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Geology News
Canada Current Events

British Columbia Map.

A report in The Vancouver Sun says that oil jobs are quite dangerous in British Columbia. The injury rate there is about 1/2 of the provincial rate, however, the severity of injuries and duration of off time are much worse.

The need for skilled mining industry professionals in Canada is going up faster than Canadian schools can gradate students. They need 600 engineers per year but schools only graduate between 120 and 150. The nine schools granting those degrees do not have the capacity needed to meet the demand.

The Frank Landslide happened on April 29th, 1903 in Alberta, Canada. A short description of the event with a few photos can be found at Dave Petley’s blog.

Use the Google Map at right to zoom in on the slide. Click the “View Large Map” link to go full screen.

An article on the Ottawa Citizen website explores the mechanics of Leda Clay (quick clay) landslides. The Notre Dame-De-La-Salette landslide is cited as an example. It blocked a river, and flooded a nearby town with water, debris and ice.

Although the recent USGS report on Bakken Formation Oil did not give details for Saskatchewan, the rock unit and an oil production potential extends northwest from the active areas in Montana and North Dakota.

Google has added contour lines to their terrain maps. They are not quite as detailed as USGS topos but for free-to-use maps they are very nice. Contour intervals vary depending upon local relief.

Researchers find that climate change is causing summer water levels on the Mackenzie River Delta to be three times higher than normal. They are also finding water level increases in the low elevation lakes on the delta. They believe that what they see on the Mackenzie Delta is representative of the circumpolar Arctic.

Pemberton is one of the fastest growing communities in British Columbia. A new study calls for a landslide warning system because the Lillooet River Valley has been hit by three large landslides in the past 6,000 years. Thanks to Ryan Scott for letting us know about this news item.

This new species, perfectly preserved in sandstone, has given scientists more detailed information than any other plesiosaur fossil to date. It has now been declared the first member of a new genus.

There are a number of territorial disputes that have brewed in the Arctic for a long time but which are moving closer to political or perhaps military confrontations. All of this is over the enormous oil, gas and other resources that are thought to exist beneath the Arctic Ocean floor.

Geology.com Article: Who Owns the Arctic?

An article at Mining Weekly explores some of the challenges faced by diamond miners. These include: bureaucracy, logistics, corruption, price stability, synthetic diamonds and more. Angola was cited as being a difficult country to work in, and Canada was cited as being underexplored.

The Diavik Mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories has produced over 41.5 million carats since mining began in 2003. All of this has been from surface production. Now operators at the mine owned by Rio Tinto and Harry Winston Diamond consider going underground.

Here is an article in The Canadian Press that quotes a number of energy executives who recently attended an oilsands conference. They comment on the pros and cons of carbon storage and reveal a lot of different perspectives.

You have probably heard about the “Appalachian Trail” which many people hike in part or in full. Now there is also the “International Appalachian Trail/Sentier International des Appalaches” which begins near Mount Katahdin (the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail) and continues along the Appalachians into Canada. This GEOTIMES article explores the concept and route of the new international trail.

Nine purple diamonds were discovered in surface rock samples collected from the Ekomiak Conglomerate on a property in James Bay, Quebec.

The Burgess Shale is a Cambrian-age black shale outcropping in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, Canada. It contains a large number of exceptionally well preserved fossils. This article describes one idea about the exceptional preservation of these fossils.

That’s the question asked by a Nunn, Colorado resident who owns property near where Powertech Uranium Corporation of Canada plans to open a uranium mine.

British Columbia is the first government to begin taxing carbon emissions. Taxes on fuels that generate carbon emissions will go into effect. To start, drivers will pay 2.4 extra cents for a liter of gasoline. They hope that this tax will promote conservation and efficiency.

Researcher at the University of Colorado have found evidence to suggest that aerosols from tropical volcanoes likely cause the “Little Ice Ages”. They correlate ice cap growth of Baffin Island in 1280 and 1450 with increases in atmospheric aerosols.

The United States Geological Survey and the Geological Survey of Canada have produced a joint publication: “Analysis of Improved Government Geological Map Information for Mineral Exploration: Incorporating Efficiency, Productivity, Effectiveness, and Risk Considerations”. It documents how the availability of government geologic maps can save exploration companies money. This publication is an all around great idea. It looks like a valuable read for state geologists preparing for a budget defense or rallying support from industry. And, it might be a good idea for neighboring state geological surveys to increase their cooperative work on the field, research and publication efforts behind the creation of geologic maps.

