Solutions for peak water use in Southwest

Popular Mechanics describes the “most intriguing” options for supplementing the flow of the Colorado River, taken from a recent study by the 7 states that draw water from the river.

1. Desalination along the West Coast in exchange for California’s or Mexico’s share of the river.

2. Pipelines to carry water from the Columbia River

3. Import Water by tanker or giant water bladders or towing insulated icebergs.

4. Kill water-using invasive shrubs like salt cedar

5. Conservation includes use of storm waters and treating waste water.

UA HiRISE camera spots Mars Rover

The UA HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured a picture of the Spirit Rover on the Mars surface.

From the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) website:

Clear skies and low-angle sunlight are an outdoor photographer’s dream. On the shortest day of Martian winter, June 24, 2008, Spirit had both. Conditions were ideal for an orbiter’s shot of the Mars rover parked on the sunlit slope of a volcanic plateau. Shadows outlined shapes in the landscape, such as the upturned edges of the bowl-shaped plateau known as “Home Plate.” Shadows also reveal nearby ridges, slopes, and large boulders. Spirit is the dark “bump,” marked by a yellow arrow.

Detailed images such as this one will help scientists select a future path for Spirit. For plotting a path on Mars, a powerful orbiting camera, long shadows, and a clear sky are about as good as it gets.

Thanks to Tom's Astroblog for noting this. A more detailed picture is there and on the MER website.

Mediation on Rosemont copper mine

The US Forest Service has hired a mediation service to bring together all the sides in the Rosemont copper mine debate. This is in addition to the EIS being prepared. Some believe the issues are unresolvable, others hope the mediation may bring additional viewpoints to the process.

The mediator is report as saying in today's Daily Star that they are not expecting conflict resolution but conflict management.

I applaud the USFS for this. The EIS process results in a decision, but it doesn't deal with the conflicts that come out of it. Adding a mediation component at this stage of the process offers potential that regardless of the final decision on the mine, the community won't be as torn apart as it might be otherwise.

Water as a Western election issue

The UK's Guardian newspaper published a story this weekend about water a Western election issue in the presidential race. They opine that lack of water by drought and rising populations could fundamentally remake the West.

"Runaway growth in Nevada, Arizona and across the arid West are stressing scarce water resources. Use of water in the Colorado River, which flows into Lake Mead, is governed by a multi-state Colorado Compact. The compact was negotiated in 1922, and it's a politically sensitive issue. John McCain's state of Arizona never liked the compact and didn't ratify it until 1944. The League of Conservation Voters is running an anti-McCain ad in Colorado saying that he wants to take the state's water." The article included the youtube video below of the Colorado ad.

Nogales flood plain maps

Nogales is as concerned about new floodplain maps as they are about actual floods. City business leaders and officials are worried that a large part of the city including downtown areas are now in the flood plain, in part because of increasing runoff in the Nogales Wash from Mexico. [left, Morley Ave, Nogales, 7-12-08. Credit City of Nogales. right, Nogales Wash, 7-15-08. Credit Jesus Gomes, Nogales Fire Dept.]

Deconstructing geologic maps exhibit at Pima Co library

What does it take to make a geologic map, from start to finish?

AZGS set up an 8-panel display in the Pima County (Tucson) Public Library, entitled "Deconstructing Geologic Mapping of the San Pedro Valley with Joe Cook." The display walks the viewer through the steps of making a geologic map from "Getting Started" -- pulling together the aerial photos, previous geologic mapping and topographic base --, through field work and field hazards -- floods, rattlesnakes, dogs and No Trespassing signs -- to digitizing the field sheets in a GIS to the final published geologic map. The story is drawn from the real experiences of AZGS geologist Joe Cook.

[right, Deb Bock, Pima County Public Library librarian views the beginning panel]

Resolution copper land swap controversies

Two news items this morning affecting the proposed land swap needed for the Resolution Copper mine to move forward. [photo credit, Resolution Copper]

The Arizona Republic has a long analysis about environmental activist Bill Roe spending extensively to get additional lands along the San Pedro river near San Manuel included for preservation in federal legislation.

The second item is a report that attorneys for Rep. Rick Renzi want the corruption charges against him dismissed. Federal prosecutors allege that Renzi supported the land exchange for the Resolution mine only if they included land owned by a former business partner. That derailed the land exchange but it's been taken over by Sen. Jon Kyl.

Grupo Mexico rethinking bid for Asarco

Reuters reports that Grupo Mexico is reconsidering its offer of $2.7 billion offer for Tucson-based Asarco in light of Sterlite's withdrawal and the dramatic drop in copper prices. Copper prices are down 40% from their July high.

