It is very interesting to see where the earthquake hotspots are.  Can you guess before seeing the video? (Note, it starts a bit slowly.)  A running calendar appears in the lower right side of the video.

This information and video are taken from “Arizona Geology” the blog of Arizona State Geologist Lee Allison.  See original post here.

See also:

Precariously Balanced Rocks and earthquakes

Earthquake hazard near Flagstaff assessed, Video

Where the Next Big American Earthquake and Tsunami Might Occur

Arizona Geologic History: Chapter 1, Precambrian Time When Arizona was at the South Pole

Arizona Geological History: Chapter 2, Cambrian and Ordovician Time

Arizona Geological History: Chapter 3: Devonian to Permian Time

Arizona Geological History Chapter 4: Triassic Period

Arizona Geological History Chapter 5: Jurassic Time

Arizona Geological History 6, The Cretaceous Period

Arizona Geological History 7: The Cenozoic Era

The photo above was taken at the Texas Canyon rest stop on I-10 between Benson and Willcox, Arizona.  It shows the weathering pattern and pedestal rocks in the Texas Canyon quartz monzonite (a granite-like rock).  The development of this geomorphology begins underground with chemical and physical weathering along joints in the rock and removal of material to make the joints wider.  Erosion eventually exhumes the rocks.  The photo below from the Chiricahua Mountains shows the results of this process  in somewhat softer volcanic rocks.

Hoodoos, such as these in the Chiricahua Mountains contain a hard capstone over softer material.  The capstone prevents complete erosion of the underlying material.

Perhaps the most spectacular rock spires in Arizona are those in Monument Valley, seen in the photo below on a misty day.  Here, hard sandstone occurs between softer siltstone and shale layers.  The spires are remnants of differential erosion by wind and water.

The Arizona State University study goes into great detail on methodology and technology about proposed analysis of precarious rocks for usefulness is accessing the seismic stability of a region.  One wonders, however, if these rock formations are really as precarious as they appear because the hoodoos and balanced rocks in Texas Canyon and in the Chiricahua Mountains survived the 1887 Sonoran earthquake.

According to the Arizona Geological Survey (Fieldnotes, summer 1987): “On May 3, 1887 Arizona and the Southwest experienced a major earthquake that had an estimated magnitude of 7.2 on the Richter scale.  The epicenter was in Sonora, Mexico approximately 40 miles south of Douglas, Arizona.  The earthquake caused several dozen deaths, damaged buildings as far away as Phoenix, generated rock falls and fires triggered by rock falls in the mountains, and caused panic among the population.”

Reference:

Haddad, D.E., and Arrowsmith, J.R., 2011, Geologic and geomorphic characterization of precariously balanced rocks, Arizona Geological Survey Contributed Report CR-11-B.

See also:

Earthquake hazard near Flagstaff assessed, Video

Where the Next Big American Earthquake and Tsunami Might Occur

Spanish Scientists Find Technique to Predict Earthquakes Claiming 80% Accuracy

The Measure of an Earthquake

Local atmospheric changes may foretell large earthquakes

So let’s see if the boogeyman is as dangerous as alleged.  First some background.  Tritium is a form of hydrogen.  Normal hydrogen consists of a proton and an electron.  Tritium has two neutrons in addition.  Tritium can replace one of the hydrogen atoms in water (H₂O) to produce tritiated water (HTO).  Tritium is unstable and decays with release of a very weak beta particle and has half-life of 12.3 years.  Beta particles are rapidly neutralized in the air and cannot penetrate your skin.  However, they can cause soft tissue damage if inhaled or ingested.

Tritium is produced naturally in the upper atmosphere as a result of bombardment by cosmic rays and falls to earth in rain and enters the natural hydrological cycle.  It is also produced as a byproduct of nuclear power generation and some has leaked into the environment.  We all ingest small amounts of tritium when we drink water.  It is rapidly distributed throughout the body in about two hours (hence is not concentrated) and is eliminated in about nine days according the Idaho State University Radiation Information Network.  The Idaho folks say “While not impossible, a large enough dose to cause any significant harm to a person is unlikely.”

The Argonne National Laboratory estimates the lifetime cancer mortality risk from tritium is about 4 in 100 trillion (Link).

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission keeps track of tritium releases from nuclear reactors.  They say, “these releases either do not leave the power plant property or involve such low levels of tritium that they do not pose a threat to public health and safety.” (Link)

The NRC says also:

•The tritium dose from nuclear power plants is much lower than the exposures attributable to natural background radiation and medical administrations.

