Current Geology News and
Earth Science Articles

Geology news and current earth science articles from around the world. Stories are archived monthly.

All links are to external sites. We do not endorse these sites or their opinions. If a link is broken, it is because the news source has removed it from its website.

September 30, 2009

Death toll rising from South Pacific tsunami
Authorities say the death toll has risen to more than 110 after a powerful undersea earthquake triggered a tsunami that hit South Pacific islands. The U.S. Geological Survey says the powerful earthquake with a magnitude of 8.0 struck early Tuesday local time. They say it generated waves that devastated coastal areas, knocked down buildings and sent cars floating out to sea.

Big utilities pull back on coal plant plans
Some of the largest electric utilities in the American Southwest are shifting away from coal-fired power generation and toward an increased reliance on renewables and energy efficiency - in part due to the gathering momentum behind carbon cap-and-trade legislation at the federal level. Earlier this year, Arizona Public Service, Arizona’s largest utility with 1.1 million customers, released a plan outlining its strategy for future energy production in the state. The company included no new coal-fired plants in the plan, despite an anticipated 50 percent rise in energy demand by 2025.

September 29, 2009

Obama encourages G20 to phase out fossil fuel subsidies
At the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh, President Obama challenged other world leaders to take a fresh look at the support their governments give to fossil fuels. Recent reports from the International Energy Agency and other institutions point out the scale of those largely hidden subsidies and how they contribute to global warming. President Obama's proposal to phase out subsidies received immediate response from some oil-producing states.

Panelists bash Canada's investment in carbon capture and sequestration
Experts gathered at the Munk Centre to discuss the merits of carbon capture and storage, which has emerged in the past several years as a key strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Professors, policy wonks, and industry representatives responded to a conference paper titled "Burying Carbon Dioxide in Underground Saline Aquifers: Political Folly or Climate Change Fix?"

The world has 1.258 trillion barrels of crude oil left
The Earth contains a finite amount of oil. Burned to power our vehicles, heat our homes and light our cities, this fuel is a nonrenewable resource. Oil barons around the world confidently insist the world's reserves of crude amount to 1.258 trillion barrels. That figure, 1.258 trillion barrels, is an estimate based on geological and seismic tests.

September 28, 2009

First geological map of Jupiter's Ganymede
Planetary scientists have just announced finishing the first-ever global geological map of Ganymede, one that reveals strong evidence for how tectonic forces formed the most prominent features on the moon's surface. Ganymede's surface is characterized primarily by covering of dark, heavily cratered primordial material, along with icier light areas that are younger. Much of the lighter material is covered with what geologists have only previously been able to describe as grooves.

University of Texas' geology department receives $1M for training
The University of Texas of the Permian Basin’s geology department has received a total of about $1 million in grants, most of which came from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Recovery Act, according to a statement released this week by the university. For the most part, according to the release, the grants will go toward carbon-dioxide training as a element of efficient oilfield extraction techniques.

Four-winged fossil bridges bird-dinosaur gap
A newly described, profusely feathered dinosaur may give lift to scientists’ understanding of bird and flight evolution, researchers report. The lithe creature, which stood about 28 centimetres tall at the hip, is the oldest known to have sported feathers and is estimated to be between 1 million and 11 million years older than Archaeopteryx, the first known bird. Several fossils of the creature, which has been dubbed Anchiornis huxleyi, have been unearthed in northeastern China, Xing Xu reported September 25 at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. The strata that contained those feathered fossils were laid down as sediments between 151 million and 161 million years ago.

China completes highest resolution, 3-D map of Earth's moon
The map, covering the whole surface of the moon, is based on image data obtained by a charge-coupled device stereo camera carried by Chang’e-1, China’s first lunar probe vehicle, launched Oct. 2007. The spatial resolution of the map is 500 metres.

September 25, 2009

New images reveal pure water ice at low latitudes on Mars
Images of recent impact craters taken by the HiRISE Camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed sub-surface water ice halfway between the north pole and the equator on Mars.

University of Alberta may help NASA land on an asteroid
NASA is looking at a proposal that could someday result in a manned landing on an asteroid. Although the proposal has not yet been approved by the U.S. government, there is a possibility the University of Alberta could play a role because of its expertise in examining space rocks.