The Grupo Mexico spokesman said it has not changed its offer to pay off Asarco's creditors completely. A revised offer is expected to be presented Oct. 30 at the next court mediation session.

Budget cuts will devastate Virginia geological survey

The State Geologist of Virginia, Dr. Ed Erb, informed us yesterday that an anticipated shortfall in Virginia's state revenues for FY09 and FY10 will lead to laying off half the staff of the the Division of Geology and Mineral Resources (Virginia's geological survey) on January 1, 2009, along with termination of ongoing programs. [right, Virginia's mineral resources. Credit VA DGMR]

The impact of the recent cuts will not end with the initial layoffs. Several staff members who have survived the layoffs will be shifted from state funding to soft monies and reassigned to tasks in support of other Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy divisions. Remaining staff members are anticipating further cuts to the state budget and are looking for jobs elsewhere.

Virginia's geological survey, under one name or another, has operated since its inception in 1835. Ed noted that DGMR was hit proportionately harder than any other state organization.

Other state surveys are reporting cuts and curtailments, although none as severe as that in Virginia. AZGS took a 5% reduction to both last year' s and the current budget and expects to take another reduction of comparable size soon as state revenues shrink. The USGS along with many federal agencies are holding back expenditures in anticipation of 5-10% cuts.

Update: Callan Bentley who writes at NOVA Geoblog, added more details to what I heard:

The official revenue projections forecast a shortfall of $973.6 million for fiscal year 2009 and $1.54 billion for fiscal year 2010, or just over $2.5 billion for both years.

Here are some of the planned cuts for the Virginia DGMR:

• 9 (out of a staff of 21) will be laid off
• 1 staff member will be transferred to the Division of Oil and Gas
• 4 staff members will be reassigned to support the Abandoned Mine Land project
• DGMR will be left with a staff of 4 on state-funded positions (of which 3 are currently supervisory) and will not, in any substantive way, be able to serve the Commonwealth.
  

Geologic art from Mars

Any time you need a bit of a lift, take a look at the rotating image show at the UA's HiRISE camera web page. The camera is one instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

These are amazingly detailed pictures of Mars but they are spectacularly beautiful images. [right, a crater on the north polar layered deposits]

More images and news of UA's asteroid impact

Emily at the Planetary Society posted a picture from Meteosat-8 that captured the fireball from asteroid 2008 TC3 impacting the Earth's atmosphere [right, the caption from Emily's post said, "At 02:45:47 UTC on October 7, 2008, the first near-Earth asteroid to have been discovered before it hit Earth entered the atmosphere over northern Sudan. The flare of heat given off by the asteroid's passage through the atmosphere was recorded by the geostationary weather satellite METEOSAT-8. Credit: EUMETSAT"].

Emily also posted another image of the fireball from EUMETSAT.

Then Chuck at Lounge of the Lab Lemming blog imported it into Google Earth and plotted the location where you should go to look for any of the meteorite that might have survived and made it to the ground.

The UA Mt. Lemmon observatory first spotted the body in space and predicted it's time and location of impact, which was dead on.

New AAPG blog on energy geoscience and policy

Dave Curtiss, who recently took the reins of the AAPG Washington DC office, has started blogging on energy geosciences and national policy at AAPG GEO-DC. Today's post names the energy advisors for Obama and McCain and links to a longer article about them and their influence on the candidates policies.

Welcome to the geoblogosphere, Dave. Dave was a Congressional fellow and previously worked at the Energy and Geoscience Institute at the University of Utah (where I worked when it was called the UU Research Institute).

Extraordinary floods

A new USGS assessment of 30 extraordinary floods between 1927 and 1978 found that the peak discharges for two of them were revised upward. One of those two extraordinary floods was in Bronco Creek, Arizona.

The USGS report has to be ordered, so I didn’t find the details online of just how large the revised flood peak flow was.

A big part of the USGS study deals with the reliability of peak flow measurements and errors in data collection and processing.

The study concludes that “Within the U.S. Geological Survey, new approaches are needed to collect more accurate data for floods, particularly extraordinary floods. In recent years, significant progress has been made in instrumentation for making direct discharge measurements. During this same period, very little has been accomplished in advancing methods to improve indirect discharge measurements.”

Hey, it's Earth Science Week!

Did anyone else notice that we really aren't doing much about Earth Science Week this year?

