Yellowstone earthquake swarm finished?

January 5, 2009

No Few significant quakes recorded at all for January 4, nor so far for January 5 (6:30 a.m. Central) — maybe the quakes took a day off in honor of Utah Statehood Day.

Update, January 6, 6:00 a.m. Central: The map now shows 11 quakes magnitude 1 or greater on January 3, 5 on January 4, and one on January 5.  This is significantly less action than the quakes every ten minutes or so when the swarm was at its peak.

Is the swarm done? This is the longest period of no-quake activity in Yellowstone since at least December 27, 2008.

Here’s the USGS data for 11:30 p.m. (Central), January 4:

Update time = Mon Jan 5 5:27:27 UTC 2009

Here are the earthquakes in the Map Centered at 44°N, 110°W area, most recent at the top.
(Some early events may be obscured by later ones.)
Click on the underlined portion of an earthquake record in the list below for more information.

MAG UTC DATE-TIME
y/m/d h:m:s		 LAT
deg		 LON
deg		 DEPTH
km		 LOCATION
MAP 2.6 2009/01/03 00:23:22 44.669 -110.163 1.0 43 km ( 26 mi) SSW of Cooke City-Silver Gate, MT
MAP 2.7 2009/01/02 20:33:53 44.553 -110.338 0.9 61 km ( 38 mi) SSW of Cooke City-Silver Gate, MT
MAP 2.2 2009/01/02 20:24:50 44.509 -110.371 0.0 61 km ( 38 mi) ESE of West Yellowstone, MT
MAP 2.7 2009/01/02 20:23:57 44.556 -110.357 1.3 60 km ( 38 mi) SSE of Gardiner, MT

So there was only one quake on January 3, and none on January 4.

Swarms are “not uncommon,” but caldera supereruptions are extremely rare.

Time Magazine tracked down the head of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO), Jake Lowenstern:

Jake Lowenstern, Ph.D., YVO’s chief scientist, who also is part of the USGS Volcano Hazards Team, told TIME that a supervolcano event does not appear to be imminent. “We don’t think the amount of magma exists that would create one of these large eruptions of the past,” he said. “It is still possible to have a volcanic eruption comparable to other volcanoes. But we would expect to see more and larger quakes, deformation and precursory explosions out of the lake. We don’t believe that anything strange is happening right now.” Last summer YVO installed new instrumentation in boreholes 500 to 600 ft. deep to better detect ground deformation.  Says Lowenstern: “We have a lot more ability to look at all the data now.” (See an interactive graphic depicting how scientists monitor volcanoes.)

Plan your vacation to Yellowstone now. Transportation will be cheaper (you can fly to Jackson Hole), and if there is any effect of the earthquake swarm, it would be to reduce tourist reservations at local hotels.

Now is the time to book your visit.

13 Comments | Disasters, earthquakes, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, geology, Natural history, Natural resources, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Weird natural dangers: Amorous toads love fish to death

November 8, 2008

From the Scarborough, England, Daily News:

AMOROUS toads have caused the deaths of scores of fish at a lake near Scarborough.

In one incident around 70 carp, worth about £3,000, were lost after male toads tried to mate with them on the Wykeham Estate.

Manager Mike Heelis said the situation became so bad last weekend he had to cancel two club competitions.

The toads clamp themselves on to the carp’s face and push its eyes into the sockets – and, if several reptiles are involved, the carp drowns due to its gills being closed.

Mr Heelis said the fish had encountered the toads after swimming into the lake’s warmer, shallow waters during the recent mild weather.

He said: “The fish are stressed, you can tell, because they are lethargic. We have several thousand fish here and maybe a third of them had the toads attached to them. This is unnatural.”

Unnatural?  I find it hard to work up sympathy for carp, after seeing what destruction they wreak on U.S. waters (carp are exotics in the U.S.)  Unnatural?  You mean, as if the toads choose their species orientation, sexual orientations, etc.?

