Dedicated to spreading the Good News of Basic and Applied Science at great research institutions world wide. Good science is a collaborative process. The rule here: Science Never Sleeps.
I am telling the reader this story in the hope of impelling him or her to find their own story and start a wordpress blog. We all have a story. Find yours.
The oldest post I can find for this blog is From FermiLab Today: Tevatron is Done at the End of 2011 (but I am not sure if that is the first post, just the oldest I could find.)
But the origin goes back to 1985, Timothy Ferris Creation of the Universe PBS, November 20, 1985, available in different videos on YouTube; The Atom Smashers, PBS Frontline November 25, 2008, centered at Fermilab, not available on YouTube; and The Big Bang Machine, with Sir Brian Cox of U Manchester and the ATLAS project at the LHC at CERN.
In 1993, our idiot Congress pulled the plug on The Superconducting Super Collider, a particle accelerator complex under construction in the vicinity of Waxahachie, Texas. Its planned ring circumference was 87.1 kilometers (54.1 mi) with an energy of 20 Tev per proton and was set to be the world’s largest and most energetic. It would have greatly surpassed the current record held by the Large Hadron Collider, which has ring circumference 27 km (17 mi) and energy of 13 TeV per proton.
If this project had been built, most probably the Higgs Boson would have been found there, not in Europe, to which the USA had ceded High Energy Physics.
(We have not really left High Energy Physics. Most of the magnets used in The LHC are built in three U.S. DOE labs: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; and Brookhaven National Laboratory. Also, see below. the LHC based U.S. scientists at Fermilab and Brookhaven Lab.)
I have recently been told that the loss of support in Congress was caused by California pulling out followed by several other states because California wanted the collider built there.
The project’s director was Roy Schwitters, a physicist at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Louis Ianniello served as its first Project Director for 15 months. The project was cancelled in 1993 due to budget problems, cited as having no immediate economic value.
Some where I learned that fully 30% of the scientists working at CERN were U.S. citizens. The ATLAS project had 600 people at Brookhaven Lab. The CMS project had 1,000 people at Fermilab. There were many scientists which had “gigs” at both sites.
I started digging around in CERN web sites and found Quantum Diaries, a “blog” from before there were blogs, where different scientists could post articles. I commented on a few and my dismay about the lack of U.S recognition in the press.
Those guys at Quantum Diaries, gave me access to the Greybook, the list of every institution in the world in several tiers processing data for CERN. I collected all of their social media and was off to the races for CERN and other great basic and applied science.
Since then I have expanded the list of sites that I cover from all over the world. I build .html templates for each institution I cover and plop their articles, complete with all attributions and graphics into the template and post it to the blog. I am not a scientist and I am not qualified to write anything or answer scientific questions. The only thing I might add is graphics where the origin graphics are weak. I have a monster graphics library. Any science questions are referred back to the writer who is told to seek his answer from the real scientists in the project.
The blog has to date 900 followers on the blog, its Facebook Fan page and Twitter. I get my material from email lists and RSS feeds. I do not use Facebook or Twitter, which are both loaded with garbage in the physical sciences.
USF students Mahsa Afra (left) and Taha Chorsi (right) setting up the radar at Mauna Loa.
A team from the University of South Florida is on the ground in Hawaii studying Mauna Loa, the largest active volcano in the world, to improve efforts that can help protect residents from lava flow. While slow-moving, lava averages 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit and destroys everything in its path.
They’re collecting data that will be used to create models that can help improve lava flow forecasting tools, such as MOLASSES – a simulation engine that forecasts inundation areas of lava flow, created by USF geosciences Professor Chuck Connor. Tools, such as MOLASSES, are useful in determining how hazards impact populations.
Connor says using the radar to gather data is essential in understanding volcano topography and improving the lava flow models.
“We want to make hazard maps that help people understand where they live and what the risks are,” Connor said. “We can’t stop a volcano from erupting, but we can give people warning about the lava flow.”
Photo credit: Lis Gallant.
Shortly after Mauna Loa’s eruption in late November – the first since 1984 – USF geosciences Professor Tim Dixon sent graduate students, Taha Chorsi and Mahsa Afra, to Hawaii with a Terrestrial Radar Interferometer, a rare, ground-based instrument that measures where the landscape is changing and how quickly those changes are occurring.
Chorsi and Afra delivered the radar to USF alumna Lis Gallant, a National Science Foundation post-doctoral research fellow at the United States Geological Survey Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.
With this radar, the USF trio were able to capture the thickening of Mauna Loa’s lava flows. The novelty of the ground-based instrument is its ability to measure the lava’s surface and create a three-dimensional map within a span of minutes.
“A lot of volcano science happens in hostile terrains,” Gallant said. “This radar is a particularly powerful instrument because it can see through moisture, and now, we can definitely say it would be well-suited in areas where visibility is poor and to immediately help hazard response.”
The team will review this data over the next several months to determine where the Mauna Loa lava flow was moving and the velocities of those movements. The data can be used to better understand how lava flows move and advance, which in turn can be used by scientists to improve tools used to forecast lava flow hazards through models.
Dixon has had great success using the radar to monitor Earth movements in glaciers, landslides, earthquakes and volcanoes. Many of his students, including Chorsi and Afra, have worked alongside him over the years to learn the radar and develop a user manual. “There’s probably only a hundred people in the world who can successfully use this instrument,” Dixon said.
“This instrument is not widely available, but fortunately USF has one,” Chorsi said. “I am very thankful that USF and Tim gave me this opportunity.”
The University of South Florida is a public research university with its main campus located in Tampa, Florida, and other campuses in St. Petersburg and Sarasota. It is one of 12 members of the State University System of Florida. The University of South Florida is home to 14 colleges, offering more than 240 undergraduate, graduate, specialist, and doctoral-level degree programs. The University of South Florida is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity” and is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. USF is designated by the Florida Board of Governors as one of three Preeminent State Research Universities.
Founded in 1956, The University of South Florida is the fourth largest university in Florida by enrollment, with 49,766 students from over 145 countries, all 50 states, all five U.S. Territories, and the District of Columbia as of the 2022–2023 academic year.
In 2022, the university reported an annual budget of $2.31 billion and an annual economic impact of over $6 billion. According to the National Science Foundation, The University of South Florida spent $568 million on research and development in 2019, ranking it 43rd in the nation and 25th among public universities.The University of South Florida’s $889 million endowment is the third-largest among Florida public universities and the largest of any American public university founded post-World War II.
In its 2018 ranking, the Intellectual Property Owners Association placed The University of South Florida 1st in Florida, 7th in the United States, and 16th worldwide in the number of US patents granted. The University of South Florida faculty, staff, students, and alumni collectively hold over 2,400 patents. The University of South Florida is home to the National Academy of Inventors and the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame, both located in the The University of South Florida Research Park in the southwest side of campus.
The University of South Florida’s sports teams are known as the South Florida Bulls and primarily compete in the American Athletic Conference of NCAA Division I. The University of South Florida’s 19 varsity teams have won a combined 6 national championships and 159 conference championships. Athletes representing the Bulls have won an additional 21 individual and relay national championships and 206 individual and relay conference championships.
For 2022–2023, U.S. News & World Report ranked The University of South Florida as tied for #97 overall on its list of Tier I National Universities and #42 among public universities. This made The University of South Florida the fastest rising university in America, jumping 84 spots on the overall list and 58 spots on the public university list in 10 years. This ranking also put The University of South Florida as #4 in Florida overall and #3 in Florida among public universities. Compared to institutions in the prestigious Association of American Universities (AAU), the group of the top 66 universities in North America, The University of South Florida ranks higher than The Iowa State University, the University of Kansas and the University of Missouri and is tied with The University of Colorado-Boulder and The University of Oregon. In other rankings released by U.S. News, The University of South Florida was the only Florida university in the Top 10 Best Value Colleges, at #8 among public universities. USF also ranked #17 in the nation overall, #12 in the nation among public institutions, and #1 in Florida on the U.S. News ranking of top National Universities for Social Mobility. Niche ranked The University of South Florida #29 for top public universities in America and #97 for best colleges in America 2023. According to Niche, The University of South Florida was home to the #9 Criminal Justice Program, #17 Information Technology Program, and #24 Public Health Program in the United States.
The 14 colleges of the university are:
College of Arts and Sciences
College of Behavioral and Community Sciences
Muma College of Business
College of Education
College of Engineering
Patel College of Global Sustainability
College of Graduate Studies
Judy Genshaft Honors College
College of Marine Science
Morsani College of Medicine
College of Nursing
Taneja College of Pharmacy
College of Public Health
College of The Arts
The University of South Florida is one of the fastest growing research universities in the nation, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. In the 2021 fiscal year, the university was awarded more than $590 million in research awards. The Intellectual Property Owners Association ranked The University of South Florida among the top ten universities in the world granted U.S. utility patents in 2011. The University of South Florida is also a member of the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program and the National Sea Grant College Program.
he University of South Florida was given a gold rating by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education for building an environmentally-conscious campus. In 2010, The University of South Florida School of Global Sustainability was created as part of the College of Behavioral and Community Sciences. In 2012, the new Patel College of Global Sustainability, consisting of the Dr. Kiran C. Patel Center for Global Solutions, the Master of the Arts in Global Sustainability Program, and the Office of Sustainability, was introduced. The college is housed in the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design GOLD certified building on The University of South Florida Tampa campus.
The University of South Florida signed the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment in 2008 and submitted its Climate Action Plan in 2010 with a goal of a 10 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2015. Since then, the university has introduced several sustainability initiatives, including electric vehicle charging stations, water bottle filling stations, reusable plastic food containers in dining halls, recycling programs in residence halls, new, more efficient buses for the fare-free campus bus service, solar-powered golf carts, and more. In 2011, the university introduced the Student Green Energy Fund, which allows students to propose and vote on projects that aim to reduce campus energy consumption, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and promote sustainable technologies.
The nearly 20,000 trees on the Tampa campus provide an estimated $1.8 million yearly benefit to the university through energy conserved, storm-water management, and carbon dioxide removal. The campus is renowned for its number of trees and has been named a Tree Campus USA by the Arbor Day Foundation every year since 2011.
Currently, the university has six LEED certified buildings, all of which are on the main Tampa campus or the downtown medical campus. They are the Dr. Kiran C. Patel Center For Global Solutions (Gold), Interdisciplinary Science Building (Gold), Yuengling Center (Silver), Center For Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (Silver), Chowdhari Golf Practice Facility (Certified), and Morsani Center for Advanced Health Care (Certified).
