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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15885\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/AKEQmap.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15885\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/AKEQmap.png\" alt=\"Alaska earthquake map\" width=\"800\" height=\"656\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15885\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 1 of Plafker’s \u003ci>Science\u003c/i> paper, “Tectonic Deformation Associated with the 1964 Alaska Earthquake,” vol. 148, pp. 1675-1687. The quake is officially given a date of March 28 because it was 3:36 a.m. the next day in Universal Time. Click the image to see it full size. Paper reproduced by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.iris.edu/seismo/quakes/1964alaska/\">IRIS SeismoArchives\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Among many geologists of the boomer generation, the Alaska earthquake of March 27, 1964 is a touchstone of our formative years. Black-and-white images of ruin and upheaval from the then-new state of Alaska burst into our consciousness. News reached us of deadly “tidal waves” washing down the West Coast. But beyond rocking us kids toward geological careers, that earthquake was a key event in the 1960s revolution in earth science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The quake, a magnitude 9.2, was the largest ever recorded in U.S. history. It lasted more than four minutes. The earthquake and the ensuing tsunami killed an estimated 131 people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Geologist George Plafker of the U.S. Geological Survey was in Seattle the afternoon of the quake, attending a regional meeting of the Geological Society of America. He didn’t feel anything, but some colleagues had been up in Seattle’s Space Needle and felt the slow rocking typical of great earthquakes at great distances. His agency sent him to the scene immediately, along with fellow USGS geologists Art Grantz and the late Reuben Kachadoorian, and on Easter Sunday they set to work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These three guys were picked because they knew the territory, not because they were earthquake specialists. The Alaskan Branch of the USGS was headquartered in Menlo Park with the rest of the western regional branch. Being in Seattle gave Plafker a day’s lead time in getting there. But the three scientists were what we would call old-school types, skilled in fieldwork and observation and thinking on their feet. They spent a week in Alaska, riding with emergency responders all over the enormous area of damage, then came home and quickly issued \u003ca href=\"http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/cir491\">USGS Circular 491\u003c/a> while planning a summer field season of intensive work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Circular 491 includes lots of photographs of damage, preliminary maps and eyewitness accounts. In the town of Homer, “Mr. Glen Sewell heard and saw a fracture, 12 to 18 inches wide, coming toward him from the southeast. The fracture passed between his legs, through a building, and continued on into Kachemak Bay.” Huge waves threw seafloor boulders 100 feet high onto the shore. The sea itself was damaged, as “vast numbers of red snappers, which normally inhabit waters deeper than 400 feet in Prince William Sound, were found floating on the surface.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most pervasive feature the geologists noted was also the most interesting to science: huge areas of land had been uplifted, and a comparable region had subsided. The signs were easy to recognize, and the summer season was largely spent measuring them. Rising shorelines killed the barnacles and other sea life on the rocks, leaving bands of dead white shells. Sinking shorelines killed the forests by drowning them in seawater. These contours of death were plain as day by summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Plafker published a long paper in the journal \u003ci>Science\u003c/i> on June 25, 1965, laying out his findings. Reading it today, the paper today has an antique feel, like something that could have been written a century earlier. He presented maps showing areas of tectonic (large-scale) uplift and subsidence larger than anyone had documented before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His paper showed unequivocally that the earthquake was not the kind that theoretical geologists were used to: not the vertical motions of “normal faults” or the sideways slippage of “strike-slip faults” like the well-known San Andreas fault. Instead, the quake had ruptured a large, nearly horizontal fault that extended from the surface of the seafloor in the Aleutian Trench downward beneath the coast of Alaska. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15886\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/AKEQprofile.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15886\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/AKEQprofile.png\" alt=\"Fault profile\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15886\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Plafker’s diagram of tectonic uplift across the area of the Good Friday earthquake. Portion of figure 6 of the 1965 \u003ci>Science\u003c/i> paper\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Today we recognize this as a subduction-related megathrust, due to motion of an underlying oceanic plate against an overlying continental plate. In 1965, we had no name for such a thing. He recognized the nature of the localized thrust faulting he had mapped on Montague Island, a place where conventional thinking predicted the opposite. Today we call it splay faulting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crucially, Plafker recognized that this kind of motion had been documented in previous Alaskan quakes, and that the rocks of coastal Alaska were themselves deformed in just the way to be expected after millions of years of earthquakes of this type. The facts Plafker brought out in this paper informed the debate that would boil over in the scientific ferment that produced plate tectonics in the next three years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Plafker was a modest scientist, as he is today at age 85, and he ended his paper with a section clearly labeled “Speculation on Origin of the Earthquake.” But he was confident enough in his conclusions that he swatted down a competing explanation published in \u003ci>Science\u003c/i> earlier that year by the prestigious seismologists Frank Press and David Jackson, calling it “an elegant analysis of the displacement by application of dislocation theory.” The barnacles on the rocks had told him something no theory could contradict.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://alaska.usgs.gov/announcements/news/1964Earthquake/\">See the USGS special page on the Alaska earthquake\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15885\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/AKEQmap.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15885\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/AKEQmap.png\" alt=\"Alaska earthquake map\" width=\"800\" height=\"656\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15885\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 1 of Plafker’s \u003ci>Science\u003c/i> paper, “Tectonic Deformation Associated with the 1964 Alaska Earthquake,” vol. 148, pp. 1675-1687. The quake is officially given a date of March 28 because it was 3:36 a.m. the next day in Universal Time. Click the image to see it full size. Paper reproduced by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.iris.edu/seismo/quakes/1964alaska/\">IRIS SeismoArchives\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Among many geologists of the boomer generation, the Alaska earthquake of March 27, 1964 is a touchstone of our formative years. Black-and-white images of ruin and upheaval from the then-new state of Alaska burst into our consciousness. News reached us of deadly “tidal waves” washing down the West Coast. But beyond rocking us kids toward geological careers, that earthquake was a key event in the 1960s revolution in earth science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The quake, a magnitude 9.2, was the largest ever recorded in U.S. history. It lasted more than four minutes. The earthquake and the ensuing tsunami killed an estimated 131 people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Geologist George Plafker of the U.S. Geological Survey was in Seattle the afternoon of the quake, attending a regional meeting of the Geological Society of America. He didn’t feel anything, but some colleagues had been up in Seattle’s Space Needle and felt the slow rocking typical of great earthquakes at great distances. His agency sent him to the scene immediately, along with fellow USGS geologists Art Grantz and the late Reuben Kachadoorian, and on Easter Sunday they set to work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These three guys were picked because they knew the territory, not because they were earthquake specialists. The Alaskan Branch of the USGS was headquartered in Menlo Park with the rest of the western regional branch. Being in Seattle gave Plafker a day’s lead time in getting there. But the three scientists were what we would call old-school types, skilled in fieldwork and observation and thinking on their feet. They spent a week in Alaska, riding with emergency responders all over the enormous area of damage, then came home and quickly issued \u003ca href=\"http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/cir491\">USGS Circular 491\u003c/a> while planning a summer field season of intensive work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Circular 491 includes lots of photographs of damage, preliminary maps and eyewitness accounts. In the town of Homer, “Mr. Glen Sewell heard and saw a fracture, 12 to 18 inches wide, coming toward him from the southeast. The fracture passed between his legs, through a building, and continued on into Kachemak Bay.” Huge waves threw seafloor boulders 100 feet high onto the shore. The sea itself was damaged, as “vast numbers of red snappers, which normally inhabit waters deeper than 400 feet in Prince William Sound, were found floating on the surface.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most pervasive feature the geologists noted was also the most interesting to science: huge areas of land had been uplifted, and a comparable region had subsided. The signs were easy to recognize, and the summer season was largely spent measuring them. Rising shorelines killed the barnacles and other sea life on the rocks, leaving bands of dead white shells. Sinking shorelines killed the forests by drowning them in seawater. These contours of death were plain as day by summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Plafker published a long paper in the journal \u003ci>Science\u003c/i> on June 25, 1965, laying out his findings. Reading it today, the paper today has an antique feel, like something that could have been written a century earlier. He presented maps showing areas of tectonic (large-scale) uplift and subsidence larger than anyone had documented before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His paper showed unequivocally that the earthquake was not the kind that theoretical geologists were used to: not the vertical motions of “normal faults” or the sideways slippage of “strike-slip faults” like the well-known San Andreas fault. Instead, the quake had ruptured a large, nearly horizontal fault that extended from the surface of the seafloor in the Aleutian Trench downward beneath the coast of Alaska. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15886\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/AKEQprofile.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15886\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/AKEQprofile.png\" alt=\"Fault profile\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15886\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Plafker’s diagram of tectonic uplift across the area of the Good Friday earthquake. Portion of figure 6 of the 1965 \u003ci>Science\u003c/i> paper\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Today we recognize this as a subduction-related megathrust, due to motion of an underlying oceanic plate against an overlying continental plate. In 1965, we had no name for such a thing. He recognized the nature of the localized thrust faulting he had mapped on Montague Island, a place where conventional thinking predicted the opposite. Today we call it splay faulting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crucially, Plafker recognized that this kind of motion had been documented in previous Alaskan quakes, and that the rocks of coastal Alaska were themselves deformed in just the way to be expected after millions of years of earthquakes of this type. The facts Plafker brought out in this paper informed the debate that would boil over in the scientific ferment that produced plate tectonics in the next three years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Plafker was a modest scientist, as he is today at age 85, and he ended his paper with a section clearly labeled “Speculation on Origin of the Earthquake.” But he was confident enough in his conclusions that he swatted down a competing explanation published in \u003ci>Science\u003c/i> earlier that year by the prestigious seismologists Frank Press and David Jackson, calling it “an elegant analysis of the displacement by application of dislocation theory.” The barnacles on the rocks had told him something no theory could contradict.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://alaska.usgs.gov/announcements/news/1964Earthquake/\">See the USGS special page on the Alaska earthquake\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Digging Up New Info on Old Earthquakes in the Santa Cruz Mountains",
"headTitle": "Digging Up New Info on Old Earthquakes in the Santa Cruz Mountains | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>As we try to learn more about earthquakes and the geologic forces that create them, we can look in two directions—to the present and to the past. Earthquakes that happen today are well recorded by seismometers, but we have to wait for them. In the meantime, we can cover more time by searching the past. A good recent example is a study mapping a San Andreas Fault earthquake that happened in 1838, long before we had seismometers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://www.bssaonline.org/content/104/1/285.abstract\">paper in the February \u003cem>Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, written by \u003ca href=\"http://geology.uoregon.edu/profile/streig/\">Ashley Streig\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://pages.uoregon.edu/dogsci/2/weld/05/ray-home.htm\">Ray Weldon\u003c/a> of the University of Oregon and Tim Dawson of the California Geological Survey, described some of the painstaking work needed to document earthquakes in the “pre-instrumental period.” It combines written information from dusty archives and geological information from mucky ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earthquakes last only moments; despite the destruction they can cause, they don’t leave many lasting traces. Broken buildings are usually cleared away and rebuilt; toppled trees rot away; landslides don’t stand out from \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2011/03/31/landslide-season/\">those that happen every wet season\u003c/a>. This is especially true in the deep woods of the Santa Cruz Mountains, where the San Andreas Fault runs through thinly settled country. But Streig’s team found a little stream valley along the fault’s trace at a locality called Hazel Dell, near the small town of Corralitos north of Watsonville. Here they did a trenching study and documented three large earthquakes—more precisely, three instances of movement on the fault—during the last two centuries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15554\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/hazeldellmap.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15554\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15554\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/hazeldellmap.png\" alt=\"Hazel Dell trenching site\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Map of the Hazel Dell locality with San Andreas Fault traces in red. Modified from Streig et al., BSSA, doi:10.1785/0120130009\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Trenching is a kind of dissection of the ground. The photos below are from a trenching exercise that I witnessed a few years ago. Here are the steps. First, very carefully map the traces of the fault and pick a spot to dig a trench across the fault, using a backhoe. Insert steel braces in the trench to hold the walls safely up. Next, take hand tools and carefully scrape both walls of the whole trench to best display the layers under the ground. Set up a precise grid of white string and start mapping whatever you can discern.