Nature, unnatural?  There’s a moral there, I’m sure, but neither Don Wildmon nor Rush Limbaugh couldn’t find it with both hands, or all four hands.

5 Comments | Biology, Humor, Natural history, Science, Zoology | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Alpine Loop? Try Utah’s, gentler, prettier than Colorado’s

August 6, 2008

Utah’s canyons have so many pretty spots. Taking visitors through them I always heard about how no one expected such beauty in the desert. So I was excited to see the headline in Sunday’s Dallas Morning News about taking the Alpine Loop.

Autumn aspens in Utahs Alpine Loop - Wikimedia photo

Autumn aspens in Utah's Alpine Loop - Wikimedia photo

Prettiest drive you can make in a day. Start out in American Fork, head up American Fork Canyon, cross over to the backside of Mt. Timpanogos — you’ll see aspen, pines, fir, some of the prettiest streams you’ve ever seen anywhere. Some years back the Utah Travel Council had a spectacular poster showing the colors in the fall — about five shades each of red, gold and green, aspen and cottonwoods against the balsam and Douglas fir and a few scattered pines. Stop and hike up to Timpanogos Cave National Monument. See where the glacier was on the east side of Timpanogos.

End up passing Robert Redford’s Sundance Ski Resort, and down Provo Canyon (when I skied there it was $6.50 for a full-day pass; have the rates gone up?) — finish up with dinner in a good restaurant in Provo (or drive the 36 miles back to Salt Lake City and have world-class sushi at Takashi).

Alas. The article was about Colorado’s Alpine Loop. Who knew Colorado even had one by that name?

I suspect the Colorado version is less-traveled. The author took a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Utah Travel Council photo of the Alpine Loop showing some of the autumn colors -- not the great shot from the long-ago poster, alas.

Utah Travel Council photo of the Alpine Loop showing some of the autumn colors -- not the great shot from the long-ago poster, alas.

Utah’s Alpine loop is paved the entire way, closed maybe only during a winter of very heavy snow. If you’re just passing through, you can do the drive in three hours or less, easily. If you have a day, grab a picnic, and spend some time stopping to enjoy the mountains.

(Go see Rich Legg’s photos of the east side of Timpanogos, here.)

Some time I’d like to check out the Colorado version. Odds are that I’ll be back in Utah County before then, however, and odds are you’ll be closer to the Utah version than the Colorado version, too.

You know the old saying about “take time to stop and smell the balsam, and ooh and aah at the aspen?” The Alpine Loop is what the aphorist was thinking about. Theodore Roosevelt would have gone there, had he known about it. You know about it now.

Windleys Google map of Utahs Alpine Loop, around Mt. Timpanogos

Windley's Google map of Utah's Alpine Loop, around Mt. Timpanogos

3 Comments | Geography - Physical, geology, Natural history, Natural resources, Travel | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Cicada Killers are back, 2008!

July 8, 2008

The Cicada Killers have returned!

Here’s a photo of our real, live version.

Cicada killers at Boisenberry Lane, Dallas

Cicada killers at Boisenberry Lane, Dallas

See last year’s post, here.

12 Comments | Environmental protection, Natural history, Science | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Come see Texas’ new canyon!

October 9, 2007

Canyon Lake Gorge, Gorge website photo

Having a brand new canyon is sort of a once in a lifetime experience. It might even be more rare than that.

Texas’s Canyon Lake Gorge opened to the public last week — a gorge, a canyon, that was carved out over a couple of days in 2002 when flood waters charging over an overtaxed dam cut through soft soils and soft rock to expose millions of years of sediments. Dinosaur footprints were exposed by the flood, too.

A torrent of water from an overflowing lake sliced open the earth in 2002, exposing rock formations, fossils and even dinosaur footprints in just three days. Since then, the canyon has been accessible only to researchers to protect it from vandals, but on Saturday it opens to its first public tour.

