Blog Action Day: Climate Change from the Arizona perspective

Today is Blog Action Day ’09, “an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance.” The theme for 2009 is Climate Change, the same theme as Earth Science Week in the U.S. Nearly 10,000 bloggers are participating from 150 countries.

The predicted impacts of climate change have been well described as particularly severe in the Southwestern US, with warmer temperatures, more droughts, and more episodic rainfall. For many, this still seems to be something in the far off future. But I just saw a sobering article in the journal Science that caught my attention.

Sustained CO2 levels over 400 ppm during the Miocene period about 20 million years ago, are associated with sea levels 25-40 m (80-130 ft) higher than today.

Jonathan Overpeck ("Peck"), co-director of the Univ. of Arizona's Institute for Earth and the Environment, is one of the co-authors of the 2007 IPCC study that won the Nobel Prize. He is quoted saying, "If anyone still doubts the link between CO2 and climate, they should read this paper."

The article says the study authors predict we will pass the 400 ppm level within a decade. In the Miocene, that level occurred with temperatures about 3-6C (5-11F) higher than today.

An article on BBC News, notes that the International Energy Agency expect greenhouse gases peaking at 510 ppm equivalent before stabilizing at 450 ppm. Peck however, warns that "We don't know where the critical CO2 or temperature threshold is beyond which ice sheet collapse is inevitable."

So, for all of us desert rats waiting for California to fall into the sea along the San Andreas fault, perhaps a more realistic scenario is the Gulf of California expanding northward into the state as sea level rises. Beach front property either way.

Update on the elimination of the Calif. Board on Geologists & Geophysicists

I got an email this afternoon from David E. Brown, Executive Officer of the California Board for Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors (BPELS), updating and correcting initial information on the surprise action by Calif. to eliminate the state Board of Registration for Geologists and Geophysicist. He forwarded a report from AEG (Assoc. of Engineering & Environmental Geologists) on their work to preserve the board, and drew my attention to the discussion on page 7 that corrected earlier comments that the BPELS would not meet with AEG until after the elimination was completed. Those comments were also referenced in a blog post I did on the news.

The report describes ongoing discussions with BPELS and noted that they were as surprised as anyone about the action. AEG is a leader in working through California's political leaders to fix the situation. [right, July 11, 2009 meeting of the Big Five (l-r): Assembly Minority Leader Sam Blakeslee (R), Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D), Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), Senate President pro tempore Darrell Steinberg (D), Senate Minority Leader Dennis Hollingsworth (R), and gubernatorial Chief of Staff Susan Kennedy. Credit AEG, via Wikipedia]

The report says BPELS is planning a town hall meeting hear concerns about the impact of the legislation. The next BPELS’ board meeting has been rescheduled for November 18 and 19 at the Mission Inn in Riverside, Calif.

The boards of registration for geologists in other states are raising concerns that California's action may create a domino effect, because as one board director said, if California with all of its geologic hazards doesn't see the need to register geologists, why should anyone else?

My thanks to David Brown for setting the record straight and passing along this information.

Twin Buttes Ranch acquired for potash

A press release by Passport Metals this morning says they have leased the Twin Buttes Ranch in the Holbrook basin for 4 years with an option to buy it for $20 million. [right, light green tracts are ranch lands. Blue are existing Passport leases with drillholes. Federal lands in PFNP in dark green. Credit, Passport Metals] The company says the ranch encompasses some 28,526 acre, of which about 21,894 acres are underlain by potash.

The roughly 60 square mile ranch was included in the expansion of the Park approved by Congress in 2004, but money was never appropriated to buy the private lands.

Ranch owner Mike Fitzgerald has been widely quoted as expressing a willingness to sell his land but also frustration at the wait for Congress to act. He put the property up for sale last year at a reported price of $10.5 million. But around the same time the price of potash was skyrocketing from $50-100 per ton to as much as $900-1,000 on the global spot market. Companies starting picking up leases in the Holbrook basin. Then, in the Fall, AZGS released the first resource estimates of the potash deposit, showing it could hold as much as one-quarter of all the potash in the U.S. Since then, all state lands have been leased in the area and there is stiff competition for private leases and lands.

