News report on Sedona sinkholes broadcast

ABC Channel 15 ran a news story last night on Sedona sinkholes, based on the recent AZGS report by prominent Prescott geologist Paul Lindbergh. AZGS geologist Brian Gootee is featured briefly.

More disasters or just more declarations?

There were more presidential disasters declared in the last decade "than in any other decade in more than 50 years, with an average of 56 per year. This is double the average from 1980 to 1989, when there were almost 24 a year, and 10 more than the 1990s with 46 per year," as reported in the National Emergency Managers Association (NEMA) 2010 Biennial Report.

NEMA said 59 major disasters were declared in the U.S last year compared for example to 34 in 1984. [right, Sabino Canyon, Tucson, following 2006 flooding. My photo]

A story about this in the Council of State Governments magazine Capitol Ideas asked the obvious question, are there really more disasters that require a major declaration or are there more political and societal pressures that are pushing the increase?

The answer is not easily resolved. There probably is a greater expectation by the public for federal assistance, but does that account for all the declarations or is there really an increase of natural disasters to some lesser extent?

Monsoon flooding around Arizona

It's a pretty robust monsoon season so far across Arizona. The sheet flooding across the low-relief areas around Flagstaff caught homeowners and officials by surprise [right, photo by Jeri Young, AZGS]. The denudation of the slopes from the Schultz fire upslope will make these areas more vulnerable until they are revegetated. Many homeowners are taking steps to build barricades and levees around their properties to get them through this season [bottom, photo by Jeri Young, AZGS]. But builders generally did not elevate the homes above the terrain, meaning that the area will always be at risk of sheet flooding.

Links to news reports:

Flagstaff is still recovering from floods in Timberline and Doney Park.
Unmapped flood zones need updating now [editorial]
Flood mitigation efforts resume over burn area


Flooded east-side [Tucson] area rejected levee in '93

Wall of water rolls down Nogales wash

Floods and tornado funnels hit Navajo Nation

Debris flows follow Flagstaff's Schultz fire

An AZGS hazards team found debris flows when they inspected post-fire erosion occurring at the site of the recent Schultz Fire in Flagstaff last week, after heavy rains produced sheet flooding in the low-relief subdivisions at the base of the mountains.

Phil Pearthree, Ann Youberg, and Jeri Young from AZGS joined Deb Martin (USGS), Sara Brown (visiting UK grad student), Dan Neary (USFS), and Karen Koestner (USFS)

[Top photo: post-fire debris-flow snout, Weatherford Canyon, Waterline Road, Schultz Fire.

Middle photo: post-fire debris flow deposits in Weatherford Canyon, Waterline Road, Schultz Fire.

Bottom: rills through mulch placed to mitigate erosion, Waterline Road, Schultz Fire.

All photos by Ann Youberg, AZGS]

The hillside erosion raises concerns about the efficacy of the reseeding and mulching efforts underway on these steep slopes in the near term to mitigate more erosion, flooding, and debris flows.

Continuing deformation from Baja's El Mayor - Cucapah quake

NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab reports that "New NASA airborne radar images of Southern California near the U.S.-Mexico border show Earth's surface is continuing to deform following the April 4 magnitude, 7.2 temblor and its many aftershocks that have rocked Mexico's state of Baja California and parts of the American Southwest."

[right, "the different shades in the image represent ground surface motions of up to a few inches upward or downward. Yellow shaded regions moved to the south or downward, regions in blue moved to the north or upward, and regions shaded in magenta showed no motion. Major fault lines are marked in red, and recent aftershocks are denoted by yellow, orange and red dots, with older earthquakes shown as gray dots." Credit, NASA/JPL]

The announcement also stated,

The April 4, 2010, El Mayor-Cucapah quake was centered 52 kilometers (32 miles) south-southeast of Calexico, Calif., in northern Baja California. The quake, the region's largest in nearly 120 years, was also felt in southern California and parts of Nevada and Arizona. There have been thousands of aftershocks, extending from near the northern tip of the Gulf of California to a few miles northwest of the U.S. border. The area northwest of the main rupture, along the trend of California's Elsinore fault, has been especially active.

Finding the center of Arizona not so easy

There is no standardized cartographic or land survey method for finding the center of the State of Arizona, according to the Arizona Professional Land Surveyors. Brian Fisher (azgeocenter2012@gmail.com), chair of the Geographic Center of Arizona Committee, briefed the Arizona Geographic Information Council yesterday that APLS is organizing events for the state's 2012 Centennial to engage the public in understanding better the complexities involved and in agreeing where to place a prominent monument to commemorate the location.

The "Journey to the Center of Arizona" project was prompted by a 3-part series in the Verde Valley newspaper in May.

The project web site has an in-depth analysis of the different mathematical approaches to finding the center of a body.

UA camera finds bulls-eye on Mars

The UA-run HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted this unusual "bulls-eye" crater on Mars. Project member Sarah Milkovich told Space.com that it could be either due to uneven erosion due to weak layers underlying the crater or a fortuitous second impact right in the center of the larger crater.

