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Geology News
Central America & Mexico Current Events

View a photo slideshow of some of the world’s most destructive storms since 1970. Included are: Cyclone Nargis, Cyclone Sidr, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Mitch, Tropical Storm Thelma, Super Typhoon Nina, and the Bhola Cyclone, among others.

Philip Klotzbach and William Gray of Colorado State University: “We foresee a well above-average Atlantic basin tropical cyclone season in 2008….. We anticipate an above-average probability of United States major hurricane landfall.”

NASA satellites collect images and data to monitor worldwide volcanoes. In addition to satellite images, they have sensors to detect heat, sulfur dioxide and small changes in the shape of earth’s surface. Here’s a collection of images that show different types of volcano monitoring.

“A dust storm struck central Mexico on March 18, 2008, and winds transported the dust into southern Texas. Dust from Mexico mixed in the atmosphere with rain showers, raining mud over the city and creating what some described as “a car wash owner’s dream,” according to San Antonio’s KSAT.com.” Quoted from the Earth Observatory Report.

The world produces about 100 tons of germanium per year. The high demand for high tech gadgets and defense technology pushed the price of germanium to an all time high of about $1300/kilogram. Prospectors are searching northern Mexico to find new sources for this rare metal.

Here is a list of the news items that were most popular with our readers for February 2008…

• New Duck-Billed Dinosaur Discovered in Mexico
• Coal Through a Microscope
• Volcanoes May Have Caused the Little Ice Ages
• Plastic: The Scourge of Sea Life
• Sir Charles Lyell’s Elements of Geology
• Photos from the Tucson Gem and Minerals Show
• Meteorites from Mercury
• Heated Debate Over the Definition of a Planet
• Theories on Grand Canyon Formation
• Who Buys High End Mineral Specimens?

Several minor to small earthquakes have occurred today in the Baja California, Mexico area. The largest was about magnitude 5.0. Up to intensity V shaking has been repored in the Mexicali area.

Researchers have found a new species of duck-billed dinosaur in the Coahuila region of Mexico. The new plant-eating hadrosaur has been named Velafrons coahuilensis.

A moderate earthquake occurred this morning in southern Mexico. It was a 6.4 magnitude event that occurred at a depth of about 119 kilometers. The epicenter was about 37 km (23 miles) northwest of Arriaga, Chiapas, Mexico. News reports indicate little damage and no loss of life.

In November a major landslide in southern Mexico blocked the Grijalva River, the second largest by discharge in the country and buried the town of San Juan de Grijalva. On Tuesday, Mexican authorities opened a canal through the landslide debris.

The 2007 hurricane season officially ended on November 30, however, Tropical Storm Olga has formed and just finished hitting the Caribbean with heavy rains and strong winds. Now it is moving between Cuba and Yucatan as it enters the Gulf of Mexico.

The 1995 eruption of Soufrière Hills volcano brought tourism on Montserrat to a halt and chased most of the island’s residents to homes in other countries. Slowly redevelopment is happening and slowly tourists are coming back. However, worries about the volcano could continue to hurt the island’s economy.

Turrialba Volcano, a stratovolcano in central Costa Rica erupted gas and a thick column of vapor last week. This was its first eruption since 1866. This follows a summer of dying vegetation on the slopes of the mountain.

Popocatepetl Volcano, a stratovolcano about 40 miles (70 kilometers) southeast of Mexico City erupted ash and steam on Saturday. It is the second highest volcano in Mexico and periodically stirs to evacuate local people.

Here’s a Landsat image showing Popocatepetl (volcanic cone with small plume in southeast corner of image) and Mexico City (purple area with a faint street grid just northwest of center).

A strong earthquake occured in the Windward Islands area of the eastern Caribbean near Martinique. So far, no casualties have been reported and a tsunami was not generated.

USGS report.

Concepcion Volcano erupted on Saturday sending columns of ash into the sky. The ash was blown to the northwest, towards the capital city of Managua. Concepcion and another stratovolcano, Maderas, form the island of Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua.

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.

A large mudslide buried parts of San Juan Grijalva village in southern Chiapas, Mexico. About 100 houses were reported buried and 30 people were reported as missing.

A week of heavy rain has flooded large areas of Mexico. Especially hard hit was the state of Tabasco which is reported to have been 70% to 80% under water - and many homes were flooded to their rooftops.

Tropical Storm Noel dropped heavy rain, triggered landslides, caused floods and killed 81 people on the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola. Now it moves out over the Atlantic and towards the Bahamas, possibly skirting Florida.

MSN Travel has a photo gallery of thirteen spectacular bridges from around the world. These include: Millau Viaduct, France; Puente de Alamillo, Spain; Kintai-kyo, Japan; Sydney Harbor Bridge, Australia; Golden Gate Bridge, California; Pont Neuf, France; San Diego-Coronado Bridge, California; Vasco da Gama Bridge, Portugal; Tower Bridge, England; Bridge of the Americas, Panama; Oberbaumbrücke, Germany; Zakim Bridge, Massachusetts; and Erasmusbrug, Netherlands.

