In Evelyn’s one-picture-per-day-to-save-some-time-before-Christmas-series, my contribution today is from the Canyonlands, Utah. It’s a view to the north from Needles Outpost campsite, directly at the boarder of the National Park. The reddish sandstones give a beautiful contrast to the dark-blue sky. The picture was taken during the night, there were always that incredible view and millions of stars. No comparison to light-polluted Germany!  The tents, which have been our home for three weeks, were completely messed with the ubiquitous red dust after that three weeks… more

I took this picture in an iron-nickel mine in Albania. Here we see the contact between the underlying ultramafics and the carbonates on top. The fluids circulated in the mafics and the iron-nickel ores are trapped at the lithological boundary. The ore is shiny green and occurs in hundreds of small bands in a small area along the contact only. I love this picture because the contact is so sharp. A fault zone nearby bears very beautiful conglomerates which I always wanted to have for my bathroom…

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Here’s the Wednesday Geology Picture as part of Evelyn’s meme. Close to the Arches National Park in Utah there is Potash, a bizarre place with saltworks that shimmer in incredible colours. Here, salt is leached from the underground and then dried in the sun. The roads that lead to the Dead Horse State Park have to cross little creeks at times, where the salt precipitated and formed glittering crystals. I had the opportunity to do some research in that area with my great colleagues Heijn and Michael in May this year. more

Following Evelyn’s suggestions, I will post random geology pics this week. Lake Marathon in Attica, Greece is providing a significant amount of the drinking water needed for the broader Athens region, where almost 40% of the 11 million Greeks live. Built between 1926 and 1929, the dam is 54 m high and 285 m long. The reservoir has a maximum volume of 41,000,000 m³ of water. Interesting is that the entire dam and the associated maintenance buildings are cased with the famous marble from the close-by Penteli mountains. I’ve been there during a great student’s excursion in 2007. more

A small comfort for all those who have missed the AGU2011 fall meeting (and so did I) might be that some sessions are now available on video for free. The AGU session on demand page has lots of videos, among them four sessions on the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. So if you’re ready for ~8 hrs of earthquake talks, you should definitely have a look.

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It seems like everyone is at the AGU currently, and even the German media is full of geoscience news. The first really interesting thing that I came across was that hurricanes might trigger strong earthquakes. If Shimon Wdowinski from University of Miami is right, this would be a huge step forward for our earthquake understanding. If he should be right.

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Dear colleague,
we are pleased to invite you to submit your abstract to the Earthquake Geology session at the upcoming EGU meeting (22-27 April, Vienna). Deadline for submissions is January 17.
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A new job announcement was posted some couple of days ago: the University of Lisbon offers two post-doctoral research positions for up to 5 years. Application submission opens this Wednesday, 7 December and closes on 13 January 2012.

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Earthquake prediction is possible! At least for toads (well, for bufo bufo only). And at least in Italy. And at least in 2009. Do you remember that story of toads having left their home (lake) before the L’Aquila earthuake and returning after the aftershock sequence? A new paper on this was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health: Grant et al., 2011: Ground Water Chemistry Changes before Major Earthquakes and Possible Effects on Animals. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health, 8, 1936-1956; doi:10.3390/ijerph8061936.

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The Asociación Argentina de Geología Aplicada a la Ingeniería (ASAGAI), Argentina National Group of the International Association for Engineering Geology and the Environment (IAEG), invite you to participate in the Symposium that will be held on August 15, 16 and 17, 2012 at Villa Carlos Paz City, Cordoba Province, Argentina.

Download the conference flyer here.

Topics:

• Groundwater
• Engineering geological mapping
• Work cases
• Contamination of natural resources
• Applied engineering geology education
• Geotechnical studies
• Environmental evaluation of plans, projects and works
• Geoindicators
• Environmental geology
• Water resources management
• Construction materials
• Land planning
• Geologic hazards
• Engineering-geological problems in works
• Recuperation of degraded lands