A study examined records of ice cover on Northern Hemisphere lakes and rivers over the past 150 years - between 1846 and 1995. These showed a definite trend of few days of ice cover. Another study focused on ice duration in the Great Lakes area of the United States. Same conclusion.

Multiple earthquakes up to 6.5 magnitude have occurred in the Queen Charlotte Islands area, off the Pacific coast of British Columbia, Canada. At the time of this posting, two 6.5 event had occurred at 11:01 UTC and 11:44 UTC along with a 5.6 at 10:39 UTC and a 5.0 at 12:00 UTC. A tsunami is not expected. These earthquakes occured near the northern edge of the Juan de Fuca Plate.

Workers in the deep gold mines below Yellowknife, Northwest Territories have always known about the geothermal gradient. Now there are proposals to tap the heat from a couple of mines that remove gold from over two kilometers below the surface.

We recently upgraded our collection of static maps of Canada….. Canada, Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland & Labrador, Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan, and Yukon Territory.

The Canadian government has set aside three tracts of land totalling 25 million acres in the the Northwest Territories. These will be used to create a national park, a wilderness area and a conservation area.

Pictographs are a form of “rock art” in which people paint an image on the rock. Explore a worldwide collection of ancient pictograph images from Arizona, Aruba, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Namibia, Nevada and Utah.

Scientists using highly sensitive seismic detectors on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington and on Vancouver Island, British Columbia have found that the strength of faint tremors increases during periods of high tide and decreases during periods of low tide.

A slab covered with hundreds of fossil retile tracks has been discovered in New Brunswick, Canada. The tracks have five fingers and scales, which is good evidence that they were made by a reptile. They were probably made by Hylonomus lyelli.

This is an opinion editorial by Floyd McKay, a journalism professor emeritus of Western Washington University. He explores the significance of the Northwest Passage and Arctic access and suggests that the United States and Canada need to negotiate an agreement on how it can be used.

What is the Northwest Passage?

CIA Image

The water level of Lake Superior is at its lowest ever. The previous record was way back in 1925. This is especially significant because Superior is the biggest and the deepest of the Great Lakes and water level changes there represent a lot of water.

USGS Image

Researchers from Laval University studied a sediment core from Ward Hunt Lake (Canada’s northernmost lake) that represented about 8450 years of record. They found that algae growth has increased significantly over the last two centuries. Older portions of the core had no algae, indicating that the lake was frozen all year.

Kevin Lange © iStockphoto.com

A petroglyph is an image that has been carved into a rock. People have been making them for thousands of years. This photographic collection of petroglyphs includes rock art from Arizona, British Columbia, California, Hawaii, India, Namibia, New Mexico, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Utah, Virgin Islands and Washington.

University of Washington scientists have found clear evidence that a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Alaska during 2002 triggered five tremor bursts on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The same earthquake sloshed lakes as far away as Louisiana and muddied wells as far away as Pennsylvania.

About 1.85 billion years ago a meteorite impact formed a large crater in the Sudbury district of Ontario, Canada. Debris from that impact was scattered across thousands of square miles. Recently, the Ham Lake fire exposed pieces of impact debris in northern Minnesota and provide interesting clues to understanding the unusual nature of the impact crater.

“Global Warning: The World’s Endangered Destinations” is a photo presentation of sixteen locations where global warming is expected to have a significant impact. These include: The Everglades; Kenai Fjords National Park; Great Barrier Reef; The Netherlands; Mt. Kilimanjaro; Tuvalu; South Georgia Island; Dalian, China; Venice; Tokyo, Japan; Wengen, Switzerland; Manhattan, New York City; Halong Bay, Vietnam; New Orleans; London, England; and Northwest Territories, Canada.

NPS Image

Sediments rich in iridium, fullerenes and other compounds associated with extraterrestrial impacts are found in lakes from New Mexico to Canada. These document that a large impact probably occurred about 12,000 years ago - corresponding to the extinction of the mammoths, mastodons and sloths that were once common in North America. It is at odds with the idea that these large mammals were hunted to extinction by humans.

UNESCO Image

The Cascadia Subduction Zone is a zone of recurrent earthquakes with the potential of producing a tsunami. It is so close to the continent that residents on the west side of Vancourver Island will have very little warning when a tsunami is produced. A new tsunami detection system takes advantage of GPS monitoring to detect horizontal ground motion and tidal monitoring to detect water motion. An earthquake followed by tsunami will make the ground and the water move in a specific pattern. The new system is configured to detect this pattern and send an automatic warning. The time require for human interpretation is eliminated, giving residents a precious few minutes of response before the tsunami arrives.