HOW DO YOU STOP FLOODING?

With parts of the UK continuing to suffer the aftermath of the most severe winter floods in years, attention has focused on how flooding can be prevented or alleviated.

Excellent article on the BBC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25929644

• Dredging
• Flood Barriers
• Natural Flood Management

Follow the link for more detailed information:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25929644

WCS EARTH MAG: FLIPBOARD

If you have an iPad why not try the link to Flipboard, where selected articles are posted about Earth Science?

Millions of people use Flipboard to read and collect the news they care about, curating their favorite stories into their own magazines.

WCS Earth Mag: http://flip.it/c8vil

I don't know if it works on iPhones. 

Make your own Fliboard 'magazine'!!

40 Maps that explain the World

Maps can be a remarkably powerful tool for understanding the world and how it works, but they show only what you ask them to. 
You might like to look at this collection of maps meant to inspire your inner map nerd. 
It is from the Washington Post.

Map 8. If all the Polar Ice Melted

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/01/13/40-more-maps-that-explain-the-world/?tid=pm_pop

Thanks to Mrs Taylor for the link

Earth Pics Game

http://www.earth-pics.com/geo-game

Gravity satellite probes Earth's mantle

Europe's Goce gravity satellite has provided striking new visualisations of the Earth's deep interior.

Its gravity data has enabled variations in the density of rock to be traced up to more than 2,000km below the surface.

The maps, help to show how material moves up and down, driving a range of geological phenomena.

These include subduction zones, where the great tectonic slabs covering the Earth's surface dive under one another.

The satellite finds traces (circled red regions) of ancient subduction zones running deep under Asia and along the Americas

These include major mantle plumes in the Pacific and south-east of Africa.

Also visible are ancient subduction zones running deep under Asia and along the Americas. What Goce is probably seeing is the buried remnants of old plate material of Jurassic age (older than 150 million years ago) in the case of Asia, and of roughly Cretaceous age (older than about 60 million years ago) in the case of the Americas.

In addition, the satellite's gravity data contains a residual signal of the former Tethys Ocean. Subducted material is seen in the maps stretching from the Mediterranean to the Himalayas. The Tethys Ocean is thought to have closed in the past 40-50 million years as India and Asia collided.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25911846

Grand Canyon 'formed recently'

The world famous Grand Canyon, which snakes through the American state of Arizona, only took its present form relatively recently.

New research suggests that most of it was put in place just five to six million years ago.

Earlier studies had claimed the canyon was perhaps 70 million years old.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25881953

Placer Mineral Game

Y13 Geology Placer Mineral game:

http://see-web-01.leeds.ac.uk/misc/miner/

Geology Girls

‘Girls into Geoscience’ event 
16th July at Plymouth University.

Primarily For Year 12 female students this unique event is to showcase careers and research in Geosciences for woman. We will have talks and workshops from women both in industry and academia and hope to show that geology isn’t just for the boys!

For more information see Mr R or email jodie.fisher@plymouth.ac.uk

MAGNETIC NORTH IS SHIFTING

The mountain in Scotland on which Mr R proposed to Miss G; she said yes!

For those who navigate Great Britain's landscape by map and compass there are three norths.

Grid north is the direction of a grid line which is parallel to the central meridian on the National Grid, the reference system on Ordnance Survey maps.

True north is the direction of a meridian of longitude, an imaginary circle of the Earth, which converges on the North Pole.

Continue reading the main story

“

Start Quote

Hillwalkers may well have broken into a cold sweat when reading recent attention grabbing headlines about magnetic north moving east”

Heather MorningMountain safety advisor

Magnetic north is the direction magnetic compasses point to.

It is always shifting, very slowly, influenced by changes in the Earth's magnetic field which is itself affected by changes to the spinning of the planet's core.

For the first time in more than 220 years of map making, Ordnance Survey has noted that it lies east, and not west, of grid north for parts of southern Britain.

Generations of outdoor fans have grown up with the knowledge that, for accurate navigation using a compass, the housing has to be moved a few degrees to the West when using a bearing from the OS grid.

