Alexandria, VA - Last summer, while the abandoned Gold King Mine in Colorado was being studied for acid mine drainage, the earthen plug blew out, releasing millions of gallons of acid mine water into the Animas River. This event added momentum to the national dialog on remediating abandoned mine lands. EARTH Magazine explores the role geoscience plays in this process. Hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines exist nationwide, releasing untold amounts of pollutants into the environment. [Read More]

Alexandria, Va. - The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is now accepting advance orders for the Earth Science Week 2016 Toolkit. The Toolkit contains educational materials for all ages that correspond to this year’s event theme, “Our Shared Geoheritage.” Materials include the traditional program poster and school-year activity calendar, as well as a DVD, posters, activities, and other resources from distinguished program partners. This year’s Toolkit provides students with the opportunity to learn about the many ways that science helps us understand, appreciate, and make the most of our geoscience heritage, or, as it is commonly known worldwide, “geoheritage. [Read More]

In March 2014, 43 people were killed when 7.6 million cubic meters of mud and debris violently engulfed a portion of Oso, Wash., after a period of heavy rain. The region where this occurred is characterized by impermeable clay and silt deposits, sometimes measuring more than 200 meters thick, which formed 16,000 years ago when an ice sheet covered the region. These deposits and the addition of a wet, rainy climate makes the Stillaguamish River Valley ripe for more landslides. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA - A 2002 eruption of Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that killed more than 100 people also triggered an earthquake eight months later that shook the town of Kalehe in the Lake Kivu region. EARTH Magazine explores just what happened to better understand a region that is being pulled apart by plate tectonics. Using remotely sensed radar data, a team from Penn State University has inferred that a 19-kilometer-long dike was emplaced during the eruption. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA - When people think of dangerous faults in America, the San Andreas probably comes to mind first. However, another potentially greater threat lurks in the East Bay region of Northern California, just a stone’s throw from San Francisco and the tech hub of Silicon Valley: the Hayward Fault. In the June issue, EARTH Magazine guest author Steven Newton lays out just what is at risk, and what to expect when an earthquake strikes on what may be the most dangerous fault in America. [Read More]

What is known: Vikings sailed to Greenland. They homesteaded there for a few hundred years, and likely experienced multiple famines. Many died. Some returned to European shores. And all of this happened during a time in Europe known to geoscientists as the Medieval Warm Period. The warmer, milder conditions that defined this time eventually ended too. For many years, scientists have pondered if the Vikings’ diaspora to Greenland was made easier by the warmer temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period. [Read More]

For years, scientists have used mineral, sediment, and ice layers throughout geologic time to track the global climate record. These can come from ice sheets. But over the course of the last decade, a new method has been developed for geoscientists to assess global climate history in almost any arid landscape. The technique relies on testing a thin, sometimes only millimeters thick, layer of calcite that precipitates on rocks as rainwater filters through the ground. [Read More]

The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is pleased to announce the release of the Geoscience Handbook: AGI Data Sheets, Fifth Edition. For more than 40 years, AGI’s Data Sheets have been a critical tool for the geoscientist in the field, the lab, and the classroom. The book evolved into its current, full-color and spiral bound format with the 2005 debut of the fourth edition. Now AGI has tapped some of the best minds in the geosciences to produce this fifth edition. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA - The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is sponsoring four contests in celebration of Earth Science Week 2016, with this year’s theme being “Our Shared Geoheritage.” This year’s competitions will feature the traditional photography contest, visual arts contest, and essay contest – as well as a new video contest. Photography Contest Students, geoscientists, and the general public are invited to participate in this year’s photography contest, “Our Heritage in Earth Systems. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA - EARTH Magazine plunges into the depths of the ocean with scientists seeking whether Earth’s climate and sea-level history are intrinsically linked with tectonics at mid-ocean ridges. Since these ridges are not as well studied as terrestrial volcanoes, largely given the challenge to access them, teams of researchers are using tectonic models, evidence from high-resolution mapping of different spreading ridges and sediment cores to examine the evidence. When a potential link between climate, sea-level change and mid-ocean ridge volcanism was first proposed, it was met with considerable push-back from leading experts in the field. [Read More]