[Photo credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona]

Opponents to Resolution copper mine go unchallenged

The Arizona Silver Belt newspaper in Globe notes that opponents of the Resolution Copper mine project in Superior [right, #10 shaft. Credit, Resolution Copper], the San Carlos Apaches, the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona and the Arizona Mining Coalition, all showed up at public comment session to oppose water quality permits for the proposed $4 billion mine. But they asked where were economic development proponents from Globe-Miami, Superior, and Gila County:

However, none of the leaders or members of the Economic Development group appeared in person at the July 19th ADEQ Superior hearing to counter anti statements made by the three outspoken opponents of the mine . Nor did the EDC attempt to submit some kind of statement in support of the two water quality permits before the July 30 deadline.


[correction 8-21-10, 17:00 -my original post incorrectly labeled the photo as #9 shaft instead of #10. Thanks to Nyal Niemuth at ADMMR for spotting the error and sending photos of the differences.]

Satellite image of Flagstaff's Schultz Fire

NASA's Earth Observatory posted this satellite image of June's Schultz fire north of Flagstaff. The figure caption reads:

The Schultz Fire had burned an estimated 8,800 acres of forest north of Flagstaff, Arizona, as of June 22, 2010, and it remained totally out of control. Evacuations were in effect in the vicinity, but no structures had yet been lost according to the interagency Incident Information System (Inciweb) Website.

This image of the fire was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on June 21. Places where MODIS detected actively burning fire are outlined in red, and smoke drifts far to the northeast over the portion of the Colorado Plateau known as the Painted Desert.

The blaze looks like two separate fires, but an infrared-enhanced view shows a continuous burn scar (brick red color), with significant activity on both the northern and southern parts of the perimeter.

• References

• InciWeb. (2010, June 22). Schultz Fire. Retrieved June 22, 2010.

NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.

Geo-tweeting

Blogs are passe. Tweeting on twitter.com is now mainstream and the geoscience community is embracing it. [this sentence took 85 characters, well within the twitter limit of 140, so I could have tweeted it]

I'm following four twitter feeds, albeit intermittently:

GSA's geosociety at http://twitter.com/geosociety

AGU's theAGU at http://twitter.com/theAGU

Chris Rowan's Geoblogfeed at http://twitter.com/Geoblogfeed

and our own, maintained by Mike Conway, Chief of the AZGS Geologic Extension Service, AZGeology at http://twitter.com/AZGeology


Each of these is serving primarily as an aggregator of geo-news from a wide array of sources. With RSS feeds, these sit on the tool bar above my browser. A quick click, and I see
instantaneous lists of what's happening in the world of geoscience. Many of the tweets are links to blog posts or news headlines. Some report geologic events as they are unfolding.

Major contribution to Centennial Museum reported

At the Arizona Geological Society dinner meeting in Tucson last night, there was word circulating that Phoenix-based Freeport McMoRan has committed $1 million for the Arizona Centennial Museum. The Centennial Museum will be the reincarnation of the Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum that was transferred to the Arizona Historical Society last week in the first step of transforming it to its new role by 2012.

When Gov. Brewer announced plans for a museum to showcase Arizona's 5 'C's back in February, she said funding for it was expected to come from foundations, corporations, citizens, and grants.

Grandview Mine, Grand Canyon

Noted mineralogist Ray Grant dazzled the Arizona Geological Society monthly meeting tonight with an overview of the history, geology, and mineralogy of the Grandview copper mine in Grand Canyon National Park [right, credit Wikipedia]. It was the largest turnout I've seen at an AGS meeting in the past year or more.

The mine started in the 1890's below the Grandview location on the canyon's south rim. The park's first hotel was built there and the mining company may have made more profit from tourism than from mining. The deposit sits in a breccia pipe, with assays running 37% copper. One sample with 70% copper won an award at the 1893 Columbian Exposition.

In 1913 William Randolph Hearst bought the mine and hotel and ran them until selling to the Park Service in 1940.

Ray described 42 minerals found at Grandview, including a few found no where else. Grandviewite is unique to the site and only recently recognized as a new mineral. The pictures he showed of dozens of spectacular specimens explain why the Grandview mine is world-renowned and has been subject to unauthorized mineral collecting over many decades. Bat doors installed in 2009 are keeping collectors out now.

He and his colleagues are continuing studies of the minerals in the mine along with the hydrology and geology in partnership with the Park Service. Ray is also revising his popular Minerals of Arizona book that will include all of these incredible minerals.

Face on Mars disappears in hi-res photo

The infamous "Face on Mars" that prompted a generation of conspiracy theories about cover-ups of Martian civilizations, is not present in a closer, higher-resolution image of the site taken by UA's HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

[1976 Viking image on left showing 'face' that disappears in image of the region captured by HiRISE and released last week. Comparison from Fox News. Credit, NASA/JPL/UA]

UA camera selected for new Mars mission

The UA-operated High Resolution Stereo Color Imager, or HiSCI, has been selected by NASA and the European Space Agency as one of the instruments to be carried by the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, scheduled to launch in 2016. An announcement by UA says it "will study the chemical makeup of the Martian atmosphere with a 1,000-fold increase in sensitivity over previous Mars orbiters."