•Humans receive approximately 50% of their annual radiation dose from natural background radiation, 48% from medical procedures (e.g., x-rays), and 2% from consumer products. Doses from tritium and nuclear power plant effluents are a negligible contribution to the background radiation to which people are normally exposed, and they account for less than 0.1% of the total background dose.  As an example, assume that a residential drinking water well sample contains tritium at the level of 1,600 picocuries per liter (a comparable tritium level was identified in a drinking water well near the Braidwood Station nuclear facility). The radiation dose from drinking water at this level for a full year (using EPA assumptions) is 0.3 millirem (mrem), which is at least two thousand to five thousand times lower than the dose from a medical procedure involving a full-body computed tomography (CT) scan (e.g., 500 to 1,500 mrem from a CT scan); one thousand times lower than the approximate 300 mrem dose from natural background radiation; fifty times lower than the dose from natural radioactivity (potassium) in your body (e.g., 15 mrem from potassium); and twelve times lower than the dose from a round-trip cross-country airplane flight (e.g., 4 mrem from Washington, DC to Los Angeles and back)”

If Physicians for Social Responsibility were really socially responsible, they would not trot out these fake scares in pursuance of a political goal.  But perhaps Mencken was right when he wrote, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Episode 1: Amazing Earth

This episode, narrated by Patrick Stewart, is a good introduction to earth history.  It discusses plate tectonics, earthquakes, and the history of life.  It has great cinematography and interesting animations.  It suffers from a somewhat melodramatic narration script.  The background music makes parts of the narration hard to hear.  The episode features great photos of erupting volcanos and buildings shaking during an earthquake.

Episode 2: What Lies Below

This episode follows three female scientists as they explore caves in Iceland.  Once again the cinematography is great.  They explore lava tubes and ice caves and have quite an adventure getting to the last cave.

Episode 3: Wild Weather Ahead

This episode is speculative fiction which dramatizes climate scenarios produced by the Earth Simulator, a super computer in Yokohama, Japan. Al Gore would like this episode. The scenarios are interspersed with scenes from the aftermath of hurricane Katrina to add to the drama. This episode qualifies as a B-grade science fiction movie. It demonstrates that even with super computers its junk in, junk out.

Episode 4: Earth, the Sequel

This episode is essentially an infomercial for the alternative energy industry.  The narrator says in the video that government action is necessary to accelerate development of alternative energy schemes (probably because they could not compete in the free market), and that a cap & trade system for the fossil fuel industry is necessary.  Although this DVD has a 2012 date, this infomercial is made partially obsolete by events such as the failure of Solyndra and other solar companies.   The rosy picture painted in the story has been tarnished by reality.

My overall opinion is that the first two episodes are worth watching; the second two episodes are propaganda and not worth your time.  You have to decide if the DVD is worth your money.

The DVD is available from the Discovery Store here for $14.98 or on Amazon here for $13.49.

Bob cats are common in Arizona and occur in many different habitats.  They especially like the outskirts of urban areas because that’s where the prey is concentrated.  Adult bob cats weigh 15 to 35 pounds, males larger than females, and stand 18 to 24 inches tall (long legs make them look taller), and are 24 to 48 inches long.  They can jump as high as 12 feet.

Bob cats generally hunt at dawn and dusk.  During the day they may lounge in the shade of a bush in your backyard.  Normal prey includes rabbits, rodents, and birds.  They have been known to take down a deer.  They prey upon small domestic pets, poultry, and other small livestock.  They also prey upon snakes, including rattlesnakes.

Bob cats usually mate from February through March and kittens are born in April through June.  The kittens stay with the mother for about a year.  Normal life span is 10 to 15 years. Bob cats are generally solitary, but you may see a mating pair, or a mother and her kittens.

Bob cats generally do not attack humans, but they can inflict serious injury with their fangs and claws.  You should not feed wild bob cats because that makes them too comfortable around humans.  If you need to discourage a bob cat, make loud noises or use a garden hose to spray them with water.  If it happens that a female has kittens in the area, then leave them alone for a few weeks until the kittens are old enough to leave with their mother.

Here is a video produced by Arizona Game & Fish department:

Do you have a bob cat story?

See also:

Do not mess with Javelinas

Mountain Lions

Urban Coyotes prowl Tucson neighborhoods

What Color is a Black Bear?

