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9 February 2018
Friday fold: Taiwanese metasediments
This Friday, in search of a Friday fold, we head to Taiwan, not far from the epicenter of this week’s destructive earthquake(s).
8 September 2017
Big earthquake in southwestern Mexico, M8.1
The M8.1 southwestern Mexico earthquake is discussed and placed in context.
27 April 2016
An opportunity to help in Canoa
As I mentioned last week, I have family in one of the coastal towns in Ecuador that was hardest hit by the magnitude 7.8 earthquake the previous weekend. Don and Wendy have asked me to share this opportunity to help: The James Dean Byrd Foundation runs a school in Canoa, La Escuela Bilingue los Algarrobos, whose campus is currently being used as a staging ground for the military’s assistance in …
21 April 2016
Firsthand reports from Canoa, Ecuador after the quake
Callan’s mother-in-law lives in one of the most strongly-shaken regions of Ecuador. Here, she and her boyfriend recount the experience of the earthquake Saturday night and its aftermath. Includes 8 photos from the scene.
12 February 2012
Fractures on a seismic sign
On the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso, there is a sign for the Kidd Seismic Observatory. The sign has seen some brittle deformation of its reflective letters. I infer this due be due to differential shrinkage of the letters (relative to the sign they are attached to) in the intense Texas heat. I like seeing deformation in materials other than rocks. This is a neat example …
29 September 2011
Salt dough physiographic province map of Virginia
By local prodigy Hannah Holland, elementary school student: Click through to make it bigger and see some details. Nice work, Hannah! Very impressive, and thanks for sharing!
13 September 2011
More earthquake damage
These are all in the northern stairwell between the 2nd and 3rd floors of the Godwin Building here on the Annandale campus of NOVA. The cement blocks have clearly separated along their mortared edges, and the disruption of the paint layer in a series of en echelon fractures reveals that deeper structural issue. I find this a bit scary. I have no information about what, if anything, is being done …
7 September 2011
Another updated aftershock plot…
A up-to-date tally of the aftershocks from the Mineral, Virginia earthquake is presented as a time vs. magnitude plot.
30 August 2011
Updated aftershock plot
The USGS reports more aftershocks, so your humble graphing servant has responded with a plot that updates the images I showed you last week. Here you go: Embiggable, via a simple click. Again, the “decay” pattern jumps out at us. One thing that I’m also noticing is how there are no events below 2.0 magnitude. What’s up with that? Simply not detectable? …or not worth bothering with? By the way, …
Callan Bentley is Associate Professor of Geology at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. For his work on this blog, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers recognized him with the James Shea Award. He has also won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, and the Biggs Award for Excellence in Geoscience Teaching from the Geoscience Education Division of the Geological Society of America. In previous years, Callan served as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine, President of the Geological Society of Washington and President the Geo2YC division of NAGT.