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15555\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/trenchwall01.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15555\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15555\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/trenchwall01.jpg\" alt=\"Paleoseismic trench wall\" width=\"500\" height=\"403\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Paleo-quake researcher Jim Lienkaemper, reaching through a brace, sprays a groomed trench wall with water to bring out sedimentary details and prevent the clay from cracking. Colored dots mark interesting details. Andrew Alden photos\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mark the boundaries of whatever you see—color changes, different textures, offsets and discontinuities—using a trowel or twig. Mark bits of wood or charcoal that could be dated by radiocarbon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15556\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/trenchwall1.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15556\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15556\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/trenchwall1.jpg\" alt=\"Detail of trench wall\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A possible bit of charcoal, or more likely an old plant root, is outlined on the trench wall along with other features.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Lay clear plastic over the trench wall and transfer onto it everything you’ve marked. Add notes. Photograph everything in good light. Print the photos and start pasting them together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15557\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/trenchwall2.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15557\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15557\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/trenchwall2.jpg\" alt=\"Paleoseismic trench photos\" width=\"500\" height=\"266\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photos of the annotated trench wall. Red lines are possible fault cracks\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Keep pasting the photos until a complete mosaic is assembled. Roll up the plastic sheets and photomosaics, pack up the samples, pull out the braces and refill the trench.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15558\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/trenchwall3.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15558\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15558\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/trenchwall3.jpg\" alt=\"Paleoseismic photomosaic\" width=\"500\" height=\"300\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Almost done with the fieldwork!\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Take everything back to the lab, assemble it into a database, run tests on the samples, and scratch your head and stare at everything for a long time. It’s an incredible amount of work, but trenching is the only way to pin down prehistoric and pre-instrumental earthquakes. Not every trench pays off, either.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Streig’s team did this at Hazel Dell in sixteen places over the course of three years. They picked the site because a stream running nearby has regularly flooded the spot, laying down a series of mud layers that are relatively easy to map. A big break came with the discovery of redwood chips in one of those layers that could only have been cut by a modern steel ax. Historical documents tell us that logging began here in the early 1800s, and carbon dating of the chips gave dates in the same range.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15559\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/redwoodchips.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15559\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15559\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/redwoodchips.jpg\" alt=\"Historical redwood chips\" width=\"500\" height=\"373\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Buried redwood chips from a Hazel Dell trench. Modified from Streig et al., BSSA, doi:10.1785/0120130009\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In their paper Streig’s team documented fault offsets from known quakes at Hazel Dell in June 1838, April 24, 1890 and April 18, 1906 plus a fourth, earlier seismic event. This precise record helped them tighten the less precise data from other trenches along the fault, and the history of fault activity in all of the Santa Cruz Mountains snapped into better focus. The data from Hazel Dell fits a model of earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault in which huge quakes (like 1906) that rip long segments of the fault interrupt an ongoing series of smaller quakes. It also fits another model in which smaller quakes lead up to the biggest ones in a supercycle or “earthquake storm.” And it fits a model in which earthquakes are essentially random. But that’s part of a bigger conversation in earthquake science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Human records, like official documents and letters written by the local inhabitants, are a crucial part of this kind of research. For an example, see the \u003ca href=\"http://www.memphis.edu/ceri/compendium/eyewitness/index.php\">database of eyewitness accounts\u003c/a> of the 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquakes in the Mississippi Valley, compiled by the University of Memphis. And more documents turn up all the time. Earthquake scientist Sue Hough told me, “Letters with earthquake references languish in a million places: tucked away in archives, posted online at least for a while.” She studies early California quakes and is always looking for more documentary data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We don’t all have the know-how to do trenching studies, but we can all read old letters. Think of them as \u003ca href=\"http://geology.about.com/od/quakemags/a/didyoufeelit.htm\">“Did You Feel It?” reports\u003c/a> from the past. The 1838 earthquake could have been recorded by hundreds of people. With each new testimonial retrieved from oblivion, no matter how small, people today can add to the permanent record.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "New research has mapped 19th-century earthquake ruptures along the San Andreas Fault in a study that combines geologic and human records.",
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"title": "Digging Up New Info on Old Earthquakes in the Santa Cruz Mountains | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>As we try to learn more about earthquakes and the geologic forces that create them, we can look in two directions—to the present and to the past. Earthquakes that happen today are well recorded by seismometers, but we have to wait for them. In the meantime, we can cover more time by searching the past. A good recent example is a study mapping a San Andreas Fault earthquake that happened in 1838, long before we had seismometers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://www.bssaonline.org/content/104/1/285.abstract\">paper in the February \u003cem>Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, written by \u003ca href=\"http://geology.uoregon.edu/profile/streig/\">Ashley Streig\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://pages.uoregon.edu/dogsci/2/weld/05/ray-home.htm\">Ray Weldon\u003c/a> of the University of Oregon and Tim Dawson of the California Geological Survey, described some of the painstaking work needed to document earthquakes in the “pre-instrumental period.” It combines written information from dusty archives and geological information from mucky ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earthquakes last only moments; despite the destruction they can cause, they don’t leave many lasting traces. Broken buildings are usually cleared away and rebuilt; toppled trees rot away; landslides don’t stand out from \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2011/03/31/landslide-season/\">those that happen every wet season\u003c/a>. This is especially true in the deep woods of the Santa Cruz Mountains, where the San Andreas Fault runs through thinly settled country. But Streig’s team found a little stream valley along the fault’s trace at a locality called Hazel Dell, near the small town of Corralitos north of Watsonville. Here they did a trenching study and documented three large earthquakes—more precisely, three instances of movement on the fault—during the last two centuries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15554\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/hazeldellmap.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15554\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15554\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/hazeldellmap.png\" alt=\"Hazel Dell trenching site\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Map of the Hazel Dell locality with San Andreas Fault traces in red. Modified from Streig et al., BSSA, doi:10.1785/0120130009\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Trenching is a kind of dissection of the ground. The photos below are from a trenching exercise that I witnessed a few years ago. Here are the steps. First, very carefully map the traces of the fault and pick a spot to dig a trench across the fault, using a backhoe. Insert steel braces in the trench to hold the walls safely up. Next, take hand tools and carefully scrape both walls of the whole trench to best display the layers under the ground. Set up a precise grid of white string and start mapping whatever you can discern.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15555\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/trenchwall01.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15555\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15555\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/trenchwall01.jpg\" alt=\"Paleoseismic trench wall\" width=\"500\" height=\"403\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Paleo-quake researcher Jim Lienkaemper, reaching through a brace, sprays a groomed trench wall with water to bring out sedimentary details and prevent the clay from cracking. Colored dots mark interesting details. Andrew Alden photos\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mark the boundaries of whatever you see—color changes, different textures, offsets and discontinuities—using a trowel or twig. Mark bits of wood or charcoal that could be dated by radiocarbon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15556\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/trenchwall1.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15556\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15556\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/trenchwall1.jpg\" alt=\"Detail of trench wall\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A possible bit of charcoal, or more likely an old plant root, is outlined on the trench wall along with other features.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Lay clear plastic over the trench wall and transfer onto it everything you’ve marked. Add notes. Photograph everything in good light. Print the photos and start pasting them together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15557\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/trenchwall2.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15557\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15557\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/trenchwall2.jpg\" alt=\"Paleoseismic trench photos\" width=\"500\" height=\"266\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photos of the annotated trench wall. Red lines are possible fault cracks\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Keep pasting the photos until a complete mosaic is assembled. Roll up the plastic sheets and photomosaics, pack up the samples, pull out the braces and refill the trench.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15558\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/trenchwall3.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15558\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15558\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/trenchwall3.jpg\" alt=\"Paleoseismic photomosaic\" width=\"500\" height=\"300\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Almost done with the fieldwork!\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Take everything back to the lab, assemble it into a database, run tests on the samples, and scratch your head and stare at everything for a long time. It’s an incredible amount of work, but trenching is the only way to pin down prehistoric and pre-instrumental earthquakes. Not every trench pays off, either.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Streig’s team did this at Hazel Dell in sixteen places over the course of three years. They picked the site because a stream running nearby has regularly flooded the spot, laying down a series of mud layers that are relatively easy to map. A big break came with the discovery of redwood chips in one of those layers that could only have been cut by a modern steel ax. Historical documents tell us that logging began here in the early 1800s, and carbon dating of the chips gave dates in the same range.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15559\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/redwoodchips.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15559\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15559\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/redwoodchips.jpg\" alt=\"Historical redwood chips\" width=\"500\" height=\"373\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Buried redwood chips from a Hazel Dell trench. Modified from Streig et al., BSSA, doi:10.1785/0120130009\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In their paper Streig’s team documented fault offsets from known quakes at Hazel Dell in June 1838, April 24, 1890 and April 18, 1906 plus a fourth, earlier seismic event. This precise record helped them tighten the less precise data from other trenches along the fault, and the history of fault activity in all of the Santa Cruz Mountains snapped into better focus. The data from Hazel Dell fits a model of earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault in which huge quakes (like 1906) that rip long segments of the fault interrupt an ongoing series of smaller quakes. It also fits another model in which smaller quakes lead up to the biggest ones in a supercycle or “earthquake storm.” And it fits a model in which earthquakes are essentially random. But that’s part of a bigger conversation in earthquake science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Human records, like official documents and letters written by the local inhabitants, are a crucial part of this kind of research. For an example, see the \u003ca href=\"http://www.memphis.edu/ceri/compendium/eyewitness/index.php\">database of eyewitness accounts\u003c/a> of the 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquakes in the Mississippi Valley, compiled by the University of Memphis. And more documents turn up all the time. Earthquake scientist Sue Hough told me, “Letters with earthquake references languish in a million places: tucked away in archives, posted online at least for a while.” She studies early California quakes and is always looking for more documentary data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We don’t all have the know-how to do trenching studies, but we can all read old letters. Think of them as \u003ca href=\"http://geology.about.com/od/quakemags/a/didyoufeelit.htm\">“Did You Feel It?” reports\u003c/a> from the past. The 1838 earthquake could have been recorded by hundreds of people. With each new testimonial retrieved from oblivion, no matter how small, people today can add to the permanent record.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "California Shakin': 'We've Got a Lot of Earthquakes Ahead of Us'",