September 24, 2009

Fear mongering no substitute for good science
A critical study on carbon capture and storage presented Wednesday at the Munk Centre for International Studies in Toronto really should have been released a week later at the University of Regina if the goal is to evaluate the technology intelligently. It would have done a world of good had the paper been presented next week in Regina at the 12th meeting of the International Energy Agency's CO2 capture network, which will see 160 scientists from 22 countries gather to examine new developments in the technology and how to adapt it for use worldwide.

Geological time has been rewritten
A Brock University earth sciences professor is part of a team of scientists who have rewritten the geological timescale that measures time in terms of geology - from the formation of the Earth to present day. In a paper published in the September issue of the Journal of Quaternary Sciences, professor Martin Head and his colleagues affirm the official extension of the beginning of the Quaternary Period - the interval of geological time in which humans evolved and now live - downwards from 1.8 million to 2.6 million years.

It's official: There's water on the moon
Since man first touched the moon and brought pieces of it back to Earth, scientists have thought that the lunar surface was bone dry. But new observations from three different spacecraft have put this notion to rest with what has been called "unambiguous evidence" of water across the surface of the moon.

Oil discovery could spark new interest in California's energy potential
The biggest find in the state in 35 years, somewhere in Kern County, could herald new exploration in California and the U.S., experts say. But some worry it could lead to a false sense of security. As soon as the discovery was announced, the race was on to figure out the location of Occidental's find. A few real estate agents turned into amateur sleuths, worried about the possibility that the oil might be next to some new client's home.

Lasers from space show thinning of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets
The most comprehensive picture of the rapidly thinning glaciers along the coastline of both the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets has been created using satellite lasers. The findings are an important step forward in the quest to make more accurate predictions for future sea level rise. The authors conclude that this dynamic thinning of glaciers now reaches all latitudes in Greenland, has intensified on key Antarctic coastlines, is penetrating far into the ice sheets' interior and is spreading as ice shelves thin by ocean-driven melt. Ice shelf collapse has triggered particularly strong thinning that has endured for decades.

September 23, 2009

Mapping the path for natural gas in Canada
Canada's conventional natural gas production is declining rapidly. Just this year we've lost about 1.0 Bcf/d of production. Since peaking in 2006 at well over 16 Bcf/d, volumes are now down 16% or 2.5 Bcf/d. By now everyone should know that much of the incentive to drill for natural gas in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (nearly all in Alberta) has dried up due to high costs followed by low prices that have plagued the domestic industry for close to three years now. The dynamic is simple: if the rigs aren't out drilling at a certain pace, the physics of the rocks take over, and natural gas reserves start declining. This dynamic is irrefutable and one of the few variables that the financial markets can count on as being predictable.

New report states Canada's carbon capture plan is sheer folly
The risks of building a system to capture and store carbon dioxide underground include arsenic leaching into groundwater, unforeseen leaks, cross-border disputes and spiralling costs, according to a paper released by the Munk Centre for International Studies.

Government of Canada strengthens science and technology research excellence by investing $159.1 million
The Honourable Gary Goodyear, Minister of State (Science and Technology), announced $159.1 million in funding for 181 Canada research chairs newly awarded or renewed in 45 Canadian universities. The funding includes $7.4 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation for research infrastructure.

Mature fields ripe for multi-stage fracs in Canada
The success of multi-stage fracturing in northeast British Columbia is driving some producers farther afield in search of other reservoirs that might benefit from the technology, Calgary oil and gas executives told a Toronto conference last week. Widely used in the Montney and in B.C.'s Horn River Basin, multi-stage fracs are now getting mileage in other reservoirs, including the Bakken. Among benefits the technology brings is increased well productivity and the ability to control the frac's reach.

Geologist uses Hawaiian legends to study volcano
Hawaiian legend says Pele, the volcano goddess, set fire to her sister Hiiaka's ohia forest and killed her lover in a jealous rage. Hiiaka then dug a deep hole at Pele's home atop Kilauea volcano to look for her lover's body. Now, a geologist who has studied volcanoes for more than four decades says the stories may offer a clue that could be useful in understanding more about Kilauea, one of the world's most active volcanoes.