Three Desert Squirrels

Desert Museum has a new Black Bear

Speckled Rattlesnakes

In 1998, a strong El Nino seems to have precipitated a shift of about 0.5 C between two oscillating but fairly level global temperature regimes.  In contrast, atmospheric carbon dioxide content has been steadily rising according to measurements taken at the Mauna Loa observatory (see graph below).  There does not seem to be any correlation between the two data sets, indicating that carbon dioxide emissions have had no major influence on temperature.

See also:

Carbon Dioxide and the Greenhouse Effect

Humans and the Carbon Cycle

If you go to the site, you find a gallery of photo pairs.  Click on one to see it larger.  Another click will make it even larger.  With practice, you can see the 3D effect even without a stereo viewer.  Try it with the medium size (one click from the gallery) photo pair. Here’s how. Instead of focusing on the computer screen, defocus your eyes and look behind the screen or cross your eyes.  Move your head around a bit and the photos will coalesce into a 3D image.  I have a practice photo pair below.  If that doesn’t work for you, go back to Allison’s blog and click on the “stereogranimator.”

According the Arizona Game & Fish Department, the population density of coyotes in the urban area is twice that in the wild.  Coyotes favor residential areas, parks, and golf courses and use natural areas and washes for dispersal.  Coyotes can run at almost 40 mph and can jump a 6-foot wall.

 AZG&F says: “Coyotes are curious, clever, and adaptable. They quickly learn to take advantage of any newly discovered food source, and are often attracted to yards with abundant fruit and wildlife to eat. Coyotes will eat pet food and knock over unsecured garbage cans, or may walk along the tops of walls around homes in search of unattended dogs and cats to eat. Coyotes may consider large or loud dogs to be a threat to their territory and become aggressive toward those dogs. Coyotes have lured free-roaming dogs away from their owners to attack, and bold coyotes may attack small dogs on retractable leashes.”  Game & Fish has a short brochure about how to deal with urban coyotes here.

The coyote (Canis latrans) is a very adaptable omnivore that occurs in 49 of the 50 states. (Guess which state they don’t inhabit.)  A coyote resembles a medium-sized dog with a long, bushy black-tipped tail, big ears, and a pointy face. The fur color varies from grayish to light brown, with a buff or white underbelly. You’ll never see a fat coyote in the wild. Mark Twain wrote: “The coyote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry.” Wiry and with long, slender legs and small feet, a desert coyote usually weighs only 15 to 25 pounds. The tracks are much smaller than those of a domestic dog of the same size.  Coyotes will eat anything from road-killed carrion to cactus fruit, mesquite beans, seeds, plants, and meat. They hunt small animals such as rodents, rabbits, birds, snakes, insects — especially grasshoppers and crickets — and any injured animal they can subdue according to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum staff.

Coyotes generally hunt singly or in pairs around a core area that contains their den.  During the breeding season, coyotes will scent-mark their territory with urine and by scraping the ground to leave a visual mark.  They will defend their territory during breeding season, February to March, with pups born in April and May.

 Coyotes, which some call “sound dogs,” typically howl at dusk as they begin their hunt.  They also howl to communicate with neighbors and family members.  Within neighborhoods, coyotes howling usually sets off the neighborhood dogs.

See also:

Creatures of the Night: The Bats

Creatures of the Night: Kangaroo Rat

Creatures of the Night: Grasshopper Mouse

Desert Museum has a new Black Bear

Do not mess with Javelinas

Mountain Lions

New Prairie Dogs at Desert Museum

New Coatis at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Pack Rats are Desert Archaeologists

The Urban Coyote and a Creation Story

Three Desert Squirrels

What Color is a Black Bear?

Jaguar sighted near Tucson

The data come from the U.S. Geological Survey.  See an overview page here, and an interactive map page here.

The maps show that the recharge project in Avra Valley and retirement of central city wells have made quite a difference.

Note that USGS provides this disclaimer: “All information on this website should be considered provisional and subject to revision. No judgment on the presence or availability of ground water should be made on the sole basis of information on this website. Neither the USGS nor ADWR will be held responsible for any loss or damages due to the use of this information.”  Comforting, isn’t it.

According to the Star story: “the city this year will put into the ground 140,000 acre feet of CAP water and take out 80,000. This has raised the water table 9 feet a year at the city facility in the central Avra Valley facility for the past decade and 140 feet in the three years that a second city recharge facility and well field has existed in the southern Avra valley.”