Now, in a small area of England west of Penzance, the grid magnetic angle is slightly to the East.

The reason is that the magnetic force that attracts a compass needle constantly moves and, relative to Great Britain, has been heading gradually eastwards for a few years.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-25841106

http://www.grough.co.uk/magazine/2014/01/22/eastern-turn-for-compasses-for-first-time-in-200-years-as-north-shifts
Thanks Mr Swarfield

NASA IMAGES WEBSITE

For more brilliant images and danger of wasting time browsing them click:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=82853&eocn=home&eoci=iotd_grid

Many thanks to Olly P for the link.

THE YEAR IN VOLCANIC ACTIVITY

2013 was a very active year for volcanoes. I particularly like photos 25 & 26!

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/12/2013-the-year-in-volcanic-activity/100645/

Y13 Geog: Desolation of smog (Tackling China's air quality crisis)

Officials in China say they are confident green technology will help overcome the country's notoriously polluted air.

Apocalyptic scenes of dense smog have recently forced major cities including Shanghai and Harbin to virtually shut down.

The capital Beijing is among urban areas where pollution routinely exceeds safety limits set by the World Health Organization (WHO).

For more information:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25576716

LECTURE ON TUESDAY

2 minute Video of mud volcano by Iain Stewart: 

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kphF71S5F0Q

For info click the link:

http://gallery.mailchimp.com/78c1ed22b5890ffa0663455cb/files/2014_01_14_Lusi_Mud_volcano.pdf

Sign up on Geog & Geol Lecture sign up googledoc

Depart 1700

Return 2030

PLEASE SIGN UP ON GOOGLE DOC

PLYMOUTH CONFERENCE URGENT!!!

Dear all,

Booking has opened for a one day conference at Plymouth Uni about Tectonic hazards.

Iain Stewart is introducing the conference and doing the last talk of the day.

SATURDAY 1st MARCH. LEAVE WELLS 0730, RETURN APPROX 1800

If you would like to come, subsidised cost £10, please let me know by lunchtime tomorrow. I hope there are still places available, one in November sold out in 3 hours!

If you are a 1stXI or 1stVII player I guess you won't be able to come.

Mr R

Early Life built Earth's Continents

REWIND Earth's story 3 or 4 billion years, to when life was emerging. The surface of our planet was starting to cool but still piping hot – possibly about 200 °C. Early, unstable continents may have been forming. Now imagine life doesn't emerge, and press play.

The pair included biological weathering in one modelled Earth, and left it out of another. Press play on both Earths at 4 billion years ago, and for the first 1.5 billion years, there is very little difference between them. By about 2.5 billion years ago, early continental plates emerge above the ocean, regardless of life. But then, everything diverges.

On live-Earth, algae, bacteria and more complex life colonise the new land, erode it and dump masses of sediment into the ocean. The sediment – 40 per cent water by weight – is eventually pulled down more than 100 kilometres beneath the surface by early subducting tectonic plates, where piping hot temperatures release the trapped water. The hydrated mantle is viscous and more buoyant, so it rises and bursts through the surface in volcanic eruptions that add to the continental plate. 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029443.100-early-life-built-earths-continents.html#.Usx6M9JdWSp

(Thanks to Flash for sending the link.)

SPECTACULAR CLIFF COLLAPSE

A camera captures the moment that a cliff partially collapses during rough seas in Rock-A-Nore outside Hastings in East Sussex

Click the link to watch the video:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-25594640

AMAZING T-REX OPTICAL ILLUSION

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/good-to-share/10542220/An-optical-illusion-that-makes-you-question-what-you-see.html

TV PROGRAMMES ON 1st JAN

Happy New Year!

On BBC iPlayer and repeated tonight (1st Jan) BBC4 Krakatoa Revealed (starts at Midnight). Recommended by James V.

More 4  
2200  Japan's Tsunami: How it happened  (repeated 2nd Jan 0115)
2300  Meteor Strike - Fireball from Space (repeated 2nd Jan 0220)