Geochemical analyses link the geologic histories of the South Pacific Islands of Fiji, Vanuatu, and Samoa. This map shows the tectonic features of the area studied. (Credit: Gill et al, 2022)
The islands of Fiji and Vanuatu rise from the tropical waters of the South Pacific in one of the most tectonically active and geologically complex regions of the world. A new study of volcanism in this area sheds light on the ancient breakup of a long island arc, which swung apart like “double saloon doors.” Fiji and Vanuatu started out as close neighbors and ended up 800 miles apart on separate sections of what had once been a continuous arc.
Island arcs form where a plate of the oceanic crust sinks beneath an adjacent plate in a process known as subduction, giving rise to a belt of volcanoes parallel to the trench where the descending plate bends downward. The islands are the tallest peaks of vast underwater mountain ranges built up by volcanic activity in the subduction zone. One such range now goes from New Zealand up to Tonga, then bends westward to Fiji. Another extends from New Guinea down to Vanuatu.
“They all used to be connected to one another, and then they got split apart in the geologic past,” explained James Gill, professor emeritus of Earth and planetary sciences at The University of California-Santa Cruz and first author of the new paper. “This paper attributes the breakup to the subduction of the Samoan Seamount Chain.”
Samoa, like Hawaii, is part of a linear chain of volcanic seamounts formed as the oceanic crust moves over a “hotspot” in the Earth’s mantle, causing a series of volcanoes to grow over that spot. A long chain of seamounts extends to the west of the Samoan islands.
“When that chain of seamounts got pushed down into the Earth underneath the island arc, it caused indigestion in the subduction zone, which ultimately broke it apart,” Gill said.
In addition to the seamounts getting hung up in the subduction zone, other complex processes were at work across the island arc, including a reversal of the direction of subduction along part of the arc, the rotation of different segments, and the opening of rifts where seafloor spreading creates new oceanic crust. The Vanuatu Arc rotated clockwise while the fragment of crust bearing Fiji rotated counter-clockwise.
These events (dubbed “double-saloon-door tectonics” by geologist Keith Martin in 2013) began about 10 million years ago and proceeded slowly over millions of years leading up to the present configuration of the islands.
Gill and his coauthors investigated this history by analyzing samples of volcanic rock collected at sites throughout the area in the 1980s by Gill and Peter Whelan, who was then a The University of California-Santa Cruz graduate student and performed initial analyses of the samples. For the new study, Gill received funding from a Humboldt Research Award to work with researchers at the GEOMAR Helmholz Center for Ocean Research in Germany, who performed modern geochemical analyses to determine the isotopic and elemental composition of the samples.
“These analyses allow us to use isotopes as long-lived tracers to find out what melted to produce the magma that erupted from a particular volcano,” Gill explained. “In this case, we can see that the Samoan seamounts are the best match for the rocks that erupted in Fiji at the time this island arc broke apart.”
Gill has been studying the geology of the South Pacific islands for more than 50 years, collecting hundreds of volcanic rock samples from remote islands in Fiji, eastern Indonesia, and the Marianas, as well as other sites around the Pacific “rim of fire.” Most of those samples are now in curated collections at the Smithsonian Institution and the American Museum of Natural History.
“When I was hired 50 years ago, The University of California-Santa Cruz was starting a Center for South Pacific Studies, which is one reason why the Arboretum has so many plants from New Zealand and Australia,” Gill said. “This paper is part of my career-long efforts to understand the geological evolution of Fiji, and it links the histories of Fiji, Vanuatu, and Samoa.”
The paper is published in the December issue of Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems [below]. In addition to Gill, the coauthors include Erin Todd at the U.S. Geological Survey; Kaj Hoernle and Folkmar Hauff at the GEOMAR Helmholz Center for Ocean Research; and Allison Price and Matthew Jackson at The University of California-Santa Barbara.
The University of California-Santa Cruz, opened in 1965 and grew, one college at a time, to its current (2008-09) enrollment of more than 16,000 students. Undergraduates pursue more than 60 majors supervised by divisional deans of humanities, physical & biological sciences, social sciences, and arts. Graduate students work toward graduate certificates, master’s degrees, or doctoral degrees in more than 30 academic fields under the supervision of the divisional and graduate deans. The dean of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering oversees the campus’s undergraduate and graduate engineering programs.
The University of California, Santa Cruz is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of the coastal community of Santa Cruz, the campus lies on 2,001 acres (810 ha) of rolling, forested hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Founded in 1965, UC Santa Cruz began with the intention to showcase progressive, cross-disciplinary undergraduate education, innovative teaching methods and contemporary architecture. The residential college system consists of ten small colleges that were established as a variation of the Oxbridge collegiate university system.
The university has five academic divisions: Arts, Engineering, Humanities, Physical & Biological Sciences, and Social Sciences. Together, they offer 65 graduate programs, 64 undergraduate majors, and 41 minors.
Popular undergraduate majors include Art, Business Management Economics, Chemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology, Physics, and Psychology. Interdisciplinary programs, such as Computational Media, Feminist Studies, Environmental Studies, Visual Studies, Digital Arts and New Media, Critical Race & Ethnic Studies, and the History of Consciousness Department are also hosted alongside UCSC’s more traditional academic departments.
A joint program with UC Hastings enables UC Santa Cruz students to earn a bachelor’s degree and Juris Doctor degree in six years instead of the usual seven. The “3+3 BA/JD” Program between UC Santa Cruz and UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco accepted its first applicants in fall 2014. UCSC students who declare their intent in their freshman or early sophomore year will complete three years at UCSC and then move on to UC Hastings to begin the three-year law curriculum. Credits from the first year of law school will count toward a student’s bachelor’s degree. Students who successfully complete the first-year law course work will receive their bachelor’s degree and be able to graduate with their UCSC class, then continue at UC Hastings afterwards for two years.
According to the National Science Foundation, UC Santa Cruz spent $127.5 million on research and development in 2018, ranking it 144th in the nation.
Although designed as a liberal arts-oriented university, UCSC quickly acquired a graduate-level natural science research component with the appointment of plant physiologist Kenneth V. Thimann as the first provost of Crown College. Thimann developed UCSC’s early Division of Natural Sciences and recruited other well-known science faculty and graduate students to the fledgling campus. Immediately upon its founding, UCSC was also granted administrative responsibility for the Lick Observatory, which established the campus as a major center for astronomy research. Founding members of the Social Science and Humanities faculty created the unique History of Consciousness graduate program in UCSC’s first year of operation.
Famous former UCSC faculty members include Judith Butler and Angela Davis.
UCSC’s organic farm and garden program is the oldest in the country, and pioneered organic horticulture techniques internationally.
As of 2015, UCSC’s faculty include 13 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 24 fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and 33 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The Baskin School of Engineering, founded in 1997, is UCSC’s first and only professional school. Baskin Engineering is home to several research centers, including the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering and Cyberphysical Systems Research Center, which are gaining recognition, as has the work that UCSC researchers David Haussler and Jim Kent have done on the Human Genome Project, including the widely used UCSC Genome Browser. UCSC administers the National Science Foundation’s Center for Adaptive Optics.
Off-campus research facilities maintained by UCSC include the Lick and Keck Observatories and the Long Marine Laboratory. From September 2003 to July 2016, UCSC managed a University Affiliated Research System (UARC) for the NASA Ames Research Center under a task order contract valued at more than $330 million.
UC Santa Cruz was tied for 58th in the list of Best Global Universities and tied for 97th in the list of Best National Universities in the United States by U.S. News & World Report’s 2021 rankings. In 2017 Kiplinger ranked UC Santa Cruz 50th out of the top 100 best-value public colleges and universities in the nation, and 3rd in California. Money Magazine ranked UC Santa Cruz 41st in the country out of the nearly 1500 schools it evaluated for its 2016 Best Colleges ranking. In 2016–2017, UC Santa Cruz was rated 146th in the world by Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In 2016 it was ranked 83rd in the world by the Academic Ranking of World Universities and 296th worldwide in 2016 by the QS World University Rankings.
In 2009, RePEc, an online database of research economics articles, ranked the UCSC Economics Department sixth in the world in the field of international finance. In 2007, High Times magazine placed UCSC as first among US universities as a “counterculture college.” In 2009, The Princeton Review (with Gamepro magazine) ranked UC Santa Cruz’s Game Design major among the top 50 in the country. In 2011, The Princeton Review and Gamepro Media ranked UC Santa Cruz’s graduate programs in Game Design as seventh in the nation. In 2012, UCSC was ranked No. 3 in the Most Beautiful Campus list of Princeton Review.
Search for extraterrestrial intelligence expands at Lick Observatory
New instrument scans the sky for pulses of infrared light
March 23, 2015
By Hilary Lebow
Astronomers are expanding the search for extraterrestrial intelligence into a new realm with detectors tuned to infrared light at UC’s Lick Observatory. A new instrument, called NIROSETI, will soon scour the sky for messages from other worlds.
“Infrared light would be an excellent means of interstellar communication,” said Shelley Wright, an assistant professor of physics at UC San Diego who led the development of the new instrument while at the University of Toronto’s Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Wright worked on an earlier SETI project at Lick Observatory as a UC Santa Cruz undergraduate, when she built an optical instrument designed by UC Berkeley researchers. The infrared project takes advantage of new technology not available for that first optical search.
Infrared light would be a good way for extraterrestrials to get our attention here on Earth, since pulses from a powerful infrared laser could outshine a star, if only for a billionth of a second. Interstellar gas and dust is almost transparent to near infrared, so these signals can be seen from great distances. It also takes less energy to send information using infrared signals than with visible light.
Wright worked on an earlier SETI project at Lick Observatory as a UC Santa Cruz undergraduate, when she built an optical instrument designed by University of California-Berkeley researchers. The infrared project takes advantage of new technology not available for that first optical search.
Infrared light would be a good way for extraterrestrials to get our attention here on Earth, since pulses from a powerful infrared laser could outshine a star, if only for a billionth of a second. Interstellar gas and dust is almost transparent to near infrared, so these signals can be seen from great distances. It also takes less energy to send information using infrared signals than with visible light.
Frank Drake, professor emeritus of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz and director emeritus of the SETI Institute, said there are several additional advantages to a search in the infrared realm.
Frank Drake with his Drake Equation. Credit Frank Drake.
“The signals are so strong that we only need a small telescope to receive them. Smaller telescopes can offer more observational time, and that is good because we need to search many stars for a chance of success,” said Drake.
The only downside is that extraterrestrials would need to be transmitting their signals in our direction, Drake said, though he sees this as a positive side to that limitation. “If we get a signal from someone who’s aiming for us, it could mean there’s altruism in the universe. I like that idea. If they want to be friendly, that’s who we will find.”
Scientists have searched the skies for radio signals for more than 50 years and expanded their search into the optical realm more than a decade ago. The idea of searching in the infrared is not a new one, but instruments capable of capturing pulses of infrared light only recently became available.