"headTitle": "California Shakin’: ‘We’ve Got a Lot of Earthquakes Ahead of Us’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15346\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15346\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/deg00013.jpg\" alt=\"The 1906 earthquake (USGS)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A woman surveys earthquake damage following the 1906 San Francisco quake. (USGS)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This is not exactly a news flash for long-time Californians. But scientists are starting to put more numbers on the inevitability that we all live with.\u003cbr>\n[contextly_sidebar id=”75eb0649d1156d7ece36bc7630c70ad7″]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>David Schwartz, U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, \u003ca title=\"Q-Forum - show\" href=\"http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201403120930\">told listeners to KQED’s Forum program\u003c/a> that there’s a 63 percent chance of a major quake on the San Andreas Fault sometime in the next 22 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apparently that’s not enough to worry about, so Schwartz was joined on the program by \u003ca title=\"Am Scientist - bio\" href=\"https://www.americanscientist.org/authors/detail/john-dvorak\">John Dvorak\u003c/a>, author of “\u003ca title=\"Kirkus - review\" href=\"https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/john-dvorak/earthquake-storms/\">Earthquake Storms: The Fascinating History and Volatile Future of the San Andreas Fault\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘Earthquakes are not random events.’\u003ccite>John Dvorak, Geologist\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“Earthquakes are not random events,” said Dvorak, a former USGS scientist. “Earthquakes are clustered in time and space.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said the 1906 San Francisco quake represented a break along the northern section of the San Andreas Fault. A middle section north of Los Angeles broke in 1857, “but that southern part, south of Palm Springs, that hasn’t broken since 1680,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Contrary to the popular conception that a quake releases pressure along the fault, thus postponing the next temblor, Dvorak said the likelihood of a second quake rises with the first one. During any given three-day span, he said the odds of a magnitude 7 or larger quake are about 1:100,000 in California. But when a magnitude 7 earthquake occurs, he said the odds of another one at least as big in the next three days go to about 1-in-10.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You don’t need to panic,” said Dvorak. “You just need to have a heightened awareness that the ground could shake again soon.” Schwartz agreed that we can look forward to a whole lotta shakin’ going on. “We’ve got a lot of earthquakes ahead of us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And behind us. Schwartz said that seismologists have a “pretty complete record” going back to about 1600 and that we’ve been enjoying an eerily quiet interval. The hundred years or so starting around 1680, “literally every fault in the Bay Area” produced large earthquakes, releasing “almost as much energy as the 1906 earthquake.” After that, Schwartz said things went relatively quiet until the “Big One” in April, 1906.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=”5878627d97357ce29aa9a7578c08516a”]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Schwartz said the worst-case scenario for Northern California would be a major break along the East Bay’s \u003ca title=\"Wiki - Hayward Fault\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayward_Fault_Zone\">Hayward Fault\u003c/a> or its neighbor to the north, the Rodgers Creek Fault. “There are two million people who fundamentally live right on top of it,” he said. “We’ve never had a major earthquake in the center of a modern U.S. city and we just really don’t know what’s going to happen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fracking Opponents Point to Seismic Risk\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, three groups that oppose fracking in California released \u003ca title=\"Shaky Ground - main\" href=\"http://www.shakyground.org/\">a report\u003c/a> warning that a boom in the practice would pose a serious seismic risk to “millions of Californians.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fracking is shorthand for hydraulic fracturing, the technique that uses fluids under high pressure to loosen up oil and gas formations underground. Drilling companies also re-inject wastewater back into the ground, which has been shown to produce minor seismic activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report appears to be largely a mapping exercise, which shows more than half of California’s “active and new” wastewater injection wells within 10 miles of faults that have been active within the last 200 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of the authors are seismologists. Patrick Sullivan, a spokesman for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the three collaborating organizations, said that the authors consulted with seismologists at the University of California. He also cited recent reports of \u003ca title=\"USGS - release\" href=\"http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=3710#.UyIc3s4QORU\">increased shaking in Oklahoma\u003c/a>, where scientists are “evaluating possible links” to oil and gas operations. Fracking has recently been suspected of triggering \u003ca title=\"NYT - post\" href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/us/ohio-looks-at-whether-fracking-led-to-2-quakes.html?hpw&rref=science&_r=0\">tremors in Ohio.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tsunami Threat Varies\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many have pondered why last Sunday’s \u003ca title=\"Times-Standard - post\" href=\"http://www.times-standard.com/breakingnews/ci_25312898/location-sundays-6-9-quake-reduced-impact-north\">6.7 quake off the Northern California coast\u003c/a> did not produce giant, devastating waves. Schwartz explained that tsunamis are produced by the displacement of the sea floor. “That requires sort of an up-and-down movement,” he told listeners. “This was a strike-slip fault, where the movement is lateral, side-to-side, so it really doesn’t affect the sea bottom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schwartz also said the temblor was relatively small for that area, citing five other events within 50 miles, bigger than magnitude 7, since about 1900. But he added that smaller events can trigger tsunamis if they cause underwater landslides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both Schwartz and Dvorak agreed on the need for an earthquake warning system in California, but advised not to look to your dog for guidance in the meantime. “There’s no scientific evidence that animals can sense earthquakes before they happen,” says Dvorak.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "And some say that a fracking boom in California will raise the ante.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15346\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15346\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/deg00013.jpg\" alt=\"The 1906 earthquake (USGS)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A woman surveys earthquake damage following the 1906 San Francisco quake. (USGS)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This is not exactly a news flash for long-time Californians. But scientists are starting to put more numbers on the inevitability that we all live with.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>David Schwartz, U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, \u003ca title=\"Q-Forum - show\" href=\"http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201403120930\">told listeners to KQED’s Forum program\u003c/a> that there’s a 63 percent chance of a major quake on the San Andreas Fault sometime in the next 22 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apparently that’s not enough to worry about, so Schwartz was joined on the program by \u003ca title=\"Am Scientist - bio\" href=\"https://www.americanscientist.org/authors/detail/john-dvorak\">John Dvorak\u003c/a>, author of “\u003ca title=\"Kirkus - review\" href=\"https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/john-dvorak/earthquake-storms/\">Earthquake Storms: The Fascinating History and Volatile Future of the San Andreas Fault\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘Earthquakes are not random events.’\u003ccite>John Dvorak, Geologist\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“Earthquakes are not random events,” said Dvorak, a former USGS scientist. “Earthquakes are clustered in time and space.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said the 1906 San Francisco quake represented a break along the northern section of the San Andreas Fault. A middle section north of Los Angeles broke in 1857, “but that southern part, south of Palm Springs, that hasn’t broken since 1680,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Contrary to the popular conception that a quake releases pressure along the fault, thus postponing the next temblor, Dvorak said the likelihood of a second quake rises with the first one. During any given three-day span, he said the odds of a magnitude 7 or larger quake are about 1:100,000 in California. But when a magnitude 7 earthquake occurs, he said the odds of another one at least as big in the next three days go to about 1-in-10.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You don’t need to panic,” said Dvorak. “You just need to have a heightened awareness that the ground could shake again soon.” Schwartz agreed that we can look forward to a whole lotta shakin’ going on. “We’ve got a lot of earthquakes ahead of us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And behind us. Schwartz said that seismologists have a “pretty complete record” going back to about 1600 and that we’ve been enjoying an eerily quiet interval. The hundred years or so starting around 1680, “literally every fault in the Bay Area” produced large earthquakes, releasing “almost as much energy as the 1906 earthquake.” After that, Schwartz said things went relatively quiet until the “Big One” in April, 1906.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Schwartz said the worst-case scenario for Northern California would be a major break along the East Bay’s \u003ca title=\"Wiki - Hayward Fault\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayward_Fault_Zone\">Hayward Fault\u003c/a> or its neighbor to the north, the Rodgers Creek Fault. “There are two million people who fundamentally live right on top of it,” he said. “We’ve never had a major earthquake in the center of a modern U.S. city and we just really don’t know what’s going to happen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fracking Opponents Point to Seismic Risk\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, three groups that oppose fracking in California released \u003ca title=\"Shaky Ground - main\" href=\"http://www.shakyground.org/\">a report\u003c/a> warning that a boom in the practice would pose a serious seismic risk to “millions of Californians.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fracking is shorthand for hydraulic fracturing, the technique that uses fluids under high pressure to loosen up oil and gas formations underground. Drilling companies also re-inject wastewater back into the ground, which has been shown to produce minor seismic activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report appears to be largely a mapping exercise, which shows more than half of California’s “active and new” wastewater injection wells within 10 miles of faults that have been active within the last 200 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of the authors are seismologists. Patrick Sullivan, a spokesman for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the three collaborating organizations, said that the authors consulted with seismologists at the University of California. He also cited recent reports of \u003ca title=\"USGS - release\" href=\"http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=3710#.UyIc3s4QORU\">increased shaking in Oklahoma\u003c/a>, where scientists are “evaluating possible links” to oil and gas operations. Fracking has recently been suspected of triggering \u003ca title=\"NYT - post\" href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/us/ohio-looks-at-whether-fracking-led-to-2-quakes.html?hpw&rref=science&_r=0\">tremors in Ohio.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tsunami Threat Varies\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many have pondered why last Sunday’s \u003ca title=\"Times-Standard - post\" href=\"http://www.times-standard.com/breakingnews/ci_25312898/location-sundays-6-9-quake-reduced-impact-north\">6.7 quake off the Northern California coast\u003c/a> did not produce giant, devastating waves. Schwartz explained that tsunamis are produced by the displacement of the sea floor. “That requires sort of an up-and-down movement,” he told listeners. “This was a strike-slip fault, where the movement is lateral, side-to-side, so it really doesn’t affect the sea bottom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schwartz also said the temblor was relatively small for that area, citing five other events within 50 miles, bigger than magnitude 7, since about 1900. But he added that smaller events can trigger tsunamis if they cause underwater landslides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both Schwartz and Dvorak agreed on the need for an earthquake warning system in California, but advised not to look to your dog for guidance in the meantime. “There’s no scientific evidence that animals can sense earthquakes before they happen,” says Dvorak.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Newly Unveiled Porpoise Fossil Has \"Jay Leno-Esque\" Proportions",
"headTitle": "Newly Unveiled Porpoise Fossil Has “Jay Leno-Esque” Proportions | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15261\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/jawporpoise.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15261\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/jawporpoise.png\" alt=\"Skimmer porpoise jaw\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15261\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A digital model of the skull of the extinct skimmer porpoise \u003ci>Semirostrum ceruttii\u003c/i> shows its protruding lower mandible. From Racicot et al., “Unique feeding morphology in a new prognathous extinct porpoise from the Pliocene of California,” \u003ci>Current Biology\u003c/i>, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.02.031 (Rachel Racicot/Yale Univ.)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A newly described fossil species of porpoise had a record-breaking lower jaw that stuck out a full 7 inches beyond its upper jaw, the farthest measured in any mammal living or dead. It was even more bizarre than Jay Leno’s jaw; not just a lantern jaw but a flashlight jaw. The lower jawbone looks like a giant chicken’s wishbone. The fused portion at the front tip of the jaw, called a symphysis, amounts to 40 percent of the jawbone’s total length.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Porpoises are the smallest relatives of the whales, smaller and stouter than the dolphins. A beautifully preserved skull collected in Southern California is \u003ca href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.02.031\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">described in detail today\u003c/a> in the journal \u003ci>Current Biology\u003c/i> as part of the formal christening of a new porpoise species. The authors assign it the name \u003ci>Semirostrum ceruttii\u003c/i>, the generic name \u003ci>Semirostrum\u003c/i> meaning “half-beak” in scientific Latin and the specific epithet \u003ci>ceruttii\u003c/i> honoring Richard Cerutti, who first collected the species in the 1990s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The team of paleontologists behind the paper, led by Rachel Racicot of Yale University, looked closely at the long symphysis and found abundant openings in the bone that once held nerves. This was not like the sword of a swordfish, but a highly sensitive jaw that served as a probe as the porpoise hunted for its prey. Racicot assumes that like its relatives the living porpoises, it fed on small fish and shellfish in a shallow nearshore habitat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15262\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/porpoisejawcat.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15262\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/porpoisejawcat.png\" alt=\"nerves in porpoise jaw\" width=\"600\" height=\"250\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15262\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nerve canals are colored in this digital model (Rachel Racicot/Yale Univ.)