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e of the americas the figure below is an example of one of these histograms these plots are preliminary and do not include the requisite error bars number of grains considered statistically significant etc but are posted here as an example of the application stay tuned for actual interpretations and results in the future on the x axis is age in millions of years and relative probability on the y axis these four different plots are from different stratigrpahic units within a preserved sedimentary basin oldest deposits on bottom a thorough comparison of significant peaks i e lots of grains of similar age from plot to plot can help us identify trends one pattern in this particular example is the introduction of younger zircons the peaks around 80 ma in the three upper plots as compared to the bottom one in this case the depositional age is very close to the youngest zircons here because the basin was fed by a volcanic arc so the younger depositional units were receiving new baby or toddler zircons as sediment anyway this is just the tip of the iceberg i ll post again about this and provide links from my fellow geo bloggers out there who do more of this kind of work are can probably explain it better if you want to know the ghory details of this preliminary dataset you can read the abstract pdf posted by brianr at 2 07 2007 2 comments labels geology jsw 3 experimental sedimentary systems this is the third post for the just science week feb 5th 9th see monday s and tuesday s posts on the first post for this week i said i would stay within a theme of deep marine sedimentation well i m gonna break from that for this post just because the topic today is just that cool for a few years i ve been following the work at the st anthony falls labratory university of minnesota in minneapolis and a good friend of mine who works there was kind enough to give us a tour in december this place does all sorts of cool stuff like super cavitation research but here i m gonna show you a few images from their experimental set ups for studying sedimentation so basically what we got here are some very sharp scientists who have taken playing in a sandbox to the ultimate level they have two main experimental tanks that interest me the most a delta basin and the experimental earthscape basin or jurassic tank the above image is a deposit growing in the delta basin remember this is just a couple meters across these experiments run for weeks and they photograph at equal time increments so they can make a time lapse movie at the end to see the evolution of the system but the real beauty of this is the quantitative information at other increments during the run time they scan the deposit with an extremely precise laser and collect data about the topography of the feature as the deposit is buried by further deposition they can relate this information to patterns of river avulsion and lobe switching identified in natural systems the image to the right is a plan view image from jurassic tank which is an experimental basin a few meters wide by a few meters long what makes it unique is its ability to create differential subsidence in almost any imaginable pattern the basement of the basin is actually an interlocking framework of numerous plates that each move independently from each other with this they can run experiments with similar subsidence patterns that are seen in earth s sedimentary basins and like the delta basin the progress of the filling is scrutinized and measured at the end the entire basin fill is carefully sliced centimeter by centimeter and high res photos are taken of the cross section the goal is to then relate the explicit knowledge of the sedimentation to the resultant stratigraphy in the real world we typically only have the stratigraphy remaining and it s up to geologists to interpret the processes that generated it these experiments are helping us think in different ways regarding what actually controls the patterns we observe and map in stratigraphy check out their web resources st anthony falls lab safl is part of national center for earth surface dynamics nced nced research projects a link to some movies data repository for the stratigraphy experiments this short article from science in 2000 does a much better job at explaining the goals of particular research projects utilizing these facilities note you ll probably need a university or personal license to download science 17 march 2000 vol 287 no 5460 pp 1912 1915 posted by brianr at 2 07 2007 0 comments labels geology misc science stratigraphy tuesday february 06 2007 space junk and ring of debris i had to interrupt the jsw just science week posts because i wanted to show this quite striking graphic of space junk around our planet from the new york times the red ring of debris is from the recent satellite destruction shenanigans by the chinese who s brilliant idea was that click on the above image to see full size and then go here to view the interactive feature at new york times website posted by brianr at 2 06 2007 0 comments labels misc science monday february 05 2007 jsw 2 submarine geomorphology this is the second post for the just science week feb 5th 9th on or something see the first post here from usgs see more here the resolution and coverage of both sea floor mapping and subsurface seismic reflection technology has grown by leaps and bounds over the last couple of decades the above image is a perspective image of the los angeles california area onshore topography and offshore bathymetry note the relatively flat continental shelf green very defined shelf edge and variably steep continental slope leading to the deep sea dark purple the shelf edge and shelf is incised by submarine canyons that deliver terrigenous i e derived from continent sediment to the deep ocean many of these canyons and channels are sitting out at the shelf edge and are inactive now during last glacial maximum 18 000 years ago sea levels were much lower and the shoreline was essentially at the shelf edge some of these canyons are still active at present however on friday of this week i will have a post about research i ve been doing recently studying the flux of terrigenous sediment to one of these basins get original image here this next image above is a map view of the bathymetry offshore of monterey california please check out mbari s website for more great images of the sea floor monterey bay is in the upper right of the image with the head of monterey submarine canyon smack dab in the middle between santa cruz to the north and the town of monterey to the south monterey canyon is a huge feature follow it out seaward and the canyon transitions into a submarine channel with a beautiful meander that s barely on this image the distance from the canyon head to that meander called shepherd meander is approximately 125 km 75 mi to give you a sense of scale the water depth at that meander is approximately 3400 m 11 150 ft monterey canyon is one of the most studied and well monitored submarine canyons in the world turbulent gravity driven flows carrying a lot of sand are responsible for carving out this fantastic feature over long time scales hundreds of thousands to millions of years this paper from 2004 by colleagues of mine andrea fildani and bill normark is a great resource for understanding the geologic history and sedimentary processes related to the formation of monterey canyon three dimensional seismic reflection technology allows us to