“We had to wait,” Wright said. “I spent eight years waiting and watching as new technology emerged.”
Now that technology has caught up, the search will extend to stars thousands of light years away, rather than just hundreds. NIROSETI, or Near-Infrared Optical Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, could also uncover new information about the physical universe.
While funding is pumped into preventing low-probability scenarios such as asteroid collision, the far more likely threat of a large volcanic eruption is close to ignored – despite much that could be done to reduce the risks, say researchers.
The 2021 eruption of Iceland’s Fagradalsfjall volcano. Credit: Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove.
The world is “woefully underprepared” for a massive volcanic eruption and the likely repercussions on global supply chains, climate and food, according to experts from the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER).
In an article published in the journal Nature [below], they say there is a “broad misconception” that risks of major eruptions are low, and describe current lack of governmental investment in monitoring and responding to potential volcano disasters as “reckless”.
However, the researchers argue that steps can be taken to protect against volcanic devastation – from improved surveillance to increased public education and magma manipulation – and the resources needed to do so are long overdue.
“Data gathered from ice cores on the frequency of eruptions over deep time suggests there is a one-in-six chance of a magnitude seven explosion in the next one hundred years. That’s a roll of the dice,” said article co-author and CSER researcher Dr Lara Mani, an expert in global risk.
“Such gigantic eruptions have caused abrupt climate change and collapse of civilisations in the distant past.”
Mani compares the risk of a giant eruption to that of a 1km-wide asteroid crashing into Earth. Such events would have similar climatic consequences, but the likelihood of a volcanic catastrophe is hundreds of times higher than the combined chances of an asteroid or comet collision.
“Hundreds of millions of dollars are pumped into asteroid threats every year, yet there is a severe lack of global financing and coordination for volcano preparedness,” Mani said. “This urgently needs to change. We are completely underestimating the risk to our societies that volcanoes pose.”
An eruption in Tonga in January was the largest ever instrumentally recorded. The researchers argue that if it had gone on longer, released more ash and gas, or occurred in an area full of critical infrastructure – such as the Mediterranean – then global shock waves could have been devastating.
“The Tonga eruption was the volcanic equivalent of an asteroid just missing the Earth, and needs to be treated as a wake-up call,” said Mani.
The CSER experts cite recent research detecting the regularity of major eruptions by analysing traces of sulphur spikes in ancient ice samples. An eruption ten to a hundred times larger than the Tonga blast occurs once every 625 years – twice as often as had been previously thought.
“The last magnitude seven eruption was in 1815 in Indonesia,” said co-author Dr Mike Cassidy, a volcano expert and visiting CSER researcher, now based at the University of Birmingham.
“An estimated 100,000 people died locally, and global temperatures dropped by a degree on average, causing mass crop failures that led to famine, violent uprisings and epidemics in what was known as the year without summer,” he said.
“We now live in a world with eight times the population and over forty times the level of trade. Our complex global networks could make us even more vulnerable to the shocks of a major eruption.”
Financial losses from a large magnitude eruption would be in the multi-trillions, and on a comparable scale to the pandemic, say the experts.
Mani and Cassidy outline steps they say need to be taken to help forecast and manage the possibility of a planet-altering eruption, and help mitigate damage from smaller, more frequent eruptions.
These include a more accurate pinpointing of risks. We only know locations of a handful of the 97 eruptions classed as large magnitude on the “Volcano Explosivity Index” over the last 60,000 years. This means there could be dozens of dangerous volcanoes dotted the world over with the potential for extreme destruction, about which humanity has no clue.
“We may not know about even relatively recent eruptions due to a lack of research into marine and lake cores, particularly in neglected regions such as Southeast Asia,” said Cassidy. “Volcanoes can lie dormant for a long time, but still be capable of sudden and extraordinary destruction.”
Monitoring must be improved, say the CSER experts. Only 27% of eruptions since 1950 have had a seismometer anywhere near them, and only a third of that data again has been fed into the global database for “volcanic unrest”.
“Volcanologists have been calling for a dedicated volcano-monitoring satellite for over twenty years,” said Mani. “Sometimes we have to rely on the generosity of private satellite companies for rapid imagery.”
The experts also call for increased research into volcano “geoengineering”. This includes the need to study means of countering aerosols released by a massive eruption, which could lead to a “volcanic winter”. They also say that work to investigate manipulating pockets of magma beneath active volcanoes should be undertaken.
Added Mani: “Directly affecting volcanic behaviour may seem inconceivable, but so did the deflection of asteroids until the formation of the NASA Planetary Defense Coordination Office in 2016. The risks of a massive eruption that devastates global society is significant. The current underinvestment in responding to this risk is simply reckless.”
The University of Cambridge (UK) [legally The Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University of Cambridge] is a collegiate public research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world’s fourth-oldest surviving university. It grew out of an association of scholars who left the University of Oxford (UK) after a dispute with townsfolk. The two ancient universities share many common features and are often jointly referred to as “Oxbridge”.
Cambridge is formed from a variety of institutions which include 31 semi-autonomous constituent colleges and over 150 academic departments, faculties and other institutions organized into six schools. All the colleges are self-governing institutions within the university, each controlling its own membership and with its own internal structure and activities. All students are members of a college. Cambridge does not have a main campus and its colleges and central facilities are scattered throughout the city. Undergraduate teaching at Cambridge is organized around weekly small-group supervisions in the colleges – a feature unique to the Oxbridge system. These are complemented by classes, lectures, seminars, laboratory work and occasionally further supervisions provided by the central university faculties and departments. Postgraduate teaching is provided predominantly centrally.
Cambridge University Press a department of the university is the oldest university press in the world and currently the second largest university press in the world. Cambridge Assessment also a department of the university is one of the world’s leading examining bodies and provides assessment to over eight million learners globally every year. The university also operates eight cultural and scientific museums, including the Fitzwilliam Museum, as well as a botanic garden. Cambridge’s libraries – of which there are 116 – hold a total of around 16 million books, around nine million of which are in Cambridge University Library, a legal deposit library. The university is home to – but independent of – the Cambridge Union – the world’s oldest debating society. The university is closely linked to the development of the high-tech business cluster known as “Silicon Fe”. It is the central member of Cambridge University Health Partners, an academic health science centre based around the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
By both endowment size and consolidated assets Cambridge is the wealthiest university in the United Kingdom. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2019, the central university – excluding colleges – had a total income of £2.192 billion of which £592.4 million was from research grants and contracts. At the end of the same financial year the central university and colleges together possessed a combined endowment of over £7.1 billion and overall consolidated net assets (excluding “immaterial” historical assets) of over £12.5 billion. It is a member of numerous associations and forms part of the ‘golden triangle’ of English universities.
Cambridge has educated many notable alumni including eminent mathematicians; scientists; politicians; lawyers; philosophers; writers; actors; monarchs and other heads of state. As of October 2020, 121 Nobel laureates; 11 Fields Medalists; 7 Turing Award winners; and 14 British prime ministers have been affiliated with Cambridge as students; alumni; faculty or research staff. University alumni have won 194 Olympic medals.
History
By the late 12th century, the Cambridge area already had a scholarly and ecclesiastical reputation due to monks from the nearby bishopric church of Ely. However, it was an incident at Oxford which is most likely to have led to the establishment of the university: three Oxford scholars were hanged by the town authorities for the death of a woman without consulting the ecclesiastical authorities who would normally take precedence (and pardon the scholars) in such a case; but were at that time in conflict with King John. Fearing more violence from the townsfolk scholars from the University of Oxford started to move away to cities such as Paris; Reading; and Cambridge. Subsequently enough scholars remained in Cambridge to form the nucleus of a new university when it had become safe enough for academia to resume at Oxford. In order to claim precedence, it is common for Cambridge to trace its founding to the 1231 charter from Henry III granting it the right to discipline its own members (ius non-trahi extra) and an exemption from some taxes; Oxford was not granted similar rights until 1248.
A bull in 1233 from Pope Gregory IX gave graduates from Cambridge the right to teach “everywhere in Christendom”. After Cambridge was described as a studium generale in a letter from Pope Nicholas IV in 1290 and confirmed as such in a bull by Pope John XXII in 1318 it became common for researchers from other European medieval universities to visit Cambridge to study or to give lecture courses.
Foundation of the colleges
The colleges at the University of Cambridge were originally an incidental feature of the system. No college is as old as the university itself. The colleges were endowed fellowships of scholars. There were also institutions without endowments called hostels. The hostels were gradually absorbed by the colleges over the centuries; but they have left some traces, such as the name of Garret Hostel Lane.
Hugh Balsham, Bishop of Ely, founded Peterhouse – Cambridge’s first college in 1284. Many colleges were founded during the 14th and 15th centuries but colleges continued to be established until modern times. There was a gap of 204 years between the founding of Sidney Sussex in 1596 and that of Downing in 1800. The most recently established college is Robinson built in the late 1970s. However, Homerton College only achieved full university college status in March 2010 making it the newest full college (it was previously an “Approved Society” affiliated with the university).
In medieval times many colleges were founded so that their members would pray for the souls of the founders and were often associated with chapels or abbeys. The colleges’ focus changed in 1536 with the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Henry VIII ordered the university to disband its Faculty of Canon Law and to stop teaching “scholastic philosophy”. In response, colleges changed their curricula away from canon law and towards the classics; the Bible; and mathematics.
Nearly a century later the university was at the centre of a Protestant schism. Many nobles, intellectuals and even commoners saw the ways of the Church of England as too similar to the Catholic Church and felt that it was used by the Crown to usurp the rightful powers of the counties. East Anglia was the centre of what became the Puritan movement. In Cambridge the movement was particularly strong at Emmanuel; St Catharine’s Hall; Sidney Sussex; and Christ’s College. They produced many “non-conformist” graduates who, greatly influenced by social position or preaching left for New England and especially the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the Great Migration decade of the 1630s. Oliver Cromwell, Parliamentary commander during the English Civil War and head of the English Commonwealth (1649–1660), attended Sidney Sussex.
Modern period
After the Cambridge University Act formalized the organizational structure of the university the study of many new subjects was introduced e.g. theology, history and modern languages. Resources necessary for new courses in the arts architecture and archaeology were donated by Viscount Fitzwilliam of Trinity College who also founded the Fitzwilliam Museum. In 1847 Prince Albert was elected Chancellor of the University of Cambridge after a close contest with the Earl of Powis. Albert used his position as Chancellor to campaign successfully for reformed and more modern university curricula, expanding the subjects taught beyond the traditional mathematics and classics to include modern history and the natural sciences. Between 1896 and 1902 Downing College sold part of its land to build the Downing Site with new scientific laboratories for anatomy, genetics, and Earth sciences. During the same period the New Museums Site was erected including the Cavendish Laboratory which has since moved to the West Cambridge Site and other departments for chemistry and medicine.
