Mars Arsia Mons volcano: Previously wet and habitable

Arsia Mons, the third-largest volcano on Mars may have been home to a habitable environment in Mars's relatively recent past. 

The rippled terrain in the foreground shows where a glacier once clung to the foothills of the mountain. 

Brown University researchers show that eruptions occurred under that ice sheet, which would have created lakes of liquid water. Where there was water, there's the possibility of past life. 

(Colours indicate elevation.) 


Credit: NASA /Goddard Space Flight Center /Arizona State University /Brown University

Heat from a volcano erupting beneath an immense glacier would have created large lakes of liquid water on Mars in the relatively recent past, and where there's water, there is also the possibility of life.

A recent paper by Brown University researchers calculates how much water may have been present near the Arsia Mons volcano and how long it may have remained.

The slopes of a giant Martian volcano, once covered in glacial ice, may have been home to one of the most recent habitable environments yet found on the Red Planet, according to new research led by Brown University geologists.

Nearly twice as tall as Mount Everest, Arsia Mons is the third tallest volcano on Mars and one of the largest mountains in the solar system.

This new analysis of the landforms surrounding Arsia Mons shows that eruptions along the volcano's northwest flank happened at the same time that a glacier covered the region around 210 million years ago.

The heat from those eruptions would have melted massive amounts of ice to form englacial lakes, bodies of water that form within glaciers like liquid bubbles in a half-frozen ice cube.

The ice-covered lakes of Arsia Mons would have held hundreds of cubic kilometers of meltwater, according to calculations by Kat Scanlon, a graduate student at Brown who led the work, and where there's water, there's the possibility of a habitable environment.

Kat Scanlon

"This is interesting because it's a way to get a lot of liquid water very recently on Mars," Scanlon said.

While 210 million years ago might not sound terribly recent, the Arsia Mons site is much younger than the habitable environments turned up by Curiosity and other Mars rovers.


Those sites are all likely older than 2.5 billion years. The fact that the Arsia Mons site is relatively young makes it an interesting target for possible future exploration.

"If signs of past life are ever found at those older sites, then Arsia Mons would be the next place I would want to go," Scanlon said.

A paper describing Scanlon's work is published in the journal Icarus.

Scientists have speculated since the 1970s that the northwest flank of Arsia Mons may once have been covered by glacial ice.

Jim Head

That view got a big boost in 2003 when Brown geologist Jim Head and David Marchant at Boston University, showed that terrain around Arsia Mons looks strikingly similar to landforms left by receding glaciers in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica.

Parallel ridges toward the bottom of the mountain appear to be drop moraines, piles of rubble deposited at the edges of a receding glacier.

An assemblage of small hills in the region also appears to be debris left behind by slowly flowing glacial ice.

The glacier idea got another boost with recently developed climate models for Mars that take into account changes in the planet's axis tilt.

The models suggested that during periods of increased tilt, ice now found at the poles would have migrated toward the equator.

That would make Mars's giant mid-latitude mountains; Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons and Arsia Mons, prime locations for glaciation around 210 million years ago.

More information: Paper: www.sciencedirect.com

Earth Observation: Grand Canyon Geology Lessons on View

The Grand Canyon in northern Arizona is a favorite for astronauts shooting photos from the International Space Station, as well as one of the best-known tourist attractions in the world. 

The steep walls of the Colorado River canyon and its many side canyons make an intricate landscape that contrasts with the dark green, forested plateau to the north and south.

The Colorado River has done all the erosional work of carving away cubic kilometers of rock in a geologically short period of time.

Visible as a darker line snaking along the bottom of the canyon, the river lies at an altitude of 715 meters (2,345 feet), thousands of meters below the North and South Rims.

Temperatures are furnace-like on the river banks in the summer, but Grand Canyon Village, the classic outlook point for visitors, enjoys a milder climate at an altitude of 2,100 meters (6,890 feet).