September 22, 2009

Use E. coli to recover waste uranium
Using bacteria and inositol phosphate, a chemical analogue of a cheap waste material from plants, researchers at Birmingham University have recovered uranium from the polluted waters from uranium mines. The same technology can also be used to clean up nuclear waste. Bacteria, in this case, E. coli, break down a source of inositol phosphate (also called phytic acid), a phosphate storage material in seeds, to free the phosphate molecules. The phosphate then binds to the uranium forming a uranium phosphate precipitate on the bacterial cells that can be harvested to recover the uranium.

Bhutan, India hit by strong earthquake
At least 10 people have been killed after an earthquake hit Bhutan and neighbouring Himalayan regions. The 6.1 magnitude quake damaged monasteries and caused homes to collapse in the mountain kingdom. The tremors also caused panic in the city of Guwahati, the capital of India's north-eastern state of Assam.

Germany approves huge offshore wind farms
Germany's cabinet approved plans to dedicate special zones off its northern coast to house up to 40 offshore wind parks that could provide electricity to over eight million households. The plan involves setting aside zones between 12 and 200 kilometres (7 and 124 miles) off its northern shores. Of the 40 wind farms, 30 would be in the North Sea and 10 in the Baltic Sea. Of these, 25 have already received approval - 22 in the North Sea and three in the Baltic Sea.

Rediscovering shale gas
In recent years, natural gas producers in the United States have struggled, mostly in vain, to be taken more seriously in the energy world. But the natural gas folks now have numbers on their side due to new successes in getting gas out of shale rock. Geologists have always known that shale rock, often found in combination with coal and oil deposits, holds substantial amounts of natural gas. If a piece of shale rock is broken and lit with a match, it will actually burn for a few moments with a small flame. The shale gas was previously considered unreachable, but advances in drilling techniques have changed that assessment.

September 21, 2009

Supervolcano 'Rosetta Stone' discovered in Italian Alps
Scientists have found the "Rosetta Stone" of supervolcanoes, those giant pockmarks in the Earth's surface produced by rare and massive explosive eruptions that rank among nature's most violent events. The eruptions produce devastation on a regional scale — and possibly trigger climatic and environmental effects at a global scale. A fossil supervolcano has been discovered in the Italian Alps' Sesia Valley by a team led by James E. Quick, a geology professor at Southern Methodist University. The discovery will advance scientific understanding of active supervolcanoes, like Yellowstone, which is the second-largest supervolcano in the world and which last erupted 630,000 years ago.

Crater that formed due to dino killing asteroid may yield clues about ancient Maya
In a clear case of geology and archaeology complementing each other, scientists have studied the most recent limestone deposits that filled the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, providing accurate dating of the rocks and a valuable basis for archaeologists to research the ancient Maya.The Chicxulub crater is one of the world’s most famous asteroid craters, which is believed to have put an end to the dinosaurs and helped mammals to flourish.

September 17, 2009

Early life on Earth: Could salt crusts be key ingredient in cooking up prebiotic molecules?
German scientists investigating the complex chemical mixture thought to be present in the early Earth’s oceans have found that amino acids can be cooked into many other important chemical building blocks of life when embedded in salt crusts.

September 16, 2009

Arctic geological map in final stages
Canadian scientists are putting the finishing touches on the world's first detailed geological map of the Arctic. The Geological Survey of Canada already published a preliminary map late in 2008, but a final copy will be released next year. The geological map will let people compare rock types all around the North Pole, making it the first map of its kind to be published in such detail, said Marc St-Onge, a senior research scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada.

Climate change forming dangerous high-altitude lakes
Melting glaciers and landslides are combining to create huge high-altitude lakes in the Himalayas that could cut off water to millions of people - and then sweep away towns when they collapse, a leading geologist said. Quakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides and tsunamis may become more frequent as global warming changes the earth's crust itself, scientists heard on Sept. 16 at a conference on the climate's effects on geology.

Conoco sees promise in Polish shale gas
ConocoPhillips, the third-largest U.S. oil major, has signed an exploration and evaluation deal targeting shale gas in Poland. Shale reserves hold vast amounts of natural gas. They are unlocked by drilling horizontal wells and fracturing the rock at various intervals deep underground. ConocoPhillips, based in Houston, said it expects to drill its first well in Poland in the first quarter of 2010.

