Latest Sedimentology Stories

By John Dodge, The Olympian, Olympia, Wash. Jul. 4--Using Capitol Lake dredge spoils to reshape the shoreline along Deschutes Parkway will be the best way to reduce effects of sediment accumulating in lower Budd Inlet if the lake is turned back into a Deschutes River estuary, a federal study released Thursday suggests. The $100,000 study by the United States Geological Survey is part of a lake-versus-estuary comparison by the Capitol Lake Adaptive Management Plan steering committee that's...

A five-year landscape project aimed at saving the remaining Culm grassland of North and West Devon was launched at a special conference last week. Eighty delegates with an interest in saving the unique wet grassland habitat attended the conference at Eggesford, where they heard detailed plans from Devon Wildlife Trust. Key speakers included Professor Michael Winter, director of the Centre for Rural Research at the University of Exeter. Devon Wildlife Trust's Working Wetlands scheme - the...

International Nickel Ventures Corporation ("INV") (TSX: INV)(TSX: INV.WT) announces that initial drilling has intersected disseminated nickel-copper sulphide mineralization with values up to 0.98% Ni and 0.58% Cu on the Damolandia project, located 60 km north of the city of Goiania, Goias State, Brazil. Damolandia Property, Goias State, Brazil INV completed a seven-hole, 1,553 metre drill program on the Damolandia property to test a combination of geological, soil geochemical, and ground...

By McClain, Michael E Naiman, Robert J Although mountains often constitute only a small fraction of river basin area, they can supply the bulk of transported materials and exert strong regulatory controls on the ecological characteristics of river reaches and floodplains downstream. The Amazon River exemplifies this phenomenon. Its muddy waters and its expansive and highly productive white-water floodplains are largely the products of forces originating in distant Andean mountain ranges. The...

By Houston, John Hart, Dan; Houston, Andrew Abstract: Neogene sediments in the northern Chilean forearc display a wide range of near syndepositional structures. Analysis of the origin and distribution of these structures in space and time offers new insights into the development of the forearc basins. The structures are described in detail and show many features associated with soft-sediment deformation, pseudo-diapirism and slope failure. Synsedimentary deformation reached a peak in the...

Those dust-caked frontier towns depicted in Western movies are no exaggeration: The West has become a much dustier place over the past few hundred years. Westward U.S expansion and changes in humans' land use have made the West five times dustier in the past two centuries than it had been in the past 5,000 years, a new study of lakebed sediments finds. "There seems to be a perception that dusty conditions in the West are just the nature of the region," said lead...

Sweeping sands across the Sahara and other dune expanses are blown by more than just wind, scientists have discovered. Powerful electric fields spring up near the desert floor and propel sand grains into the air. By accounting for this electricity, researchers say they can design better climate change models, and even explain features of the dust on Mars. Scientists have long been at a loss to explain why sand sweeping across the desert doesn't bounce higher when the wind...

The United Nation's World Meteorological Organization, or WMO, is launching an early warning system that can help Arizona and other states minimize hazards from intercontinental sand and dust storms. A University of Arizona research professor is leading the international team drafting the U.N. plan which will begin operation early next year.Storms generated in arid parts of the world can deposit thousands of tons of airborne sand and dust on cities and over continents. It exposes populations...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - More than 2 square miles of some of the world's largest underwater sand dunes were mapped in the Pacific Ocean off the San Francisco coast as part of a study to help researchers better understand beach erosion. The submerged dunes, called sand waves, are located just west of the Golden Gate Bridge, measuring more than 30 feet high and 700 feet long, according to researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey. The sand waves were created by the displacement of sediment by...

New research reveals that the dark coating known as desert varnish creates a record of life around it, by binding traces of DNA, amino acids and other organic compounds to desert rocks. Samples of Martian desert varnish could therefore show whether there has been life on Mars at any stage over the last 4.5 billion years.The research, published in the July edition of the journal Geology, reveals that the dark coating known as desert varnish creates a record of life around it, by binding traces...