Back in 2009 I posted an assessment of Water Supply and Demand in the Tucson area based on information from  the Water Resources Research Center at the University of Arizona (WRRC). I summarize from that post here:

The Demand:

In 1999, total usage in the Tucson Active Management Area was 323,000 AF according to WRRC.  Municipal usage was 154,000 AF which included 17,000 AF used by golf courses (35% was effluent from the sewer plants), and 20,000 AF used by “turf” facilities such as parks, schools, cemeteries (33% was effluent).  Agriculture used 132,000 AF (of which 20,000 AF came from imported CAP water).  Mines used 39,207 AF, sand and gravel operations used 5,167 AF and “other” industrial use totaled 4,026 AF.  Sewer treatment plants produced 70,000 AF per year and are projected to produce 115,000 AF by 2025.  Currently 84% of effluent discharge is released into the Santa Cruz river channel where it infiltrates into a shallow aquifer.  (Alert readers might notice that these official figures from 1999 add up to more than 323,000 AF, so some categories must have been counted twice.)

By 2003, total usage increased to about 350,525 AF.  This is projected to rise to 396,000 AF by 2025 assuming increased municipal and industrial demand, and decreased agricultural use.  Natural recharge provides only about 60,000 AF per year.  In 2003, municipal usage totaled 185,199 AF.  Municipal use includes all domestic and small business consumption.  Industries used 47,430 AF; agriculture used 102,959 AF; Indians used 14,196; all others used 3,705 according to WRRC.

This total usage is about 169 gallons per day per capita, with residential use pegged at 110 gallons per day per capita, a figure that has remained constant for many years.  In contrast, the Phoenix area uses 238 gallons per day per capita, but gets 73% of its water from “renewable” resources such as rivers, CAP, and effluent.

The Supply:

In 2003, groundwater supplied 256,233 AF, CAP supplied 64,554 AF, use of effluent supplied 11,360 AF.  The rest was due to incidental and natural recharge.

Tucson gets most of its water by mining groundwater stored in aquifers down to 1200 feet deep in the Tucson and Avra Valley basins.  This is mainly fossil water deposited during the wet Pleistocene glacial periods.  However, there is even more water in deeper aquifers, but as depth increases, water quality decreases, and water becomes briny with salts and toxic metals.

The 1999 WRRC report states that, “In 1940, when Tucson began to increase its groundwater pumping, these aquifers held approximately 70 million AF of groundwater at depths less than 1,200 feet below the surface.” This resource is equivalent to all the water in Lake Mead and Lake Powell combined.  Since 1940, 10% of this groundwater has been withdrawn.  Simple arithmetic implies at that rate, the remaining groundwater supply shallower than 1200 feet could last about 150- to 200 years.  This time will be extended by increasing use of CAP water and effluent.

See my post linked above for more information.

Reference:

Sejrup, H.P., Haflidason, H. and Andrews, J.T. 2011. A Holocene North Atlantic SST record and regional climate variability. Quaternary Science Reviews 30: 3181-3195.   Abstract here.  Their graph:

A commenter on the previous post dismissed the research saying it was for only one region and did not necessarily represent global temperature history.

Well, here is more research showing that the results found in Norway were similar to results found globally:

Reference:

Bertler, N.A.N., Mayewski, P.A. and Carter, L. 2011. Cold conditions in Antarctica during the Little Ice Age — Implications for abrupt climate change mechanisms. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 308: 41-51.

From ice cores, the researchers were able to identify the temperature differences of the Medieval Warm Period (AD 1140 to 1287), the Little Ice Age (AD 1288 to 1807), and the Modern Era (AD 1808 to 2000). They found “the McMurdo Dry Valleys were 0.35°C warmer during the MWP than now, accompanied by warmer conditions in the Ross Sea.”

Reference:

Liu Y, Cai Q F, Song H M, et al., 2011, Amplitudes, rates, periodicities and causes of temperature variations in the past 2485 years and future trends over the central-eastern Tibetan Plateau. Chinese Sci Bull, 56: 2986 2994, doi: 10.1007/s11434-011-4713-7.

These researchers show that the Medieval Warm period was at least as warm as the current period.  See my post on the paper here.

Reference:

Hu, F.S., Ito, E., Brown, T.A., Curry, B.B. and Engstrom, D.R.  2001.  Pronounced climatic variations in Alaska during the last two millennia.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 98: 10,552-10,556.