September 15, 2009

British firm will fire probes into the moon to study its geology
Engineers have unveiled plans to fire probes into the moon from a satellite to learn more about its structure. But this is no Nasa-style blockbuster - the project is being masterminded from an industrial estate in Guildford, England. The company is hoping to work with Virgin Galactic, the company set up by Sir Richard Branson, on a low-cost satellite launch system.

University will study West Virginia's groundwater
West Virginia University has won a grant to study how global mapping and precision farming can combine to protect water quality in the Eastern Panhandle. The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded $181,000 for the work, which focuses on a region with porous limestone geology.

Biological studies shed light on collapse of coral reefs
An explosion of knowledge has been made in the last few years about the basic biology of corals, researchers say in a new report, helping to explain why coral reefs around the world are collapsing and what it will take for them to survive a gauntlet of climate change and ocean acidification. Corals have sophisticated systems of biological communication that are being stressed by global change, and are only able to survive based on proper function of an intricate symbiotic relationship with algae that live within their bodies.

Brazil plans to build 28 oil rigs
Brazil's state-run Petrobras wants up to 28 rigs designed for deep-water exploration to be ready between 2013 and 2018 and will begin by contracting an initial group of nine rigs. It originally announced the tender more than a year ago.

September 14, 2009

Western Canadian premiers discuss carbon capture and storage technology
Canada's Western premiers say three heads are better than one when it comes to figuring out how to fight global warming by blasting carbon emissions deep underground. They said co-operation can help defray the costs of the very expensive technology, which would take carbon dioxide from big polluters, such as the oil sands and coal-fired power plants, liquefy it and pump it into underground caverns.

Horn River ranks as third largest shale-gas find in North America
The Horn River shale-gas region in a remote corner of northern British Columbia could hold as much as 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, making it third among the big shale finds that have revolutionized North America's natural gas industry. Shale gas discoveries have changed the face of the North American gas supply picture in recent years, boosting production using expensive new technologies even as natural gas prices fall to multi-year lows.

Is there oil or gas in the Boise Basin?
Idaho has no natural gas or oil production within its borders, but an energy company from Calgary, Alberta, hopes that will soon change. Bridge Resources Corp. has filed for permits to drill four exploration wells near New Plymouth and Payette - a part of the Treasure Valley where companies have searched for oil and gas since the early 1900s. The last well in the area was drilled in 1988, according to the Idaho Geological Survey.

University of Texas gets stimulus money to train carbon capture workforce
The University of Texas at Austin got nearly $1 million in stimulus money to train students and professionals to work in the carbon capture and storage industry. Of course, the jobs are only safe if Congress regulates greenhouse gases. But the $994,702 grant from the Department of Energy is safe for three years. The grant will allow the university to create the Alliance for Sequestration Training, Outreach, Research and Education (STORE - get it?). The group draws researchers from UT's Institute for Geophysics, the Center for Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, and the Bureau of Economic Geology.

September 9, 2009

World faces hi-tech crunch as China eyes ban on rare metal exports
A draft report by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has called for a total ban on foreign shipments of terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, and lutetium. Other metals such as neodymium, europium, cerium, and lanthanum will be restricted to a combined export quota of 35,000 tonnes a year, far below global needs.

World’s biggest CO2 storage project
The Chevron-led joint venture to develop the Gorgon Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and domestic gas project, could become the world's biggest carbon capture and storage (CCS) project if it receives investment approval.

September 8, 2009

Arctic is warmest in 2,000 years
The Arctic is warmer than it's been in 2,000 years, even though it should be cooling because of changes in the Earth's orbit that cause the region to get less direct sunlight. Indeed, the Arctic had been cooling for nearly two millennia before reversing course in the last century and starting to warm as human activities added greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

UK lined up to be Europe's carbon capital
Britain could become the carbon storage capital of Europe by selling space beneath the North Sea to bury billions of tonnes of waste gases from the continent's power stations. An industry offering carbon storage to the mainland could create as many jobs as North Sea oil and bring £5 billion a year into UK coffers by 2030, scientists estimate.

