Scientists aboard the U.S. research vessel Endeavor and collaborators ashore have just arrived on the coast of Haiti to start a 20-day survey of that will assess the history and potential continued threat of earthquakes there. (Read the full story of the project, involving the Earth Institute and other major institutions.) Chief scientist Cecilia McHugh of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory…
How we talk about the CWC’s work and about the complex issues we’re working with is very important, but it is often hard to give up specificity in favor of understandability. We can all use reminders about how to communicate clearly and effectively with the general public.
Nationally, the California Water Wars have been something people have been following for months. As discussed by Water Center expert Tanya Heikkila in her September blog post “California’s other crisis,” the state’s reservoirs had been significantly depleted and fights had been breaking out all over the state about who deserved water the most – farmers,…
Last night I made dinner. I’ve never cooked over an open fire—only on a tiny gas-powered stove on backpacking trips–but Jay and Barbara have been teaching me how. Dinner was edible. Jay built the fire last night, but tonight I’m hoping to do the whole thing start to finish. Wish me luck. We left Cerro…
The US Geological Survey report, ‘Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2005’, By Joan F. Kenny, et al, released in 2009, compares recent and historical findings on water withdrawls for fresh surface water, groundwater, irrigation, thermo-electric power generation, public supply, self-supplied industrial use, and livestock, among others.
Challenges Evidence That Global Warming Was the Cause
Reconstructing a shoreline history takes skill. Today we’re using altimeters to establish the elevation of Lago Cardiel’s former shorelines. We also continue to look for shells to help us date the lake’s past shorelines, a task that requires strong powers of observation. In one short stretch there might be a dime-sized snail shell almost indistinguishable…
Today we’re looking for live snails so that we can measure how much carbon-14 they are incorporating into their calcite shells. Carbon-14 is a rare isotope of carbon that decays radioactively–organisms incorporate carbon-14 into their tissues and shells while they are alive, and as soon as they die, the carbon-14 starts decaying away. We can…
The bottom of the seafloor shows us where ice used to flow. To pinpoint when the ice retreated, the geologists on board take samples of mud and sand from the seafloor. Using a weighted steel barrel lowered to the seafloor they bore their way through sand and mud. A catcher at the bottom of the…