The Grand Canyon has become a geologic icon—a place where you can almost sense the invisible tectonic forces within the Earth.

The North and South Rims are part of the Kaibab Plateau, a gentle tectonic swell in the landscape. The uplift of the plateau had two pronounced effects on the landscape that show up in this image.

First, in drier parts of the world, forests usually indicate higher places; higher altitudes are cooler and wetter, conditions that allow trees to grow.

The other geologic lesson on view is the canyon itself. Geologists now know that a river can cut a canyon only if the Earth surface rises vertically.

If such uplift is not rapid, a river can maintain its course by eroding huge quantities of rock and forming a canyon.

Image Credit: NASA

RTZ Copper Mine landslide triggered quakes

The April 10, 2013, landslide at Rio Tinto-Kennecott Utah Copper's Bingham Canyon mine contains enough debris to bury New York City's Central Park 66 feet deep, according to a new University of Utah study. 

The slide happened in the form of two rock avalanches 95 minutes apart. 

The first rock avalanche included grayer bedrock material seen around the margins of the lower half of the slide. 

The second rock avalanche is orange in color, both from bedrock and from waste rock from mining. 

The new study found the landslide triggered 16 small quakes. Such triggering has not been noted previously. 

The slide likely was the largest nonvolcanic landslide in North America's modern history. 

Credit: Kennecott Utah Copper.

Last year's gigantic landslide at a Utah copper mine probably was the biggest nonvolcanic slide in North America's modern history, and included two rock avalanches that happened 90 minutes apart and surprisingly triggered 16 small earthquakes, University of Utah scientists discovered.

The landslide – which moved at an average of almost 70 mph and reached estimated speeds of at least 100 mph – left a deposit so large it "would cover New York's Central Park with about 20 meters (66 feet) of debris," the researchers report in the January 2014 cover study in the Geological Society of America magazine GSA Today.

While earthquakes regularly trigger landslides, the gigantic landslide the night of April 10, 2013, is the first known to have triggered quakes.

The slide occurred in the form of two huge rock avalanches at 9:30 p.m. and 11:05 p.m. MDT at Rio Tinto-Kennecott Utah Copper's open-pit Bingham Canyon Mine, 20 miles southwest of downtown Salt Lake City. Each rock avalanche lasted about 90 seconds.

While the slides were not quakes, they were measured by seismic scales as having magnitudes up to 5.1 and 4.9, respectively. The subsequent real quakes were smaller.

Kennecott officials closely monitor movements in the 107-year-old mine – which produces 25 percent of the copper used in the United States – and they recognized signs of increasing instability in the months before the slide, closing and removing a visitor center on the south edge of the 2.8-mile-wide, 3,182-foot-deep open pit, which the company claims is the world's largest man made excavation.

Landslides – including those at open-pit mines but excluding quake-triggered slides – killed more than 32,000 people during 2004-2011, the researchers say.

Fortunate;y, no one was hurt or died in the Bingham Canyon slide. The slide damaged or destroyed 14 haul trucks and three shovels and closed the mine's main access ramp until November.

Kris Pankow

"This is really a geotechnical monitoring success story," says the new study's first author, Kris Pankow, associate director of the University of Utah Seismograph Stations and a research associate professor of geology and geophysics.

"No one was killed, and yet now we have this rich dataset to learn more about landslides."

There have been much bigger human-caused landslides on other continents, and much bigger prehistoric slides in North America, including one about five times larger than Bingham Canyon some 8,000 years ago at the mouth of Utah's Zion Canyon.

More Information: Massive landslide at Utah copper mine generates wealth of geophysical data - GSA Today

New Zealand's Southern Alps glaciers reducing rapidly

Hochstetter Icefall feeding the retreating Tasman Glacier in the Southern Alps of New Zealand's Southern Island.

Credit: Dr. Huw Horgan

Historic records show Franz Josef Glacier retreated three kilometres in the last century and mathematical modeling indicates it is likely to retreat even more this century.

