• Current News
• Africa
• Alabama
• Alaska
• Antarctic
• Archaeology
• Arctic
• Arizona
• Arkansas
• Asia
• Astronomy
• Atlantic
• Australia and Pacific
• Bakken Shale
• Barnett Shale
• California
• Canada
• Caribbean Sea
• Caves and Karst
• Central America
• China
• Coal
• Coastal Geology
• Colorado
• Contamination
• Delaware
• Diamonds
• Dimension Stone
• Dinosaurs
• Dust Storm
• Earthquakes
• Energy
• Engineering Geology
• Environment
• Europe
• Fayetteville Shale
• Floods
• Florida
• Fossils
• Gemstones
• Geologist Career
• Geology for Kids
• Geology.com
• Georgia
• Geothermal
• Glaciers
• Global Warming
• Gold
• Google
• GPS and GIS
• Great Websites
• Ground Water
• Hawaii
• Haynesville Shale
• Historical Geology
• Hurricanes and Cyclones
• Idaho
• Illinois
• India
• Indiana
• Indonesia
• Interesting
• Iowa
• Kansas
• Kentucky
• Landslides
• LNG
• Louisiana
• Maine
• Maps
• Marcellus Shale
• Mars
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Metals
• Meteorology
• Meteors and Meteorites
• Mexico
• Michigan
• Minerals
• Mining
• Minnesota
• Mississippi
• Missouri
• Montana
• Natural Gas
• Natural Hazards
• Nebraska
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• New Jersey
• New Mexico
• New York
• North Carolina
• North Dakota
• Oceanography
• Ohio
• Oil and Gas
• Oklahoma
• OPEC
• Oregon
• Pennsylvania
• Plants
• Plate Tectonics
• Politics and Geology
• Satellite Images
• Soil
• Solar Power
• South America
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• Space
• Subsidence
• Teaching Science
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Tornadoes
• Tsunami
• United States
• USGS
• Utah
• Utica Shale
• Vehicles
• Vermont
• Virginia
• Volcanoes
• Washington
• Water
• West Virginia
• Wildfire
• Wind Energy
• Wisconsin
• Wyoming

Geology News
Geology.com Current Events

Specimen of impact breccia from the Popgai crater, northern Siberia.

We are pleased to have a new article titled “Impactites - Ghostly Footprints of Ancient Meteorites” by Geoffrey Notkin of Aerolite Meteorites. Learn about impact breccia, Libyan desert glass, moldavites, shatter cones, tectites and more.

This is the fifth article in Geoffrey’s Meteorwritings series.

There are a lot of great blogs in the geoscience area and most of them can be followed with an RSS feed subscription. However, very few geobloggers give their visitors a free and easy way to receive new posts by email. (Yes, I know that RSS is really cool but you might be surprised at how many rockhounds prefer an email subscription. Lots of visitors to Geology.com have joined our email subscription list instead of using RSS feed.)

Feedburner provides a free and easy way for you to enable email subscriptions to your blog. If your blog produces a feed all you need to do is open an account at Feedburner, give them the URL of your feed, enable email subscriptions and place a link on your blog to your email subscriptions page.

We have a new article on Vesuvius by Jessica Ball, author of the Magma Cum Laude blog. The article contains interesting information about the volcano’s eruption history, geologic hazards, plate tectonics and more.

Some meteorites are extremely expensive but others can be collected at a surprisingly affordable cost. Geoffrey Notkin of Aerolite Meteorites explores meteorite values and shares some information on collecting meteorites.

“Vast Martian glaciers of water ice under protective blankets of rocky debris persist today at much lower latitudes than any ice previously identified on Mars, says new research using ground-penetrating radar on NASA

Here is a collection of isoseismal maps for twelve historic California earthquakes. Fort Tejon - 1857, Owens Valley - 1872, San Francisco - 1906, Long Beach - 1933, Kern County - 1946, San Bernardino - 1947, Riverside County - 1948, Kern County - 1952, Borrego Mountains - 1968, San Fernando - 1971, Coalinga - 1983, and Santa Cruz - 1989.