Using sediment cores from Farewell Lake in the northwestern foothills of the Alaska Range, the researchers found that surface water temperatures during the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period were the same as those now.

Reference:

Hong, B., Liu, C.-Q., Lin, Q.-H., Yasuyuki, S., Leng, X.-T., Wang, Y., Zhu, Y.-X. and Hong, Y.-T. 2009. Temperature evolution from the ä18O record of Hani peat, Northeast China, in the last 14000 years. Science in China Series D: Earth Sciences 52: 952-964.

Using cores extracted from peat deposits in Northeast China, researchers used oxygen-18 analysis and concluded that the Medieval Warm Period in China peaked about 900 AD and was 1 C warmer than the current warm period.  They also found that “sudden cooling events, such as the Older Dryas, Inter-Allerod, Younger Dryas, and nine ice-rafted debris events of the North Atlantic are almost entirely reiterated in the temperature signals of Hani peat cellulose ä18O.”

Reference:

Millar, C.I., King, J.C., Westfall, R.D., Alden, H.A. and Delany, D.L. 2006. Late Holocene forest dynamics, volcanism, and climate change at Whitewing Mountain and San Joaquin Ridge, Mono County, Sierra Nevada, CA, USA. Quaternary Research 66: 273-287.

Using temperature reconstruction from tree rings, the researchers concluded that the Medieval Warm Period in Nevada was “significantly warmer” (+3.2°C) than present.

Reference:

Kaniewski, D., Van Campo, E., Paulissen, E., Weiss, H., Bakker, J., Rossignol, I. and Van Lerberghe, K. 2011. The medieval climate anomaly and the little Ice Age in coastal Syria inferred from pollen-derived palaeoclimatic patterns. Global and Planetary Change 78: 178-187.

Analyzing pollen contained in sediment cores from alluvial fans, the researchers found evidence that suggests “three peaks centered on ca. 1115, 1130 and 1170 cal yr AD suggest similar or warmer temperatures compared to AD 2000.”

Reference:

Neukom, R., Luterbacher, J., Villalba, R., Kuttel, M., Frank, D., Jones, P.D., Grosjean, M., Wanner, H., Aravena, J.-C., Black, D.E., Christie, D.A., D’Arrigo, R., Lara, A., Morales, M., Soliz-Gamboa, C., Srur, A., Urritia, R. and von Gunten, L. 2011. Multiproxy summer and winter surface air temperature field reconstructions for southern South America covering the past centuries. Climate Dynamics 37: 35-51.

Using multiple temperature proxies, the researchers concluded the warmest decade of this Medieval Warm Period in Southern South America was AD 1079-1088, and that was about 0.17°C warmer than the peak warmth of the current warm period.

Reference:

Holmgren, K., Tyson, P.D., Moberg, A. and Svanered, O.  2001.  A preliminary 3000-year regional temperature reconstruction for South Africa.  South African Journal of Science 97: 49-51.

These researchers deduced temperature variations from stalagmites in caves.  They estimate that the Little Ice Age between AD 1500 and 1800, was about 1°C colder than they are presently.  During the Medieval Warm Period at around AD 900 temperatures reached 2.5°C higher than at present.  Another exceptionally warm period was noted in the late fifteenth century, when temperatures rose more than 3°C above the current level.

The foregoing gives just a few examples showing that climate is cyclical and current temperatures are not unusual.  There is still no credible evidence that I am aware of that supports the contention that our carbon dioxide emissions are the major cause of recent warming.  For another overview see here.

In the current warm period, temperatures are increasingly artifacts of poor station siting that creates a warming bias (see Surfacestations.org) In a study of U.S. stations it was found that “9 of every 10 stations are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited.”  Part of the problem is that many stations are in or near growing cities and suffer from the Urban Heat Island effect, i.e., during the day, the sun heats concrete and asphalt which then radiate heat at night making temperatures in the cities (and at the stations) warmer than rural areas.  And, there is also the problem of data manipulation by government agencies with an agenda.

For some additional perspective, the graph below shows global temperature as measured from satellites, beginning in 1979.  Although atmospheric carbon dioxide has been increasing, there does not seem to be a corresponding temperature response.  In the graph, temperatures before the strong El Nino event in 1998 show no trend.  Temperatures after 1998 also show no trend.  The difference is temperature levels before and after is attributed to shifts in global atmospheric cycles such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and El Nino.