Other glaciers in the region, including Fox Glacier, are declining at similar rates as a result of climatic change says Dr Brian Anderson, a senior research fellow at the Antarctic Research Centre, who is supported by a Marsden Fast Start research grant.

Dr Anderson says mathematical modelling helps him, and other researchers in the team, understand how glaciers have evolved since the last ice age.

It also helps them analyse what is occurring now and predict how many glaciers in the Southern Alps will fare in the future.

Brian Anderson

"It's important to see the long term picture to really understand what's going on. That's because many of our glaciers—Fox and Franz Josef particularly—change so quickly and, apparently, so erratically.

"In the 12 years we've been carrying out this study, we've seen them rapidly retreat and then rapidly advance."

"It's not until we look back over the past century that we see an overall pattern of retreat emerging," says Dr Anderson.

"Looking ahead, we are likely to see warmer and wetter weather, which means Franz Josef and Fox glaciers will retreat a lot—our best estimate is that they will be seven or eight kilometres shorter than present by 2100."

The research findings are being collated and published as part of the Antarctic Research Centre's glacier monitoring project which also involves Dr Ruzica Dadic, Dr Huw Horgan and Associate Professor Andrew Mackintosh.

Together, the researchers are observing and measuring three glaciers—the well-known Franz Josef and Tasman glaciers and the lesser-known Brewster Glacier.

Nicolas Cullen

Other collaborators on the Brewster Glacier project are Dr Nicolas Cullen at the University of Otago and Dr Andrew Lorrey at NIWA.

The data gathered is contributing to the University of Zurich's World Glacier Monitoring Service.

Dr Anderson says: "Already we are seeing issues at Franz Josef Glacier, where walking access has not been possible for more than a year, and tourists are now being flown onto the ice."

"These are the kinds of things being predicted to happen around the world as glaciers decline and temperatures continue to warm," he says.

Earlier this year, Dr Anderson says a 70-metre chunk of ice broke off the terminal face of Tasman glacier, releasing an estimated seven million cubic metres of ice into Tasman Lake.

"Tasman is undergoing rapid decline right now, with large chunks breaking off and falling into Tasman Lake.

We are using time-lapse photography to capture these 'calving' events as they happen and gather valuable information on ice loss and glacier behaviour at the same time."

ESA Mars Express MARSIS: Penetrating Radar views Mars Geology

A radar view of the southern highlands of Mars, captured by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS) instrument on ESA’s Mars Express. 

The radar track covers 5580 km and features the Hellas Basin at the far right, and the south polar ice cap with its associated layered deposits just left of centre. 

The gap to the left of the south pole is an artificial effect due to a distortion in the measurements; it does not correspond to any geological feature. 

Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL/ASI/Univ. Rome

There is much more to Mars than meets the eye. By using the MARSIS radar instrument on Mars Express, we can see several kilometres below the surface to see what lies beneath.

The radar creates subsurface images of Mars by beaming low-frequency radio waves towards the planet, which are reflected from any surface they encounter.

While most are reflected by the planet's surface, some travel deeper and bounce off interfaces between layers of different material, such as between rock, water or ice.

The strength and timing of the radar echoes that arrive back at Mars Express are a gauge of the depths of different types of underground interfaces.

This radar image is a 5580 km-long slice through the southern highlands of Mars created shortly after the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding instrument (MARSIS) became operational in 2005.

The right-hand side is dominated by the vast Hellas Basin. It plunges 7 km below the surface and is about 2300 km wide, making it one of the largest impact basins in the Solar System.

The bright peak just left of centre is the south polar region of Mars. This is where the radar comes into its own, for beneath the cap of frozen carbon dioxide and water ice it reveals multiple layers of ice and dust.

This map shows the thickness of the south polar layered deposits of Mars, an ice-rich geologic unit that was probed by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS).