Is it because we're intellectually and emotionally caught up in the world economic crisis or the presidential campaigns? Or because we seem to be working 24/7 these days in an endless hamster-wheel lifestyle that leaves no time for something else?

If we earth scientists don't showcase our profession and science to the rest of the world, no one else is likely to do it. And mea culpa - as the State Geologist, I should be talking to the local Rotary, regaling Legislators about the role of geology in society, and arranging photo ops to lure the news media in. But it didn't happen.

Next year, let's try to make this a special week. 2009 will be the grassroots Year of Science celebration with October's theme being Earth Science. We can start talking now about what we will do.

UA Mars Lander gets Breakthrough Award from Popular Mechanics

The UA-NASA Phoenix Mars Lander was honored today in New York with a Popular Mechanics "Breakthrough Award" as one of the Top 10 World-Changing Innovations of the Year. UA researcher Peter Smith participated in the magazine's Breakthrough Conference along with Barry Goldstein of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Ed Sedivy from Lockheed Martin, talking about the Lander successes and results and what that means for more Martian exploration.

Multiple proposals for reorganizing earth sciences at UA

About 75 proposals or white papers were submitted yesterday to the UA VP and Provost Meredith Hay [right] for the "transformation" process expected to lead to reorganizing programs, departments, and colleges to meet new budget realities. At least 9 of them are earth science related. The proposals were made public this afternoon on the Provost's website. I've compiled links to the 9, along with the contact person for each:

A campus-wide school devoted to earth and environmental science Malcolm K Hughes

Arid Lands Resource Sciences GIDP and the Transformation Process Stuart E. Marsh

College of Science and Engineering Joaquin Ruiz

Earth and Environment Consortium Lisa J Graumlich

Hydrology and Water Resources Thomas Meixner

Institute for Mineral Resources Mary Poulton

School of Geological, Atrmospheric, Hydrologic and Environmental Sciences (placeholder name) Karl W. Flessa

School of Soil, Water, Environment and Natural Resources Lisa J. Graumlich (through Eugene G. Sander)

School of Sustainability for Energy, Water, and Materials Prof. Glenn Schrader and Prof. Joe Simmons

The next phase involves reviewing and possibly combining some proposals before discussing them with proposers, department heads, and deans.

Credit crisis II: Sterlite can't afford to buy Asarco

Sterlite Industries, the subsidiary of Vedanta Resources, says it cannot fund its $2.6 billion bid to buy Asarco LLC from bankruptcy, because of the problems of getting credit in the financial markets. The only other bidder is Grupo Mexico. Sterlite has been Asarco’s preferred purchaser and was getting strong support from Asarco unions and creditors. [right, copper pits in Arizona. Copyright, Asarco]

Phoenix Lander weathers Martian dust storm

A huge dust storm swept across Mars over the weekend but weakened by the time it reached the Phoenix Mars Lander on Saturday.

[right, image of Mars taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The polar ice cap is in the middle of the image. The 37,000 square km (almost 23,000 square miles) dust storm moved counter clockwise through the Phoenix landing site on Oct 11. Phoenix is shown as a small white dot, located at about 10 o’clock position. The storm, which had already passed over the landing site earlier in the day, is located at about a 9:30 o’clock position. Credit, NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems.]

Tucson paper says dump tires in abandoned mines

The lead editorial in today's Arizona Daily Star (Tucson) endorsed the idea of filling abandoned mines with used tires. The paper opined that "Throwing tires into mines doesn't come without its own risks, but the state must weigh the threat of possible pollution against the danger that more people could die."

The idea was first proposed by State Mine Inspector Joe Hart to the Legislature earlier this year but concerns over degradation of the tires and impacts on groundwater pretty much sidetracked the concept.

The Star resurrected the idea because the State seized as many as 10 million tires in the town of Mobile southwest of Phoenix, after shutting down a tire recycling operation on state lands. The question is what to do with one of the largest inventories of tires in the region. [above, Google Earth view of Envirotech International Industries site near Mobile, AZ]

The paper's editorial may breath new life into burying them in old mines, but I expect the environmental challenges to remain.

Credit crisis may halt Freeport copper mining expansions

The CEO of Phoenix-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. said it may defer expansions of existing mines because of the credit freeze and declining metals prices.

Freeport has projects to develop the Safford mine [right, credit Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold] and restart the Miami mine and expand mines at Morenci, Bagdad and Sierrita in Arizona. They also to develop a large project in the Congo and reopen the Climax mine in Colorado. The company did not say what projects might be cut or how big they would be.

Freeport stock dropped nearly 10% by end of the day.