The University of Cambridge began to award PhD degrees in the first third of the 20th century. The first Cambridge PhD in mathematics was awarded in 1924.
In the First World War 13,878 members of the university served and 2,470 were killed. Teaching and the fees it earned came almost to a stop and severe financial difficulties followed. As a consequence, the university first received systematic state support in 1919 and a Royal Commission appointed in 1920 recommended that the university (but not the colleges) should receive an annual grant. Following the Second World War the university saw a rapid expansion of student numbers and available places; this was partly due to the success and popularity gained by many Cambridge scientists.
richardmitnick
8:04 pm on August 24, 2022 Permalink
| Reply Tags: "See Iceland Aglow in Volcanic Eruptions", A swarm of earthquakes in late July and early August rocked the area., A vivid look at Iceland’s recent resurgence of volcanic eruptions—and why the country could be in for 300 years of renewed volcanic activity., Applied Research & Technology ( 10,907 ), As the mid-ocean ridge spreads Reykjanes cycles through quiet periods typically lasting 800 to 1000 years followed by two or three centuries of spectacular eruptions., Basic Research ( 16,197 ), Earth Observation ( 2,016 ), Geology ( 824 ), Geophysics ( 54 ), Iceland straddles the boundary between two of the earth’s tectonic plates: The North American and Eurasian plates are pulling away from each other at a rate of one to two inches per year., Iceland's Fagradalsfjall volcano ( 2 ), Iceland-like Hawaii-is perched above a “hotspot” a column of hot rock that rises through the mantle driven by its own buoyancy., Now it seems the peninsula is truly waking up., Scientific American ( 141 ), Such striking volcanic displays are relatively common in Iceland., The area is located along a kink in the mid-ocean ridge and the cracks form as a result of the two plates moving apart at an odd angle., The Fagradalsfjall volcano into the valley is just 20 miles from Iceland’s capital of Reykjavk., The kind of volcanic eruptions that take place in this area [Reykjanes] are not originating from the typical cone-shaped mountain but more through openings in the crust., The strings of small craters and fissures now forming in Reykjanes’s volcanic systems are where the plate boundary comes onshore., The towering cone of Hekla in the south is closer to the mantle hotspot., Volcanology
A vivid look at Iceland’s recent resurgence of volcanic eruptions—and why the country could be in for 300 years of renewed volcanic activity.
The 2021 eruption of Iceland’s Fagradalsfjall volcano. Credit: Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove.
Breaking more than seven months of calm, the peninsula of Reykjanes in western Iceland has once again burst into volcanic flames. After a swarm of earthquakes in late July and early August rocked the area, lava burst forth from the Fagradalsfjall volcano into the valley of Meradalir—not far from the barely cooled lava from the same volcano’s 2021 eruption—treating tourists and researchers to the vibrant red-orange glow of fresh molten rock just 20 miles from Iceland’s capital of Reykjavk.
Such striking volcanic displays are relatively common in Iceland. The entire country, which is one of the geologically youngest landmasses in the world, is the product of millions of years of eruptions and is perfectly placed for ongoing volcanic activity.
Fagradalsfjall volcanic eruption in 2022. Credit: Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove.
Iceland straddles the boundary between two of the earth’s tectonic plates: enormous fragments of crust that fit together like puzzle pieces to form our planet’s rocky outer shell. The North American and Eurasian plates are pulling away from each other at a rate of one to two inches per year, gradually unzipping the floor of the Atlantic Ocean to form a mid-ocean ridge. This divergence leaves a gap that draws up material from the earth’s mantle, a hot layer of rock sandwiched between the crust (the layer we live on) and our planet’s metal core.
Fagradalsfjall 2022 eruption. Credit: Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove.
As it rises, this material partially melts, supplying Icelandic volcanoes with magma, but this isn’t the only source of molten rock in the region. Iceland-like Hawaii-is perched above a “hotspot” a column of hot rock that rises through the mantle driven by its own buoyancy, which adds yet more fuel to the island’s volcanic fires.
In Iceland, this combination of magma sources expresses itself as several different kinds of volcanoes. The towering cone of Hekla in the south is closer to the mantle hotspot-whereas the strings of small craters and fissures now forming in Reykjanes’s volcanic systems are where the plate boundary comes onshore.
Fagradalsfjall 2021 eruption. Credit: Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove.
“The kind of volcanic eruptions that take place in this area [Reykjanes] are not originating from the typical cone-shaped mountain but more through openings in the crust,” says Sara Barsotti, coordinator for volcanic hazards at the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO). These openings occur because the area is located along a kink in the mid-ocean ridge and the cracks form as a result of the two plates moving apart at an odd angle. Some of these cracks fill with magma, which can eventually erupt, whereas others allow chunks of crust to slide past one another, leading to earthquakes. Magma moving through the crust can also cause seismic activity as new cracks form or widen to accommodate the molten rock.
Fagradalsfjall 2021 eruption. Credit: Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove.
As the mid-ocean ridge spreads Reykjanes cycles through quiet periods typically lasting 800 to 1000 years followed by two or three centuries of spectacular eruptions, which scientists studying Iceland suspect could be starting now. During the 1990s, well before the Fagradalsfjall eruption began in 2021, geophysicist Sigrun Hreinsdóttir, now at the New Zealand geoscience research and consulting company GNS Science, Te Pū Ao, set up GPS stations throughout the peninsula to monitor the area’s slow shifting, bending and buckling, accompanied by small earthquakes. At the time, there were no active eruptions.
Looking back, though, Hreinsdóttir says, these measurements may have captured the first signs of new volcanic action in the region. “There was a lot of activity in [the mountain] Hengill, at the edge of Reykjanes Peninsula—lots of earthquakes,” she explains. All the action led scientists to suspect a magma chamber was filling up deep below the surface, and “we were wondering if that was kind of the first sign that Reykjanes might be close to coming alive.”
Fagradalsfjall 2021 eruption. Credit: Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove.
Now it seems the peninsula is truly waking up. Since the late 2000s, magma injected beneath the surface has caused the area to periodically inflate and deflate, bulging to accommodate the movements of molten rock underground. Barsotti and her colleagues at IMO track the locations of these reservoirs using earthquakes, GPS and satellite imagery to try to anticipate which parts of Reykjanes are most primed for future eruptions. The final warning sign was a cluster of large earthquakes that shook western Iceland before the first fissures opened in 2021.
2021 eruption. Credit: Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove.
After longing to see an eruption on every day of her fieldwork on the peninsula around 30 years ago, Hreinsdóttir could only watch her dream come true from afar, as COVID kept her home in New Zealand in 2021. This August, however, she went on a pilgrimage to lay her hands on the cooled lava from last year, and her six-year-old son was knocked off his feet by a magnitude 4.5 earthquake. This August 2 quake turned out to be a warning for an eruption on the very next day that would prove to be even bigger and more spectacular than the one she had missed. “It was quite a nice feeling for me,” she says. “It felt like Fagradalsfjall was just saying, ‘Hello!’”
Fagradalsfjall 2021 eruption. Credit: Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove.
On August 3, Hreinsdóttir hiked out to Meradalir with her colleagues from the University of Iceland, where she was previously affiliated, and some 1,800 other visitors to see the fluorescent orange glow of lava fountaining up from between the rocks of her former study area. Like in the 2021 Fagradalsfjall eruption, volcanologists expect new lava to keep emerging here for several months.
The eruption is already a hotspot for hikers and photographers. So far it is “pretty safe,” says Barsotti, who is monitoring the volcanic activity closely for potential hazards. “But I think we also need to know there is always uncertainty in what we can anticipate to be next.” The ongoing eruption is just an hour’s drive from Reykjavík, so IMO’s volcanologists are using data and models to assess current and future risks to infrastructure, water quality and human health caused by the lava and gases emanating from the new fissure.
Fagradalsfjall 2021 eruption. Credit: Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove.
Although the eruption itself presents some dangers to tourists, including noxious fumes and unimaginably hot molten rock, perhaps the greatest challenge facing those who want to see it is the two-hour hike to get there. “It is important to check on the IMO website for the conditions expected because we are going toward autumn—it might be very cold; it might be very windy,” Barsotti says. As a result, children age 12 and under and pets are prohibited from entering the eruption area.
Those that make it, though, are in for an enviable sight. “I’m jealous of myself, to be honest,” Hreinsdóttir says, although eruptions may occur as often as every few years now that Reykjanes has awakened from its roughly 800-year slumber. “How lucky was it that I was alive when this was happening?”
Fagradalsfjall 2022 eruption. Credit: Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove
Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the U.S., has been bringing its readers unique insights about developments in science and technology for more than 160 years.
Active for at least the last 700,000 years, and dominating the landscape of Hawaii, Mauna Loa is the largest shield volcano on Earth (above water, at least) – and scientific data reveals more about what might be enough to set off future eruptions.
Looking at shifts in the ground tracked by GPS and satellite data, researchers in 2021 were able to model the flow of magma on the inside of the volcano, as well as figuring out what would and wouldn’t be likely to trigger the next major eruption from Mauna Loa.
In the ‘would be likely’ column: a sizable earthquake. That conclusion is based on measurements of magma influx that have happened since 2014, directed by the topographic stress of the surrounding rock.
“An earthquake of magnitude 6 or greater would relieve the stress imparted by the influx of magma along a sub-horizontal fault under the western flank of the volcano,” said Bhuvan Varugu, a geologist at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at the University of Miami, in a press release accompanying the 2021 study [Scientific Reports 2021 (below)].
“This earthquake could trigger an eruption.”
The scientists determined that 0.11 square kilometers (about 0.04 square miles) of new magma flowed into a new spot in the volcano chamber between 2014 and 2020, changing direction according to the pressures being placed on it.
These kinds of magma body changes haven’t been measured before. Together with surface lava flows and ground shifts along the fault the volcano is sitting on, magma intrusions change the shape of the volcano – and the likelihood of it erupting.
Volcanologists already know that flank activity and eruptions are closely related at Mauna Loa, which means that changes in these flanks caused by magma injections can make a substantial difference in terms of how the volcano behaves.
“An earthquake could be a game changer,” explained marine geologist Falk Amelung from the University of Miami.
“It would release gases from the magma comparable to shaking a soda bottle, generating additional pressure and buoyancy, sufficient to break the rock above the magma.”
According to the data, Mauna Loa is already under a “pretty heavy” topographic load.