Known as the South Polar Layered Deposits, this feature extends nearly 4 km below the surface. 

The layers are thought to arise from variations in the deposition of ice and dust as Mars experienced cycles of climate change.

Thanks to the radar, scientists have estimated that the amount of water trapped in frozen layers in the south polar region is equivalent to a liquid layer about 11 m deep covering the planet.

NASA Earth Observation Satellites reveal sudden Greenland ice melt

Image Credit: Reuters

Greenland's massive ice sheet has melted this month over an unusually large area, Nasa has said.

Scientists said the "unprecedented" melting took place over a larger area than has been detected in three decades of satellite observation.

Melting even occurred at Greenland's coldest and highest place, Summit station.

The thawed ice area jumped from 40% of the ice sheet to 97% in just four days from 8 July.

Although about half of Greenland's ice sheet normally melts over the summer months, the speed and scale of this year's melting surprised scientists, who described the phenomenon as "extraordinary".

Nasa said that nearly the entire ice cover of Greenland, from its thin, low-lying coastal edges to its centre, which is 3km (two miles) thick, experienced some degree of melting at its surface.

"When we see melt in places that we haven't seen before, at least in a long period of time, it makes you sit up and ask what's happening," Nasa chief scientist Waleed Abdalati said.

"It's a big signal, the meaning of which we're going to sort out for years to come."

He said that, because this Greenland-wide melting has happened before, Nasa is not yet able to determine whether this is a natural but rare event, or if it has been sparked by man-made global warming.

Scientists said they believed that much of Greenland's ice was already freezing again.

Until now, the most extensive melting seen by satellites in the past three decades was about 55% of the area.

Ice last melted at Summit station in 1889, ice core records show.

The news comes just days after Nasa satellite imagery revealed that a massive iceberg, twice the size of Manhattan, had broken off a glacier in Greenland.

"This event, combined with other natural but uncommon phenomena, such as the large calving event last week on Petermann Glacier, are part of a complex story," said Nasa's Tom Wagner.

NASA Mars HiRISE Image: Gully Monitoring on Crater Slopes in Terra Sirenum

These crater gullies lie on the northern wall of an unnamed 9-kilometer diameter southern hemisphere crater in Terra Sirenum. The image was acquired during early winter in the southern hemisphere, so the crater wall is in shadow.

These gullies were first imaged by HiRISE in 2006. Since that time the possible role of seasonal frost in gully formation along with the association of polygonal terrain with these and other gullies has garnered considerable interest.

As a result, these gullies have become one of several locations being monitored by HiRISE throughout multiple Mars years. Over a dozen images of these gullies have been acquired to date throughout different Mars seasons.

In this image, frost (likely water-ice) is once again forming on these southern hemisphere mid-latitude crater slopes.  

The subimage shows gullies on the shadowed polar-facing slope. The large dynamic range of the HiRISE camera allows one to see into the shadows dimly lit by sunlight scattered by the surface and the atmosphere.

These gullies are thinly veiled with frost and range in width from several meters to tens of meters and in length from a couple kilometers or so. Dark regions within the gullies are warmer areas where frost likely evaporated or melted exposing the darker underlying surface.

NASA MARS Rover InSight

A proposed Discovery Mission concept led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to investigate the formation and evolution of terrestrial planets by studying the deep interior of Mars now has a new name, InSight, and is seen in this artist's rendering.

InSight is one of three missions vying to be selected for flight in the Discovery Programme, a series of NASA missions to understand the solar system by exploring planets, moons, and small bodies such as comets and asteroids.

Picture: NASA/Reuters

British Geologocal Society: Endangered Metal Risk List

To coincide with the British Science Festival, the British Geological Survey (BGS) has today released a new ‘Risk List’ which ranks the risk to global supply of chemical elements of economic value.


The list highlights vulnerable elements where global production is concentrated in a small number of countries, including metals which are critical to development of a low-carbon digital economy.