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The rocks holding the fossils tell us about that habitat. The San Diego Formation, where Cerutti collected the type specimen, is largely a soft sandstone made of fine sand. The Purisima Formation, where other bones have been found, is a similar body of rocks cropping out irregularly in the Bay Area. Both represent the fine-grained sediment that once lay on the bottom of large, shallow bays in the California coast around 5 million years ago, in Pliocene time just before the beginning of the modern era of ice ages. Sea level was high at the time and the land was warm. These bays were large enough and stable enough to support the evolution of specialized feeders like Cerutti’s half-beak.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Racicot’s team found only two other animals with comparable faces: a bird, the black skimmer \u003ci>Rynchops niger\u003c/i> and a group of half-beaked fish called \u003ci>Hemiramphus\u003c/i>. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15263\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/rynchops-niger.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15263\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/rynchops-niger.jpg\" alt=\"Black skimmer\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15263\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Rynchops niger\u003c/i> the black skimmer (Dick Daniels/Wikimedia Commons)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>They note that these species mainly hunt at dawn, dusk or night and rely on their sensitive beaks in those dim conditions. Porpoises, like other cetaceans, use high-pitched sound to map their surroundings. And the pattern of tooth wear in \u003ci>Semirostrum ceruttii\u003c/i> matches what would happen to such a hunter whose jaw occasionally dipped into fine sand as they swam the ancient California seas. The long lower beaks of these species help detect prey and guide into their mouths. The extinct porpoise had neck joints and muscles that fit this hunting style, Racicot notes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I picture the Pliocene setting of coastal California as a large habitat that brought forth a variety of sea mammals, each exploiting a specialized niche. Racicot’s team hypothesizes that unlike other porpoise species \u003ci>Semirostrum ceruttii\u003c/i> foraged along the bottom, its sensitive beak giving it an extra edge in dark or muddy waters similar to the behavior of modern river dolphins.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15261\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/jawporpoise.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15261\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/jawporpoise.png\" alt=\"Skimmer porpoise jaw\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15261\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A digital model of the skull of the extinct skimmer porpoise \u003ci>Semirostrum ceruttii\u003c/i> shows its protruding lower mandible. From Racicot et al., “Unique feeding morphology in a new prognathous extinct porpoise from the Pliocene of California,” \u003ci>Current Biology\u003c/i>, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.02.031 (Rachel Racicot/Yale Univ.)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A newly described fossil species of porpoise had a record-breaking lower jaw that stuck out a full 7 inches beyond its upper jaw, the farthest measured in any mammal living or dead. It was even more bizarre than Jay Leno’s jaw; not just a lantern jaw but a flashlight jaw. The lower jawbone looks like a giant chicken’s wishbone. The fused portion at the front tip of the jaw, called a symphysis, amounts to 40 percent of the jawbone’s total length.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Porpoises are the smallest relatives of the whales, smaller and stouter than the dolphins. A beautifully preserved skull collected in Southern California is \u003ca href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.02.031\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">described in detail today\u003c/a> in the journal \u003ci>Current Biology\u003c/i> as part of the formal christening of a new porpoise species. The authors assign it the name \u003ci>Semirostrum ceruttii\u003c/i>, the generic name \u003ci>Semirostrum\u003c/i> meaning “half-beak” in scientific Latin and the specific epithet \u003ci>ceruttii\u003c/i> honoring Richard Cerutti, who first collected the species in the 1990s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The team of paleontologists behind the paper, led by Rachel Racicot of Yale University, looked closely at the long symphysis and found abundant openings in the bone that once held nerves. This was not like the sword of a swordfish, but a highly sensitive jaw that served as a probe as the porpoise hunted for its prey. Racicot assumes that like its relatives the living porpoises, it fed on small fish and shellfish in a shallow nearshore habitat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15262\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/porpoisejawcat.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15262\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/porpoisejawcat.png\" alt=\"nerves in porpoise jaw\" width=\"600\" height=\"250\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15262\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nerve canals are colored in this digital model (Rachel Racicot/Yale Univ.)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The rocks holding the fossils tell us about that habitat. The San Diego Formation, where Cerutti collected the type specimen, is largely a soft sandstone made of fine sand. The Purisima Formation, where other bones have been found, is a similar body of rocks cropping out irregularly in the Bay Area. Both represent the fine-grained sediment that once lay on the bottom of large, shallow bays in the California coast around 5 million years ago, in Pliocene time just before the beginning of the modern era of ice ages. Sea level was high at the time and the land was warm. These bays were large enough and stable enough to support the evolution of specialized feeders like Cerutti’s half-beak.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Racicot’s team found only two other animals with comparable faces: a bird, the black skimmer \u003ci>Rynchops niger\u003c/i> and a group of half-beaked fish called \u003ci>Hemiramphus\u003c/i>. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15263\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/rynchops-niger.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15263\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/rynchops-niger.jpg\" alt=\"Black skimmer\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15263\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Rynchops niger\u003c/i> the black skimmer (Dick Daniels/Wikimedia Commons)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>They note that these species mainly hunt at dawn, dusk or night and rely on their sensitive beaks in those dim conditions. Porpoises, like other cetaceans, use high-pitched sound to map their surroundings. And the pattern of tooth wear in \u003ci>Semirostrum ceruttii\u003c/i> matches what would happen to such a hunter whose jaw occasionally dipped into fine sand as they swam the ancient California seas. The long lower beaks of these species help detect prey and guide into their mouths. The extinct porpoise had neck joints and muscles that fit this hunting style, Racicot notes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I picture the Pliocene setting of coastal California as a large habitat that brought forth a variety of sea mammals, each exploiting a specialized niche. Racicot’s team hypothesizes that unlike other porpoise species \u003ci>Semirostrum ceruttii\u003c/i> foraged along the bottom, its sensitive beak giving it an extra edge in dark or muddy waters similar to the behavior of modern river dolphins.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "three-years-after-disaster-crescent-city-sports-a-new-tsunami-resistant-harbor",
"title": "Three Years After Disaster, Crescent City Sports a New 'Tsunami-Resistant' Harbor",
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"headTitle": "Three Years After Disaster, Crescent City Sports a New ‘Tsunami-Resistant’ Harbor | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15207\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/CrescentCity_ErnestPerry_1403.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15207\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15207\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/CrescentCity_ErnestPerry_1403.jpg\" alt=\"Three years after a tsunami destroyed it, Crescent City's Harbor is completely rebuilt. (Ernest Perry)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Three years after a tsunami swept through it, Crescent City’s Harbor is completely rebuilt. (Ernest Perry)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Richard Young admits that \u003ca title=\"Times-Standard - post\" href=\"http://www.times-standard.com/breakingnews/ci_25312898/location-sundays-6-9-quake-reduced-impact-north\">this week’s magnitude 6.9 earthquake\u003c/a> off the Northern California coast made him sit up in bed. This one did not produce a menacing tsunami. But if it had, the Crescent City harbormaster says he’d be ready.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Three years ago — almost to the day — a wave generated by Japan’s monstrous \u003ca title=\"NOAA - Tohoku\" href=\"http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazard/honshu_11mar2011.shtml\">Tohoku earthquake\u003c/a> destroyed Crescent City’s fishing harbor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003ca title=\"CW - post\" href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/03/13/crescent-city-its-a-mess-all-right/\">It was devastating\u003c/a>,” recalls Young, “not only for the harbor but for the entire community up here because this harbor and the commercial fishing activity that takes place here is an enormous part of the local economy, the local identity, and we were at risk of losing all of it at that time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Three years and $50 million later, Young says, “It’s fair to say we’re all the way back at this point.” The harbor has been rebuilt with new slips and gangways, and a new feature that may be most important of all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s the first tsunami-resistant marina that we know of anywhere on the West Coast,” Young adds with pride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we rebuilt it, we built it much stronger than it was previously. There are more pilings, larger pilings, and the system is designed to resist up to a 50-year tsunami.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Designed by Oakland-based \u003ca title=\"Gerwick - about\" href=\"http://www.gerwick.com/topmenu/aboutgerwick/Pages/aboutcowi.aspx\">Ben C. Gerwick Inc\u003c/a>., the fishing port has added nearly 100 more pilings (the posts that hold the floating docks in place). The new pilings are double the size of the old ones, and driven 30 feet into bedrock under the harbor. But the key new feature is a 400-foot tsunami attenuator dock, designed to withstand a tsunami of the intensity typically seen only twice in a century. Young says that translates roughly to a 12 to 15-foot wave.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Nothing is tsunami-proof because obviously we can’t resist all the forces that Mother Nature can throw at us,” admits Young, but, in a repeat of the type of events that caused havoc in 2006 and 2011, “This harbor is designed to resist those forces and suffer minimal, if any damage at all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15228\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Crescent2011_0524.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15228\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15228\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Crescent2011_0524.jpg\" alt=\"Wreckage piled up by the 2011 tsunami that hit Crescent City's harbor. (Craig Miller/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wreckage piled up by the 2011 tsunami that hit Crescent City’s harbor. (Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Young says that it’s been a long road back. He and his staff had just lined up redevelopment plans from a 2006 event, when the larger 2011 wave struck.” Where the \u003ca title=\"SF Gate - post\" href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/TSUNAMI-STRIKES-CRESCENT-CITY-5-to-6-foot-2466620.php\">2006 tsunami damaged things\u003c/a>, the 2011 tsunami just destroyed the harbor,” he recalls. “We’re very happy to get back to the business of running a harbor, instead of building a harbor.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most of the money to rebuild the harbor came from state and federal disaster grants, with some help from Del Norte County. But the harbor still had to borrow $5 million to finish the job. “Now comes the hard part, which is paying the bills,” says Young.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hard part is over for Young, however. He says he delayed his retirement in order to stick around and get the job done. Now he’s hanging up his slicker and moving to Chico in the Sierra foothills, where he is unlikely to hear tsunami warning sirens in the night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15207\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/CrescentCity_ErnestPerry_1403.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15207\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15207\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/CrescentCity_ErnestPerry_1403.jpg\" alt=\"Three years after a tsunami destroyed it, Crescent City's Harbor is completely rebuilt. (Ernest Perry)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Three years after a tsunami swept through it, Crescent City’s Harbor is completely rebuilt. (Ernest Perry)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Richard Young admits that \u003ca title=\"Times-Standard - post\" href=\"http://www.times-standard.com/breakingnews/ci_25312898/location-sundays-6-9-quake-reduced-impact-north\">this week’s magnitude 6.9 earthquake\u003c/a> off the Northern California coast made him sit up in bed. This one did not produce a menacing tsunami. But if it had, the Crescent City harbormaster says he’d be ready.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Three years ago — almost to the day — a wave generated by Japan’s monstrous \u003ca title=\"NOAA - Tohoku\" href=\"http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazard/honshu_11mar2011.shtml\">Tohoku earthquake\u003c/a> destroyed Crescent City’s fishing harbor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003ca title=\"CW - post\" href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/03/13/crescent-city-its-a-mess-all-right/\">It was devastating\u003c/a>,” recalls Young, “not only for the harbor but for the entire community up here because this harbor and the commercial fishing activity that takes place here is an enormous part of the local economy, the local identity, and we were at risk of losing all of it at that time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Three years and $50 million later, Young says, “It’s fair to say we’re all the way back at this point.” The harbor has been rebuilt with new slips and gangways, and a new feature that may be most important of all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s the first tsunami-resistant marina that we know of anywhere on the West Coast,” Young adds with pride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we rebuilt it, we built it much stronger than it was previously. There are more pilings, larger pilings, and the system is designed to resist up to a 50-year tsunami.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Designed by Oakland-based \u003ca title=\"Gerwick - about\" href=\"http://www.gerwick.com/topmenu/aboutgerwick/Pages/aboutcowi.aspx\">Ben C. Gerwick Inc\u003c/a>., the fishing port has added nearly 100 more pilings (the posts that hold the floating docks in place). The new pilings are double the size of the old ones, and driven 30 feet into bedrock under the harbor. But the key new feature is a 400-foot tsunami attenuator dock, designed to withstand a tsunami of the intensity typically seen only twice in a century. Young says that translates roughly to a 12 to 15-foot wave.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Nothing is tsunami-proof because obviously we can’t resist all the forces that Mother Nature can throw at us,” admits Young, but, in a repeat of the type of events that caused havoc in 2006 and 2011, “This harbor is designed to resist those forces and suffer minimal, if any damage at all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15228\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Crescent2011_0524.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15228\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15228\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Crescent2011_0524.jpg\" alt=\"Wreckage piled up by the 2011 tsunami that hit Crescent City's harbor. (Craig Miller/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wreckage piled up by the 2011 tsunami that hit Crescent City’s harbor. (Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Young says that it’s been a long road back. He and his staff had just lined up redevelopment plans from a 2006 event, when the larger 2011 wave struck.” Where the \u003ca title=\"SF Gate - post\" href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/TSUNAMI-STRIKES-CRESCENT-CITY-5-to-6-foot-2466620.php\">2006 tsunami damaged things\u003c/a>, the 2011 tsunami just destroyed the harbor,” he recalls. “We’re very happy to get back to the business of running a harbor, instead of building a harbor.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most of the money to rebuild the harbor came from state and federal disaster grants, with some help from Del Norte County. But the harbor still had to borrow $5 million to finish the job. “Now comes the hard part, which is paying the bills,” says Young.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hard part is over for Young, however. He says he delayed his retirement in order to stick around and get the job done. Now he’s hanging up his slicker and moving to Chico in the Sierra foothills, where he is unlikely to hear tsunami warning sirens in the night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>No early reports of damage or injuries. Quake hit at 10:18 p.m., centered off Humboldt coast. \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2014/03/09/6-9-quake-shakes-northern-california-coast/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"rssmi_more\" rel=\"noopener\">…Read More\u003c/a> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Source: \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2014/03/09/6-9-quake-shakes-northern-california-coast/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"6.9 Quake Shakes Northern California Coast; No Tsunami Threat\" rel=\"noopener\">Newsfix – Science\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"title": "Martian Meteorites Traced to Their Source: Mojave Crater",