Further magma intrusions will increase the likelihood of an earthquake and an eruption, but it might not necessarily be needed: A lack of movement under the volcano’s western flank makes the researchers think this is where an earthquake might be due.
Recent eruptions emphasize just how important an early warning could be: In 1950, lava from a Mauna Loa eruption reached the coast in just three hours. The 1950 eruption and another major one in 1984 were both preceded by substantial earthquakes.
Predicting the timings of eruptions is an incredibly complex task, with a lot of variables and estimates involved – but careful magma mapping strategies like the one in this new study can provide invaluable data for future modeling.
“It is a fascinating problem,” said Amelung.
“We can explain how and why the magma body changed during the past six years. We will continue observing and this will eventually lead to better models to forecast the next eruption site.”
The Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science is an academic and research institution for the study of oceanography and the atmospheric sciences within the University of Miami. It is located on a 16-acre (65,000 m^²) campus on Virginia Key in Miami, Florida. It is the only subtropical applied and basic marine and atmospheric research institute in the continental United States.
Up until 2008, RSMAS was solely a graduate school within the University of Miami, while it jointly administrated an undergraduate program with UM’s College of Arts and Sciences. In 2008, the Rosenstiel School has taken over administrative responsibilities for the undergraduate program, granting Bachelor of Science in Marine and Atmospheric Science (BSMAS) and Bachelor of Arts in Marine Affairs (BAMA) baccalaureate degree. Master’s, including a Master of Professional Science degree, and doctorates are also awarded to RSMAS students by the UM Graduate School.
The Rosenstiel School’s research includes the study of marine life, particularly Aplysia and coral; climate change; air-sea interactions; coastal ecology; and admiralty law. The school operates a marine research laboratory ship, and has a research site at an inland sinkhole. Research also includes the use of data from weather satellites and the school operates its own satellite downlink facility. The school is home to the world’s largest hurricane simulation tank.
The University of Miami is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. As of 2020, the university enrolled approximately 18,000 students in 12 separate colleges and schools, including the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine in Miami’s Health District, a law school on the main campus, and the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science focused on the study of oceanography and atmospheric sciences on Virginia Key, with research facilities at the Richmond Facility in southern Miami-Dade County.
The university offers 132 undergraduate, 148 master’s, and 67 doctoral degree programs, of which 63 are research/scholarship and 4 are professional areas of study. Over the years, the university’s students have represented all 50 states and close to 150 foreign countries. With more than 16,000 full- and part-time faculty and staff, The University of Miami is a top 10 employer in Miami-Dade County. The University of Miami’s main campus in Coral Gables has 239 acres and over 5.7 million square feet of buildings.
The University of Miami is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”. The University of Miami research expenditure in FY 2019 was $358.9 million. The University of Miami offers a large library system with over 3.9 million volumes and exceptional holdings in Cuban heritage and music.
The University of Miami also offers a wide range of student activities, including fraternities and sororities, and hundreds of student organizations. The Miami Hurricane, the student newspaper, and WVUM, the student-run radio station, have won multiple collegiate awards. The University of Miami’s intercollegiate athletic teams, collectively known as the Miami Hurricanes, compete in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The University of Miami’s football team has won five national championships since 1983 and its baseball team has won four national championships since 1982.
Research
The University of Miami is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”. In fiscal year 2016, The University of Miami received $195 million in federal research funding, including $131.3 million from the Department of Health and Human Services and $14.1 million from the National Science Foundation. Of the $8.2 billion appropriated by Congress in 2009 as a part of the stimulus bill for research priorities of The National Institutes of Health, the Miller School received $40.5 million. In addition to research conducted in the individual academic schools and departments, Miami has the following university-wide research centers:
The Center for Computational Science
The Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS)
Leonard and Jayne Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy
The Miami European Union Center: This group is a consortium with Florida International University (FIU) established in fall 2001 with a grant from the European Commission through its delegation in Washington, D.C., intended to research economic, social, and political issues of interest to the European Union.
The Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies
John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics – studies possible causes of Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and macular degeneration.
Center on Research and Education for Aging and Technology Enhancement (CREATE)
Wallace H. Coulter Center for Translational Research
The Miller School of Medicine receives more than $200 million per year in external grants and contracts to fund 1,500 ongoing projects. The medical campus includes more than 500,000 sq ft (46,000 m^2) of research space and the The University of Miami Life Science Park, which has an additional 2,000,000 sq ft (190,000 m^2) of space adjacent to the medical campus. The University of Miami’s Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute seeks to understand the biology of stem cells and translate basic research into new regenerative therapies.
As of 2008, The Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science receives $50 million in annual external research funding. Their laboratories include a salt-water wave tank, a five-tank Conditioning and Spawning System, multi-tank Aplysia Culture Laboratory, Controlled Corals Climate Tanks, and DNA analysis equipment. The campus also houses an invertebrate museum with 400,000 specimens and operates the Bimini Biological Field Station, an array of oceanographic high-frequency radar along the US east coast, and the Bermuda aerosol observatory. The University of Miami also owns the Little Salt Spring, a site on the National Register of Historic Places, in North Port, Florida, where RSMAS performs archaeological and paleontological research.
The University of Miami built a brain imaging annex to the James M. Cox Jr. Science Center within the College of Arts and Sciences. The building includes a human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) laboratory, where scientists, clinicians, and engineers can study fundamental aspects of brain function. Construction of the lab was funded in part by a $14.8 million in stimulus money grant from the National Institutes of Health.
In 2016 the university received $161 million in science and engineering funding from the U.S. federal government, the largest Hispanic-serving recipient and 56th overall. $117 million of the funding was through the Department of Health and Human Services and was used largely for the medical campus.
The University of Miami maintains one of the largest centralized academic cyber infrastructures in the country with numerous assets. The Center for Computational Science High Performance Computing group has been in continuous operation since 2007. Over that time the core has grown from a zero HPC cyberinfrastructure to a regional high-performance computing environment that currently supports more than 1,200 users, 220 TFlops of computational power, and more than 3 Petabytes of disk storage.
Regional setting and structural features of Taupo volcano in the Taupo Volcanic Zone (TVZ), New Zealand (map inset) [modified from Wilson & Charlier (2009)].
The vast expanse of Lake Taupō’s sky blue waters, crowned by hazy, mountainous horizons, invokes an extreme sense of tranquility.
Lake Taupō is the largest freshwater lake in Australasia, located at the center of New Zealand’s north island. And while it appears peaceful today, the lake has a violent origin story.
The lake’s waters sit within a prehistoric caldera – a word based on the Spanish for ‘cauldron’ or ‘boiling pot’ – formed during Earth’s most recent supereruption, the Oruanui eruption, 25,400 years ago.
When magma is released from a supervolcano (defined as having released at least 1,000 cubic kilometers of material in any one eruption) in an event like the Oruanui eruption, the depleted magma vents cave in, Earth’s surface sinks, and the landscape is permanently changed into a caldera.
In the last 12,000 years, the Taupō volcano has been active 25 times. Its most recent eruption in 232 AD is described by authors of the new paper as “one of the Earth’s most explosive eruptions in historic times”. Since then, the volcano has had at least four documented “episodes of unrest”, causing destructive earthquakes and, in 1922, a massive ground subsidence.
It’s the supervolcano’s more modern periods of unrest that the researchers have studied, analyzing up to 42 years of data collected at 22 sites dotted around and across the lake. And there’s evidence that the supervolcano is still rumbling.
“In 1979 [researchers] began a novel surveying technique which uses the lake surface to detect small changes, with four surveys made every year since,” lead author and Victoria University of Wellington seismologist Finn Illsley-Kemp explained. This technique involves the use of a gauge that measures vertical displacement of the lake bed.
To ensure the data are reliable, these gauges are weighted to reduce the impact of waves, and several measurements are taken for each datapoint, to detect degrees of variation and outliers. A backup gauge is also installed at each site as an insurance against disturbance by other forces.
In the project’s beginning, the measurements were recorded from manual gauges set up at just six stations. Eight more stations were added between August 1982 and July 1983, and during this time, the value of these measurements began to show.
In early 1983, the system detected rising or falling across different sites. Not long after, a swarm of earthquakes gently shook the region, resulting in the rupturing of several faults that pushed the central Kaiapo fault belt down and caused other areas at the lake’s south end to rise.
The 1983 earthquake swarms were only the first of seven discreet episodes of unrest recorded over the past 35 years.
By 1986 routine surveys were being carried out each year with additional sensors, with extra observations in the wake of earthquakes, creating a robust dataset that has only become more detailed over time.
The authors noticed that during periods of geological unrest, the north-eastern end of the lake (which is closest to the volcano’s center and the adjoining fault lines) tended to rise; the lake bed near the fault belt’s center sank; and at the lake’s southern end, there was some minor subsidence.
“Within the lake, near Horomatangi Reefs, the volcano has caused 160 mm [16 cm or 6.3 inches] of uplift, whereas north of the lake the tectonic faults have caused 140 mm [5.5 inches] of subsidence,” Illsley-Kemp said.
He thinks this region, which has very few earthquakes compared to the surrounding areas, is the location of Taupō ‘s magma reservoir, with deep rock that is too hot and molten for earthquakes to occur.
The researchers say the 16 cm of uplift – which, while not catastrophic, is definitely enough to cause some damage to buildings or pipes – is possibly due to magma moving closer to the surface during periods of unrest.
Illsley-Kemp said the research shows Taupō is an active and dynamic volcano, intimately connected with the surrounding tectonics.
The researchers think the northeastern end of the volcano – which has the youngest vents – is more likely to be affected by the expansion of hot magma, pushing the ground upwards. They think the ‘sinking’ center of the Taupō fault, and the subsidence at the lake’s southern end is likely due to deep magma cooling (and therefore shrinking), a tectonic extension of a rift, or both.
Illsley-Kemp has regularly assured people that while it’s in a state of unrest, there is no evidence the volcano will erupt anytime soon.
“However, Taupō will most likely erupt at some stage over the next few thousand years – and so it’s important that we monitor and understand these unrest periods so that we can quickly identify any signs which might indicate a forthcoming eruption,” he told the New Zealand Herald in a 2021 article.
Ultimately, this research is more about understanding the normal ‘behavior’ of the caldera, and what to look for when things are getting more heated.
6 July 2022
Olivier Roche
Yosuke Aoki
Nikolai Bagdassarov
Michael Heap
Sigrun Hreinsdottir
Qinghua Huang
Daniel Pastor-Galan
Michael Poland
Maria Sachpazi
Fang-Zhen Teng
Gregory Waite
Marie Edmonds
Paul Asimow
Minghua Zhang
Graziella Caprarelli
Flank eruption at Cumbre Vieja volcano (La Palma, Canary Islands, September 26, 2021). Credit: Raphaël Paris.