“It exposed these rocks so quickly and it dug so deeply, there wasn’t a blade of grass or a layer of algae,” said Bill Ward, a retired geology professor from the University of New Orleans who started cataloging the gorge almost immediately after the flood.

The mile-and-a-half-long gorge, up to 80 feet deep, was dug out from what had been a nondescript valley covered in mesquite and oak trees. It sits behind a spillway built as a safety valve for Canyon Lake, a popular recreation spot in the Texas Hill Country between San Antonio and Austin.

The reservoir was built in the 1960s to prevent flash flooding along the Guadalupe River and to assure the water supply for central Texas. The spillway had never been overrun until July 4, 2002, when 70,000 cubic feet of water gushed downhill toward the Guadalupe River for three days, scraping off vegetation and topsoil and leaving only limestone walls.

Canyon Lake is southwest of Austin, almost due west from San Marcos about 20 miles. The lake backed up from a 1960 flood control project dam built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — the new Canyon Lake Gorge is managed jointly by the Corps and the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority.

Watch carefully, dear reader: Creationists will soon start to claim that the rapid cutting of this canyon verifies a young age for all canyons, and shows that the Earth’s geology can indeed be very young. But that claim will gloss over the fact that while the gorge was cut quickly, it was cut through sediments that took millions or billions of years to lay down. The Associated Press reports problems with such a hypothesis:

The sudden exposure of such canyons is rare but not unprecedented. Flooding in Iowa in 1993 opened a limestone gorge behind a spillway at Corvalville Lake north of Iowa City, but that chasm, Devonian Fossil Gorge, is narrower and shallower than Canyon Lake Gorge.

Neither compares to the world’s most famous canyon. It took water around 5 million to 6 million years to carve the Grand Canyon, which plunges 6,000 feet at its deepest point and stretches 15 miles at its widest.

The more modest Canyon Lake Gorge still displays a fault line and rock formations carved by water that seeped down and bubbled up for millions of years before the flooding.

Some of the canyon’s rocks are punched with holes like Swiss cheese, and the fossils of worms and other ancient wildlife are everywhere. The rocks, typical of the limestone buried throughout central Texas, date back “111 million years, plus or minus a few hundred thousand years,” Ward said.

Six three-toed dinosaur footprints offer evidence of a two-legged carnivore strolling along the water. The footprints were temporarily covered with sand to protect them as workers reinforced the spillway, but they’ll be uncovered again eventually, Rhoad said.

Tours for the new gorge are booked for the next six months. Details on how to reserve space can be found at the website of the Gorge Preservation Society (GPS).

5 Comments | Geography - Physical, geology, History, Natural history, Science, Texas, Travel | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

1872 Mining Act – Amend it now?

September 20, 2007

Sherffius cartoon on Bush administration mining regulations

Few people know about the law. Since 1872, mineral extraction from the public lands of the United States has been governed by a law designed to make it easy for miners to get minerals out. The law is essentially unchanged, though some mining operations are now bound by other laws to protect the environment and other uses of public lands, such as grazing, tourism, scientific study, wood production, grazing, wildlife management and hunting.

The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources opens hearings on reforming the law next Thursday, September 27. The hearing will be webcast, most likely.

The House of Representatives has already had a couple of field hearings.

Watch your claims!

Resources:

2 Comments | Economics, Environmental protection, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, geology, History, Natural history, Natural resources | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Saving Texas’s only natural lake

August 3, 2007

Aptly named, Salvinia molesta threatens to choke Caddo Lake to death. As Caddo Lake is the only natural lake in Texas, and a site of outstanding beauty and great natural treasure, the friends of Caddo Lake are fighting back.

Spraying Salvinia molesta on Caddo Lake - NY Times photo by Michael Stravato

The New York Times features a lengthy story on the lake and the fight to save it in this week’s Science section (July 31, 2007 – Science is part of the Times every Tuesday).

