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Geology News
Colorado Current Events

NPR’s “All Things Considered” program goes to the Colorado School of Mines where lots of students are getting hired well in advance of graduation at $80K+ salaries with signing bonuses.

More….
Geologist Salaries at Record Highs
Geologist Career Resources

The-Vug.com has photos of the Amazonite and Smoky Quartz exhibit from the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show. Included are photos from the Pike’s Peak County, Colorado mine where some were collected and also from the Collector’s Edge Cleaning Lab where some of the specimens were prepared.

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.”

“The five provinces of the western United States — the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado Plateau, the Rio Grande Rift, and the Basin and Range—now offer great contrast in landscape… …yet one-hundred million years ago, all of these provinces were near sea level.” Quoted from the JSG Release.

This podcast at NPR explores how new graduates from the Colorado School of Mines and other schools are grabbing starting geologist salaries of $80,000.

Geology.com: Geology Careers Page

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.

The Bradford Washburn American Mountaineering Museum opens this week in Golden, Colorado. It is the only museum in the United States that has a focus on the history of mountaineering. Their direct web address is www.bwamm.org.

Posted at The-Vug.com is a photographic tour of the specimen cleaning lab at Collector’s Edge Minerals, Inc. of Golden, Colorado. Shown are a few photos of the facility and photos of work-in-progress.

NOAA’s Seasonal Drought Outlook shows developing drought conditions continuing in the southern United States with areas of developing drought in Florida, Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado.

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.

“A University of Colorado at Boulder study indicates meltwater periodically overwhelms the interior drainpipes of Alaska’s Kennicott Glacier and causes it to lurch forward, similar to processes that may help explain the acceleration of glaciers observed recently on the Greenland ice sheet that are contributing to global sea rise.” Quoted from the NASA news release.

USGS Image

“The 2007 melt extent on the Greenland ice sheet broke the 2005 summer melt record by 10 percent, making it the largest ever recorded there since satellite measurements began in 1979, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder climate scientist.”

RockyMountainNews.com has a large number of articles on the real and potential impact of the recent oil and gas boom in Colorado. The economics of this are complex with jobs, royalties, taxes, real estate and other elements in the equation. Land stewardship is also a complex issue. Submitted by: Rick Steele.

The following articles are open access at the GSA Journals website:

Earth history along Colorado’s Front Range

Assessing the State of Our Knowledge of Continental Arc Volcanism

The “Astronomy Picture of the Day” for November 25 is an iridescent cloud. This is a rare phenomenon in which water droplets diffract sunlight in a way that causes a display of color in the sky.

Andrew Alden shares some photos of sedimentary structures, dinosaur tracks, burrows, trackmarks, dinosaur bones and outcrops at his about.com Geology site.

Jerry Magloughlin of Colorado State University is studying the rocks of ancient fault zones. These rocks, which produced historic earthquakes, contain structures and textures that can be studied to learn how and why faults move to produce earthquakes.

Most people have never heard of Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Park. It is an area where you can see the tallest sand dunes in North America against the backdrop of the Sangre de Christo Mountains. It is an easy-to-visit park where the shifting sands make it different each time you visit.

Powertech is looking to open a uranium mine that will produce some of the estimated 9.7 million pounds of uranium that lies beneath an area in northern Colorado. The company acquired ownership of much of this resource in a purchase from Anadarko Petroleum. Many people are upset about this mine.

USGS Image

A massive slide of rocks and mud tore a bridge loose from its moorings and buried Frying Pan Road in waist-deep in mud.

Rafael Abreu, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center in Colorado, said Tuesday that a 3.9 magnitude event recorded at 2:48 a.m. Monday didn’t have wave forms characteristic of a typical naturally occurring earthquake. “What we are seeing is a mine collapse,” Abreu said

Mudslides last week in Alpine Colorado wiped out roads, damaged buildings and forced the evacuation of 98 people. The slides damaged one half of the buildings in the town and are blamed on exceptional amounts of rain during the past month. No injuries were reported.

Powertech, Inc., a Canadian mining company hopes to mine uranium from a site near Nunn, Colorado. The company estimates that there are about ten million pounds of uranium beneath the site. The project will create jobs and local income but it also comes with environmental concerns. Here’s a report on a public meeting related to the project.

USGS Image

USGS has published: Reported Historic Asbestos Mines, Historic Asbestos Prospects, and Natural Asbestos Occurrences in the Rocky Mountain States of the United States (Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming). USGS Open File Report 2007-1182 can be downloaded as a PDF document.

The book tells the story of Herbert T. Young, reopening the Orphan Boy Mine (also known as the Allan Emory Mine), located west of Denver, in the Colorado Rocky Mountains after World War II. The book includes some previously unpublished photographs as well as history and stories about the area.

USGS Image

USGS has released a fact sheet that contains interesting maps and data documenting water level declines in the High Plains Aquifer. This important aquifer underlies over 100 million acres in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming. Water levels in the aquifer have been in decline since it was first tapped for irrigating crops. Enormous declines - often over 150 feet (pre-development to 2005) - have been measured in many areas. This is a short report in .pdf format and worth a look just to see the maps. Reference: USGS Fact Sheet 2007-3029, Changes in Water Levels and Storage in the High Plains Aquifer, Predevelopment to 2005.

Stone Aerospace Iimage

Next week researchers in Mexico will be exploring El Zacatón, the world’s deepest water-filled sinkhole using DEPTHX, the world’s only cave-diving robot. Marc Airhart, science writer at the Jackson School of Geosciences of the University of Texas at Austin, will be sending updates that will be posted right here on the Geology.com News page. Other scientists participating in this project are from Carnegie Mellon University, Colorado School of Mines, Southwest Research Institute and Stone Aerospace.

Colorado Map

In 1969 a 43 kiloton nuclear bomb was detonated at a depth of 8,426 feed below Colorado. This was Project Rulison, a test to determine if an underground nuclear blast could be used to stimulate natural gas production from a low grade field. The gas was too reactive to be sold commercially. Today drillers are seeking permission to drill close to the buffer zone around the Rulison site and property owners are concerned about escaping radiation or the contamination of ground waters.

A boulder half the size of a small car bounced down a slope behind an Eldorado Springs, Colorado housing complex and crashed into the back of a house. It now rests in a second story living room, supported by a load-bearing wall in the story below. Getting the boulder out without wrecking the house in the process is going to be a big problem. A contractor plans to use acid to help break up the rock.

Pennsylvania Satellite Image

Composite Landsat images of each US state with state boundaries. Favorites include: Arizona (see Grand Canyon, National Forests, cities, Painted Desert visible), Colorado (views of the Rockies and eastern farmlands), Pennsylvania (view the folded Appalachians), Utah (salt flats, canyons, deserts and forests),Washington (volcanoes, rivers, cities and farmland).