The recent awakening of the Fagradalsfjall (Iceland), Cumbre Vieja (La Palma, Canary Islands) and Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai (Tonga) volcanoes reminded us that eruptions are often preceded by variable styles and magnitudes of precursory signals, can have a range of sizes and impacts, and represent serious threats to the environment and society. These events show that despite considerable progress in the understanding of volcanic processes in recent decades, there are still scientific barriers to better predict the occurrence, style, and magnitude of eruptions and to anticipate their consequences. These manifestations are controlled by physico-chemical processes that occur at various time and length scales and largely out of view in the subsurface, and that depend on the chemical composition of the magmas as well as the pressure and temperature conditions.
Fundamental questions remain concerning many aspects of volcanic processes (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2017). For example, how do batches of eruptible magmas assemble, evolve over time, and ascend to the surface? Under what circumstances do volcanic edifices become unstable and collapse? What processes control the effusive or explosive style of eruptions and possible transitions over time? What processes control the dispersion of volcanic products at the Earth’s surface and in the atmosphere?
Addressing these questions and forecasting volcanic eruptions requires the use of complementary methods employed from different fields (Sparks, 2003; Poland and Anderson, 2020). Analysis of samples and data acquisition using ground and remote sensors produces time-series data that provide key information about fundamental processes and are essential for forecasting eruptions. These data also serve to define input parameters and test models, with applications that are constantly improving due to ever-evolving computational capabilities. Models are also fed by the results of laboratory experiments that aid in the interpretation of field observations.
Vulcanian eruption at Sakurajima volcano (Japan). Credit: Olivier Roche.
New types of models have emerged in recent years to simulate volcanic eruptions and mitigate hazards. Estimation of uncertainties due to ranges of values of the input parameters and the nature of the models themselves enables the production of probabilistic hazard maps (Bevilacqua et al., 2015; Neri et al., 2015), while machine learning algorithms can filter through enormous databases to identify patterns useful for eruption forecasting (Curtis et al., 2020; Ren et al., 2020).
Many volcanic phenomena are characterized by multiphase flows. Although very different in appearance, flows of crystal and gas bubble-laden magmatic liquids (in magma reservoirs and dikes or as lava flows at the Earth’s surface), of mixtures of gas and magma fragments (eruptive plumes, pyroclastic density currents), or of water and solid particles (lahars) generally obey the same physical principles (Iverson et al., 2010; Dufek, 2016; Bachman and Huber, 2019). The dynamics of these flows depend fundamentally on the relative proportions of the different phases and their interactions. Better understanding the mechanisms of these multiphase mixtures and defining rheological laws are crucial steps for the development of robust models.
Increasing focus on climate change is opening new fields of study for the volcano research community. Melting of glaciers due to climate warming causes crustal stress relaxation and may be a factor in increased eruptive activity (Rawson et al., 2016). A growing number of studies also suggest that volcanic eruptions that inject large amounts of aerosols into the stratosphere may affect atmospheric currents and consequently the evolution of climate (Khodri et al., 2017; DallaSanta et al., 2021). In this context, investigating the impact of the largest volcanic eruptions, which are relatively rare but may have significant forcing effects, appears to be a major issue (Guillet et al., 2017).
The new special collection on Advances in understanding volcanic processes is intended to address the many open challenges in volcanology. The collection will bring together articles that present new scientific results and highlight developments or applications of modern techniques employed to investigate volcanic processes. Contributions are expected to clearly identify new knowledge and understanding of volcanic phenomena.
This is a joint special collection between JGR: Solid Earth, JGR: Atmospheres, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, and Earth and Space Science. Manuscripts can be submitted to any of these journals, depending on their fit with the journal’s scope and requirements. At JGR: Solid Earth, submissions will be handled by a team of Guest Editors: Yosuke Aoki, Nickolai Bagdassarov, Michael Heap, Sigrun Hreinsdottir, Qinghua Huang, Daniel Pastor-Galan, Michael Poland, Olivier Roche, Maria Sachpazi, Fang-Zhen Teng, and Gregory Waite, along with regular Editors. At G-Cubed, submissions will be handled by the Editors Marie Edmonds and Paul Asimow. At Earth and Space Science, submissions will be handled by the Editor in Chief, Graziella Caprarelli. At JGR: Atmospheres, submissions will be handled by the Editor in Chief and editors.
Citation: Roche, O., Y. Aoki, N. Bagdassarov, M. Heap, S. Hreinsdottir, Q. Huang, D. Pastor-Galan, M. Poland, M. Sachpazi, F. Teng, G. Waite, M. Edmonds, P. Asimow, M. Zhang, and G. Caprarelli (2022), Dynamics of volcanic processes, Eos, 103, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EO225019. Published on 6 July 2022.
“Eos” is the leading source for trustworthy news and perspectives about the Earth and space sciences and their impact. Its namesake is Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn, who represents the light shed on understanding our planet and its environment in space by the Earth and space sciences.
The Fagradalsfjall eruption site viewed from above. The photo shows lava emanating from multiple vents. Tourists for scale. Credit: Alina V. Shevchenko and Edgar U. Zorn, GFZ Germany.
The recent Fagradalsfjall eruption in the southwest of Iceland has enthralled the whole world, including nature lovers and scientists alike. The eruption was especially important as it provided geologists with a unique opportunity to study magmas that were accumulated in a deep crustal magma reservoir but ultimately derived from the Earth’s mantle (below 20 km).
A research team from University of Oregon, Uppsala University, University of Iceland, and Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum (GFZ) took this exceptional opportunity to collect lava samples every few days in order to construct a time-integrated catalog of samples and to monitor the geochemical evolution throughout the eruption to a degree of detail rarely achieved before. Usually, when volcano scientists look at past eruptions they work with a limited view of the erupted materials—for example older lava flows can get wholly or partially buried by newer ones. However, at Fagradalsfjall, the eruption was so well monitored and sampled that scientists had a chance to capture the evolution of an Icelandic eruption in near real-time.
The team were interested in oxygen isotopes. Why? Because oxygen makes up about 50% of all volcanic rocks and its isotope ratios are very sensitive tracers of mantle and crustal materials. In this way, oxygen isotopes can help scientists to determine if magma is mantle-derived or if it interacted with crustal materials as it made its way to the surface. However, in addition to oxygen, the other vast suite of elements making up the volcanic rocks threw up some surprises. For instance, the team observed that this single eruption contains roughly half of the entire diversity of mantle-derived magmas previously recorded for the whole of Iceland.
In brief, geochemical results show that the latest Iceland eruption was supplied by magmas derived from multiple sources in the Earth’s mantle, each with its own distinctive elemental characteristics. To the amazement of scientists, each of these domains had identical oxygen isotope ratios. This result was remarkable and has never been observed before at an active eruption. The study provides new and compelling evidence for distinct mantle-sourced magmas having uniform oxygen isotope ratios, which can help us to better understand mantle dynamics and refine mantle models for Iceland.
Collecting red-hot lava samples at the Fagradalsfjall eruption site. Samples were collected regularly in order to create a detailed time-line of erupted material for analysis. Credit: Jóna Sigurlína Pálmadóttir, University of Iceland.
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12:31 pm on July 1, 2022 Permalink
| Reply Tags: "Unlocking the Magmatic Secrets of Antarctica’s Mount Erebus", Applied Research & Technology ( 10,907 ), Carbon capture and storage ( 54 ), CO2-rich volcanic systems are less well understood than the more common H2O-rich arc volcanoes., Data taken by measuring natural electromagnetic waves traveling through Earth revealed the volcano’s magmatic system brings lava much closer to the surface than subduction arc volcanoes., Earth Observation ( 2,016 ), Ecology ( 286 ), Eos ( 324 ), Geology ( 824 ), One of Antarctica’s only active volcanoes is home to one of the few long-lasting lava lakes on Earth., Past studies into Erebus relied on seismic data to probe its inner workings., Research has revealed the plumbing underneath Mount Erebus that keeps the lake full., The snow-covered Mount Erebus is the southernmost active volcano on Earth and shares Antarctica’s Ross Island with three other volcanoes-all dormant., Unlike arc volcanoes such as the Cascades in western North America Erebus has very little water in its magma. Instead it’s rich in carbon dioxide (CO2)., Unprecedented images of Mount Erebus’s inner workings show the unique trappings of a CO2-rich rift volcano., Volcanology
From “Eos” : “Unlocking the Magmatic Secrets of Antarctica’s Mount Erebus”
Unprecedented images of Mount Erebus’s inner workings show the unique trappings of a CO2-rich rift volcano.
Mount Erebus, Antarctica, is the most southerly active volcano on Earth. Credit: Josh Landis/National Science Foundation, Public Domain.
One of Antarctica’s only active volcanoes is home to one of the few long-lasting lava lakes on Earth. The lake occasionally blasts out lava bombs from the summit crater of Mount Erebus, 3,794 meters high.
Now, research has revealed the plumbing underneath Mount Erebus that keeps the lake full.
Data taken by measuring natural electromagnetic waves traveling through Earth revealed the volcano’s magmatic system brings lava much closer to the surface than subduction arc volcanoes.
Unlike arc volcanoes such as the Cascades in western North America Erebus has very little water in its magma. Instead it’s rich in carbon dioxide (CO2). This dryness allows magma to travel much closer to the surface than water (H2O)-rich volcanoes that stall out at about 5 kilometers below the surface.
CO2-rich volcanic systems are less well understood than the more common H2O-rich arc volcanoes.
“If we can also get an idea of where the magmatic system is, you can better understand the monitoring data when these systems enter periods of unrest,” said lead scientist and geophysicist Graham Hill at the Institute of Geophysics at the Czech Academy of Sciences.
“This is the first great image of one,” said geophysicist Phil Wannamaker at the University of Utah, who participated in the work.
Erebus has long been familiar to polar explorers—this photo was taken by Robert Falcon Scott on his ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. Credit: Robert Falcon Scott/Wikimedia, Public Domain.
Fire and Ice
The snow-covered Mount Erebus is the southernmost active volcano on Earth and shares Antarctica’s Ross Island with three other volcanoes-all dormant. Mount Erebus overlooks McMurdo Station, and nearby sits the hut built by legendary polar explorer Ernest Shackleton and his men before they summited Erebus in 1908. Although its name ultimately harkens to Greek mythology’s personification of darkness, Captain James Ross named the volcano after one of his ships, the HMS Erebus, in 1841.
Past studies into Erebus relied on seismic data to probe its inner workings. Scientists use seismic waves traveling through Earth to ascertain the material below. But Erebus has very few crustal-scale earthquakes, hamstringing the method to shallow depths.
