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23 April 2010
Accretionary Wedge #24: My geologic hero
In considering who I would write about as my geologic hero, I of course had to consider my undergraduate advisor, who I’ve written about before. (You all know him from this blog, if you’ve been keeping up with the adventures of William & Mary’s Geology Department.) But that would essentially be a rehash of something I’ve already talked about. Although Chuck was (and still is) an immense influence on my …
4 December 2008
A Big Island Geology Tour
Callan suggested that I post the advice I gave him for his recent trip to Hawaii, and since I haven’t had time to write anything really meaningful lately (darn you, end-of-semester crunch time!) I think I’ll do just that. You can follow along with his fantastic photos and discussion of the locations he visited – I’ll link to each of his blog entries as they go up. (Those links are …
9 April 2008
More news from Hawaii: Volcanoes National Park evacuated
(Image from the Hawaii Volcano Observatory) Looks like shifting wind + gas plumes = not fun out at Kilauea. Enough that the park closed completely yesterday, and several of the surrounding communities were put under voluntary evacuation notice. Shifting winds are blowing the gas plume emanating from Halema’uma’u crater out over the inhabited parts of the park and into local communities, which usually don’t have to deal with vog, or …
25 March 2008
Kilauea’s Halema’uma’u Crater producing ash plume
I’m finally on top of things! As of yesterday, the gas plume emanating from the explosion site in Halema’uma’u Crater on the summit of Kilauea has started to carry ash as well. They’ve put up a webcam on the roof of the Jagger Observatory, and it’s a pretty cool view. (I am very jealous of the person currently visible in the lower right of the image.) Here’s the USGS press …
20 March 2008
New developments and a little history from Kilauea
Boy, have I been sleeping on the job. Halema’uma’u Crater, in the caldera of Kilauea, experienced its first explosive eruption since 1924. Ron and Geotripper have both covered the event in their posts, and the Hawaii Volcano Observatory has some great photos of the explosion crater and the debris that was scattered by the explosion. Since I don’t want to repeat their efforts, I’ll take a look at the 1924 …
5 March 2008
Alien Invaders
National Geographic has posted an interesting web article about invasive plants edging out native species in Hawaii. Scientists from the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (Stanford and Hilo) have used imaging spectroscopy and LiDAR to map 850 square miles of rainforest on Hawaii’s Big Island in order to understand how nonnative plants are affecting the current populations of native species (mainly ‘ohia, a Hawaiian tree with bright red flowers called lehua). The …
11 February 2008
Holy Smoking Breadfruit, Batman!
Judging from the sudden dropoff of comments, people are a little stumped on exactly what got dropped in a lava flow in Friday’s geopuzzle. So, here’s the answer: Breadfruit. (http://www.hear.org/starr/hiplants/images/600max/starr_040318_0066_artocarpus_altilis.jpg) At least, that’s what the locals said. I was skeptical, since breadfruit is usually pretty smooth, and these appear to have some pretty prominent spiky parts, but there was a garden nearby that had some immature breadfruit growing in it, …
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.