GSA Update #2
The last few day shave been absolutely crammed for me. Sunday was taken up by the short course I attended, but yesterday was the first day I had time to attend talks, and I’ve forgotten how easy it is...
View ArticleGSA Update #3
I always head to GSA with good intentions (i.e., actually writing about things the day they happen), but I usually end up joining the ranks of those catching up with their writing instead. (There’s...
View ArticleEssential reading for volcanologists
One of the things I’ve found out since starting serious research in volcanology is that a lot – and I mean a lot – of the best texts are either out of print, expensive, or both. Fortunately there are...
View ArticleAccretionary Wedge #24: My geologic hero
In considering who I would write about as my geologic hero, I of course had to consider my undergraduate advisor, who I’ve written about before. (You all know him from this blog, if you’ve been keeping...
View ArticleReflecting on risk
USGS photo of the May 18, 1980 eruption. I don’t have any stories to share with you about the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption, since I wasn’t around then – and the other geobloggers are doing a fine job...
View ArticleLos Alamos & environs
While I was visiting Los Alamos recently, I made sure I got out of the lab to do a little hiking. Here are the photographic results: This hike was on the Quemazon trail, which starts in the western...
View ArticleBandelier National Monument
One of the neat things about Los Alamos is that Bandelier National Monument is only a few minutes away. The volcanic tuff at Bandelier erupted from the Valles caldera about 1.25 million years ago, but...
View ArticleGeologic models
The discussion that came up in my fluid dynamics course today was about the different kinds of models we use in geology, and how we make sure they're useful. The main categories that we discussed were...
View ArticleBuffalo gets some (experimental) volcanic action
Volcanic eruptions are both relatively unpredictable and very dangerous, and it's difficult to collect direct observations of volcanic phenomena. Because of this, volcanologists are always looking for...
View Article“How to Build a Volcano”: Followup from Dr. Ed Llewellin
I was lucky enough to get an email from Dr. Ed Llewellin, one of the volcanologists featured in National Geographic’s “How to Build a Volcano”, with commentary on my review of the show. He’s given me...
View ArticleAGU 2011: Day 2
Tuesday was the first chance I had to attend a press conference (one of the perks of being an AGU blogger!) I was especially excited about one of the first of the morning, which was by Hawaii...
View ArticleAGU 2011: Day 3
Well, as usual, the hectic pace of AGU caught up with me (and my laptop started having fits), so I'm behind on my meeting posts. So, we'll go back to Wednesday's activities:
View ArticleThe volcanology library: choosing the classics
If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll have seen the post I did on essential reading for volcanologists last year. Recently, a fellow grad student and I were having a conversation about...
View ArticleMagma, P.I. (Or, I Go On Dr. Kiki’s Science Hour And Try To Sound Good)
So if anyone caught my tweet late last Thursday, you'll know that I was interviewed on Dr. Kiki's Science Hour, an internet video show on TWiT TV. Dr. Kiki (otherwise known as Dr. Kirsten Sanford)...
View ArticleGeologist’s bookshelf: Older offerings
I'm a bit of a pack rat when it comes to books, especially geological ones. I've got quite a few that I've collected but never really had time to read. (When you read journal articles at work all day,...
View ArticleVolcanology Etymology
In my liberal-arts-undergraduate life, I ended up taking a few linguistics classes to fulfill the requirements for my anthropology minor. I actually had a lot of fun, especially when we started talking...
View ArticleMini Maars: A followup
In August, I wrote about some experiments on maar formation being conducted at UB's facility for experimental volcanology (to which I mainly contributed by digging holes). Well, there were some camera...
View ArticleWater in really big groups of hot rocks: When you can’t say “hydrothermal...
By now you've hopefully seen the geo-meme that Anne Jefferson over at Highly Allocthonous started using the Up-Goer-Five text editor, which forces you to write a description of something using only the...
View ArticleBenchmarking Time: Mount Terrill, Fish Lake Plateau, Utah
The next benchmark in my collection is another from Fish Lake in Utah. This is one of my favorite places to do field work, despite the fact that quite a bit of it is vertical and I was cursed with a...
View ArticleSo you want to be a volcanologist?
In addition to my blogging and on-again-off-again relationship with Twitter, I like to take my geologizing to places outside the office. Just yesterday, I had the opportunity to talk with a girls' STEM...
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