Top shelf seismometer

The USGS has the 'Did You Feel It?' website for generating shake maps for earthquakes felt by anybody. Late last night, I felt the modest 3.2 quake in Oakland.

I may have been the only one in San Francisco to feel it (they don't show locations on the map under a certain number of entries, apparently). Why did I feel it and nobody else in SF? Well, it was after midnight, and it was rather late (after midnight). And, it wasn't a very strong earthquake either.

But, another reason is the bookshelf-liquor bottle seismometer we have in our apartment. On the top shelf of said bookshelf we keep the handful of bottles of liquor we have. When the bus goes by our apartment, they rattle ever so slightly. Something about the slightly warped hardwood floor in this 1940s building makes this set-up a very sensitive recorder of any motion. Last night as I was working late, the bottles rattled, but a lot slower than when the bus goes by. Earthquake! The fact that no bus was going by at that moment was another clue.

Another disappearing lake

Last month, news about the disappearance of a glacial lake in Chilean Patagonia spread around the media outlets and geoblogosphere. A lot of the discussion since has been focused on whether or not this event is indeed just the latest example of anthropogenic global warming.

This reminded me of a story of a disappearing lake that is without a doubt the result of human intervention. This is crazy...check it out. In 1980, Lake Peigneur in Louisiana catastrophically drained into the ground creating a swirling vortex that sucked barges and other boats into it.

The short version is: they drilled an oil well into an active salt mine. When the drill hole met the subsurface cavity....well, watch this History Channel footage (>6min) below. They go into much more detail and have some incredible footage.

Spectacular photographs of Klyuchevskoy Volcano on Kamchatka

Click on the image above to see a whole bunch of great photographs of the Klyuchevskoy Volcano on Kamchatka, which has been erupting for the last few weeks.

Link via Geology.com

1980 Mount St. Helens eruption anniversary

Today marks the 27th anniversary of the famous Mount St. Helens eruption. At 8:32 am on May 18th, 1980 the volcano erupted as half the mountain slid off the side.

This GoogleVideo would not properly embed on the blog (and I can't be bothered to figure it out), but if you click on the image below it will take you to the page where you can view that famous clip of the eruption.


The geoblogosphere has had some discussions in recent months regarding the accuracy and quality of Wikipedia when it comes to geologic information. In this case, I think the Wikipedia entry on Mount St. Helens does a decent job at laying out the important information. And, as Wikipedia entries go, it has a very nice list of notes and external sites at the bottom of the page to get more information.

Below is a map of the ash fallout from the 1980 eruption. I wonder why there is that isolated patch in Oklahoma?

Catalina Island wildfire

If you're following the news even a little bit, you've probably heard about the wildfire burning up Catalina Island, which is offshore of southern California. Click image above or quote below to read story and see more photos. Although many people live on the island, much of it is a wildlife refuge.

Despite being well offshore, Catalina has been left parched by the lack of rainfall that has made the rest of Southern California particularly susceptible to wildfires like the one in Los Angeles' Griffith Park this week.

Here is a batymetric map showing the island. See more here.

Video of flash flood

Here is a great video of a flash flood in Thompson Canyon, which is in Utah and very near these outcrops. This particular video was shot by Doug Jerolmack last summer. I found this on Paul Heller's website, which is a great resource for videos of clastic sedimentation.



Note the debris-rich front of the flow, full of twigs, sticks, and other stuff (pause at 00:19). After some time, the debris-poor part of the flow comes through.

Pause at 00:34 and note the levee of woody debris that has formed on the edge of the flow. This is a defining characteristic of these types of flows and help keep it going by providing additional confinement.

At 00:43-00:47 (end of footage) note the standing wave that has formed.

Video of debris flow in California

Note: I downloaded this clip a long time ago and, unfortunately, don't know any specific information about it (except that it occurred in California). If you happen to know the details and source of this video, please let me know.

I have a bunch of video clips related to sedimentation that i'll be posting from time to time. This one is a muddy debris flow carrying and/or rolling some rather large boulders.

Friday Field Foto #14: Landslide deposit

In the spring of 2006 I was lucky enough to attend a geology conference in Mendoza, Argentina, which is in the foreland of the central Andes east of, and just over the continental divide from Santiago, Chile. Part of the program was a day trip up to the Andes to look at the fold-thrust belt structure. This is very close to Aconcagua, which is the highest peak in the western hemisphere (almost 7,000 meters).

I snapped this photo on the last stop of the day (near the divide/border) of a landslide that occured about 100 years ago. Apparently, the timing of this is known from notes and observations from European explorers/settlers. Note the building in the lower right foreground for scale.

Video of landslide in Japan

UPDATE: As of Aug '07, this video was removed from YouTube...sorry

I finally took 5 minutes and figured out how to embed YouTube videos on this blog. From time to time, I'm gonna post geo-related footage. This one is of a landslide that occurred in Japan.