Moderate Baja quake barely felt in Yuma

USGS reports that a magnitude 4.3 quake hit northern Baja California at 8:38 am local time this morning but there have been only limited reports of it being felt in the region. It was about 75-80 km southwest of Yuma, Arizona and occurred in an area of seismicity associated with the rift and transform faults opening the Gulf of California.

USGS: rare earths reserves are adequate

A story on the advance copy of the forthcoming USGS mineral commodities report on rare earth metals was posted by reporter Dorothy Cosich on Mineweb.com.

They report that the USGS found that global rare earth metals reserves are currently sufficient to meet needs well into this century and there is a growing competitive and diverse group of worldwide suppliers.

In recent weeks, publications as diverse as the New York Times, US News & World Report, Science magazine, and Defense News have raised concerns about China's near monopoly on rare earth production while global demands for electronics and national defense are soaring. The USGS report shows that more than 90% of US imports of rare earth elements are from China.

Mineweb quotes Defense News as writing, "Now armed with its monopoly, China is jacking up prices by cutting production and exports and pressuring high-tech manufacturers to set up shop in China, where supplies are more plentiful."

But the conclusion of the USGS: "World reserves are sufficient to meet forecast world consumption well into the 21^st Century."

iPhone app for Arizona geology

It was only a matter of time, I suppose, but did we really expect someone to release an application for iPhones to view the geology of the Grand Canyon State??

A company called Integrity Logic tells us they can put the geology of Arizona in the palm of your hand, for only $4.99.

The company says the 23 GIS layers that make up Geology AZ are kept in an internal database, can be moved up or down and made transparent.

Tapping an area on the phone screen can bring up additional info about the unit selected, such as lithologic description and age [right, screen shot]

[Thanks to Steve Reynolds for passing this along. One of our tech-savvy guys already had downloaded it to his phone]

Ryan Clark, one of our informatics gurus here at AZGS, has tried out the app, and reports that most of the data provided appears to be from the USGS. So, there is a potentially money-making opportunity for some entrepreneur to do a new app, using AZGS geo-data!

Alternative energy demands leading to Western water wars?

The nice thing about holidays these days, is they offer a chance to catch up on the 500+ emails waiting in my in-box. One of those I just found was an article in the New York Times from a couple weeks back forwarded by Barb Murphy at Clear Creek Associates, about the growing realization that "Many of the proposed solutions to the nation’s energy problems, from certain types of solar farms to biofuel refineries to cleaner coal plants, could consume billions of gallons of water every year." The article likens some of the debates to a new Western water war.

That concern has not been lost on federal land management agencies, like BLM, which slowed down the land rush earlier this year, after applications for solar energy projects had been filed on millions of acres across the West.

As the battles heat up over competing interests for water rights, I wonder if we are going to hear criticisms of projects proposed by foreign energy companies. Some of the larger and more active players in solar energy projects across the region are from Spain and Germany, where the solar industry is booming.

Are we going to hear arguments against them like we do against foreign mining companies trying to develop mines in the region? For example, one of the biggest complaints about the proposed Rosemont copper mine south of Tucson is that it is owned by a Canadian company, Augusta Resources. Critics argue the profits will go out of Arizona and out of the US. Won't foreign-owned alternative energy companies be in the same boat as the debates get more heated?

Tribes battle over coal and power plants

The tribes of northern Arizona (Hualapai, Navajo, Havasupai and Hopi) have all banned uranium mining on their lands but two weeks ago the Hopi Tribal Council told a number of environmental groups opposed to coal mining and coal-fired power plants to leave the reservation.

Indian Country Today reports the Hopi Tribal Council said the Sierra Club, National Resources Defense Council, National Parks Conservation Association, Grand Canyon Trust, and “on-reservation organizations sponsored by or affiliated with the groups, are no longer welcome on the reservation.”

Environmental groups on the reservation blasted back accusing the Council of being illegitimate and in the pockets of big corporations.

Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. supported the Hopi Council's decision, saying the environmental groups threatened the survivial of the Navajo people by pushing to close down the Navajo Generating Station near Page, Arizona [right. Credit Salt River Project]. USA Today reports that the power plant provides more than 70% of the Hopi Nation's government revenues.

UA research offers hope for oxygen, life in Europa's oceans

New research by UA planetary scientist Richard Greenberg about the liquid ocean suspected to lie below the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa, suggests that "there may be plenty of oxygen available in that ocean to support life, a hundred times more oxygen than previously estimated."

In a talk yesterday at a meeting of the Div. for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, in Puerto Rico, Greenberg described the basis for his conclusions that "the concentrations would be great enough to support not only microorganisms, but also “macrofauna”, that is to say more complex animal-like organisms which have greater oxygen demands. The continual supply of oxygen could support roughly 3 billion kilograms of macrofauna, assuming similar oxygen demands to terrestrial fish."

Behind the scenes documentary of Phoenix Mars mission

A second documentary about last years UA-lead-Phoenix Mars Mission will be broadcast on PBS next Tuesday, Oct. 13 (9 pm locally here in Tucson). The film, "Phoenix Mars Mission: Onto the Ice" picks up where the first film left off, just after the launch of the spacecraft.

[right, the HiRISE image of the lander and parachute. Credit, NASA/JPL/University of Arizona]

Geothermal data project underway

The project to build a digital National Geothermal Data System was launched this week, following extensive consultation with the US Dept. of Energy. AZGS is a partner in the 5-year, $4.9 million project, which is being managed by the Intermountain West Geothermal Center at Boise State U. in Idaho. [right, geothermal map of North America. Credit, SMU/AAPG]

AZGS is the lead in developing the Geoscience Information Network or GIN, a collaboration among the Association of American State Geologists, the U.S. Geological Survey, and a growing group of industry and government partners. GIN will serve as the data discovery, access, and data exchange and integration mechanism for NGDS.

President Obama said in May that the NGDS would serve as the respository for all the data and results for $375 million worth of stimulus-funded geothermal projects nationwide that are expected to be announced shortly. This has required some rethinking of how and how quickly to get NGDS functioning and deployed.

Budget cut plans

We submitted our plans to the budget office last night, to cut the state appropriation by 30% starting in January. These are still just recommendations to the Governor, so until they are made public, we are not at liberty to discuss the details. But we did follow closely the recommendations of the external panel that convened last Tuesday to review all AZGS programs and operations. The panel met with program managers, reviewed the last four years of work by the Survey, and considered the results of the online survey of programs that so many of you filled out.

AZGS Extension Service chief Mike Conway has compiled the results of the more than 200 surveys completed and shown how each program fared in pie diagrams [right, an example of the poll results on the Bedrock Geologic Mapping Program].

We'll post the decisions of the Governor's budget office when they are made public, which is expected to happen quickly.

Thanks to all of you who took the poll and the surprising number of folks who added comments, suggests, and ideas. We'll be following up on these in the coming days.

I also want to thank the external panel members who took a day out of their already busy schedules to give us the benefits of their experience and expertise: Bill Greenslade, chair, representing the Arizona Chapter of AIPG; Ken Fergason, with AMEC, representing the Arizona Section of Association of Engineering & Environmental Geologists; Kevin Horstman, consultant and president of the Arizona Geological Society; Alan Dulaney, City of Peoria and president of the Arizona Hydrologic Society; Steve Trussell, executive director of the Arizona Rock Products Association, Eric Mears, Brown & Caldwell; Don Hammer, consultant; Wes Ward, retired USGS; and Dick Ahern, US Forest Service. They did a remarkable job sythesizing a lot of information and invaluable guidance.

We've all been heartened with the community involvement in helping us make some very difficult decisions. In the end, we hope we will have taken the actions that will be in the best interests of our stakeholders, the citizens of Arizona, and the State.

Bridge over Colorado River at Hoover Dam

The bridge over the Colorado River, immediately below Hoover Dam is making great strides. I've received multiple sets of spectacular photos but without anyone sure where they came from, so I can't attribute them.