Nitrogen trifluoride is thousands of times more effective at warming the atmosphere than an equal mass of carbon dioxide. It is used during the manufacture of liquid crystal flat-panel displays, thin-film solar cells and microcircuits. The amount of nitrogen trifluoride in the atmosphere is thought to be increasing at a rate of 11% per year.

NASA has released a satellite image of the Louisiana Gulf Coast that shows the impact of Hurricane Ike’s storm surge. Areas that were inundated are clearly visible because they are either covered with sediment or the vegetation was damaged. It shows that the impact of a storm surge and hurricane flooding can extend far inland.

Geoffrey Notkin of Aerolite Meteorites describes the three main types of meteorites and shares some of the best meteorite photos on the web in a new article titled “Meteorite Types and Classification”. The image at right is a photograph of polished slice of the Imilac Pallasite. It shows gold and orange olivine crystals suspended in a matrix of extraterrestrial iron-nickel.

If you are new to meteorites you might start with his “What are meteorites?” article.

Here is a list of the most popular news items here for September, 2008….

• Hurricane Ike Damage Photos
• Greenland’s Ice Loss
• What Are Meteorites?
• East Africa’s Great Rift Valley
• Arctic Sea Ice: 2nd Lowest Year
• Toyota’s New Natural Gas Car
• Huge Ancient Lake Discovered in Russia
• Rubber Ducks Track Glacial Melt
• Volcanic Ash Risk in PNG
• Canadian Ice Shelf Retreat

A collection of oblique aerial photos showing before and after scenes of the Bolivar Peninsula, just east of the landfall area of Hurricane Ike. The storm surge swept houses and other buildings - complete neighborhoods - right off their lots. Photos by the United States Geological Survey.

New analysis of Mars’ terrain using NASA spacecraft observations reveals what appears to be by far the largest impact crater ever found in the solar system.

Learn some of the basics about the East Africa Rift System from this article by James Wood and Alex Guth of Michigan Technological University. The article includes some interesting maps and great photos.

Join meteorite hunter, Geoffrey Notkin of Aerolite Meteorites, as he begins a series of monthly articles on the topic of meteorites. This month: What Are Meteorites? He plans to share some of the best meteorite photos on the web.

Wall Arch, a popular feature at Arches National Park Collapsed during the night of August 4, 2008. Here are before and after photos of the arch by the National Park Service.

Lots of people are being asked to sell the minerals beneath their property or sign a contract that gives a drilling company the right to explore their property for oil and natural gas. This article explores many aspects of mineral rights, and attempts to inform the potential seller/lessor that the transactions and agreements can be very complex and that advice from an expert is a good idea.

NASA scientists have concluded that at least one of the large lakes observed on Saturn

These are the most popular news items listed here during July 2008….

• Greenland Lake Disappears
• Water On Mars
• World’s Largest Tsunami
• Earth’s Magnetic Field is Changing
• Natural Gas Royalty Calculator
• New Segment of the San Andreas Fault
• Bears Trap Russian Geologists
• Okmok Volcanic Eruption
• Evidence for Arctic Seafloor Eruptions
• Photos in the St. Helens Crater

“We have water,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. “We’ve seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted.”

USGS completed an assessment of undiscovered conventional oil and gas resources in all areas north of the Arctic Circle. They concluded that 90 billion barrels of oil, 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids may remain to be found in the Arctic. About 84 percent of that resource is expected to occur in offshore areas.

NASA’s Spitzer telescope has revealed the second-brightest star in our galaxy: the Peony Nebula. This giant blue star has an extraordinary mass, and a diameter about 100 times greater than our sun.

“Two studies based on data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed that the Red Planet once hosted vast lakes, flowing rivers and a variety of other wet environments that had the potential to support life.”

Lots of people have leased their acreage for potential gas drilling and are curious about how much their royalties might amount to. We now have a tool to estimate gas royalty income based upon a few assumptions. You just type in your royalty rate, an assumed natural gas wellhead price, an assumed well production rate, the number of acres in the production unit and the number of production unit acres that belong to you - then push a button.

Eruption warning levels at Okmok Volcano have been at orange and red for the past week. Elevated seismicity, an ash plume up to 30,000 feet, steam, sulfur dioxide and a RED volcano alert code have been seen.

