eruption in Biological News

CU-Boulder study shows Maya intensively cultivated manioc 1,400 years ago

... preserved under a blanket of ash by a volcanic eruption in present-day El Salvador 1,400 years ago. ... field -- was harvested just days before the eruption of the Loma Caldera volcano near San Salvador in ... manioc stalk cuttings just a few days before the eruption of the volcano. A few anthropologists have ...

USGS news: August science picks

... Earthquake Rattles Los Angeles Area Explosive eruption of Kasatochi, Cleveland, and Okmok Volcanoes in ... 703-648-4299 or cransom@usgs.gov . Explosive eruption of Kasatochi, Cleveland, and Okmok Volcanoes in ... Surveys. Information about the current eruption of these volcanoes, including activity ...

August 2008 Geology and GSA Today media highlights

... of the chamber roof following the explosive eruption of viscous magma. The primary goal of Hughes and ... and political debate about whether the Lusi eruption was naturally initiated by a remote earthquake two days prior to the eruption or was triggered by a drilling accident ...

February Geology and GSA Today media highlights

... deflation of a shallow mud chamber, triggered by eruption and sediment fluid evacuation events. Bonini ... for many fatalities. Famous examples include the eruption of Vesuvius with the destruction of Herculanium and Pompeii and the eruption of Mont Ple in Martinique that destroyed the town ...

December GEOLOGY and GSA TODAY media highlights

... glaciers; monitoring Mt. Etna gas composition and eruption forecasting; and cause of the end of the PETM. ... ridge volcanic processes from the 20052006 eruption of the East Pacific Rise, 946956N S. Adam ... the most detailed map of a mid-ocean ridge (MOR) eruption to date. Lava flows erupted in 20052006 at the ...

September Geology and GSA Today media highlights

... (and uplift) may presage a future volcanic eruption in this area that is home to over two million ... for over 2000 years, and only in 1538 did an eruption follow a period of uplift. Bodnar et al. propose ... bradyseism do not necessarily indicate that an eruption is imminent. Age and source constraints for ...

CU-Boulder team discovers first ancient manioc fields in Americas

... Maya village in El Salvador buried by a volcanic eruption 1,400 years ago has discovered an ancient field ... and landscape were frozen in time by the sudden eruption of the nearby Loma Caldera volcano about 600 ... and his colleagues previously determined the eruption at Ceren occurred on an early August evening ...

Volcano taming

... its tracks and save potentially thousands of lives and homes when the next eruption occurs? That's the question R.D. Schuiling of Geochem Research BV, based ... the town of Zafferana was saved from being ravaged by the 1991-1993 eruption cycle of Etna by huge earth walls built to divert the lava flow. ...

Complex dynamics underlie bark beetle eruptions

... and frequent in recent years as winter temperatures have risen, and an eruption of mountain pine beetles is currently devastating lodgepole pines ... complexity of the biological processes that determine when a bark beetle eruption will occur. When beetles bore through a trees bark, they release ...

USGS April 2008 science picks

... activity at Kilauea, which on March 19 experienced its first explosive eruption since 1924. The volcano is also emitting sulfur dioxide at toxic levels. ... some of which erupt explosively multiple times a year. Since the 19891990 eruption of Redoubt Volcano in Alaska and a near-disastrous encounter between a ...

Symposium to discuss geoengineering to fight climate change at the ESA Annual Meeting

... atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays back into space. This approach mimics what happens naturally when volcanoes erupt; in 1991, for instance, an eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines cooled the Earth by 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit. But Simone Tilmes of the National Center for Atmospheric Research ...

Global sunscreen won't save corals

... incoming sunlight before it reached the Earth's surface, lowering global temperatures just as volcanic ash from the Mount Pinatubo did following its eruption in 1991. But critics have warned that such a scheme might also alter rainfall patterns, damage the planet's ozone layer, or have other unexpected ...

CU-Boulder study shows 53 million-year-old high Arctic mammals wintered in darkness

... cycles that occur each year, Eberle said. Telltale isotopic signatures of carbon from enamel layers that form sequentially during tooth eruption allowed the team to pinpoint the types of plant materials consumed by the mammals as they ate their way across the landscape through the seasons, ...

American Chemical Society Weekly PressPac -- April 15, 2009

... has considerable implications on the ability to concentrate solar power, Murphy says. For example, the increased aerosols resulting from the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines reduced global sunlight by less than three percent but decreased output from some solar generating plants by about ...

February 2009 Geology and GSA Today media highlights

... recharge was responsible for the high measured fluxes of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide from 1995-1997. Their results suggest that the ongoing eruption of Popocatpetl is essentially an intrusive event. More generally, they suggest that intrusion and deep degassing may explain the high gas fluxes at ...