"headTitle": "Martian Meteorites Traced to Their Source: Mojave Crater | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15035\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/sau094marsmeteorite.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15035\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/sau094marsmeteorite.jpg\" alt=\"Mars meteorite\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15035\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This Martian meteorite, designated Sayh al-Uhaymir 094, was found in Oman in February 2001. It’s classified as a shergottite and is similar to the deep rocks of Earth’s oceanic crust (image Natural History Museum Bern)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>After almost 50 years, we’re getting rather familiar with Mars. We have spacecraft images dating back to 1965 and chemical evidence from lander missions beginning in the 1970s. For years, orbiters have been recording the surface of Mars in spy-satellite detail. And Mars has sent actual rock specimens our way in the form of meteorites. A paper in the March 7 issue of \u003ci>Science\u003c/i> argues that most of the Mars rocks in our collections come from one place, a big young crater named Mojave.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rocks from Mars are a rare component of the hundreds of thousands of meteorites we’ve collected. They’re flung into space when cosmic collisions on Mars blast craters in its rocky crust, then they drift around the solar system for a while until Earth’s gravity draws them close enough to fall. We have about 150 specimens in our hands. Nearly all of them are the same rock type, given the name shergottite after the meteorite named Shergotty, which fell near Sherghati, India, in 1865. It’s a heavy, magnesium-rich mix of the minerals olivine, pyroxene and feldspar that is similar to the so-called ultramafic rocks of our own oceanic crust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ci>Science\u003c/i> paper reports efforts to trace shergottites and other Martian meteorites to their source. The research team, consisting of \u003ca href=\"http://earthdynamics.org/stephanie.html\">Stephanie Werner\u003c/a> (University of Oslo), \u003ca href=\"http://e-mars.geologie-lyon.fr/?page_id=919\">Anouck Ody\u003c/a> (Lyon University) and \u003ca href=\"http://www.ias.u-psud.fr/pperso/fpoulet/\">François Poulet\u003c/a> (Paris University Sud), first presented their work at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference last year in Texas, but this paper marks its formal publication. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The authors had several facts at their disposal. The Martian stones consist of a well-known mix of minerals that can be checked against satellite observations of the Martian surface. They have a controversially wide range of age determinations, with most being more than 4 billion years old and a few as young as 150 million years old. And they have been exposed to cosmic rays for as little as 1 million years. This represents the time they were floating in space before falling to Earth. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Werner’s team then made a new search for the youngest craters on Mars. These are best known from their fresh appearance and the presence of dust deposits that form a star-shaped pattern. The rays don’t show up well in ordinary light, but thermal images taken at night display them well. A prevous study found eight of these rayed craters, most of them only a few kilometers across. Only one of that group, Zunil, is large enough (about 10 km across) that the energy spent in forming it could have launched rocks free of Mars’s gravity. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new, more thorough search turned up 14 more rayed craters, of which the largest by far is Mojave, 55 kilometers across. It sits in Xanthe Terra, an area with some of the oldest terrain on Mars. Crater counts, the standard method of dating planetary surfaces, suggest that Xanthe, along with the rocks beneath it, is 4.1 billion years old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15036\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/mojavecrater.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15036\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/mojavecrater.jpg\" alt=\"Mojave crater, Mars\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15036\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mojave crater, shown in a mosaic of night-time thermal images, is surrounded by rays of fresh dust showing that it’s only a few million years old at most (Science/AAAS)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The researchers took a close look at the rocks exposed in the crater and found many localities that matched Mars meteorites in color—and by “color” I mean the range in light wavelengths going far beyond the red end of the visible rainbow. Given the size of Mojave, the consistency in ages between the terrain and the meteorites, and the close match in mineral composition, the authors are confident that the shergottites—and, for good measure, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001\">the controversial meteorite ALH84001\u003c/a>—”were sourced from the Mojave impact site.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With that, Werner’s team offers an explanation for the unusually young ages determined in some of the shergottites. These are not real ages, they say, but “reset” ages. A lot has happened at Xanthe Terra, by Martian standards. Since the time the ancient rocks formed some 4 billion years ago, volcanism and flooding during the next billion years left their traces behind in the landscape and, presumably, in the rocks as well. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shock waves from other impacts affected these already-altered rocks. For instance, the feldspar in most shergottites was shocked out of crystallization into the glassy form called maskelynite. The ages of these events may be reflected in dates derived from various specific minerals, whereas when the whole rock is dated the ages exceed 4 billion years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, just the other day in geological terms, a giant impact onto Xanthe Terra created Mojave crater and propelled the shergottites into space. All of this geologic history can upset the isotopic clocks in the rocks, turning part of their signal into noise—but now that the noise has plausible explanations, maybe it can be turned into a signal of new knowledge about Mars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pinning down the source of the shergottites is a cool thing, but Werner’s team points out in the \u003ci>Science\u003c/i> paper that something more fundamental has been achieved. We now have pinned down the exact age of Xanthe Terra with absolute dates, and from that we can recalibrate the crater-counting dating method to determine Mars history more precisely. Where once we considered Xanthe to be 4.1 billion years old, they say, we now can say that it’s 4.3 billion, and the rest of Mars can be studied with new precision.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15035\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/sau094marsmeteorite.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15035\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/sau094marsmeteorite.jpg\" alt=\"Mars meteorite\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15035\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This Martian meteorite, designated Sayh al-Uhaymir 094, was found in Oman in February 2001. It’s classified as a shergottite and is similar to the deep rocks of Earth’s oceanic crust (image Natural History Museum Bern)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>After almost 50 years, we’re getting rather familiar with Mars. We have spacecraft images dating back to 1965 and chemical evidence from lander missions beginning in the 1970s. For years, orbiters have been recording the surface of Mars in spy-satellite detail. And Mars has sent actual rock specimens our way in the form of meteorites. A paper in the March 7 issue of \u003ci>Science\u003c/i> argues that most of the Mars rocks in our collections come from one place, a big young crater named Mojave.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rocks from Mars are a rare component of the hundreds of thousands of meteorites we’ve collected. They’re flung into space when cosmic collisions on Mars blast craters in its rocky crust, then they drift around the solar system for a while until Earth’s gravity draws them close enough to fall. We have about 150 specimens in our hands. Nearly all of them are the same rock type, given the name shergottite after the meteorite named Shergotty, which fell near Sherghati, India, in 1865. It’s a heavy, magnesium-rich mix of the minerals olivine, pyroxene and feldspar that is similar to the so-called ultramafic rocks of our own oceanic crust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ci>Science\u003c/i> paper reports efforts to trace shergottites and other Martian meteorites to their source. The research team, consisting of \u003ca href=\"http://earthdynamics.org/stephanie.html\">Stephanie Werner\u003c/a> (University of Oslo), \u003ca href=\"http://e-mars.geologie-lyon.fr/?page_id=919\">Anouck Ody\u003c/a> (Lyon University) and \u003ca href=\"http://www.ias.u-psud.fr/pperso/fpoulet/\">François Poulet\u003c/a> (Paris University Sud), first presented their work at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference last year in Texas, but this paper marks its formal publication. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The authors had several facts at their disposal. The Martian stones consist of a well-known mix of minerals that can be checked against satellite observations of the Martian surface. They have a controversially wide range of age determinations, with most being more than 4 billion years old and a few as young as 150 million years old. And they have been exposed to cosmic rays for as little as 1 million years. This represents the time they were floating in space before falling to Earth. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Werner’s team then made a new search for the youngest craters on Mars. These are best known from their fresh appearance and the presence of dust deposits that form a star-shaped pattern. The rays don’t show up well in ordinary light, but thermal images taken at night display them well. A prevous study found eight of these rayed craters, most of them only a few kilometers across. Only one of that group, Zunil, is large enough (about 10 km across) that the energy spent in forming it could have launched rocks free of Mars’s gravity. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new, more thorough search turned up 14 more rayed craters, of which the largest by far is Mojave, 55 kilometers across. It sits in Xanthe Terra, an area with some of the oldest terrain on Mars. Crater counts, the standard method of dating planetary surfaces, suggest that Xanthe, along with the rocks beneath it, is 4.1 billion years old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15036\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/mojavecrater.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15036\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/mojavecrater.jpg\" alt=\"Mojave crater, Mars\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15036\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mojave crater, shown in a mosaic of night-time thermal images, is surrounded by rays of fresh dust showing that it’s only a few million years old at most (Science/AAAS)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The researchers took a close look at the rocks exposed in the crater and found many localities that matched Mars meteorites in color—and by “color” I mean the range in light wavelengths going far beyond the red end of the visible rainbow. Given the size of Mojave, the consistency in ages between the terrain and the meteorites, and the close match in mineral composition, the authors are confident that the shergottites—and, for good measure, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001\">the controversial meteorite ALH84001\u003c/a>—”were sourced from the Mojave impact site.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With that, Werner’s team offers an explanation for the unusually young ages determined in some of the shergottites. These are not real ages, they say, but “reset” ages. A lot has happened at Xanthe Terra, by Martian standards. Since the time the ancient rocks formed some 4 billion years ago, volcanism and flooding during the next billion years left their traces behind in the landscape and, presumably, in the rocks as well. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shock waves from other impacts affected these already-altered rocks. For instance, the feldspar in most shergottites was shocked out of crystallization into the glassy form called maskelynite. The ages of these events may be reflected in dates derived from various specific minerals, whereas when the whole rock is dated the ages exceed 4 billion years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, just the other day in geological terms, a giant impact onto Xanthe Terra created Mojave crater and propelled the shergottites into space. All of this geologic history can upset the isotopic clocks in the rocks, turning part of their signal into noise—but now that the noise has plausible explanations, maybe it can be turned into a signal of new knowledge about Mars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pinning down the source of the shergottites is a cool thing, but Werner’s team points out in the \u003ci>Science\u003c/i> paper that something more fundamental has been achieved. We now have pinned down the exact age of Xanthe Terra with absolute dates, and from that we can recalibrate the crater-counting dating method to determine Mars history more precisely. Where once we considered Xanthe to be 4.1 billion years old, they say, we now can say that it’s 4.3 billion, and the rest of Mars can be studied with new precision.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Seven Things to Know About the Sixth Mass Extinction",