Every Texas social studies teacher should know Caddo Lake and its stories as well as anything else. It’s the stuff memorable classes are made of.

1. It’s the only “natural” lake in Texas, though it is formed by a dam. The “only honest lake in Texas,” in the local lingo. The original lake was formed by a monumental log jam on the Red River, probably trees blown down by a massive hurricane several hundred years ago.

2. Caddo Lake is named after the Caddo Tribe, the tribe whose word for friend, “tejas,” gave the state its name. (See my earlier post on Caddoland.)

3. Caddo Lake straddles what was once “no man’s land,” or the Neutral Territory, a buffer zone between English/French, then American, and Spanish, then Mexican settlements. It was a haven for criminals, scalawags, filibusterers and revolutionaries. The area plays a large role in the decades of fighting to steal Texas from the Spain, and later from Mexico. Texas history is much better understood when one knows the lake.

4. Caddo Lake once was the means to make Jefferson, Texas, a port city. Until Col. Shreveport dynamited the logjam that made the lake in 1873, Jefferson was a bustling center of commerce. Today Jefferson boasts some wonderfully preserved historic remnants of that era, many converted to bed and breakfast inns, a great weekend getaway. Fishing is good, photography is great.

5. Ladybird Johnson was born nearby, and her family still lives in the area.

6. The Hughes Tool Company had its beginnings on Caddo Lake, where Howard Hughes, Sr., tested his drill bit, “the rock eater,” designed to cut through mud and rock to where the oil was; this is the home of the fortune that Howard Hughes, Jr., inherited, to build to one of the greatest fortunes in the world. That the younger Hughes was a rake, a mechanical genius, an air pioneer, daring movie producer, and weird as hell only makes the story better. Hughes named his movie production company after the lake, Caddo Productions.

6. Contrary to most of Texas’s political leanings, local people around Caddo Lake have rallied to efforts to protect the lake and conserve its rare beauty. The area is designated for protection as a Ramsar Treaty critical wetlands site — a designation that most conservative Texans ridicule and fear (at one point the Texas Republican Party platform opposed conservation easements to protect the lake — bizarre). Latter-day Caddoans welcome the designation, and when we toured the area they sang the praises of Don Henley, the rock and roll musician who is aiding their efforts to save the lake. It’s an odd combination for any political work — uniquely Texas. (Here’s your chance to play the Eagles for your classes, teachers!)

7. When it comes to Texas botany, zoology, and biology in general, Caddo Lake provides the local angle for water quality, water shortages (one proposal is to steal water from the lake for Texas cities far away), wildlife management, and of course, the invasion of exotic species.

8. Everything about this area screams Texas quirkiness. Uncertain, Texas? An often-told story (accurate?) is that when the town applied for a post office, there was a dispute about what to call the town. The fellow who filled out the application wrote “uncertain” in the blank for the town’s name — and that’s how the U.S. Postal Service approved it. Another story holds that the name “Uncertain Landing” caught on because the landing was treacherous mooring for boats. You got a better story about your town’s name? I doubt it.

Save the article from the Times, teachers! You’ll be glad you have it later this year.

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6 Comments | 1836, A Good Story, Conservation, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Natural history, Texas, Texas history | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Cicadas, cicada-killer wasps are back!

July 20, 2007

Cicada killer wasp, from Purdue University

Extensive rains delayed them a bit, but our annual cicada cycle started up with vigor sometime in the last ten days. For the past three years, we get the announcement at our house, not from the cicadas singing from the trees, but from the cicada-killer wasps that buzz our back patio area, scouting the yard for good places to bury their prey.

It started with one female burying cicadas under the patio; perhaps another joined her by the end of the first season. But last year, we had about a dozen buzzing about the yard. We have plenty of cicadas, so it should be good pickings for the wasps — so long as no one sprays insecticide on them.