Tropical Storm Noel has dumped up to twenty inches of rain on Haiti and the Dominican Republic. This has resulted in widespread flooding. The storm lost strength while passing over Hispaniola but forecasters say that it could build into a hurricane when it tracks back over the warm Atlantic Ocean waters today.

An offshore platform in the Gulf of Mexico was knocked over by eight meter high waves in a heavy storm. Most crew members were able to scramble into life rafts but some of the rafts broke up in the storm. Nineteen workers were lost.

USGS Image

Mexico is the second largest supplier of oil to the United States. However, it’s output is falling because the fields are being depleted with no replacments, and sabotage is interrupting the supply chain. The US will need to find a new supplier to replace this decline in Mexican oil.

NASA Image

Hurricane Lorenzo is expected to hit the Gulf Coast of Mexico on Friday morning. It is presently a Category 1 storm and is expected to strengthen before it makes landfall.

NOAA Image

When Hurricane Felix hit the coast of Central America many of the people there had no idea that a powerful hurricane was coming. They were out in the sea fishing, at work in coastline areas, or taking shelter in stilt homes a few feet above high tide. Many of these people were killed because they took no precautionary actions, but some are now telling their survival stories.

A 30-million-year-old piece of amber from the Dominican Republic contains what might be the oldest known vertebrate eggshell. It is believed th be the shell of a hummingbird egg and if this is confirmed it will also be the oldest evidence of the bird in the Americas.

NOAA Image

Hurricane Felix has upgraded in strength to a Category 5 storm with windspeeds approaching 165 MPS. It is currently moving west through the Caribbean Sea and heading towards Honduras and Belize where it could arrive on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, as a Category 5 Storm.

NOAA Image

Hurricane Felix is just north of South America and is headed towards Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. According to the current predicted path it will pass by the northern coast of Honduras on Tuesday, hit Yucatan on Wednesday morning and back over the warm waters of the Gulf on Thursday.

Caribbean Islands Map

A team from St Andrews University has been awarded 400,000 pounds to develop a system to monitor Soufriere Hills Volcano on the Caribbean Island of Montserrat. Most of the island was rendered uninhabitable by a 1995 eruption. This new monitoring system will be put in place to provide advance eruption warning to remaining residents.

NOAA Image

Hurricane Dean lost some of its steam passing over the Yucatan Peninsula, dropping in strength to a Category 1. However it now will move over the Bay of Campeche where it will draw strength from the very warm waters there. Vulnerable there are over 100 oil platforms and three major oil exporting ports.

NOAA Image

The predicted path of Hurricane Dean as shown by the National Hurricane Center is crossing Yucatan on Tuesday and making landfall on the Gulf Coast of Mexico on Wednesday afternoon.

Guatemala Map

Heavy rain in Guatemala triggered a landslide on Thursday that slid into a concrete block house. A wall of the house fell inwards killing five children.

Instead of creeping toward Mexico City at about one inch per year - the expected speed from plate tectonic theory - the region near Acapulco moved in the opposite direction for six months and sped up by four times, said CU-Boulder aerospace engineering Professor Kristine Larson.

Caribbean Map

Twelve years ago Montserrat was a jewel of an island with most of its income coming from tourism. Then, after a 100-year silence, Soufriere Hills Volcano erupted. Today about 1/2 of the original population struggles to make a living amid the dust and debris of the eruption’s aftermath.

Haiti Map

Gold and copper prospecting companies are working in Haiti, some returning to prospects that they started a decade ago. Political violence and social problems still discourage exploration but reports of promising properties are rekindling interest.

A landslide in Mexico buried a bus traveling on a remote mountain road. Thirty-two people are confirmed dead.

Guatemala Map

A 6.8 magnitude earthquake has occurred about twenty miles off of Guatemala’s Pacific coast at a depth of about forty miles. Some homes are reported damaged. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that a tsunami is not expected. The damage done by this earthquake is expected to be lower than other earthquakes of similar size. This is because the epicenter was under the ocean and away from population. USGS data for this earthquake

J. A. Soriano Photo

Scientists from the University of Texas at Austin are trying to better understand how the cenotes of Mexico formed and how they evolve over time. At the same time scientists from Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburgh are pushing the envelope in robotic mapping and navigation.

Electrical Resistivity at Poza Seca

Marc Airhart sends his third field report from Mexico. He explains how some sinkholes have slowly closed, sealing an underground lake below that might contain forms of life that are capable of living without sunlight or oxygen. These living communities have been isolated for thousands of years and may have evolved along paths different than their current relatives that have continued living at the surface.