create maps of buried geomorphic features the images shown at right and below clearly show beautiful meandering channels that were once on the sea floor in very deep water and are now in the subsurface by analyzing slices within the seismic volume we can map the evolution of the geomorphology through time these images from a recent paper from posamentier kolla 2003 utilized together bathymetric images from the modern sea floor and seismic reflection images from the buried sea floor are spawning new branches of geomorphology that are focused on deep marine processes and evolution i envision more and more collaborative efforts in the future among subaerial i e on land and submarine researchers of earth surface processes posamentier and kolla 2003 seismic geomorphology and stratigraphy of depositional elements in deep water settings journal of sedimentary research vol 73 no 3 posted by brianr at 2 05 2007 1 comments labels geology marine science photos images sea floor image stratigraphy turbidites sunday february 04 2007 jsw 1 sediment thickness in the world s oceans for my first post of jsw just science week feb 5 9 i m going to introduce my field of study sedimentary geology with an illustration much of the rest of this week i will be discussing more than you ve ever wanted to know about the sedimentation along continental margins actually i have no idea what i ll be posting about that s my guess you ll have to stay tuned the above figure which can be found here shows the thickness of sediment in the world s oceans and marginal seas i love this map it is really great to get a global view like this like many others investigating patterns of nature it is necessary to look at all scales this post starts out big the whole globe subsquent posts will zoom in spatially as well as pull back temporally and get a sense of past conditions one of the first things to focus on is the continents of north and south america at this scale the configuration and history of the tectonic plates clearly governs the patterns see map of plate boundaries below note the asymmetry of sediment thickness the eastern margins of the land masses have thick accumuations the hotter colors of sediment whereas the western margins do not the active western margins consist of a subduction margin in south america transform margin in southern north america and subduction margin in northern north america at a very large scale this activity although it creates a lot of high relief nearshore producing sediment is not the bes t place to preserve sediment over long time scales the accumulations along the eastern or passive margins are so thick because they ve been piling up for 10s of millions of years these two strikingly different tectonic settings should be kept in mind another notable pattern on the map of sediment thickness is the bengal submarine fan this fan which sits in the bay of bengal between india and southeast asia is the single largest accumulation of sediment on the planet extending for nearly 30 degrees of latitude from the margin big deal so you may be asking so what why should we study these accumulations of sediment i hope to show you with a series of posts why i think it s interesting from a scientific standpoint to figure these things out from the small scale processes of transporting depositing sediment to the spectacular geomorphology present on the sea floor to the implications to studying earth history and by now i m sure most of you may have also noticed the spatial coincidence of some of the thicker accumulations with petroleum provinces this is no coincidence for sure where you pile up a bunch of sediment over a long period of time you get the perfect host for our world s for better or for worse lifeblood i m not going to go too much into this particular application of sedimentary geology at least not this week my aim is higher i want to learn as much as i can from these sediments rocks i m a data junkie i ll admit it i want to observe and characterize information about the earth i ll take it where i can get it i ve been working on a post about peak oil from a sedimentary geologist s perspective but not this week this week i ll be using this information to tell you something hopefully interesting about our planet map of tectonic plates found here posted by brianr at 2 04 2007 2 comments labels geology marine science just science week on this blog feb 5th 9th i ve joined a bunch of science related bloggers in a week designed to be about just science that is posts will not be diatribes about the misuse of science by government not that that s not fun not rants about intelligent design in public schools not that that doesn t deserve ranting not a reference and or commentary on a mainstream article etc but a post about some actual science the goal is at least a post a day good idea i m not sure i ll make a post a day but i m sure gonna try here s the feed http www justscience net feed rss2 posted by brianr at 2 04 2007 0 comments labels misc science science blogs sokal and mooney op ed in la times see chris mooney s blog the intersection for more introduction to this editorial that he and alan sokal co authored in today s la times it s titled can washington get smart about science and is a nice little piece of writing what i like is that sokal has been known to criticize liberals and mooney has a book about conservatives in government and their subversion of science i like to see people team up like this and cut through the partisan crap it s all too easy for people to stay on their side whatever that means the partisan brain is a funny thing people with strong partisan tendencies tend to automatically believe agree disbelieve disagree with statements that have yet to be checked for its truthiness sometimes when i stroll about the blogosphere i get severely turned off by ultra partisan liberals spouting complete nonsense conservatives do the same of course i guess i don t find myself strolling about their internet neighborhoods though anyhow read chris and alan s article it s good posted by brianr at 2 04 2007 1 comments labels commentary opinion political science blogs where on google earth 4 the only clue i m gonna give for this one is that the boundary between shallow water light blue and deep water dark blue is very sharp good luck posted by brianr at 2 04 2007 2 comments labels where on google earth saturday february 03 2007 commentary on commentary keep in mind this is only one example of this kind of idiocy unfortunately a lot of people get their information opinion from people like this for those of you who don t know neil boortz is a rush limbaugh wannabe sad apparently he and another author have written a very thoughtful book about tax reform that i hear good things about i haven t read it yet so i can t comment on that but that s not what this is about this is about someone with a megaphone and a lot of loyal listeners choir members spouting stupidity about the recent ipcc report i neither have the time nor energy to deconstruct all of this here s some of my favorite tidbits from his editorial titled why i am skeptical about man made global warming a 21 page report from something called the intergovernmental panel on climate change has been released today in paris no less and as expected it s predictions are dire sweet right off the bat we get some anti french sentiment always a crowd pleaser but really it makes sense that the global warming crowd would come to this co...
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