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31 December 2015
2015 through a geologist’s eyes
It’s the last day of my eighth year of blogging. I’ve had a pretty amazing year, and though I haven’t gotten to writing about every bit of it, I’ve amassed some great photos of my travels. So here are a few things you’ve already seen, and a preview of a few things yet to come!
17 May 2015
Faults from the air
Sometimes I spend so much time out looking at geological features in the Bay area that I forget to blog about them. But this weekend I had the chance to go for a wonderful tour of the South Bay and Peninsula via Cessna, and I’m convinced that it’s an awesome way to check out geology. (Of course, anyone who’s seen Michael Collier’s photographic work knows that already, but in case you needed convincing, take my word for it. Also, not having to brave security at the airport is lovely.)
29 January 2015
More pillow basalt at Rodeo Cove
I promised photos of the second part of my trip to see pillow basalts at the Marin Headlands, and here we are, just as the fog was lifting in the early afternoon. After exploring the Point Bonita lighthouse and its vicinity, we decided to hike down through the abundant succulents (Carpobrotus edulis, if I’ve got it right) to Rodeo Cove and its beach.
19 January 2015
Pillow basalts at Point Bonita
It’s amazing how quickly I’m capable of abandoning my blogging resolutions, really. Here we are, a couple of weeks into the new year and I’ve failed to a) post more often and b) talk about my research. (I swear I have a post in the works about that, but it’s gotten long and unwieldy and in desperate need of editing!) But this weekend I’m going to keep a couple of the other resolutions, and blog about the trip I took yesterday to the Marin Headlands.
24 November 2014
Primitive camping and serpentinite
There are field trips that make me very glad I drive a car with a reasonable amount of clearance, and my camping overnighter to the Los Padres National Forest south of Big Sur was no exception. Driving the Coast Ridge Road wasn’t the most harrowing trip I’ve ever made, but it certainly merited the description of ‘gnarly’ that one of my camping buddies applied.
21 October 2014
Standing on the San Andreas Fault
Having just arrived in California and still in the process of unpacking boxes in my apartment, I decided the most productive thing to do was go on a hike. Silicon Valley is near a lot of Open Space Preserves as well as various local and state parks, and I was really eager to get outside and explore. And because I’m in California, I was hungry to finally set eyes (and foot) on the biggest fault I could get to.
22 July 2014
Benchmarking Time: DC is all about boundaries
Washington DC is an interesting city. When the original plans were being made in the 1780s and 1790s, they called for a 100-square-mile area to be allocated for the city, and George Washington (who was President at the time) wanted to include the City of Alexandria in Virginia. But the Residence Act, passed in 1791, specified that all the federal buildings had to be on the Maryland side of the river (mostly because someone realized that the law allowed the President to choose the location and some members of Congress didn’t want him taking advantage of that and including his own property to the south of Alexandria). So we ended up with a diamond-shaped District 10 miles on a side, overlapping both Virginia and Maryland, with the actual city in Maryland.
13 June 2014
Building DC: Union Station’s marble floors
Whenever I go to a hearing on the Senate side of Capitol Hill, I usually arrive via Union Station. It’s a really beautiful building and one of the few grand train stations left in the country, and I’m always impressed by the architecture there. According to the architectural history, it was designed in the Beaux-Arts Style and meant to mimic the Roman Baths of Caraculla and Diocletian. It was completed in 1907, and then restored from 1986-1988 (and it’s actually being worked on right now, too). But wait! There’s geology involved with all that history.
9 May 2014
Edinburgh: Visiting Rosslyn Chapel
On my last day in Edinburgh, Dr. Caco and I took a bus ride south of the town to Roslin. Those of you who are Dan Brown fans might remember the last scenes of The Da Vinci Code movie, where the two heroes end their search for the Holy Grail ” at Rosslyn Chapel.
23 March 2014
Edinburgh: Old Town and older volcanoes
My PhD advisor relocated to Scotland last year, and I finally had a chance to visit her in Edinburgh. And wow, what a great place for a geologist to go!
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.