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Geology News
Pennsylvania Current Events

Early this year researchers surprised everyone with a resource estimate for the Marcellus Shale beneath Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York and surrounding states. They estimated that the Marcellus might contain more than 50 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas. That volume of natural gas would be enough to supply the entire United States for about two years and have a wellhead value of about one trillion dollars!

Within the Pittsburgh city limits a homeowner has underground water that flows from his property onto a city street. Should he be fined for that discharge or should he receive government aid? This article explores a few of the many abandoned mine problems in Pennsylvania. Statewide over a million homes are above underground mines, but only 58,000 subsidence insurance policies have been written.

Geotimes has a “Travels in Geology” article about the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon - also known as the Pine Creek Gorge. It provides some details on how the Canyon is thought to have formed and more information on the recreational activities that can be enjoyed there. It’s about ten miles from our office.

A guy in Pennsylvania set a new record for stone-skipping. You will not believe how many skips he made. I think that this record should rightly belong to a geologist, but I don’t know of any who can skip a stone half that many times.

Mine Rescue Capsule MSHA.gov Image

The use of a mine rescue capsule has been ruled out for the trapped Utah Miners. This procedure would involve drilling a large diameter hole down to the mine. The hole would need to be about two feet in diameter - large enough permit passage of a steel cage (the capsule) that can hold one miner at a time. Then the capsule (see photo at right) would be lowered down to the mine. The miners would one-by-one enter the capsule and be hoisted up to the surface. Drilling such a large diameter hole would be very slow work, there are very few companies who have equipment that is capable of drilling such a large diameter hole to such a great depth, and it could be difficult to get the drilling equipment to the proper location. The procedure has been used successfully in the past - the capsule shown at right was used in 2002 to rescue nine miners from the Quecreek Mine in Pennsylvania.

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.

Landowners in southwestern Pennsylvania are disturbed that they are not being paid for coal bed methane being drilled and extracted from the ground beneath their properties. They are paid for land disruption but no royalties on the gas. The reason that they are not paid is that the methane is considered to be a part of the coal seam and all ownership of that methane resides with the owner of the coal.

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.

Energy.gov Image

Longwall mining involves the complete removal of a coal seam with the expectation of subsidence. This mining method is commonly done in the Pittsburgh Coal seam beneath large portions of western Pennsylvania. There, longwall mining in Consol’s Bailey Mine, which is about 1000 feet below Ryerson Station State Park is blamed for a crack in the Duke Lake dam. This crack led to draining of the dam out of safety concerns. The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation has filed a “notice of intent to sue” against Consol.

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).

Stay Out of Abandoned Mines!

An average of 30 people per year die in abandoned mines. Causes of death include: drownings, falls, asphyxiation, ATV accidents and being shot by a security guard. Pennsylvania leads the nation in abandoned mine deaths for 2000 - 2006. Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky each had ten or more deaths in that time interval. Contact information is provided so that you can report dangerous abandoned mines in your area.