The British Geological Survey (BGS) has compiled a "risk list" of elements assessing the precariousness of our supplies.

The study examines the scarcity of each element in Earth's crust, how many countries produce it and the political stability of those countries. It says supplies of antimony, tungsten, mercury and the platinum group of elements are most endangered.

The problem is even more acute than that of the "rare-earth" elements used to make many consumer electronics goods, which hit the headlines earlier this year when power hungry China, the world's biggest acquirer of stocks, sites and companies that mine rare earth elements, blocked exports to the International market to restrict competition and boost pricing.

The risk list helps to focus future research on diversifying supply from new resources, using greener production technologies and cost effective recycling.

The new digital and environmental technologies on which we will rely to deliver a prosperous, low carbon economy often contain metals which have previously been of little interest to man. These ‘critical metals’ – the celebrities of the periodic table – are completely intertwined with modern life, present in thousands of products and increasingly indispensable.

The Risk List 2011 will be released to coincide with the ‘Metals, Mines & Mobiles’ event at the British Science Festival on the 12th September 2011 at the University of Bradford.

The panel of experts at the event will examine the life cycle of technology metals and includes Professor Frances Wall (CSM), Andrew Bloodworth (BGS), Dr Alan McLelland (NAMTEC) and Dr Paul Mitchell (Director, GreenHorizons Environmental Consultants Ltd.)

Download the risk list by clicking on the picture or from www.mineralsuk.com

VTSO: Central Virginia Seismic Zone

EARTHQUAKES IN THE CENTRAL VIRGINIA SEISMIC ZONE
Since at least 1774, people in central Virginia have felt small earthquakes and suffered damage from infrequent larger ones. 

The largest damaging earthquake (magnitude 4.8) in the seismic zone occurred in 1875. Smaller earthquakes that cause little or no damage are felt each year or two.

Earthquakes in the central and eastern U.S., although less frequent than in the western U.S., are typically felt over a much broader region. East of the Rockies, an earthquake can be felt over an area as much as ten times larger than a similar magnitude earthquake on the west coast.

A magnitude 4.0 eastern U.S. earthquake typically can be felt at many places as far as 100 km (60 mi) from where it occurred, and it infrequently causes damage near its source. A magnitude 5.5 eastern U.S. earthquake usually can be felt as far as 500 km (300 mi) from where it occurred, and sometimes causes damage as far away as 40 km (25 mi).

FAULTS
Earthquakes everywhere occur on faults within bedrock, usually miles deep. Most bedrock beneath central Virginia was assembled as continents collided to form a supercontinent about 500-300 million years ago, raising the Appalachian Mountains.

Most of the rest of the bedrock formed when the supercontinent rifted apart about 200 million years ago to form what are now the northeastern U.S., the Atlantic Ocean, and Europe.

At well-studied plate boundaries like the San Andreas fault system in California, often scientists can determine the name of the specific fault that is responsible for an earthquake.

In contrast, east of the Rocky Mountains this is rarely the case. The Central Virginia seismic zone is far from the nearest plate boundaries, which are in the center of the Atlantic Ocean and in the Caribbean Sea.

The seismic zone is laced with known faults but numerous smaller or deeply buried faults remain undetected. Even the known faults are poorly located at earthquake depths.

Accordingly, few, if any, earthquakes in the seismic zone can be linked to named faults. It is difficult to determine if a known fault is still active and could slip and cause an earthquake.

As in most other areas east of the Rockies, the best guide to earthquake hazards in the seismic zone is the earthquakes themselves.

Source: NEIC/USGS

Two maps showing the geology of central Virginia: Geology Map 1 | Geology Map 2

VTSO: Central Virginia Seismic Zone

DC Earthquake: Powerful tremor shakes region - Capital Weather Gang - The Washington Post

U.S. Geological Survey has confirmed an earthquake struck central Virginia at 1:53 p.m 4 miles south southeast of Louisa, Virginia near Mineral, Va.