The bridge will link Arizona and Nevada via Highway 93 and avoid the painfully slow drive across the dam to get across the river. Developers are expecting tens of thousands of new residents in northwest Arizona once the bridge is complete. That is going to increase demand for water and energy in the region.

According to the posts being circulated:

Creeping closer inch by inch 900ft above the Colorado River the two sides of a $250 million bridge at the Hoover Dam is slowly taking shape.

The bridge will carry a new section of US Route 93 past the bottleneck of the old road which can be seen twisting and winding around and across the dam itself.

When complete, it will provide a new link between the states of Nevada and Arizona. In an incredible feat of engineering, the road will be supported on the two massive concrete arches which jut out of the rock face.

The arches are made up of 53 individual sections each 24ft long which have been cast on-site and are being lifted into place using an improvised high-wire crane strung between temporary steel pylons.

The arches will eventually measure more than 1,000ft across. At the moment, the structure looks like a traditional suspension bridge. But once the arches are complete, the suspending cables on each side will be removed.

Extra vertical columns will then be installed on the arches to carry the road. The bridge has become known as the Hoover Dam bypass, although it is officially called the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial bridge, after a former governor of Nevada and an American Football player from Arizona who joined the US Army and was killed in Afghanistan.

Work on the bridge started in 2005 and should finish next year. An estimated 17,000 cars and trucks will cross it every day.

Minor quake in NW Arizona

A moderate 3.9 magnitude earthquake on Friday afternoon was felt by residents of northwest Arizona and the Boulder City area of Nevada (19 miles away).

The event occurred Friday, October 09, 2009 at 03:13:54 PM local time at the epicenter.

Historically, there have not been many earthquakes recorded in the immediate area, although the area to the northwest has been more active.

McNutt's testimony at Senate confirmation hearing for USGS Director

Statement

Of

Marcia K. McNutt

As nominee for the position of

Director of the U.S. Geological Survey

Before the

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

Of the

United States Senate

October 8, 2009

Chairman Bingaman, Senator Murkowski, distinguished members of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, I am honored to come before you as President Obama’s nominee for Director of the US Geological Survey. I am excited about this opportunity to join Secretary Salazar’s team at the Department of the Interior, especially now, when the nation’s need for timely information on natural hazards, environmental and climate change, and water, energy, biological, and other natural resources has never been greater.

My inspiration for dedicating my life to the Earth sciences comes from having lived in some of the most beautiful landscapes that America has to offer: the 10,000 lakes of Minnesota, the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the sandy beaches of La Jolla and Cape Cod, and now John Steinbeck’s Pastures of Heaven above Monterey Bay. I always knew I wanted to be a scientist, but even when I was young I could never picture myself in a lab coat with a test tube.

I majored in Physics at Colorado College, but my favorite college course was Introduction to Geology, taught by Professor John Lewis. Colorado College uses the block plan in which students only take one course at a time for a month. Introduction to Geology is two blocks long. So my first two months at college were spent with Doc Lewis and about 19 other students scrambling around the Front Range with our back packs and sleeping bags trying to piece together the geologic history of the Southern Rockies from first principles. We never cracked a book the entire time. I was drawn to the grandeur of the Earth sciences and awed by the time and space scales upon which Earth processes played out. No lab coat. No test tube. Science outside!

Once I arrived at graduate school at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, I switched fields from Physical Oceanography to Marine Geophysics because plate tectonics was revolutionizing the geosciences. With the vast majority of plate boundaries under the ocean, marine geophysicists would be the ones to put the pieces of the theory together. Entering the field at that time was like becoming a biologist right after Darwin wrote Origin of the Species or becoming a physicist right after Einstein wrote the Special Theory of Relativity. Old papers, textbooks, and theories were suddenly rendered irrelevant, such that there was no large body of prior knowledge to be absorbed. Observations had to be reinterpreted within the context of the new framework. Major marine expeditions were led, and often staffed entirely, by my fellow graduate students and myself, because many of the more senior practitioners in the field were too slow to embrace the new paradigm. It was a heady time filled with the excitement of scientific discovery. Science at sea!

