Alexandria, Va. — Tokyo, a city of more than 13 million people, has been devastated by earthquakes in the past and likely will be again. But when? And what role do ongoing slow-slip earthquakes — the kind that generally can’t be felt at the surface — play in relieving or building up stress? New research examining plate movements under Tokyo has found that since the massive magnitude-9 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, recurrence intervals for nondamaging slow-slip quakes beneath Japan’s capital have shortened. [Read More]

Alexandria, Va. — The Cascadia Subduction Zone is a 1,000-kilometer-long subduction zone stretching from Mendocino, Calif., to north of Vancouver Island off the coast of British Columbia, Canada. Those living along this stretch are occasionally treated to some shaky moments by the subduction of the Juan de Fuca Plate beneath the massive North American Plate. But the real threat is a potentially devastating magnitude-9 earthquake and the potentially ensuing tsunami — which has happened before and will happen again. [Read More]

Celebrate the Amazing World of Geoscience in the Latest Issue of GeoSpectrum from AGI Stories in this issue highlight how geoscience gives back: The new “Miners Give Back” humanitarian program from Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration (SME) Growth of the “Geoscientists without Borders” program to help communities in Haiti, Sweden and Benin from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) Association of Environmental and Engineering Geologists’ (AEG) efforts to help provide the Shisasari community in western Kenya clean drinking water Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) contributed a story about mapping the impact Hurricane Sandy had on coastal soils Geoscience is also giving back to its own professional community by supporting the Geological Society of America’s (GSA) GeoRef database. [Read More]

The last several decades have seen Arctic sea-ice minimums drop by more than half in area and more than three-quarters in volume. With current models predicting further reductions, scientists are calling it the “new normal” and are trying to grasp its implications — one of which is the occurrence of pathogens never before seen in the Arctic. Ice is a major eco-barrier for pathogens, but with Arctic ice diminishing rapidly amid the changing climate, pathogens have an opportunity to move into new areas and spread disease as mammals increase their ranges and intermingle. [Read More]

Alexandria, Va. — Tucked high in the Andes Mountains of northern Peru is a remarkable fossil locality: a 39-million-year-old petrified forest preserved in nearly pristine condition: stumps, full trees, leaves and all. With its existence unknown to scientists until the early 1990s — and its significance unbeknownst to villagers — this ancient forest hosts the remains of more than 40 types of trees, some still rooted, that flourished in a lowland tropical forest until they were suddenly buried by a volcanic eruption during the Eocene. [Read More]

Alexandria, Va. — County fairs are opportunities to bring in those handsome Holsteins competing for Best Bessie, to sample foods that don’t normally belong on sticks and definitely shouldn’t be deep-fried, and to enjoy carnival rides and games with unfavorable odds. They’re also opportunities to get the attention of a lot of people. Just ask the exhibitors who rent space to hawk their wares — everything from kitchen knives to leaf-free gutters. [Read More]

June 17, 2014, Alexandria, VA – Go online today to view a new webcast detailing three new contests that are being conducted as part of Earth Science Week, the annual worldwide celebration of the geosciences! Find the “Contests of Earth Science Week 2014” webcast online now for viewing at your convenience. This free webcast, narrated by AGI Outreach Assistant Katelyn Murtha, provides an overview of guidelines for photography, visual arts, and essay contests. [Read More]

Alexandria, Va. — “Hello World” Upon hearing that brief message, scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) and followers around the world sent up a collective cheer. Rosetta — the ESA spacecraft currently on a 10-year mission to orbit and land on a comet — awoke in January after a three-year hibernation, and was ready to get to work. The Rosetta spacecraft launched on March 2, 2004, to study Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. [Read More]

Tulsa, Ok. — The Society for Sedimentary Geology (SEPM) announces an unusual paper in their journal PALAIOS that combines ‘forensic’ paleontology and archeology to identify origins of the millstones commonly used in the 1800’s. Over four years, the scientific team located millstones by visiting historical localities in Ohio, then studied them and identified unique characteristics between the coveted French buhr and the locally sourced Ohio buhrstone. Both types of millstones were composed out of an extremely hard rock called chert, and superficially they can look very similar. [Read More]

Alexandria, Va. - The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is now accepting advance orders for the Earth Science Week 2014 Toolkit. The Toolkit contains educational materials for all ages that correspond to this year’s event theme, “Earth’s Connected Systems.” Materials include the traditional program poster and school-year activity calendar, as well as resources from distinguished program partners such as the U.S. Geological Survey, NASA, the National Park Service, Esri, ExxonMobil, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and professional geoscientific societies. [Read More]