.) as the earth rotates around the sun on its tipped axis, the area closest to the sun moves from north to south, which changes weather patterns, and brings some areas of the world – including India – large amounts of unusual precipitation. Some of this precipitation works its way over to the Arabian peninsula, but it is mitigated by the tropical continental area present on the peninsula at that time.
During the summer, which occurs between June and September, average temperatures across the peninsula range from 72.5 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. (Fig. 4) In addition to the standard temperature increase brought on by the Earth's rotation, tropical continental air blows in from Africa, creating a stable high pressure area. This brings very hot, very dry air, clear skies, and low humidity. (De Pauw, E.) It is this time of year that generates the standard mental picture of the Middle East: deathly hot.
Precipitation on the peninsula is scarce, overall, and varies highly between years. (The Biome Group) Amount of precipitation correlates closely with the elevation, and sometimes the Yemen and Asir highlands, and the Hajar mountains generate their own weather systems, including frequent instances of fog. These mountains also guide the precipitation and wind around the peninsula. (De Pauw, E.) The evaporation rate exceeds the precipitation rate, perpetuating the arid climate. (The Biome Group)
The precipitation is directly the cause of the sparse and patchy vegetation patterns on the peninsula. Areas where water collect, such as wadis (ephemeral stream beds, where water is only present during periods of intense precipitation, frequently canyon-like,) support a greater number of plants more effectively than the rest of the desert. (De Pauw, E.) Vegetation patterns depends more specifically on the frequency of flooding, stream velocity, sediment type, and the local variability of rainfall.
Soil forms very slowly, as most water sluffs right off the exposed bedrock or drains through the limited soil. Without any plants to hold the little soil together, there is much erosion. (Stoffer, P.) Any soils that do form are coarse, shallow, and rocky, with good drainage. Small particulates are blown away, leaving only the larger pieces behind. (The Biome Group)
Since the peninsula is a very dry area, chemical breakdown (i.e. the dissolution of minerals from water) is very low. However, mechanical breakdown (i.e. the physical subdivision of large rocks into smaller rocks) is very high. This is a result of the heating and cooling of rocks, roots forcing their way through cracks, wind, precipitation, and any ice wedging that might occur. (Stoffer, P.) Different types of rock have varying resistances to erosion, creating differential erosion and carving curious shapes into the rocks, such as pillars, ledges, etc. (Taylor, S.)
Erosion through precipitation is intense. Frequently, rain drops in still air strike the ground with a velocity of 30ft/s, and, by the time one inch of rain has fallen, the ground will have been hit by a total mass of 113 tons. (Shelton, J.) Erosion consists frequently on a small-scale – sand thrown up by the impact of rain, small rocks jostled. (Shelton, J.) However, large-scale erosion also happens - if the slopes become saturated with rain, rock falls or landslides will occur. (Stoffer, P.) This material will be moved along in a debris flow, consisting of a large amount of rock, plant material, etc., held together with just enough water to keep it moving. (Stoffer, P.) A flash flood usually consists of a greater percentage of water in the debris flow. In a flash flood, rocks are smashed together, decreasing their surface area, and increasing the rate of chemical breakdown. (Stoffer, P.) (This is because, with a greater surface area, there are more exposed atoms to be dissolved by the water.) In general, the rocks become smaller and more rounded the farther they are away from their source. (Stoffer, P.) When this material exits a canyon, it spreads out significantly, creating what is called an alluvial fan. (Shelton, J.)
Aeolian processes (wind erosion) does not erode a desert landscape nearly as much as one would think, however it does play a part. Small particles of rock or sand are moved through the air or along the ground, in a process called deflation. (Taylor, S.) Frequently, this material slams into other rocks and “sand blasts” them, or abrades them, further increasing the amount of material being carried by the wind. (Taylor, S.) If there is a strong wind, and it carries a lot of material, it can become a sand or dust storm. These storms can cover several countries, as seen in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5: A dust storm crossing Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iran in 2003. Dust storms differ from sand storms in that their particulate size is smaller, meaning it can be blown farther and spread more widely. (Shelton, J.) (Credit: NASA Earth Observatory.)

Looking back through the history of the Arabian peninsula, it is possible to see how a series of depositional and compressional periods contributed to the formation of large oil reservoirs, and the general topology of the region. If the same material was placed in a more temperate location, the equivalent of the American South would have occurred. Instead, the region's tectonic activity has placed it in its current position, resulting in a highly arid climate. The scorching temperatures and lack of precipitation have resulted in a carved landscape, complete with sand dunes, wadis, and dust storms. This combination of factors has resulted in one of the hottest, sandiest, and most desolate places on the globe.

Citation Locations:

Alnaji, N. (2006). A Brief Tectonic History of the Arabian Basin. In USC Sequence Stratigraphy Web. From http://strata.geol.sc.edu/Nassir-Thesis-SITE/CHAPT04/li>
Scotese, C. (2003). The Paleomap Project. In The Paleomap Project. From http://www.scotese.com.
Blakey, R. (2006). Paleogeography Through Geologic Time: Silurian. In Stratigraphy and Sedimentology on the Colorado Plauteau. From http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/global_history.html
Faqira, M. Rademakers, M., Afifi, A.. (2005). Impact of the Hercynian Orogeny on Hydrocarbon Accumulations in Eastern Saudi Arabia. In 2005 AAPG International Conference and Exhibition. From http://aapg.confex.com/aapg/paris2005/techprogram/A99685.htm
Shelton, J. Geology Illustrated. United States: W.H. Freeman & Co., 1966
Strickler, M. Ask GeoMan. In GeoMania. From http://jersey.uoregon.edu/~mstrick/
Stoffer, P. (2004). Weathering and Erosion in Desert Environments. In Desert Landforms and Surface Processes in the Mojave National Preserve and Vicinity. From http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2004/1007/index.html
De Pauw, E. (2002). An Agroecological Exploration of the Arabian Peninsula. In The Arabian Peninsula Regional Program. From http://www.icarda.org/APRP/Agroecological_Exploration.htm
The Biome Group. (1996). The Desert Biome. In University of California Museum of Paleontology. From http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/exhibits/biomes/deserts.php.
Taylor, S. Desert Processes and Landscape Development. In Dr. Stephen Taylor's Homepage. From http://www.wou.edu/las/physci/taylor/g322/deserts.pdf
Geology.com. The World's Largest Desert. From http://geology.com/records/largest-desert.shtml.
NASA Earth Observatory. From http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/

Honest Admission #2:

2009-05-12T01:10:00.001-07:00

Please tell me:
am I the only one who, when they hear distant bass rumbles/thunder/airplanes, immediately looks around for the Tyrannosaurus?

I still have nightmares, sometimes.

(Coffee makes me honest.)

Chem test

2009-05-10T18:13:00.000-07:00

My professor seems to be very fond of maelic acid.
C4H4O4.
Or, alternatively:
HOOCCHCHCOOH.

When I look at that, all I see is:
HOOCH.

Whatever happened to, say, HCl or HBrO or H2SO4?

Shock.

2009-04-27T23:16:00.000-07:00

Am I the only one who missed that Peter O'Toole is still alive?

Or that he played Priam in "Troy"?
(Troy being a badly made movie of "The Illiad".)

How do you go from "Lawrence of Arabia" to a movie that stars Orlando Bloom?