"headTitle": "Seven Things to Know About the Sixth Mass Extinction | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14482\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/coralreef.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14482\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/coralreef.jpg\" alt=\"Coral Reef at Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge (Jim Maragos/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwspacific/5565696408/\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Coral reefs are the first major ecosystems that could be wiped out by human impacts. (\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwspacific/5565696408/\">Jim Maragos/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>You gotta love an author who manages to turn complex scientific theories and millions of years of history into an easy-to-understand thesis — even if that thesis is that humans are causing mass extinction. Elizabeth Kolbert’s book \u003ca href=\"http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780805092998\">“The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History”\u003c/a> centers around two ideas: that humans are witnessing a very high rate of species extinction and that we’re causing much of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kolbert joined \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201402191000\">KQED’s Forum\u003c/a> to discuss her book and the disappearance of everything from the snails of the Hawaiian islands to bats in upstate New York. The topic isn’t a cheery one, but as Kolbert writes in the introduction, “If extinction is a morbid topic, mass extinction is, well, massively so. It’s also a fascinating one.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are highlights from the Forum interview, edited for clarity:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>1. We Don’t Know Yet How Bad This Extinction Will Be\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are clearly at a time of very high extinction rates. Whether we rise to the level of the major – the five major – mass extinctions of the last half billion years certainly remains to be determined. There have also been, somewhat oxymoronically, “minor” mass extinctions in the record. Where this extinction event is going to fit into that is obviously impossible to know when you’re in the midst of it. But increasingly you hear scientists comparing us to the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs and many other groups.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14487\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/trilobites.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14487\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/trilobites.jpg\" alt=\"Trilobites went extinct in the mass extinction at the end of the Permian. (Kevin Walsh/Flickr)\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Trilobites went extinct in the mass extinction at the end of the Permian. (\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/86624586@N00/513424023/\">Kevin Walsh/Flickr\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>2. Based on Carbon Emissions, We May Be On Track For the Worst Mass Extinction, Ever\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The worst mass extinction in the history of the planet happened about 250 million years ago at the end of what’s known as the Permian period. And it’s believed that it was caused by this major burst of volcanic activity that emitted a lot of CO2 into the air and warmed the planet very radically and changed the chemistry of the oceans very radically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And very soberingly, scientists have recently tried to figure out at what rate was CO2 being emitted at that point. And the best estimate that they can come up with – this is a pretty recent paper – suggests that we are pouring CO2 into the air faster than was poured into the air in the events leading up to the end of the Permian extinction. So you increasingly hear ‘We cannot rule out that kind of an outcome: the Permian,’ which was the worst mass extinction in history. I find that – even I, who wrote this book, and feel like I couldn’t be surprised by much anymore – find that, just extremely sobering and terrifying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>3. Invasive Species Have Created a “New Pangea”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Invasive species actually are implicated in, some people would say, the majority of extinctions we know about. Invasive species turn out to be really important.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Effectively about 250 million years ago all of the continents of the world were smushed together in this supercontinent that has been called Pangea. And then they drifted apart due to plate tectonics and we eventually got the world as we know it, with seven continents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What we’re doing by bringing together all of the flora and fauna of the world just by transporting things around the world, in a biological sense, is erasing those boundaries between the continents and smushing them back together. So a term has been coined: the ‘New Pangea.’ We are creating the New Pangea. We’re bringing everything back together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that can have, it turns out, very devastating consequences. Often it has no consequences — you move something around the world, it can’t make it in a new place so it just disappears, or it establishes itself and it doesn’t do any damage, it just sort of coexists with what was there before. But a certain percentage of the time, and even if it’s a very small percentage – [because] you are doing it over and over again, it obviously adds up – a certain percentage of the time you bring together these evolutionary lineages that have been separated for tens of millions of years and very devastating things happen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14485\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/wns28-e1392943860258.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14485\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/wns28-e1392943860258.jpg\" alt=\"Bats hibernating in a cave in New York with fungal growth on their faces. (Nancy Heaslip/NY Department of Environmental Conservation)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bats hibernating in a cave in New York with fungal growth on their faces. (Nancy Heaslip/NY Department of Environmental Conservation)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>4. White-Nose Syndrome, a European Fungus, Is Decimating North American Bats\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[The fungus] has been traced back to Europe – it came over quite possibly on someone’s shoe, or in their suitcase. It almost certainly landed somewhere in upstate New York, because that is where we first started to see these huge die-offs. It’s very devastating to bats, it gets on their skin, it irritates their skin. You can \u003ca href=\"http://www.nwhc.usgs.gov/disease_information/white-nose_syndrome/\">see it\u003c/a>. It looks like the bats have been dunked in talcum powder or cocaine, some people have said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What happens is that bats in the North Eastern U.S. hibernate during the winter. So they hang by their toes, their body temperature drops, their immune system shuts down and they really, really need to conserve energy. They are very small little creatures, they need that energy to get through the winter – there’s nothing to eat. And this fungus irritates them, they wake up, they fly around, there’s nothing to eat, they drop dead.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>5. Coral Reefs Could Be the First Major Ecosystems to Disappear Because of Humans\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many marine scientists believe that coral reefs will be the first major ecosystem to be done in by human impacts. So there will still be corals, but they will no longer be able to form these fantastic reefs that support a tremendous variety of species anywhere between half a million and something like nine million species spend part of their lives on coral reefs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Changing water temperatures are really dramatically affecting reefs. Reefs have this interesting symbiosis going on. They have algae inside them, that feed them, that provide carbohydrates for them and that they get a lot of their energy from. And when water temperatures get too high this relationship breaks down, they expel [the algae] and they basically starve to death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coral_bleach.html\">Coral bleaching events\u003c/a>, which are happening more and more frequently because water temperatures are going up, those are already really reducing coral cover in a lot of parts of the world. So for example, in the Great Barrier Reef, which is the world’s largest reef, coral cover has declined by something like 50 percent just in the last few decades.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>6. The Chemistry of the Oceans Is Changing Radically\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you talk to scientists – certainly if you talk to marine scientists – one thing that really, really worries them that has not gotten the press it deserves is this issue of ocean acidification. That’s the phenomenon where, when you pour CO2 into the air as we are — there’s just no debate about that, we’re pouring about ten billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year just by burning fossil fuels — a lot of it is going to end up in the oceans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When CO2 dissolves in water it forms a weak acid. It forms carbonic acid … And it’s changing the chemistry of the oceans very radically.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>7. There’s No Saying What Will Survive This Extinction Event\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People are actively interested in this question precisely because we seem to be in another mass extinction event. What comes through? What tends to come through these extinction events? And they’ve found very very few rules. It’s very hard to say that there’s a rule. The dinosaurs were the dominate group on Earth for tens of millions of years and they all – every species of non-avian dinosaur dies out. Why is that? No one really knows.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can listen to the complete interview below:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/135726672&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Elizabeth Kolbert’s book “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” centers around two premises: that humans are witnessing a very high rate of species extinction and that humans are causing much of it.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14482\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/coralreef.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14482\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/coralreef.jpg\" alt=\"Coral Reef at Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge (Jim Maragos/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwspacific/5565696408/\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Coral reefs are the first major ecosystems that could be wiped out by human impacts. (\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwspacific/5565696408/\">Jim Maragos/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>You gotta love an author who manages to turn complex scientific theories and millions of years of history into an easy-to-understand thesis — even if that thesis is that humans are causing mass extinction. Elizabeth Kolbert’s book \u003ca href=\"http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780805092998\">“The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History”\u003c/a> centers around two ideas: that humans are witnessing a very high rate of species extinction and that we’re causing much of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kolbert joined \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201402191000\">KQED’s Forum\u003c/a> to discuss her book and the disappearance of everything from the snails of the Hawaiian islands to bats in upstate New York. The topic isn’t a cheery one, but as Kolbert writes in the introduction, “If extinction is a morbid topic, mass extinction is, well, massively so. It’s also a fascinating one.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are highlights from the Forum interview, edited for clarity:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>1. We Don’t Know Yet How Bad This Extinction Will Be\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are clearly at a time of very high extinction rates. Whether we rise to the level of the major – the five major – mass extinctions of the last half billion years certainly remains to be determined. There have also been, somewhat oxymoronically, “minor” mass extinctions in the record. Where this extinction event is going to fit into that is obviously impossible to know when you’re in the midst of it. But increasingly you hear scientists comparing us to the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs and many other groups.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14487\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/trilobites.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14487\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/trilobites.jpg\" alt=\"Trilobites went extinct in the mass extinction at the end of the Permian. (Kevin Walsh/Flickr)\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Trilobites went extinct in the mass extinction at the end of the Permian. (\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/86624586@N00/513424023/\">Kevin Walsh/Flickr\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>2. Based on Carbon Emissions, We May Be On Track For the Worst Mass Extinction, Ever\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The worst mass extinction in the history of the planet happened about 250 million years ago at the end of what’s known as the Permian period. And it’s believed that it was caused by this major burst of volcanic activity that emitted a lot of CO2 into the air and warmed the planet very radically and changed the chemistry of the oceans very radically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And very soberingly, scientists have recently tried to figure out at what rate was CO2 being emitted at that point. And the best estimate that they can come up with – this is a pretty recent paper – suggests that we are pouring CO2 into the air faster than was poured into the air in the events leading up to the end of the Permian extinction. So you increasingly hear ‘We cannot rule out that kind of an outcome: the Permian,’ which was the worst mass extinction in history. I find that – even I, who wrote this book, and feel like I couldn’t be surprised by much anymore – find that, just extremely sobering and terrifying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>3. Invasive Species Have Created a “New Pangea”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Invasive species actually are implicated in, some people would say, the majority of extinctions we know about. Invasive species turn out to be really important.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Effectively about 250 million years ago all of the continents of the world were smushed together in this supercontinent that has been called Pangea. And then they drifted apart due to plate tectonics and we eventually got the world as we know it, with seven continents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What we’re doing by bringing together all of the flora and fauna of the world just by transporting things around the world, in a biological sense, is erasing those boundaries between the continents and smushing them back together. So a term has been coined: the ‘New Pangea.’ We are creating the New Pangea. We’re bringing everything back together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that can have, it turns out, very devastating consequences. Often it has no consequences — you move something around the world, it can’t make it in a new place so it just disappears, or it establishes itself and it doesn’t do any damage, it just sort of coexists with what was there before. But a certain percentage of the time, and even if it’s a very small percentage – [because] you are doing it over and over again, it obviously adds up – a certain percentage of the time you bring together these evolutionary lineages that have been separated for tens of millions of years and very devastating things happen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14485\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/wns28-e1392943860258.