I credit the US Geological Survey for giving me my first “real” job after receiving my PhD. I spent three wonderful years in the Office of Earthquake Studies in Menlo Park, California, calibrating the strength of plates on time scales relevant to the earthquake generation process. Working on the earthquake problem, in California, gave me my first taste of what it was like to be involved in research of interest to the general public, not just my fellow scientists. This was science people use! I also benefitted from this time at the GS in that I can still appreciate the culture of the organization from the viewpoint of someone who has spent time “down in the trenches,” and yet the intervening years away allow me to bring a fresh perspective to the organization.

The majority of my career has been spent at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I served on the faculty in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences for 15 years, and was eventually awarded an endowed chair. I enjoyed being surrounded every day by some of the brightest young minds in the country, engaging them in forefront research problems, and watching them grow intellectually each day. My favorite part about MIT was serving as a freshman advisor and hearing the personal stories of the students each September. Many represented the first generation in their families to attend college. Whether they had come from the barrios of San Antonio or the plains of North Dakota, the one thing they shared was the fact that they had earned their place in the MIT freshman class by their own effort. And back home, an entire community was cheering them on.

My research took me and my students all over the planet: to the islands of French Polynesia, the Tibet Plateau, Iceland, Siberia, and Antarctica. At MIT I learned how to do what really counts, how to find, measure, and nurture excellence, and to become ridiculously efficient at multi-tasking. Equally importantly, I developed a complete intolerance for sloppy science and anything but the highest ethical standards.

My most recent posting for the last 12 years has been as the President and CEO of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, better known as MBARI. MBARI is an oceanographic research institution founded by David Packard and privately funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. With its emphasis on peer relationships between scientists and engineers and encouragement of high-risk research and technology development, MBARI is best described as a “NASA for the oceans,” albeit at a smaller budget scale. This latest position has given me ample experience in leadership, management, and administration, as well as considerable opportunity to familiarize myself with issues and opportunities in environmental chemistry and biology.

In looking back at my time at MBARI, I believe I have left a mark on several aspects of institute operations. First, teamwork. Across science, engineering, marine operations, outreach programs, and administrative areas, everyone functions as a well-oiled team. To a person, everyone understands that the reason we exist is to support the research mission and to make it progress smoothly and flawlessly. Second, our mission. I helped redirect MBARI from a broadly constituted portfolio in basic research to a more targeted set of socially relevant topics such as ocean acidification, eutrophication, methane hydrates, and harmful algal blooms, nearly a decade before they became common buzzwords. Finally, the staff. I am proud of the people I have hired, their work ethic, and their commitment to Packard’s founding vision of how a different kind of institution can truly make a difference.

You may all be wondering why I would consider leaving such a scientific paradise and relocating from my beloved Pastures of Heaven at this time. This nation is facing important decisions concerning future uses of its precious resources: water, energy, and environment. We are increasingly at economic risk from natural hazards. The challenges associated with climate change must be better understood. Submarine areas under US control out to the 200 mile limit are equal to the subaerial land area of this great nation, and yet the seabed resources have yet to be explored and inventoried. In deciding how best to move forward, our leaders, including members of Congress, the President, and the Secretary of the Interior, need sound, unbiased, scientific advice. Science is not the only factor in decision making, but it needs to be one of the factors. The USGS has long-term records and scientific expertise that can be used for making good choices based on solid data, and can look into the geologic record to determine whether recent conditions are likely to be representative of the future. Now, more than ever before, the nation needs the USGS, and I would be proud, if confirmed, to lead this effort.

So, in summary, these are the skills and qualities I would hope to bring to the leadership of the US Geological Survey, if confirmed:

- The capacity to be inspired by the natural world

- A love for science outside

- An appreciation for the culture of the US Geological Survey

- A history of association with some of the finest research institutions in the nation

- The ability to recognize and nurture excellence

- High ethical standards

- An aptitude for leadership

- Experience in team building

- A track record for asking the right scientific questions

Thank you for the opportunity to come before you, and I look forward to this challenge, should you confirm me for this position.

