M3.1 quake this afternoon west of Fredonia

A magnitude 3.1 earthquake occurred at 1:39 pm local time today about 20 miles west of Fredonia, Arizona and just east of Colorado City.

The area has a history of small quakes in this part of the Intermountain Seismic Belt.

And last week's episode of the CBS tv show Medium has the psychic star foreseeing an earthquake hitting Arizona at 9:18 am. Must be another quake.

Base flow in the San Pedro River

A new report from the USGS finds that regional groundwater contributes about 3/4 of the base flow of the San Pedro River near Tombstone, with 1/4 coming from "summer storm runoff stored as alluvial groundwater for the 2000 to 2009 period."

The authors conclude that "Continued regional groundwater pumping will, however, eventually lead to a decline in the contribution of regional groundwater to base flow."

Ref: Kennedy, J.R., and Gungle, Bruce, 2010, Quantity and sources of base flow in the San Pedro River near Tombstone, Arizona: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2010-5200, 43 p.

Holocene maps released of Verde River tributaries

The Arizona Dept. of Water Resources has released detailed geologic maps of Holocene units along tributaries of the Verde River drainage that were done by AZGS. The maps are located at http://www.azwater.gov/AzDWR/SurfaceWater/Adjudications/

They are situated at the bottom of the page and referred to as Phase II Summary Report.

The mapping was led by AZGS geologist Joe Cook under contract to ADWR for anticipated use in groundwater - surface water adjudication hearings. The geologic maps along the main Verde River were previously released by ADWR and AZGS.

ASU's Earth & Space Exploration Day underway

Working my way through hundreds of emails that piled up while I was traveling the past two weeks, I see it's a bit late to share the news that ASU's School of Earth & Space Exploration is holding an open house "Earth & Space Exploration Day" in the Bateman Physical Sciences Bldg on the Tempe campus. It runs until 3pm, so there's time to head over and see the exhibits and let the kids join in the special events for them.

Look for:
Dr. Rock (Bring a rock from home and have it analyzed)
Search for Near Earth Objects
Under Arizona KAET TV Program
Meteorite display and activities
GeoWall
Earthquake activities
Dr. Water
Make Salt-and-Pepper Rock
Examine rocks through microscopes
High Pressure Water actvity
Dyanmic Earth display
Storm Chasers
Volcano activity
Pan for Gold
Ecology Explorers
Mud Wrestling
Meet Lucy
Underwater Robotics
Balloon Aerial Photography system
'A Mountain' Fieldtrip

NGDS as the "killer app"

The National Geothermal Data System was described as the "killer app" (i.e., application) for the concept of distributed Web services and the Geoscience Information Network (GIN). Matt Harris with the British Geological Survey, offered that interpretation to the participants at the OneGeology-Europe final review in Paris last week, and it was one of those eureka moments. Those of us working to implement GIN as the data integration framework for NGDS are so buried in the project that we may have missed the obvious.

GIN is a 3-year old collaboration between the State Geologists (via AASG) and the USGS to build a national distributed geoscience data network. It was adopted by the U.S. Dept. of Energy Geothermal Technologies Program last year for the NGDS with AZGS as the prime contractor to deploy the network nationwide among state surveys and populate it with vast amounts of digital data relevant to geothermal energy exploration and development.

The OneGeology-Europe project paid my way to Paris to present an external view in the wrap-up of their two-year project to build a continent-wide data network among 20 nations. In my formal remarks, I applauded the OneGeology project as the continents flagship effort that proved the technology and architectural approach that we are now emulating in the U.S. They have 40 Web services working in 17 languages and are harmonizing geological maps across the borders of Europe. AZGS has been working closely with OneGeology through our geoinformatics chief, Steve Richard, to develop joint vocabularies and specifications so the two continent-wide data systems will be compatible and integrated.

From Paris, it was off to Denver for the annual Geological Society of America meeting and an open forum on the emerging National Geoinformatics Community. Dr. Richard Hughes, Director of Information and Knowledge Exchange of the BGS, who was also with us in Paris, reaffirmed the 'killer app' title and declared that the GIN-NGDS project was the most significant project in North America.

A busy GSA meeting

It's been a busy week for AZGS at the Geological Society of America annual meeting in Denver that wrapped up today. We just finished packing up our new multi-screen digital display at the State Geologists exhibit booth for shipment home.

We were running live demos, bringing in maps and data via web services from distributed data providers all over the country as part of our DOE-funded Geothermal Data project in the National Geothermal Data System.

We appear to be pushing the commercial software to its limits but are working with company technical staff.

AZGS scientist honored at GSA

Erica Bigio, part-time scientist at AZGS who is also working on her graduate degree at the University of Arizona, received two awards at the Geological Society of America annual meeting in Denver tonight. The Quaternary Geology & Geomorphology Division gave her the Robert K. Fahnestock Memorial Award as well as the Marie Morisawa Research Award Honorable Mention.

The Robert K. Fahnestock Memorial Award is made annually to the applicant for graduate student research grants with the best application in the field of sediment transport or related aspects of fluvial geomorphology.

The Marie Morisawa Award for $1000 was established in 2006 to honor Dr. Marie Morisawa, one of the first women to maintain a high profile in Quaternary geology and geomorphology throughout her career. The purpose of the award is to support promising female M.S. and Ph.D. graduate students pursuing a career in geomorphology.