[right, "the UA’s High Resolution Stereo Color Imager, or HiSCI, features an innovative rotation drive for three-dimensional imaging. As the instrument orbits the Red Planet, it snaps pictures once a feature of interest on the surface below comes into view. HiSCI then swings around and takes more pictures of the feature as it passes overhead." Credit, UA]

HiSCI will be operated by the same team at the UA's Lunar and Planetary Lab that has been acquiring images from Mars using the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

AGU's Outstanding Student Paper Awards

The weekly geo-newspaper Eos reports Arizona geoscience students were among those who received Outstanding Student Paper Awards at the 2009 AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco last December

Seismology
Christine Gans, University of Arizona, Tucson, Imaging the flat slab beneath the SierrasPampeanas, Argentina, using receiver function analysis: Evidence for overthickened subducted oceanic crust

Tectonophysics
David Pearson, University of Arizona, Tucson, Kinematic history of the retroarc thrust belt in the central Andes of Argentina at 24–25°S: Significant Andean shortening and sporadic foreland-ward deformation propagation

Hydrology
Maite Guariola- Claramonte, University of Arizona, Tucson, Regional vegetation die- off alters hydrological partitioning

Green Valley CAP extension center of mine debate

The recent decision by the Bureau of Reclamation to allow the CAP canal to be extended to the Green Valley area drew lots of news media attention today. Front page story in the Arizona Daily Star today by environmental writer Tony Davis offers a summary of the issues that has split the community. I also heard it on public radio on the drive home tonight as a lead story.

Rosemont Copper is paying for the extension and would get the water it needs for mining for the expected life of the mine. Community Water Co. gets a pipeline they cannot currently afford but the water would not recharge the downdropping water table caused by current water use by existing residents, farms, and other mines for the next 20 years or so. [right, regional groundwater level increase from recharge. Credit, Bureau of Reclamation]

The debate over the canal extension is complicated by its use for the copper mine.

Arizona Mining & Mineral Museum transferred to Historical Society

The Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum (AMMM) was transferred from the Department of Mines and Mineral Resources (DMMR) to the Arizona Historical Society (AHS) effective midnight July 29, 2010, according to a post on the DMMR web site . This is in accordance with HB 2251, which was signed into law by Governor Brewer on May 6, 2010. The museum will be converted to the Arizona Centennial Museum in time for the state's celebration in 2012.

The notice from DMMR Director Madan Singh says "DMMR will remain in its present location through September 20, 2010 when it is planned to move to 1520 West Adams. Use the west door of this building, located on the north side of the parking lot behind 1520 West Washington (our present location). The DMMR offices and facilities will be closed between September 13 and September 24 because of the move; the website will also be off. Some facilities may not be available for a few days before and after the above dates."

The new location is just a couple hundred feet north of the present space.

Flash flood in Antelope Canyon

The Arizona (Flagstaff) Daily Sun reports that "Five members of a 12-person Swiss tourist group were injured Friday in a flash flood in the same canyon where 10 people drowned in a 1997 flash flood."

The tv station ABC15 in Phoenix, however, says it was 3 Swiss and 1 French national who were rescued but on Saturday. Another group of 8 were rescued reportedly from the Corkscrew area of the canyon further south.

This video posted on YouTube shows the slot canyon and why it could be dangerous in a flash flood.

Extension of CAP to Green Valley ok'd to recharge aquifer

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation reaffirmed its approval of extending the Central Arizona Project (CAP) canal to Green Valley, to deliver Colorado River water to recharge the aquifer.

Inside Tucson Business says this has been fought by opponents of the proposed Rosemont Copper mine. The pipeline would be paid by mine owners Augusta Resources. The paper says pecan grove owner Farmer’s Investment Co. (Fico) is opposing both the pipeline and the mine. Pecan groves are among the largest water users in the area, which is undergoing notable ground subsidence due to pumping of groundwater [right, regional subsidence, from 2007 to 2008. Source, US Bur. of Rec].

BOR concluded that “plans for taking and using its CAP entitlement will not result in significant environmental impacts to the Green Valley/Sahuarita area, Upper Santa Cruz Sub basin of the Tucson Basin Aquifer, or the human environment in the vicinity.”

The BOR preferred alternative plan shows that the recharge by Rosemont could lead to a regional ground water level of 10s of feet, with a maximum of 100 feet at the center.

New issue of electronic "Arizona Geology"magazine

We converted our quarterly magazine Arizona Geology to electronic online format nearly two years ago, initially as a cost savings measure, but we also were excited about opportunities offered by the new approach to use more photos and color, include videos, and have as much space as a story needed.

The Summer 2010 issue of Arizona Geology went live yesterday. Editor Mike Conway has compiled a wonderful set of articles including the origin of the Grand Canyon, geologic mapping of the Verde River, small earthquakes in Arizona, and how lidar is being used here.

We have guest pieces from Flagstaff geologist and author par excellence Wayne Ranney and one of ASU's sharpest grad students, David Haddad.

I've heard from some of our readers around the state and country who miss the paper copy of the mag they used to get in the mail, but many didn't realize it is now online and more robust than ever. We invite you to rediscover Arizona Geology.