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12 November 2010
Natural gas seeps in Western NY
One of the first things that everyone comments on when I tell them that I’m studying volcanology at Buffalo is the lack of volcanoes. Indeed, there is a serious lack of volcanoes, one that’s compounded by the fact that the area is underlain by sedimentary rock – not an igneous intrusion in sight. Still, there are some really neat things to see here (a waterfall comes to mind…) There’s a lot of green space in and around Buffalo (including a number of Olmstead parks), and in some of the parks I’ve visited are features that people commonly refer to as ‘eternal flames’. Unlike the ones you see at memorials in cemeteries, these are natural gas seeps that are lit on fire by geologists pyromaniacs curious observers.
10 February 2010
A local waterfall in winter
Of course, local for me means Niagara Falls. I took a trip up on Saturday to get myself outdoors for a little while, and while I’m pretty sure no important parts of me were permanently frozen, it was effing cold up there. (Not very snowy, though. It’s pretty ironic that I moved away from the Washington DC area, and they’re now poised to get more snow than Buffalo this year. …
Jessica Ball is a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, researching volcanic hydrothermal systems and stability, and doing science communication for the California Volcano Observatory. She previously worked at the Geological Society of America's Washington DC Policy Office, learning about the intersection of Earth science and legislative affairs. Her Mendenhall postdoc and PhD focused on how water affects the stability of volcanoes, and involved both field investigations and numerical modeling applications. Her blogging covers a range of topics, from her experiences in academic geosciences to science outreach and communication to her field and lab work in volcanology.