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14485\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/wns28-e1392943860258.jpg\" alt=\"Bats hibernating in a cave in New York with fungal growth on their faces. (Nancy Heaslip/NY Department of Environmental Conservation)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bats hibernating in a cave in New York with fungal growth on their faces. (Nancy Heaslip/NY Department of Environmental Conservation)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>4. White-Nose Syndrome, a European Fungus, Is Decimating North American Bats\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[The fungus] has been traced back to Europe – it came over quite possibly on someone’s shoe, or in their suitcase. It almost certainly landed somewhere in upstate New York, because that is where we first started to see these huge die-offs. It’s very devastating to bats, it gets on their skin, it irritates their skin. You can \u003ca href=\"http://www.nwhc.usgs.gov/disease_information/white-nose_syndrome/\">see it\u003c/a>. It looks like the bats have been dunked in talcum powder or cocaine, some people have said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What happens is that bats in the North Eastern U.S. hibernate during the winter. So they hang by their toes, their body temperature drops, their immune system shuts down and they really, really need to conserve energy. They are very small little creatures, they need that energy to get through the winter – there’s nothing to eat. And this fungus irritates them, they wake up, they fly around, there’s nothing to eat, they drop dead.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>5. Coral Reefs Could Be the First Major Ecosystems to Disappear Because of Humans\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many marine scientists believe that coral reefs will be the first major ecosystem to be done in by human impacts. So there will still be corals, but they will no longer be able to form these fantastic reefs that support a tremendous variety of species anywhere between half a million and something like nine million species spend part of their lives on coral reefs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Changing water temperatures are really dramatically affecting reefs. Reefs have this interesting symbiosis going on. They have algae inside them, that feed them, that provide carbohydrates for them and that they get a lot of their energy from. And when water temperatures get too high this relationship breaks down, they expel [the algae] and they basically starve to death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coral_bleach.html\">Coral bleaching events\u003c/a>, which are happening more and more frequently because water temperatures are going up, those are already really reducing coral cover in a lot of parts of the world. So for example, in the Great Barrier Reef, which is the world’s largest reef, coral cover has declined by something like 50 percent just in the last few decades.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>6. The Chemistry of the Oceans Is Changing Radically\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you talk to scientists – certainly if you talk to marine scientists – one thing that really, really worries them that has not gotten the press it deserves is this issue of ocean acidification. That’s the phenomenon where, when you pour CO2 into the air as we are — there’s just no debate about that, we’re pouring about ten billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year just by burning fossil fuels — a lot of it is going to end up in the oceans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When CO2 dissolves in water it forms a weak acid. It forms carbonic acid … And it’s changing the chemistry of the oceans very radically.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>7. There’s No Saying What Will Survive This Extinction Event\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People are actively interested in this question precisely because we seem to be in another mass extinction event. What comes through? What tends to come through these extinction events? And they’ve found very very few rules. It’s very hard to say that there’s a rule. The dinosaurs were the dominate group on Earth for tens of millions of years and they all – every species of non-avian dinosaur dies out. Why is that? No one really knows.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can listen to the complete interview below:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Why the Next Rainstorm Might Make a Bigger Dent in the Drought",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2014/02/13/Drought.gif\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>The Cosumnes River, before and after the atmospheric river storm of February 8-9. (Carson Jeffres)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Watching the TV news reporters out in their slickers, in front of \u003ca title=\"KTVU - post\" href=\"http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local/storm-helps-refill-parched-russian-river/ndJZN/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter\">suddenly raging rivers\u003c/a> last weekend, it was tempting to open the taps and start celebrating the end of California’s Big Dry. But officials and forecasters were \u003ca title=\"SF Gate - post\" href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/California-drought-Storm-a-reprieve-not-a-cure-5222416.php\">quick to point out\u003c/a> that the festivities would be premature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are a few reasons for this. One is the sheer depth of California’s precipitation deficit. Over a three-day period, some places doubled their total seasonal rainfall totals–and still found themselves at just 30 or 40 percent of average.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another was that this atmospheric river pouring in from the Pacific was a rifle, not a shotgun. It “kind of sat in one spot and hosed one part of the state,” explains \u003ca title=\"UC Davis - CWS\" href=\"https://watershed.ucdavis.edu/people/jfmount\">Jeffrey Mount\u003c/a>, a consulting geologist and co-founder of the \u003ca title=\"UC Davis - CWS\" href=\"https://watershed.ucdavis.edu/\">Center for Watershed Sciences\u003c/a> at University of California, Davis. “We’re in a statewide drought, so this did nothing to relieve anything basically south of Sacramento.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the third reason is more elusive. It has to do with how extremely dry conditions were when the storm arrived.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It rained so hard that it saturated the ground right near the surface,” says Mount, who is a fluvial geomorphologist, which is to say an expert on how rivers change and respond to major weather events. “Once it’s saturated, that water starts running right off the surface. It’s not stored at all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hence, rivers that were right in the path of the storm went from nearly bone-dry to running amok in a matter of hours. Carson Jeffres, a colleague of Mount’s at Davis, was up on the Cosumnes River, watching it swell. “The river went from dry to out in the floodplain in about 16 hours,” Jeffres wrote in an email.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2014/02/13/RussianRiver.gif\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>The Russian River seen from Badger Park in Healdsburg, before and after the atmospheric river storm of February 8-9. (Before: Craig Miller. After: Jacob Katz)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But much of that water didn’t stick around long enough to recharge underground aquifers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mount says it has to do with “infiltration capacity” of the soils. “Think of your ability to absorb information,” he says. “You have an infiltration capacity. The soils are the same way. Lighter, more prolonged rains don’t tend to overwhelm the ground’s infiltration capacity. “It goes into soil and it actually starts moving downslope below the surface and discharges into the river, which is why you often will see rivers will rise very slowly in gentle storms and then go down very slowly, long after the storm has gone. That’s because the soils just below the surface are feeding water into the rivers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when the water all comes at once, as it did in the early February deluge, “Up comes the river and down goes the river, very quickly,” says Mount.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In extremely dry conditions, Mount says the soil can turn “hydrophobic.” That doesn’t mean the dirt has rabies but it does mean it’s “afraid” of water, as he explains it. “The first rain doesn’t penetrate much. It literally bounces right off and runs off. The way water ran off during that storm, one would wonder if that was the case.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not that there weren’t winners from the storm. At one point, Mount says \u003ca title=\"SacBee - post\" href=\"http://www.sacbee.com/2014/02/10/6143952/long-awaited-soaking-quenches.html\">Folsom Lake\u003c/a>, a lynchpin reservoir for the Sacramento region, was taking in 50,000 acre-feet per day from the suddenly engorged American River. “That’s enough for the City of Folsom to make it through a whole year,” he says. But similar flows on the Russian River, for instance, went straight out the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2014/02/13/Drought.gif\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>The Cosumnes River, before and after the atmospheric river storm of February 8-9. (Carson Jeffres)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Watching the TV news reporters out in their slickers, in front of \u003ca title=\"KTVU - post\" href=\"http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local/storm-helps-refill-parched-russian-river/ndJZN/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter\">suddenly raging rivers\u003c/a> last weekend, it was tempting to open the taps and start celebrating the end of California’s Big Dry. But officials and forecasters were \u003ca title=\"SF Gate - post\" href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/California-drought-Storm-a-reprieve-not-a-cure-5222416.php\">quick to point out\u003c/a> that the festivities would be premature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are a few reasons for this. One is the sheer depth of California’s precipitation deficit. Over a three-day period, some places doubled their total seasonal rainfall totals–and still found themselves at just 30 or 40 percent of average.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another was that this atmospheric river pouring in from the Pacific was a rifle, not a shotgun. It “kind of sat in one spot and hosed one part of the state,” explains \u003ca title=\"UC Davis - CWS\" href=\"https://watershed.ucdavis.edu/people/jfmount\">Jeffrey Mount\u003c/a>, a consulting geologist and co-founder of the \u003ca title=\"UC Davis - CWS\" href=\"https://watershed.ucdavis.edu/\">Center for Watershed Sciences\u003c/a> at University of California, Davis. “We’re in a statewide drought, so this did nothing to relieve anything basically south of Sacramento.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the third reason is more elusive. It has to do with how extremely dry conditions were when the storm arrived.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It rained so hard that it saturated the ground right near the surface,” says Mount, who is a fluvial geomorphologist, which is to say an expert on how rivers change and respond to major weather events. “Once it’s saturated, that water starts running right off the surface. It’s not stored at all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hence, rivers that were right in the path of the storm went from nearly bone-dry to running amok in a matter of hours. Carson Jeffres, a colleague of Mount’s at Davis, was up on the Cosumnes River, watching it swell. “The river went from dry to out in the floodplain in about 16 hours,” Jeffres wrote in an email.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2014/02/13/RussianRiver.gif\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>The Russian River seen from Badger Park in Healdsburg, before and after the atmospheric river storm of February 8-9. (Before: Craig Miller. After: Jacob Katz)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But much of that water didn’t stick around long enough to recharge underground aquifers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mount says it has to do with “infiltration capacity” of the soils. “Think of your ability to absorb information,” he says. “You have an infiltration capacity. The soils are the same way. Lighter, more prolonged rains don’t tend to overwhelm the ground’s infiltration capacity. “It goes into soil and it actually starts moving downslope below the surface and discharges into the river, which is why you often will see rivers will rise very slowly in gentle storms and then go down very slowly, long after the storm has gone. That’s because the soils just below the surface are feeding water into the rivers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when the water all comes at once, as it did in the early February deluge, “Up comes the river and down goes the river, very quickly,” says Mount.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In extremely dry conditions, Mount says the soil can turn “hydrophobic.” That doesn’t mean the dirt has rabies but it does mean it’s “afraid” of water, as he explains it. “The first rain doesn’t penetrate much. It literally bounces right off and runs off. The way water ran off during that storm, one would wonder if that was the case.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not that there weren’t winners from the storm. At one point, Mount says \u003ca title=\"SacBee - post\" href=\"http://www.sacbee.com/2014/02/10/6143952/long-awaited-soaking-quenches.html\">Folsom Lake\u003c/a>, a lynchpin reservoir for the Sacramento region, was taking in 50,000 acre-feet per day from the suddenly engorged American River. “That’s enough for the City of Folsom to make it through a whole year,” he says. But similar flows on the Russian River, for instance, went straight out the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "New Trove of Canadian Fossils Expands Knowledge of Cambrian Explosion",
"headTitle": "New Trove of Canadian Fossils Expands Knowledge of Cambrian Explosion | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14248\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/burgesstrilobite.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14248\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14248\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/burgesstrilobite.jpg\" alt=\"Burgess-type trilobite\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Specimen of the early trilobite \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kootenia\">Kootenia burgessensis\u003c/a>\u003c/em> from the new Marble Canyon locality, British Columbia. From \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140211/ncomms4210/full/ncomms4210.html\">Caron et al.\u003c/a>, \u003cem>Nature Communications\u003c/em>, 2014\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The famous \u003ca href=\"http://burgess-shale.rom.on.ca/\">Burgess Shale fossil locality\u003c/a> in the Canadian Rockies has a new neighbor, and it appears to be even more promising as a glimpse of evolution’s “Cambrian explosion.” The new Marble Canyon fossil quarry, just over the hill from the original Burgess Shale site, has spectacular fossils of soft-bodied creatures that differ notably from those of its 100-year-old neighbor, the Walcott Quarry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In studying the life of the geologic past, we’re limited to the fossils that nature happens to preserve. Most places have none; many places have just hard parts like bones and shells. Just a handful of places seemingly preserve faithful replicas of everything—skin, internal organs, feathers, even embryos. Places like that are called lagerstätten, and the Walcott Quarry is one of the most important in the world. Now Marble Canyon is another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Marble Canyon lagerstätte was \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140211/ncomms4210/full/ncomms4210.html\">unveiled this week in the journal \u003cem>Nature Communications\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, including the photos reproduced here. The authors lived a dream that every fossil hunter has: they studied the geologic maps and planned a search for the same rocks found in the Walcott Quarry. A year later, a helicopter dropped them high in the Rockies and they ambled over to a pile of boulders shed off the mountainside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Picking through the stones, they quickly found the fossils they sought. Team leader Jean-Bernard Caron recalls, “They had been weathered by the elements probably for thousands of years, but that did not matter to us! Everybody in our team stumbled across treasures, and in a matter of a few days just doing simple ‘talus picking,’ we had found hundreds of specimens without much effort at all! I still remember exclamations of awe by my colleagues and field assistants every few minutes or so—it was unbelievable! These were very exciting times indeed.” (\u003ca href=\"http://www.rom.on.ca/en/blog/mighty-burgess-shale-fossil-site-discovered-in-kootenay-national-park\">Read more in his own words\u003c/a> on the website of the Royal Ontario Museum, which sponsored the expedition.) One of those exclaimers was a Californian, \u003ca href=\"http://pomona.edu/news/2014/02/11-gaines-fossils-marblecyn.aspx\">Pomona College professor Robert Gaines\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next they went uphill and found the boulders’ source. For the rest of the two-week stay, they mined this little outcrop and took home a total of 3,067 fossils.