Flowing water on Mars

UA planetary scientist Alfred McEwen and his colleagues, using the UA-run HiRISE camera, have found seasonal streaks "like nothing else on Mars" that offer compelling evidence that liquid water is flowing on the Red Planet today.

A paper in the journal Science to be published tomorrow shows a sequence of images [right, one clip from the animated sequence] taken across the Martian year.

"Seasonal streaks act as if elevated temperatures around the melting point of water ice unleash liquid water. Dark streaks a few meters wide grew from rocky outcrops down steep, equator-facing slopes beginning in the martian spring and continuing until the early fall."

The animation sequence wouldn't copy to the blog, so you should go to Science and watch it directly. It's hard to argue with these images.

update, 8-5-11: here's CNN video of yesterday's press conference, with footage of the seasonal changes:




Ref: McEwen et al., Seasonal Flows on Warm Martian Slopes, Science, 333(6043) 740-743, 2011.

Richard "Dick" Wilson, 1931-2011

Well known Arizona geologist Richard “Dick” Wilson, a faculty member in the University of Arizona Department of Geosciences from 1962 to 1980, has passed away. Dick and his wife established Tucson’s Tohono Chul Park and he was active in Flagstaff-area philanthropy.

A message from Tohono Chul Park reports that Dick "died... of an infection contracted while on a family rafting trip through the Grand Canyon. He was flown out of the canyon to Flagstaff Medical Center on the next to the last day of the trip but did not recover. His family reported that up to that point he was having a marvelous time - taking pictures, bonding with the river runners and teaching them about the geology along the river." [photo credit, Tohono Chul Park]

An obituary ran in the Arizona (Flagstaff) Daily Sun.

Videos from last year's post-fire floods in Flagstaff's Timberline neighborhood

Coconino County recently posted a montage of videos from the August 2010 flooding in the Timberline neighborhood of Flagstaff, downslope from the severe Schultz fire. It's a reminder of the threats that will continue to face the region until the mountain slopes are revegetated, and what may loom for residents of this summers fires across the state.

Giant crack (fissure?) tears up Willcox road

AZGS geologists are heading to the Willcox area in the morning to investigate giant cracks running down East Van Ness Road near Highway 191 in the Sunsites area. This part of Cochise County is plagued with both earth fissures and giant dessication cracks, although to residents, the subtle differences between these two natural hazards are probably of academic interest. They are more concerned about road access and safety. [right, AZGS earth fissure map of the Three Sisters Buttes area, Cochise Co.]

The Willcox Range News reports that the road is not a county road so there are no funds to try to repair it.

AZGS geologist Joe Cook who manages our earth fissure mapping project, is quoted "The difference between the two is that earth fissures are related to ground subsidence from the over pumping of groundwater, while GDCs [giant dessication cracks] are like giant mud crack networks related to soil shrinking and swelling due to wetting and drying and overall drought."

Foreign investment in Western US resources

Opponents of the Rosemont copper mine south of Tucson, point to the Canadian home of the company's parent, Augusta Resources, as rationale for halting the mine. Yet, the State of Arizona has trade offices in not only Canada, but Mexico, Europe, and China, in hopes of luring foreign investments in Arizona and purchase of Arizona exports.

The debate over foreign investment in the U.S. is ratcheting up across the Western U.S. A series of recent articles and reports look warily at global investments in natural resources in Arizona and other western states.

High Country News last week ran a feature story on how "China's insatiable energy appetite is fueling a natural resource boom in the West" [subscription required].

Stanford University's Rural West Initiative, Bill Lane Center for the American West, has a report on "Fossil Fuels, Foreign Trade, and Foreign Investment in the American West" that concludes that "The biggest foreign influence on fossil fuel production comes from rising worldwide consumption of fossil fuels, and that is largely driven by growth in Asian economies. However, the main driver of demand for fossil fuels from the American West continues to overwhelmingly come from domestic consumption in the United States. The American West is indeed a “carbon colony.” But it is our carbon colony."

Another report on the Stanford site, provides an interactive map [right] with foreign-owned energy and mineral resource operations shown for western states.

Interestingly, the map and the reports largely ignore foreign investments or ownership of large renewable energy projects such as Spanish company Abengoa's construction of potentially the world's largest solar energy plant on 1,900 acres west of Phoenix, using $1.45 billion in U.S. government loan guarantees.

So, the issue may not be foreign investments per se, but what those monies are funding, that really matters.

Evolution of economic geology

Spence Titley, professor emeritus at University of Arizona, kept the audience enthralled last night at the dinner meeting of the Arizona Geological Society, where he offered a sweeping vista of the "Evolution of the Practice of Economic Geology During the 20th Century."

Spence [right, photo credit Mari Jensen, UA] has been a leading player in the field across the entire second half of that century and continues to be so, in an elder statesman role.

He characterized research and exploration following independent paths at the start of the century but by the post-WW II years, mineral discoveries were driving new research. By the end of the century, research begin driving new discoveries.

And although he didn't say it explicitly, he left me at least with the sense that there are huge new discoveries yet to be made, both in our understanding of the origin of ore bodies and in our finding new deposits.

Debris flow predictions in Monument wildfire area

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1181/

Miller and Ash canyons in the Huachuca Mountains have the potential for post-fire debris flows with volumes over 200,000 cubic yards, following the Monument wildfire. Other drainages have potential for debris flows ranging on up from 2,000 cubic yards.

These volumes and their probabilities of occurrence are part of the USGS assessment released publicly at the end of last week. AZGS geologists participated in the assessment. A table in the report lists each canyon, its potential volume and probabilities at multiple intervals over the next ten years:

This report presents a preliminary emergency assessment of the debris-flow hazards from drainage basins burned by the Monument wildfire in southeastern Arizona, in 2011. Empirical models derived from statistical evaluation of data collected from recently burned drainage basins throughout the intermountain Western United States were used to estimate the probability of debris-flow occurrence and volumes of debris flows for selected drainage basins. Input for the models include measures of burn severity, topographic characteristics, soil properties, and rainfall total and intensity for a (1) 2-year-recurrence, 30-minute-duration rainfall, (2) 5-year-recurrence, 30-minute-duration rainfall, and (3) 10-year-recurrence, 30-minute-duration rainfall.

Estimated debris-flow probabilities in the drainage basins of interest ranged from a low of 26 percent in response to the 2-year-recurrence, 30-minute-duration rainfall to 100 percent in response to the 10-year-recurrence, 30-minute-duration rainfall. The high probabilities in all modeled drainage basins are likely due to the abundance of steep hillslopes and the extensive areas burned at moderately to high severities. The estimated volumes ranged from a low of about 2,000 cubic meters to a high of greater than 200,000 cubic meters.

[right, location of drainages of interest and level of burn severity. Credit USGS]

Ref: Ruddy, B.C. and Verdin, K.L., 2011, Probability and volume of potential postwildfire debris flows in the 2011 Monument burn area, southeastern Arizona: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2011–1181, 9 p.