These wasps are larger than most wasps, as long as 2.5 inches, and big enough to muscle a cicada around. The cicadas are twice as big, volume wise, but I suspect they weigh less. In any case, the wasps show outstanding strength and coordination in zooming around carrying their paralyzed victims to their holes — yesterday I saw a wasp rocket into a hole in the garden without the usual stop to drop the cicada and tug it in. The hole was a perfect fit. Jet air delivery.

The wasps leave us alone as we watch. We’ve never been stung, and I don’t know that these guys sting humans (unless attacked, and I assume they’d fight back).

Their ability to move dirt is amazing. We usually get a pile of soil about a foot around and three to six inches high at each hole.

So far as I know, down here in Dallas we don’t get any massive infestations of the the 13- or 17-year cicadas. I cannot imagine how such a feast might affect these industrious little guys, other than they might fly themselves to death. We lived through a double hatching of the 13- and 17-year cicadas in Maryland. Corpses of the cicadas made some streets slick enough they were dangerous to drive. Man, what I wouldn’t have given for a few thousand cicada killers then!

Cicada killers, or cicada hawks, sting and paralyze cicadas, then inter the still-living cicada with one egg laid in it for male larvae, or one egg with two cicadas, for female larvae. The wasp egg hatches and the larva consumes the fresh cicada; some of the wasps survive the winter, and I don’t know if the cicada is kept fresh the entire time, or if a few of the wasps hatch and go dormant.

My photos didn’t turn out as well as those from Purdue and Michigan State — the buggers are fast and restless. The photos could easily have come from our yard, with the massive blossoming of the yellow composites right now (“DYCs” in local horticultural parlance).

Watch your yard — you probably have these tiny “True Life Adventures” going on in your own backyard. You can encourage them with careful plantings, and especially by not spraying poisons (did I mention that between the predatory insects and the now-large geckoes that have taken up residence here, we don’t have cockroaches and other nasty house pests?).

The photo below shows a wasp carrying a cicada.

Cicada killer carrying cicada, from Michigan State U Extension

Update on resources (7-30-2008):

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47 Comments | Environmental protection, Natural history, Point of personal privilege, Science, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Fisking “Junk Science” and “100 things you should know about DDT”: A new project

June 27, 2007

Looking at the odd campaign against the reputation of Rachel Carson, conducted largely by a group of corporate-paid, political scalawags, one will eventually come across a site named JunkScience.com, which has as a motto, “All the junk that’s fit to debunk.”

One might be forgiven if one assumes that the site debunks junk science claims. But that does not appear to be it’s aim at all. On this page, for example, “100 things you should know about DDT,” the site perpetrates or perpetuates dozens of junk science claims against Rachel Carson, against public health, against government and against reason. The site promotes junk science, rather than debunking it!

For example, I had just read a chunk of history reminding me that our first Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, William Ruckelshaus, had been ordered by a federal court to review the pesticide certification for DDT, and had acted against DDT only after two different review panels recommended it be phased out, and states had already started bans of their own. At the time, in 1972, Ruckelshaus faced a heap of criticism for moving so slowly on the issue.

EPA history caption: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring led to banning DDT and other pesticides. [EPA iimage]

EPA history caption: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring led to banning DDT and other pesticides. [EPA iimage]

How is this action described at JunkScience.com?

You wouldn’t quite recognize the events — and I doubt you could verify other oddities the JunkScience.com site claims:

17. Extensive hearings on DDT before an EPA administrative law judge occurred during 1971-1972. The EPA hearing examiner, Judge Edmund Sweeney, concluded that “DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man… DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man… The use of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife.”

[Sweeney, EM. 1972. EPA Hearing Examiner’s recommendations and findings concerning DDT hearings, April 25, 1972 (40 CFR 164.32, 113 pages). Summarized in Barrons (May 1, 1972) and Oregonian (April 26, 1972)]

18. Overruling the EPA hearing examiner, EPA administrator Ruckelshaus banned DDT in 1972. Ruckelshaus never attended a single hour of the seven months of EPA hearings on DDT. Ruckelshaus’ aides reported he did not even read the transcript of the EPA hearings on DDT.