So Hill, Wannamaker, and their colleagues took a different approach: magnetotelluric data.
During summers between 2014 and 2017, the team visited Erebus via helicopter. They visited 129 sites on Erebus and Ross Island, taking exhaustive measurements. “Hats off to Graham for the energy and drive to cover the entire island,” said Wannamaker.
At each site, they’d recorded the natural electromagnetic waves that travel through Earth from the Sun and distant lightning bolts. “A lightning bolt is an impulsive antenna, if you will, and electromagnetic waves ripple out from that into your survey area,” said Wannamaker. Solar weather also produces waves that propagate through Earth.
Captured by custom “voltmeters” on the surface and fed into a modeling algorithm, the waves can create a 3D picture of the electrical resistivity of material below, “kind of like a CT scan of the human body,” said Wannamaker.
Mount Erebus is fed by a column of hotter rock extending vertically from at least 100 kilometers deep (yellow) and melted magma that extends up through the crust (red). Yellow and red represent unusually low resistivity below Erebus (10 and 5 ohm meters, respectively). DGFZ = Discovery Graben fault zone; EFZ = Erebus fault zone. Credit: Hillet al., 2022.
The picture below Erebus is “very glorious.” Areas with lower electrical resistivity indicate the material is hot and, to some extent, melted. The image shows a hot region that extends to at least 100 kilometers below Erebus. There is also a channel of melt going upward through the crust that feeds the volcano, the new research shows.
A languid plume rises from Mount Erebus’s lava lake in 1983. Credit: Bill Rose/Michigan Technological University, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Using this method gave the researchers a much higher resolution: It gave them a continuous view from a few hundred meters to about 100 kilometers deep. “That’s an advantage over other geophysical methods, such as most seismology,” said Wannamaker. The resolution got fuzzier the deeper they looked, however.
In the image, a lower-resistivity area, likely magma, shoots toward the surface. This magma feeds the lava lake.
Clues from the Deep
“This material has been lurking down there,” said Wannamaker. This image “gives us some picture of the longer-term volatile recycling of the mantle and the crust, in particular to CO2.”
More commonly studied volcanoes like the Cascades are rich in water. Water is very volatile (it easily bubbles out of the magma like fizz in a soda), and as the pressure drops as it gets nearer to the surface, it can suddenly saturate the magma and cause an explosive event, like the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens.
Erebus is different. The magma’s birthplace in the upper mantle has little water, and the small amount of water it possesses disappears as the magma rises to the surface. The result is dry magma “reaching all the way to the very near surface, which is what we haven’t seen elsewhere.” The team published the results in Nature Communications last month.
Another notable feature in the new Erebus image is the magma skewing eastward as it nears the surface. For more than 200 million years, Antarctica was splitting in two at the West Antarctic Rift. The separation stopped 11 million years ago, but local movements on Terror Rift, which underlies Mount Erebus and other volcanoes, continued.
The magma reaches a choke point at the intersection of faults. There, magma and gas pressure build up in the lower middle crust. Occasionally, the magma and gas break through, carrying magma to the lake.
“Accessible” Mount Erebus
“This is a landmark study,” said Rick Aster, a professor at Colorado State University who was not involved in the new work. The latest findings address “one of the most remarkable features of Erebus volcano—that it has been able to sustain a convecting phonologic lava lake in its inner crater for at least many decades.”
Although the new data are the most detailed yet, the researchers can’t see deeper into the mantle unless they take measurements over a larger footprint. A bigger footprint would require taking more measurements on sea ice and the ice shelf, like they did for about a dozen sites in the present study.
Surprisingly, Erebus is “one of the more accessible systems in the world, if not the most accessible,” said Hill. Although it’s far away, “you have none of the other restrictions of forest cover and accessibility. You can pretty much go anywhere on Erebus to make your measurement.”
“Eos” is the leading source for trustworthy news and perspectives about the Earth and space sciences and their impact. Its namesake is Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn, who represents the light shed on understanding our planet and its environment in space by the Earth and space sciences.
New research reveals the intensity of British Columbia’s 2020 hazard cascade as members of the Homalco First Nation continue to pick up the pieces.
In late November, 2020 a geological mystery appeared on seismographs around the world. A signal comparable to a magnitude-5.0 earthquake emanated from deep within the southern Coast Mountains of British Columbia (B.C.), Canada.
The cause of this ground-shaking event remained unknown for two weeks, until forestry workers passing through traditional territory of the Homalco First Nation happened upon its aftermath in the Elliot Creek watershed. The glacier-carved valley, narrowly framed by mile-high rocky walls, was decimated by a massive hazard cascade — a chain reaction of geological events — involving a landslide, tsunami, outburst flood and sediment plume. What was once a verdant environment for the region’s famed salmon is now an ashen alley that fans out into a sea of debris.
The sheer scale of the cascade can be hard to comprehend even when viewing the valley from a helicopter, said Marten Geertsema, a research geomorphologist with the B.C. Ministry of Forests and the lead author of a new study that describes the events [Geophysical Research Letters].
British Columbia 2020 hazard cascade aftermath.
“It’s staggering when you just stand there,” said Geertsema. “It’s kind of hard to wrap your head around how powerful that all was.”
Homalco First Nation and researchers from the B.C.-based Hakai Institute are assessing the long-term ecological impacts on the region, especially for fisheries. Ongoing unstable conditions in the valley suggest that recovery could take decades. Moreover, Elliot Creek has erratically changed course numerous times in the past year, which can make restoration plans irrelevant essentially overnight.
“If we get a massive rain event like last year, the whole river could change again and it’s not money well spent,” said Erik Blaney, an environmental technical of the Tla’amin Nation who was contracted by the Homalco Nation to lead assessment and recovery efforts. “You’re playing with mother nature.”
A cascade of unfortunate events
The hazard cascade began with the fifth largest landslide on record in British Columbia, involving, according to study co-author Göran Ekström, the equivalent of the combined mass of Canada’s 25 million cars. Ekström is a seismologist at Columbia University. Nearly half of the debris crashed onto the toe of West Grenville glacier, near the base of the valley. The rest ran up the opposite wall of the valley before gravity carried it down once again. Traveling at more than 100 miles per hour (170 kilometers per hour), the landslide plunged into an alpine lake left behind by the glacier during its retreat over the last century.
Like the splash after a jump off a high-dive, the landslide’s impact was fast and violent: the rockfall catapulted enough water out of the lake to reduce its area by nearly 20%, creating islands in its newly shallow depths. In just over a minute, a tsunami wave towering more than 330 feet (100 meters) high sped across the lake before cresting the opposite shore, creating what is known as a glacial lake outburst flood.
The view down valley showing the eroded creek bed and lack of vegetation. Credit: Briar Stewart/CBC.
The water was then forcefully channeled down the confines of the valley like a marble in a Rube Goldberg machine. Though it generally takes millennia for water to steadily erode deep ravines, the flood gouged out a groove 160 feet (50 meters) deep in the stream bed within minutes.
As the creek bank gave way and trees were mowed down, the flood became a thick soup of debris that left an enormous fan of sand, mud and wood extending from the mouth of the valley. It contaminated local fresh and marine waterways, creating a sediment plume — suspended organic materials — that destroyed water quality.
“You need certain elements in place to create these massive domino effects,” said Geerstema. “This goes to show us the damaging footprint of these events when you have water in the right place.”
Looking with LiDAR
The landslide’s remote location meant that fortunately no one was around when the hazard cascade took place. To map out what happened, Geertsema, who regularly scours satellite imagery for evidence of landslides in high-mountain areas, worked with members of Canada’s First Nations, the Hakai Institute and other institutions around the world to simulate the events using numerical modeling and LiDAR — a survey method that pulses lasers from an airplane to create 3D representations of the surface.
Geertsema, who compared post-landslide images with those taken only one year prior, said the team was very lucky to have such detailed imagery. “We wouldn’t have been able to produce these models without that input data,” he said.
The view of the lake looking towards West Grenville glacier and the sheer vertical slide face. Credit: Brian Menounos.
Fewer glaciers, more hazards
British Columbia’s mountainous terrain is no stranger to landslides or floods and tsunamis. Climate change, however, has exacerbated the impacts and frequency of these hazards — especially as warming temperatures cause ground-stabilizing permafrost and glaciers to melt away.
As glaciers retreat, weak bedrock loses the support that prevents its collapse, said Tom Millard, a research geomorphologist with the B.C. Ministry of Forests and co-author of the study. The meltwater lakes left in their wake, such as at Elliot Creek, also tend to get larger, which ratchets up the hazard of a potential tsunami or outburst flood.
Living with the consequences
The chain reaction of geological events created a cascade of ecological effects that will linger for decades. The flood destroyed most of the salmon population, as well as the spawning habitat that they return to each year. The fish are unable to survive current turbidity levels, which remain more than 25 times higher than normal (especially after a rainstorm), said Blaney.
More than food, salmon are an important part of the Homalco First Nation’s culture and livelihood. Grizzly bears’ annual feasting on salmon draws in tourism that helps the community thrive. But this past year, low salmon numbers meant the bears went hungry.
As recovery effort coordinator, Blaney has ideas for sustainable ways to help the ecosystem return to some semblance of normal. One solution is to prune crab apple trees as another source of food for the bears.
“It’s something that our people did before,” said Blaney.
Blaney is also considering installing a platform that would provide a safer way for researchers to monitor the salmon population, diverting the creek through a more stable area with remaining trees, and planting native vegetation to control for erosion.
Finding funding for these projects, however, is only one obstacle that is part of an even greater challenge: living with the increasingly stark effects of climate change. Severe wildfires in summer 2021 burned across B.C., and the Coast Mountains are experiencing some of the highest rates of glacier loss on earth, meaning hazard cascades like the one at Elliot Creek could become more frequent.
“I don’t think the average person living in a city can really understand or see the changes that we’re seeing and the devastation that they’re having on salmon and other important pieces of our survival and our culture,” said Blaney. “We’re seeing change, and it’s happening fast and it’s beyond any scope we could have imagined.”
Further Reading
For the full multimedia feature by the Hakai Institute — which includes video, interactive maps, and more — click here.
Geertsema, M., Menounos, B., Bullard, G., Carrivick, J. L., Clague, J. J., Dai, C., … & Sharp, M. A. (2022). The 28 November 2020 landslide, tsunami, and outburst flood–a hazard cascade associated with rapid deglaciation at Elliot Creek, British Columbia, Canada. Geophysical research letters, 49(6), e2021GL096716.
Menounos, B., Hugonnet, R., Shean, D., Gardner, A., Howat, I., Berthier, E., … & Dehecq, A. (2019). Heterogeneous changes in western North American glaciers linked to decadal variability in zonal wind strength. Geophysical Research Letters, 46(1), 200-209.
