It’s more than a year that I haven’t solved a WoGE (Where on GoogleEarth?), but I came across Ron’s latest quiz and found it quite fast to my own surprise. He had a very unusual location – a seamount off the island of Oahu that turned out to be no volcano but part of a giant landslide instead. Beautiful spot, great story.
Now I have the honour of hosting WoGE #414, and here it is: more
It’s Friday, friends, the weekend is near and here’s the Friday links. Today I collected some news on earthquakes, landslides and geoscience jobs. Have fun!
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Matthew’s WoGE #364 took us far out to South Georgia and on the Neumayer glacier – a phantastic example of rapid glacier retreat due to changing sea water temperatures. As you might immediately see from my image, I want to take you to a more comfortable area, but with some nice geology, too. Here’s the quiz: more
Rhett Howell’s WoGE #359 was located in Utah – the Death Hollow is a beautiful example of Navajo sandstone, bordered by two deep canyons and with a very interesting joint system. The site is situated on a huge monocline and part of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. So now it’s my turn again to host the next one. Here’s WoGE#360: more
A very strange story happened in OC California some days ago (thanks @EricFielding for pointing me to that). A woman suffered serious burns because some rocks her kids found at a beach combusted spontaneously in her pocket. Immediately, a discussion started on twitter. What kind of rocks could that be? Hydrocarbon-bearing sediments? Coal? Phosphor? There have been some accidents with phosphor from World War II weapons that was washed upon the shore of the Baltic Sea. People confused it with amber. However, this is unlikely at California beaches. Mysterious rocks… more
Matthew’s WoGE #345 looked pretty much like an ocean shoreline, but it turned out to be Lake Khanka located at the border of Russia and China. This lake is very shallow but has a large area and it is famous for its biodiversity and strongly influenced by flood events. There have been plenty of beach-WoGEs lately, so I decided to take you to another environment. more
The University of Oklahoma has set up a “Global Geo-Referenced Field Photo Library“. Once registered, users may upload and geotag their (geological) field photos. Additionally, you can provide information on the geology/geomorphology. This could become a nice database if more people start uploading their images. Imagine you have a braided river system and you can compare different years and seasons. It’s up to you if you want to make your pictures public or if you prefer to keep them private.
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Matthew chose to take us to the Baikal Rift with his WoGE #326. The Olkhon island is almost as large as Madeira and has some fascinating tectonic features, thanks again for pointing me to that great spot, Matthew! Now it’s time for a new challenge. Find the following feature on GoogleEarth, post the location and a brief description of the geology in the comments, and all the fame will be yours. more
Matthew’s WoGE #305 showed one of the rare sandstone outcrops in Georgia, the Broxton Rocks. The best hint was in the image source: “USDA Farm Service Agency” led me to search the US, and from the vegetation and the shape of the fields (and the E-W river!) it didn’t take too long to find it. But he was right – finding out about the geology wasn’t that easy.
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Earthquake prediction again: The former president of India, Abdul Kalam, said earthquake prediction will be possible within 10 years. It would be great if he was right, but he isn’t. Why do people continue to say that? There are so many that “predict” earthquakes, and so many people relying on them. What a pity… more