[Santa Ana Register, April 25, 1972]

19. After reversing the EPA hearing examiner’s decision, Ruckelshaus refused to release materials upon which his ban was based. Ruckelshaus rebuffed USDA efforts to obtain those materials through the Freedom of Information Act, claiming that they were just “internal memos.” Scientists were therefore prevented from refuting the false allegations in the Ruckelshaus’ “Opinion and Order on DDT.”

I propose to Fisk much of the list of 100 claims against Carson (which is really a list over 100 items now), in a serial, spasmodic fashion. I’ll post my findings here, making them generally available to internet searches for information on Rachel Carson and DDT. Below the fold, I’ll start, with these three specious claims listed above.

Read the rest of this entry »

17 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Cost of Green, DDT, History, Hoaxes, Natural history, Politics, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Rachel Carson’s honor defended

June 25, 2007

Bug Girl sleuthed around a bit, and found information from official sources that really demonstrates the critics of Rachel Carson are using Gillette Foamy to make us think “mad dog!”

DDT concentration in the food chain - USFWS

Chart from US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) illustrates biomagnification, by which a minuscule dose of DDT to small plankton gets magnified a few million times by the time the top predators in the food chain get it.

So the evidence continues to pile up that Rachel Carson was simply a fine writer, a good scientist, and correct about DDT’s dangers.

Check out the Fish and Wildlife Service’s site, here; notice especially their structure of the site, to dispel the falsehoods.

FWS quotes Carson on DDT use:

In Audubon magazine she wrote, “We do not ask that all chemicals be abandoned. We ask moderation. We ask the use of other methods less harmful to our environment” (4). Countering claims that she was advocating a back-to-nature philosophy, she said, “We must have insect control. I do not favor turning nature over to insects. I favor the sparing, selective and intelligent use of chemicals. It is the indiscriminate, blanket spraying that I oppose” (5).

Evidence mounts that claims against Rachel Carson are sheer calumny. While the political motivations of this smear campaign are not clear, we don’t need to know for certain who is telling lies about a great American hero, or why. As Americans, as concerned citizens, as teachers and parents — as patriots — we only need to know that the claims against Rachel Carson are false.

And now it is our duty to call on Oklahoma’s Sen. Tom Coburn to stop the campaign against Carson. Coburn is the point man in the smear campaign right now: He has put a committee hold on the well-intentioned, justified bill to name a post office in her hometown after Rachel Carson. It is time for Tom Coburn to stand up and do the right thing for a great American. Sen. Coburn needs to lift his committee hold and allow committee action on this minor honor.

Other sources of note:

Bruce Watson, “Sounding the Alarm,” Smithsonian Magazine, September 2002. (Watson, Bruce. Sounding the alarm. Smithsonian, v. 33, Sept. 2002: 115-117.   AS30.S6)

“The Berry and the Poison,” about methyl bromide and its ban, Smithsonian Magazine, December 1997.

3 Comments | Accuracy, Conservation, DDT, Environmental protection, Ethics, History, Hoaxes, Junk science, Natural history, Politics, Public health, Rachel Carson, Research, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quote stumbled upon: Clarence Day, on descendants of apes

March 24, 2007

Clarence Day, from NNDB

What fairy story, what tale from the Arabian Nights of the jinns, is a hundredth part as wonderful as this true fairy story of simians! It is so much more heartening, too, than the tales we invent. A universe capable of giving birth to many such accidents is — blind or not — a good world to live in, a promising universe. . . . We once thought we lived on God’s footstool; it may be a throne.

Clarence Day (1874-1935), This Simian World (1920), XIX

More from that chapter, below the fold

Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by Ed Darrell

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