One Easter Island mystery solved
Archaeologists believe they have solved one ancient mystery surrounding the famous Easter Island statues. At 2,500 miles off the coast of Chile, the island is one of the world's most remote places inhabited by people. Up to 1,000 years ago, the islanders started putting giant red hats on the statues. The research team, from the University of Manchester and University College London, think the hats were rolled down from an ancient volcano.

September 4, 2009

U.S. DOE projects to advance environmental science and technology
The Office of Fossil Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) has selected nine new projects targeting environmental tools and technology for shale gas and coalbed methane (CBM) production. NETL’s goals for these projects are to improve management of water resources, water usage, and water disposal, and to support science that will aid the regulatory and permitting processes required for shale gas development.

New PBS film on Yellowstone explores the geology of the giant volcano
Yellowstone National Park contains more than two-thirds of all the geysers on earth, including the most famous - Old Faithful. A spectacular new film on the geology of Yellowstone National Park will be available to US viewers of PBS on September 8th. Yellowstone: Land to Life reveals how powerful geological forces from fire to ice have combined to create a unique landscape which supports an abundant variety of life.

September 3, 2009

Geologists find oldest stone-age axes in Europe
The first hand axes used by early humans in Europe are 400,000 years older than previously thought, geologists say, closing the gap with their first known appearance in Africa. The geologists found layers of rock at the sites near Murcia, Spain, where magnetic minerals were found to have a polarity opposite to what is now found. These polarity reversals are the result of natural changes in orientation of the Earth's magnetic field, which have occurred several times in the last few million years. The last reversal in the Earth's magnetic field took place 780,000 years ago.

Engineering planet Earth is feasible
UK Royal Society study has concluded that many engineering proposals to reduce the impact of climate change are technically possible. But it also stressed that the potential of geo-engineering should not divert governments away from their efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

BP to close test gas-to-liquids plant in Alaska
BP said it will close a facility in Alaska that has been used for seven years to test technology that converts natural gas into liquid fuel. BP Exploration Alaska Inc, the company's Alaska unit, said Tuesday its facility at Nikiski on the Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage has fulfilled its mission, successfully demonstrating that diesel fuel and aviation fuel can be reliably produced from natural gas.

September 2, 2009

Obama’s plan B for nuclear waste
Washington doesn’t have the geology to store high-level nuclear wastes. Too much groundwater; too much risk of radioactivity spreading into aquifers and the Columbia River. Such was the verdict of the scientists and policymakers who rejected Hanford as a nuclear waste dump more than 20 years ago. But President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are fast reversing that verdict.

BP's new massive oil strike
It may be one of the biggest oil finds of the year, if not the decade. In recent weeks, executives at BP's exploration centres in Houston and London have been closely tracking the progress of a very deep well that BP contractors were drilling into the seabed of the western Gulf of Mexico. In late August the exploratory well, known as Tiber, was completed. Now word is trickling out that BP has scored one of the largest discoveries yet in the gulf.

September 1, 2009

Stop emitting carbon dioxide or geo-engineering could be only hope for Earth's climate
The future of the Earth could rest on potentially dangerous and unproven geo-engineering technologies unless emissions of carbon dioxide can be greatly reduced, the latest Royal Society report has found. Geo-engineering technologies were found to be very likely to be technically possible and some were considered to be potentially useful to augment the continuing efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing emissions. However, the report identified major uncertainties regarding their effectiveness, costs and environmental impacts.

University of Wyoming gets $2 million grant for carbon sequestration research
Two grants will help the University of Wyoming boost educational and research opportunities for students interested in pioneering technologies for the energy industry. Two university professors received nearly $2 million in competitive federal funding to support carbon sequestration research and technology. The proposals were approved as part of the U.S. Department of Energy's attempts to stimulate cleaner-coal research and technology.

Questerre Utica shale discovery assessed at over 4 Tcf
Questerre Energy Corporation announced that Netherland, Sewell and Associates, Inc., an independent reservoir engineering firm based in Texas, has estimated the prospective original gas in place for the Utica shale in the deep fairway in the St. Lawrence Lowlands at 150 Bcf per square mile, which is 66% higher than earlier industry figures. NSAI has further estimated Questerre's prospective recoverable resources to range between 2.2 Tcf- 8.0 Tcf with a best estimate of 4.28 Tcf, equivalent to 360-1,300 million barrels of oil equivalent.