It has been felt throughout the D.C. metro region and over a large part of the eastern U.S. Initial indications are that it measured 5.9 on the Richter scale.

Minutes after the quake, the director of the U.S. Geological Survey, Marcia McNutt -- who watched objects falling from the shelves in her office -- cautioned that the shaking might not be over.

“What the concern is, of course, is that this is a foreshock. If it’s a foreshock, then the worse is yet to come.”
She said the energy from earthquakes on the East Coast does not attenuate as quickly as it does on the West Coast, and thus even a relatively modest tremor can shake a very broad.

“When something like this happen, everyone has to remember, more than half of the states in the U.S. are considered earthquake country.

something like this happens, remember what to do in the case of a seismic event. Duck, get under something sturdy like a desk or a doorway, get away from falling glass.

Make sure that you are not in the way of falling objects like pictures, bookshelves, books, anything that’s not firmly connected the wall.”


An earthquake also occurred in the D.C. metro region July 16, 2010. A 3.6 magnitude quake centered near Gaithersburg shook the area. Today’s 5.9 magnitude quake is 200 times bigger than that quake and more than 2800 times as powerful (USGS How Much Bigger Calculator).

CNN is reporting Virginia has recorded only 25 earthquakes since it became a state.

Experts say there are two active earthquake areas in Virginia: The one apparently responsible for Tuesday’s quake runs along the James River between Charlottesville and Richmond and is known as the Central Virginia Seismic Zone.

The other is an area centered in Giles County in southwest Virginia, which had a 5.8-magnitude quake more than a century ago.

The Virginia Tech Seismological Observatory(VTSO) offers the following on earthquake history in the central Virginia seismic zone:

Since at least 1774, people in central Virginia have felt small earthquakes and suffered damage from infrequent larger ones. The largest damaging earthquake (magnitude 4.8) in the seismic zone occurred in 1875. Smaller earthquakes that cause little or no damage are felt each year or two.

It would appear today’s quake is the largest on record in that region. USGS said it was the strongest quake to hit the entire state since 1897.

VTSO adds the following:
A magnitude 4.0 eastern U.S. earthquake typically can be felt at many places as far as 100 km (60 mi) from where it occurred, and it infrequently causes damage near its source. A magnitude 5.5 eastern U.S. earthquake usually can be felt as far as 500 km (300 mi) from where it occurred, and sometimes causes damage as far away as 40 km (25 mi).

Early reports on the USGS website indicate that the quake, half a mile deep, was felt from New York City to Charlotte, N.C. and as far west as Cleveland. Twitter reports state the quake was felt as far away as Ottawa, Canada and Alabama.

Aftershock risk?
From Mike Blanpied, associate coordinator for the USGS earthquakes hazards program:

“Aftershocks could go on for days, weeks, or even months. They’re most likely to be felt under the next 3 or 4 days.”

“The rocks are old and cold and they carry the seismic energy very far. Even a magnitude 6 or less earthquake can be felt over a considerably large area, unlike California where the shaking is more concentrated,” Blanpied said.

ESA: ExoMars Methane Detection

The priority for the ESA ExoMars is mission is to map trace gases in the atmosphere of Mars, distinguishing individual chemical species down to concentrations of just a few parts per billion.

Of these gases, one in particular attracts special attention: methane. Discovered on Mars in 2003, it happens to be a possible ‘biomarker’, a gas that is readily produced by biological activity.

Understanding whether the methane comes from life or from geological and volcanic processes takes precedence. “The methane is the anchor point around which the science is to be constructed,” says ESA spokesperson Vago.

Adding to the mystery is that methane was found to be concentrated in just three locations on Mars, and then disappeared much faster from the atmosphere than scientists were expecting.

This points to an unknown destruction mechanism much more powerful than any known on Earth. It may also indicate a much faster creation process to have produced such large quantities of the gas in the first place.