September Geology and GSA Today media highlights

... of these organisms in the surface ocean reduces the amount of hydrogen sulfide released to the atmosphere but does not prevent hydrogen sulfide eruption from the ocean. The end-Permian geologic record is consistent with the modeled distribution of hydrogen sulfide, supporting the notion that hydrogen ...

AGU journal highlights -- July 23, 2008

... Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS) Operational Vertical Sounder), Carn et al. tracked sulfur dioxide released by Hekla. They find that the eruption emitted about 0.5 to 0.7 teragrams (trillions of grams) of sulfur dioxide, which later split into three distinct clouds, one of which circled the ...

USGS to help Chile develop volcano early warning system

... Survey is partnering with the Chilean government to develop a volcano early warning and emergency response system for the country after the historic eruption of Chaitn Volcano on May 2. Following the eruption, the USGS helped Chile to install monitoring networks at Chaitn to transmit data in real time ...

Predicting the radiation risk to ESA's astronauts

... month or even years. During the Apollo missions of the 1960s70s, the astronauts were simply lucky not to have been in space during a major solar eruption that would have flooded their spacecraft with deadly radiation. Essentially, they took risks and got away with it. For the kind of long-duration ...

Professor's video series explains all facets of Earth

... the theme of climate and humans, and how geological events have played vital roles in shaping human history. He sited the example of a huge volcanic eruption at Tambora in Indonesia that in 1816 filled the Earths skies with so much ash and aerosols that crops failed globally and the Earth was colder for ...

Quakes under Pacific floor reveal unexpected circulatory system

... Science Foundation. Scientists from Lamont and other institutions are still retrieving and analyzing data from earlier cruises. In 2006, a volcanic eruption buried some of their instruments; most of the instruments were lost, but those that survived provided new information about how the eruptions work. ...

Biologists find unusual plant gene: abstinence by mutual consent

... enough to allow the male-female communication to proceed. This signal coming from the peroxisomes of the male or female is sufficient to set off the eruption of the pollen tube allowing the sperm cells to be released. The interesting next question is, what is the signal coming from peroxisomes that ...

October Geology and GSA Today media highlights

... began throughout the Sierra Nevada 10 million years ago as well, and that "delamination" was initiated then, or earlier. A later episode of volcanic eruption and range uplift, beginning 3.5 million years ago, may have been triggered by a later accelerated phase of delamination, range-front faulting, or ...

When bivalves ruled the world

... 10 times greater than they are today, says Fraiser, an assistant professor of geosciences. It makes sense, she says. The largest continuous volcanic eruption on Earth known as the Siberian Traps had been pumping out C02 for about a million years prior to the Permian-Triassic mass extinction. The ...

Volcanic eruptions, ancient global warming linked

... margin were responsible for the global warming and changes in ocean chemistry. The breakthrough came from being able to find a marker ?the ash eruption ?that was distributed all over the North Atlantic, and showed up in the marine record as well, Duncan said. The volcanic activity that took ...

Ancient DNA provides clues to the evolution of social behavior

... When a population becomes that small, it loses much of its genetic diversity-a phenomenon known as a genetic bottleneck. Chan thinks that a volcanic eruption known to have occurred in the Andes roughly 3,000 years ago, combined with environmental change and competition from the larger species of tuco-tuco, ...

Serious adverse reactions to smallpox vaccine appear to be limited

... surrounds the heart) and 10 as ischemic cardiac events that were not anticipated based on historical data. Two cases of generalized vaccinia (a skin eruption in reaction to vaccination) and 1 case of postvaccinial encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) were detected. No preventable life-threatening ...

Asleep in the deep: Model helps assess ocean-injection strategy for combating greenhouse effect

... from injected CO2 are a serious concern, Zhang said, "because carbon dioxide is known to have driven deadly water eruptions." In 1986, a CO2-driven eruption in Cameroon's Lake Nyos killed some 1,700 people, as well as animals in the area; two years earlier, a smaller release of CO2 from Lake Monoun in the ...

Researchers discover underwater volcano

... growing in the summit crater of another larger underwater volcano, Vailulu'u. Researchers explored the unique biological community surrounding the eruption site, and were amazed to find an "Eel City," a community of hundreds of slithering eels. This new volcano, dubbed Nafanua after the ferocious ...

New Clues Add 40,000 Years to Age of Human Species

... probably carried to the Lake Turkana basin soon after, providing a time stamp for nearby sediments,?he adds. The results revealed how long ago the eruption occurred: roughly 196,000 years. "This provided an unambiguous maximum age for the fossils,?says McDougall. Further supporting the dates, the ...