Earthquake Network projectEarthquake Network is a research project which aims at developing and maintaining a crowdsourced smartphone-based earthquake warning system at a global level. Smartphones made available by the population are used to detect the earthquake waves using the on-board accelerometers. When an earthquake is detected, an earthquake warning is issued in order to alert the population not yet reached by the damaging waves of the earthquake.
The project started on January 1, 2013 with the release of the homonymous Android application Earthquake Network. The author of the research project and developer of the smartphone application is Francesco Finazzi of the University of Bergamo, Italy.
Get the app in the Google Play store.
Smartphone network spatial distribution (green and red dots) on December 4, 2015
The Quake-Catcher Network is a collaborative initiative for developing the world’s largest, low-cost strong-motion seismic network by utilizing sensors in and attached to internet-connected computers. With your help, the Quake-Catcher Network can provide better understanding of earthquakes, give early warning to schools, emergency response systems, and others. The Quake-Catcher Network also provides educational software designed to help teach about earthquakes and earthquake hazards.
After almost eight years at Stanford, and a year at CalTech, the QCN project is moving to the University of Southern California Dept. of Earth Sciences. QCN will be sponsored by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) and the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC).
The Quake-Catcher Network is a distributed computing network that links volunteer hosted computers into a real-time motion sensing network. QCN is one of many scientific computing projects that runs on the world-renowned distributed computing platform Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC).
The volunteer computers monitor vibrational sensors called MEMS accelerometers, and digitally transmit “triggers” to QCN’s servers whenever strong new motions are observed. QCN’s servers sift through these signals, and determine which ones represent earthquakes, and which ones represent cultural noise (like doors slamming, or trucks driving by).
There are two categories of sensors used by QCN: 1) internal mobile device sensors, and 2) external USB sensors.
Mobile Devices: MEMS sensors are often included in laptops, games, cell phones, and other electronic devices for hardware protection, navigation, and game control. When these devices are still and connected to QCN, QCN software monitors the internal accelerometer for strong new shaking. Unfortunately, these devices are rarely secured to the floor, so they may bounce around when a large earthquake occurs. While this is less than ideal for characterizing the regional ground shaking, many such sensors can still provide useful information about earthquake locations and magnitudes.
USB Sensors: MEMS sensors can be mounted to the floor and connected to a desktop computer via a USB cable. These sensors have several advantages over mobile device sensors. 1) By mounting them to the floor, they measure more reliable shaking than mobile devices. 2) These sensors typically have lower noise and better resolution of 3D motion. 3) Desktops are often left on and do not move. 4) The USB sensor is physically removed from the game, phone, or laptop, so human interaction with the device doesn’t reduce the sensors’ performance. 5) USB sensors can be aligned to North, so we know what direction the horizontal “X” and “Y” axes correspond to.
If you are a science teacher at a K-12 school, please apply for a free USB sensor and accompanying QCN software. QCN has been able to purchase sensors to donate to schools in need. If you are interested in donating to the program or requesting a sensor, click here.
Earthquake safety is a responsibility shared by billions worldwide. The Quake-Catcher Network (QCN) provides software so that individuals can join together to improve earthquake monitoring, earthquake awareness, and the science of earthquakes. The Quake-Catcher Network (QCN) links existing networked laptops and desktops in hopes to form the worlds largest strong-motion seismic network.
Below, the QCN Quake Catcher Network map
ShakeAlert: An Earthquake Early Warning System for the West Coast of the United States
The U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) along with a coalition of State and university partners is developing and testing an earthquake early warning (EEW) system called ShakeAlert for the west coast of the United States. Long term funding must be secured before the system can begin sending general public notifications, however, some limited pilot projects are active and more are being developed. The USGS has set the goal of beginning limited public notifications in 2018.
Watch a video describing how ShakeAlert works in English or Spanish.
Earthquakes pose a national challenge because more than 143 million Americans live in areas of significant seismic risk across 39 states. Most of our Nation’s earthquake risk is concentrated on the West Coast of the United States. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has estimated the average annualized loss from earthquakes, nationwide, to be $5.3 billion, with 77 percent of that figure ($4.1 billion) coming from California, Washington, and Oregon, and 66 percent ($3.5 billion) from California alone. In the next 30 years, California has a 99.7 percent chance of a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake and the Pacific Northwest has a 10 percent chance of a magnitude 8 to 9 megathrust earthquake on the Cascadia subduction zone.
Part of the Solution
Today, the technology exists to detect earthquakes, so quickly, that an alert can reach some areas before strong shaking arrives. The purpose of the ShakeAlert system is to identify and characterize an earthquake a few seconds after it begins, calculate the likely intensity of ground shaking that will result, and deliver warnings to people and infrastructure in harm’s way. This can be done by detecting the first energy to radiate from an earthquake, the P-wave energy, which rarely causes damage. Using P-wave information, we first estimate the location and the magnitude of the earthquake. Then, the anticipated ground shaking across the region to be affected is estimated and a warning is provided to local populations. The method can provide warning before the S-wave arrives, bringing the strong shaking that usually causes most of the damage.
Studies of earthquake early warning methods in California have shown that the warning time would range from a few seconds to a few tens of seconds. ShakeAlert can give enough time to slow trains and taxiing planes, to prevent cars from entering bridges and tunnels, to move away from dangerous machines or chemicals in work environments and to take cover under a desk, or to automatically shut down and isolate industrial systems. Taking such actions before shaking starts can reduce damage and casualties during an earthquake. It can also prevent cascading failures in the aftermath of an event. For example, isolating utilities before shaking starts can reduce the number of fire initiations.
System Goal
The USGS will issue public warnings of potentially damaging earthquakes and provide warning parameter data to government agencies and private users on a region-by-region basis, as soon as the ShakeAlert system, its products, and its parametric data meet minimum quality and reliability standards in those geographic regions. The USGS has set the goal of beginning limited public notifications in 2018. Product availability will expand geographically via ANSS regional seismic networks, such that ShakeAlert products and warnings become available for all regions with dense seismic instrumentation.
Current Status
The West Coast ShakeAlert system is being developed by expanding and upgrading the infrastructure of regional seismic networks that are part of the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS); the California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN) is made up of the Southern California Seismic Network, SCSN) and the Northern California Seismic System, NCSS and the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN). This enables the USGS and ANSS to leverage their substantial investment in sensor networks, data telemetry systems, data processing centers, and software for earthquake monitoring activities residing in these network centers. The ShakeAlert system has been sending live alerts to “beta” users in California since January of 2012 and in the Pacific Northwest since February of 2015.
In February of 2016 the USGS, along with its partners, rolled-out the next-generation ShakeAlert early warning test system in California joined by Oregon and Washington in April 2017. This West Coast-wide “production prototype” has been designed for redundant, reliable operations. The system includes geographically distributed servers, and allows for automatic fail-over if connection is lost.
This next-generation system will not yet support public warnings but does allow selected early adopters to develop and deploy pilot implementations that take protective actions triggered by the ShakeAlert notifications in areas with sufficient sensor coverage.
Authorities
The USGS will develop and operate the ShakeAlert system, and issue public notifications under collaborative authorities with FEMA, as part of the National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program, as enacted by the Earthquake Hazards Reduction Act of 1977, 42 U.S.C. §§ 7704 SEC. 2.
For More Information
Robert de Groot, ShakeAlert National Coordinator for Communication, Education, and Outreach rdegroot@usgs.gov
626-583-7225
Early Warning Labs, LLC (EWL) is an Earthquake Early Warning technology developer and integrator located in Santa Monica, CA. EWL is partnered with industry leading GIS provider ESRI, Inc. and is collaborating with the US Government and university partners.
EWL is investing millions of dollars over the next 36 months to complete the final integration and delivery of Earthquake Early Warning to individual consumers, government entities, and commercial users.
EWL’s mission is to improve, expand, and lower the costs of the existing earthquake early warning systems.
EWL is developing a robust cloud server environment to handle low-cost mass distribution of these warnings. In addition, Early Warning Labs is researching and developing automated response standards and systems that allow public and private users to take pre-defined automated actions to protect lives and assets.
EWL has an existing beta R&D test system installed at one of the largest studios in Southern California. The goal of this system is to stress test EWL’s hardware, software, and alert signals while improving latency and reliability.
Earthquake Early Warning Introduction
The United States Geological Survey (USGS), in collaboration with state agencies, university partners, and private industry, is developing an earthquake early warning system (EEW) for the West Coast of the United States called ShakeAlert. The USGS Earthquake Hazards Program aims to mitigate earthquake losses in the United States. Citizens, first responders, and engineers rely on the USGS for accurate and timely information about where earthquakes occur, the ground shaking intensity in different locations, and the likelihood is of future significant ground shaking.
The ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning System recently entered its first phase of operations. The USGS working in partnership with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) is now allowing for the testing of public alerting via apps, Wireless Emergency Alerts, and by other means throughout California.
ShakeAlert partners in Oregon and Washington are working with the USGS to test public alerting in those states sometime in 2020.
ShakeAlert has demonstrated the feasibility of earthquake early warning, from event detection to producing USGS issued ShakeAlerts ® and will continue to undergo testing and will improve over time. In particular, robust and reliable alert delivery pathways for automated actions are currently being developed and implemented by private industry partners for use in California, Oregon, and Washington.
Earthquake Early Warning Background
The objective of an earthquake early warning system is to rapidly detect the initiation of an earthquake, estimate the level of ground shaking intensity to be expected, and issue a warning before significant ground shaking starts. A network of seismic sensors detects the first energy to radiate from an earthquake, the P-wave energy, and the location and the magnitude of the earthquake is rapidly determined. Then, the anticipated ground shaking across the region to be affected is estimated. The system can provide warning before the S-wave arrives, which brings the strong shaking that usually causes most of the damage. Warnings will be distributed to local and state public emergency response officials, critical infrastructure, private businesses, and the public. EEW systems have been successfully implemented in Japan, Taiwan, Mexico, and other nations with varying degrees of sophistication and coverage.
Earthquake early warning can provide enough time to:
Instruct students and employees to take a protective action such as Drop, Cover, and Hold On
Initiate mass notification procedures
Open fire-house doors and notify local first responders
Slow and stop trains and taxiing planes
Install measures to prevent/limit additional cars from going on bridges, entering tunnels, and being on freeway overpasses before the shaking starts
Move people away from dangerous machines or chemicals in work environments
Shut down gas lines, water treatment plants, or nuclear reactors
Automatically shut down and isolate industrial systems
However, earthquake warning notifications must be transmitted without requiring human review and response action must be automated, as the total warning times are short depending on geographic distance and varying soil densities from the epicenter.
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