[thanks to Alaska State Geologist Bob Swenson for passing this along]

CO2 well finds impermeable reservoir

The 3,853' deep well drilled near Cholla Power Plant [right] on the Colorado Plateau failed to find enough permeability at total depth to make it a viable reservoir to sequester carbon dioxide (CO2) from power plants in the region. The drilling project web site indicates the well bottomed in Precambrian granites.

The WestCarb consortium, including Arizona Public Service, is planning another exploratory well at a site to be determined, and pending approval of the US Dept. of Energy which funded much of the experiment. WestCarb noted that the well did confirm high salinity water in the target formation and suitable cap rock, both requirements for CO2 sequestration reservoirs.

Poll results - rating AZGS programs

Yesterday our external panel met to review AZGS programs to give us guidance on what programs to put forward for permanent elimination to meet the State's budget shortfall. The 9 representatives of geoscience professional societies, trade groups, and community sectors, met with program managers and section chiefs, toured the facilities, and quizzed us all on our programs and accomplishments.

One set of materials they considered were the results of the online poll AZGS has conducted for the past week and half to solicit the opinions of the people who use our data and services. As of Sunday, 183 participants had completed the poll, with more than half providing additional comments. We will compile all these results and post on the AZGS website, but in the interim, here is a summary graph showing the average ranking of each of the 24 programs we broke out. The rankings go from 1= not important to 5 = very important.

We are taking all these comments and recommendations to prepare our budget reduction plan fo the Governor's Office of Strategic Planning & Budget by Friday. The plans from all state agencies are expected to be made publicly shortly after they are gathered and reviewed. We will be able to talk in more detail about our planned cuts once the Governor's office releases them.

We really appreciate everyone who took the poll, offered comments, and provided ideas. Your assessments are truly guiding how we proceed.

One change we made quickly is to break the Energy and Mineral Resources program into two separate programs. The panel yesterday evaluated them independently.

We'll you posted on developments.

Arizona plunges in business ranking

Arizona fell 18 places, the most of any state, in the Forbes magazine rankings of the best states for business. Arizona was 18th in the 2006 but only 36th in the results put out last week. According to the article, "A common theme with our top-ranked states is an expanding, educated workforce."

Forbes measures 6 areas - costs, labor supply, regulatory environment, current economic climate, growth prospects, and quality of life. They use 33 factors to determine the rankings in the 6 areas.

Arizona did best in Economic Climate (7th) and worst in Quality of Life (47th). The Quality of Life rank comes from an "index of schools, health, crime, cost of living, and poverty rates."

The other factors are:

Business costs rank = 31
Labor rank = 14
Regulatory environment rank = 45
Growth prospects rank = 38

Our second strength, the labor rank, is based on educational attainment, net migration, and projected population growth. A worsening employment and economic forecast for Arizona was highlighted as the root of our big drop.

Senate confirmation hearing for Marcia McNutt to head USGS

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, chaired by Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, will hold a full Committee hearing to consider the nominations of Marcia K. McNutt [right. Credit MBARI], to be Director of the United States Geological Survey, and Arun Majumdar, to be Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, Department of Energy, this coming Thursday, October 9, at 10:00 a.m. in Room SD-366 Dirksen.

Marcia would be the first woman to be confirmed as director of the USGS. So far, there are no reports of Senators opposing or holding back her nomination to put pressure on the Administration to act on other issues, as has happened with some other nominations.

Series completed on a 'brief' history of the Colorado Plateua

Geoblogger "Geotripper" (aka Garry Hayes, right. Credit, Geotripper blog) has compiled the links to his extensive set of posts that cover a "Brief" History of the Colorado Plateau. As Garry noted, it appears to be the equivalent of writing an entire book on the topic:

"So there you go: 71 posts that tell a story encompassing 2 billion years as it is exposed on a very special part of the earth's surface: the Colorado Plateau, covering parts of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico."

It's an amazing collection. I'm looking forward to reading those that I missed along the way. Great job Garry!