Fifty years ago this month the largest tsunami ever documented occurred in Lituya Bay, Alaska. It was a 1720-foot-tall wave produced by a chain reaction of events. A 7.7 magnitude earthquake on the Fairweather Fault triggered a 40 million cubic yard rockfall that plunged 3000 feet, splashing into Lituya Bay to produce the big wave. This article includes a map, satellite image, survivor accounts and image collection.

NASA has published a set of maps that reveal ocean areas where winds could produce environmentally friendly energy. They could potentially be used to to plan the location of offshore wind farms that convert wind energy into electricity.

New data from the Messenger spacecraft reveals information about Mercury’s volcanoes, impact craters, core, magnetic field and crustal processes. Perhaps the most interesting observation was related to the planet’s change in volume. Large lobate scarps with huge cliffs are evidence that the planet has become smaller in volume over time. The reduction in volume is thought to be a result of a drop in Mercury’s internal temperature.

Charles Lyell (1797-1875) was a lawyer turned geologist. He supported himself by writing books, mostly about geology. He wrote some of the most widely read geology books published in his lifetime. These include: Principles of Geology and Elements of Geology

Full text with images of Lyell’s “Elements of Geology“.

On June 30th, 1908 a meteoroid of about 220 million pounds exploded in Earth’s atmosphere above a remote part of Siberia. The blast destroyed the forest for several miles in every direction, knocking down trees, stripping their branches and pointing their trunks away from the explosion’s source.

Flooding continues in the Midwest United States with some rivers being above flood stage for over two straight weeks. Satellite images of Iowa, Illinois and Missouri show large lakes where levee breaks have flooded hundreds of acres.

Photographs taken four days apart by the Phoenix Mars Lander reveal that small dice-size particles disappeared. The only way this could happen is if the substance vaporized. NASA scientists conclude that the particles were ice or frozen water.

During the last two weeks Iowa and much of the Midwest has been hit with one heavy storm after another. Some areas have received over 16 inches of rain and streams are now at record levels. On this page are a few videos, and news reports that provide information on rainfall, stream levels and flooding.

The Haynesville Formation in northwestern Louisiana has attracted a lot of attention from gas production companies and landmen. Over 6000 property owners there have banded together to negotiate as a block for leases and royalties. They have an offer that includes a $27,200 signing bonus and a 26% royalty. (VIDEO)

There is a tremendous interest in the Devonian black shale known as the Marcellus Formation. Landmen are offering landowners signing bonuses of over $2000 per acre for desirable properties in northern Pennsylvania and western New York along with up to 18% royalty rates. Here is a growing list of videos, news links and lease information.

Marcellus Shale: Research Results Surprise Geologists

A “glory” is an atmospheric phenomenon with the same colors as a rainbow. They form when sunlight is scattered by the water droplets of a cloud. Here is a satellite image of one over the Pacific Ocean just west of Baja.

Dr. Gary Greenberg, author of A Grain of Sand: Nature’s Secret Wonder”, shares some of his photomicrographs of colorful and interesting sand grains in this gallery of images.

On May 25th, 2008 the Phoenix Mars Lander made a successful touchdown near the North Polar area of Mars. The images in this article show the landing site, artist’s impressions of what the descent looked like and some of the first landscape images sent back to Earth.

The recent eruption of Chaiten Volcano in Chile produced enormous ash plumes that crossed the South American continent and carried hundreds of miles over the Atlantic Ocean. They blanketed the landscape beneath them with a thin layer of volcanic ash. This article explores the impact of volcanic ash using Chaiten, Mount St. Helens and Novarupta as examples.

New observations from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that the crust and upper mantle of Mars are stiffer and colder than previously thought. The findings suggest any liquid water that might exist below the planet’s surface, and any possible organisms living in that water, would be located deeper than scientists had suspected.

Links to six more news stories and one new video. Stories include:

• Landslides form 21 unstable dams.
• Distribution of aftershock epicenters.
• Schools at risk.
• Survivors still being found in the rubble.
• ABC News Earthquake Photo Gallery