Geo news du jour

There's a lot happening in our geologic community that's attracting news attention lately. Here's a sampling -

An ABC News crew was in Phoenix earlier this week filming a story on gold prices and the growing exploration activity around the state for a story to be aired on the evening news and Nightline. Nyal Niemuth at our sister agency ADMMR, provided background info and was interviewed on camera. Haven't heard when this will be aired. Perhaps as a sidebar to the upcoming Super Bowl coverage?

The Arizona Republic reported on an onyx mine with a wonderful set of slides posted at their online site - http://www.azcentral.com/home/design/articles/0126onyx0126.html

UA Mining and Geological Engineering Dept gets $2.06 million donation to set up the David Lowell Professional Program in Mineral Resources. David and Edith Lowell had previously donated $1.9 million to create the Lowell program in economic geology. Lowell is a UA graduate in mining engineering and well known for his copper mine discoveries.

An article in last week's journal Nature, by UA geoscience researcher Joellen Russell, makes a compelling case that global warming and melting icecaps will increase ocean circulation, reversing a long thought prediction that the circulation will weaken. This will have major influence on determining the impacts of global warming around the world.


Visitation at Grand Canyon National Park rose to 4.4 million recreational visitors in 2004, the highest number of visitors since 2004 and an increase of almost 3 percent over last year. Visitation rose by about 1 percent across the park system as a whole. But even that is good, compared to recent drops as more folks sat home watching tv and playing video games. [right, source NPS]

The NPS is going multi-media, with online broadcasts since May called "Ranger Minutes," a new weekly podcast, downloadable from the Park's website, and as of a few days ago, an experimental cell phone audio tour. Check it out at www.nps.gov/grca/photosmultimedia.