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14250\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/marblecanyonquarry.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14250\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14250\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/marblecanyonquarry.jpg\" alt=\"Marble Canyon Quarry\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Marble Canyon quarry, with team member Diego Balseiro labeling fossils. Photo courtesy Jean-Bernard Caron\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The significance of their find sank in as they prepared and analyzed their fossils over the following year. In their two weeks of digging, they had collected 55 different species. Fossil collecting follows a so-called rarefaction curve, which describes the rate at which new species are found as time goes on. The curve always levels off as the collector eventually finds every species that’s there. The rarefaction curve for Marble Canyon looks even better than the one for the Walcott Quarry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let’s look at some of the highlights shown in the \u003cem>Nature Communications\u003c/em> paper. Many of the fossils represented species of arthropods new to science. (Arthropods are the group of animals that includes trilobites, spiders, insects, and crustaceans of all kinds.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14251\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/eyelash-creature.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14251\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14251\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/eyelash-creature.jpg\" alt=\"Isoxyid fossil\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This specimen of a new arthropod species (an isoxyid) is about 1 inch across. The dark bands among the fringelike appendages are thought to be vessels for the creature’s blood, or hemolymph\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14252\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/shrimpy.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14252\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14252\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/shrimpy.jpg\" alt=\"Leancholidiid fossil\" width=\"600\" height=\"350\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This specimen of a new arthropod species (a leancholidiid) is about 3 inches long; its front appendages, shown folded against its underside on the left, may have been used to hunt other animals\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14254\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/mollisonia.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14254\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14254\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/mollisonia.jpg\" alt=\"Mollisonia symmetra\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This specimen of \u003cem>Mollisonia symmetrica\u003c/em>, about 2 inches long, is the first to display its soft parts; it was previously known in fragments\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14255\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/mollies-eyes.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14255\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14255\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/mollies-eyes.jpg\" alt=\"Mollisonia's eyes\" width=\"600\" height=\"375\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003cem>Mollisonia\u003c/em>‘s eyes are preserved, complete with corneas and retinas; these and the appendages beside the head appear to make it a predatory species\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The bigger picture in which these new fossils fit is the abiding mystery of the Cambrian explosion, a period about 500 million years ago in which life burgeoned with new species and new body plans at a rate not seen before or since. It was as if a whole new world had opened up to life, and nearly all of today’s major animal classes arose at that time. Explanations involve the rise of free oxygen in the atmosphere and the creation of the protective ozone layer, the availability of calcium with which to build hard shells, and the evolutionary “arms race” of predators and prey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Cambrian explosion is a key problem in evolution, by which I mean that biologists and paleontologists are having the time of their lives and learning things that shed light on the rest of life’s history on Earth. The Marble Canyon fossils are a few million years younger than the Walcott Quarry, giving us a new point in time to help unveil the big story.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "A new trove of soft-body fossils promises to expand the range of time and life-forms available to science as we explore the Cambrian Explosion of a half-billion years ago.",
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"title": "New Trove of Canadian Fossils Expands Knowledge of Cambrian Explosion | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14248\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/burgesstrilobite.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14248\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14248\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/burgesstrilobite.jpg\" alt=\"Burgess-type trilobite\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Specimen of the early trilobite \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kootenia\">Kootenia burgessensis\u003c/a>\u003c/em> from the new Marble Canyon locality, British Columbia. From \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140211/ncomms4210/full/ncomms4210.html\">Caron et al.\u003c/a>, \u003cem>Nature Communications\u003c/em>, 2014\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The famous \u003ca href=\"http://burgess-shale.rom.on.ca/\">Burgess Shale fossil locality\u003c/a> in the Canadian Rockies has a new neighbor, and it appears to be even more promising as a glimpse of evolution’s “Cambrian explosion.” The new Marble Canyon fossil quarry, just over the hill from the original Burgess Shale site, has spectacular fossils of soft-bodied creatures that differ notably from those of its 100-year-old neighbor, the Walcott Quarry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In studying the life of the geologic past, we’re limited to the fossils that nature happens to preserve. Most places have none; many places have just hard parts like bones and shells. Just a handful of places seemingly preserve faithful replicas of everything—skin, internal organs, feathers, even embryos. Places like that are called lagerstätten, and the Walcott Quarry is one of the most important in the world. Now Marble Canyon is another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Marble Canyon lagerstätte was \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140211/ncomms4210/full/ncomms4210.html\">unveiled this week in the journal \u003cem>Nature Communications\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, including the photos reproduced here. The authors lived a dream that every fossil hunter has: they studied the geologic maps and planned a search for the same rocks found in the Walcott Quarry. A year later, a helicopter dropped them high in the Rockies and they ambled over to a pile of boulders shed off the mountainside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Picking through the stones, they quickly found the fossils they sought. Team leader Jean-Bernard Caron recalls, “They had been weathered by the elements probably for thousands of years, but that did not matter to us! Everybody in our team stumbled across treasures, and in a matter of a few days just doing simple ‘talus picking,’ we had found hundreds of specimens without much effort at all! I still remember exclamations of awe by my colleagues and field assistants every few minutes or so—it was unbelievable! These were very exciting times indeed.” (\u003ca href=\"http://www.rom.on.ca/en/blog/mighty-burgess-shale-fossil-site-discovered-in-kootenay-national-park\">Read more in his own words\u003c/a> on the website of the Royal Ontario Museum, which sponsored the expedition.) One of those exclaimers was a Californian, \u003ca href=\"http://pomona.edu/news/2014/02/11-gaines-fossils-marblecyn.aspx\">Pomona College professor Robert Gaines\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next they went uphill and found the boulders’ source. For the rest of the two-week stay, they mined this little outcrop and took home a total of 3,067 fossils.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14250\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/marblecanyonquarry.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14250\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14250\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/marblecanyonquarry.jpg\" alt=\"Marble Canyon Quarry\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Marble Canyon quarry, with team member Diego Balseiro labeling fossils. Photo courtesy Jean-Bernard Caron\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The significance of their find sank in as they prepared and analyzed their fossils over the following year. In their two weeks of digging, they had collected 55 different species. Fossil collecting follows a so-called rarefaction curve, which describes the rate at which new species are found as time goes on. The curve always levels off as the collector eventually finds every species that’s there. The rarefaction curve for Marble Canyon looks even better than the one for the Walcott Quarry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let’s look at some of the highlights shown in the \u003cem>Nature Communications\u003c/em> paper. Many of the fossils represented species of arthropods new to science. (Arthropods are the group of animals that includes trilobites, spiders, insects, and crustaceans of all kinds.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14251\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/eyelash-creature.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14251\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14251\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/eyelash-creature.jpg\" alt=\"Isoxyid fossil\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This specimen of a new arthropod species (an isoxyid) is about 1 inch across. The dark bands among the fringelike appendages are thought to be vessels for the creature’s blood, or hemolymph\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14252\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/shrimpy.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14252\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14252\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/shrimpy.jpg\" alt=\"Leancholidiid fossil\" width=\"600\" height=\"350\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This specimen of a new arthropod species (a leancholidiid) is about 3 inches long; its front appendages, shown folded against its underside on the left, may have been used to hunt other animals\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14254\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/mollisonia.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14254\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14254\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/mollisonia.jpg\" alt=\"Mollisonia symmetra\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This specimen of \u003cem>Mollisonia symmetrica\u003c/em>, about 2 inches long, is the first to display its soft parts; it was previously known in fragments\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14255\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/mollies-eyes.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14255\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14255\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/mollies-eyes.jpg\" alt=\"Mollisonia's eyes\" width=\"600\" height=\"375\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003cem>Mollisonia\u003c/em>‘s eyes are preserved, complete with corneas and retinas; these and the appendages beside the head appear to make it a predatory species\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The bigger picture in which these new fossils fit is the abiding mystery of the Cambrian explosion, a period about 500 million years ago in which life burgeoned with new species and new body plans at a rate not seen before or since. It was as if a whole new world had opened up to life, and nearly all of today’s major animal classes arose at that time. Explanations involve the rise of free oxygen in the atmosphere and the creation of the protective ozone layer, the availability of calcium with which to build hard shells, and the evolutionary “arms race” of predators and prey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Cambrian explosion is a key problem in evolution, by which I mean that biologists and paleontologists are having the time of their lives and learning things that shed light on the rest of life’s history on Earth. The Marble Canyon fossils are a few million years younger than the Walcott Quarry, giving us a new point in time to help unveil the big story.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Don't Eat the Dirt on Mars: the Pros and Cons of Perchlorate",
"headTitle": "Don’t Eat the Dirt on Mars: the Pros and Cons of Perchlorate | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14108\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/S044-e1392090054341.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14108\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/S044-e1392090054341.jpg\" alt=\"Future astronauts explore the Red Planet. Credit/ NASA\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Future astronauts explore the Red Planet. Credit/NASA\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>To be successful Mars colonists, future astronauts will need to know both the potential hazard and utility of the soil. Astronauts can use Martian soil to “live off the land” as building material, fuel, or a fertilizer, greatly reducing the cost of a Mars mission, which is one of the biggest barriers to sending humans to the red planet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One unusual compound that has garnered quite a bit of attention is called perchlorate; it has the potential to be both a blessing and a curse for future explorers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you think that you have heard of perchlorate before, it’s probably because perchlorate is a \u003ca title=\"Perchlorate in the Pacific Southwest\" href=\"http://www.epa.gov/region9/toxic/perchlorate/per_ca.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fairly common groundwater contaminant\u003c/a> here on Earth, especially in regions of California and other parts of the southwest United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A particular type of perchlorate called ammonium perchlorate is used as rocket propellant. If enough ammonium perchlorate finds its way into drinking water from rocket testing, launches or fireworks, it can be detrimental to human health. Excess perchlorate consumption harms the thyroid by preventing the synthesis of hormones that regulate metabolism.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Perchlorate has the potential to be both a blessing and a curse for future explorers.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>In 2008, scientists on the Phoenix lander team discovered perchlorate on the Martian surface. Last year, \u003ca title=\"Perchlorate Complicates Hunt for Life on Mars\" href=\"http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5709/perchlorate-complicates-hunt-for-life-on-mars\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">perchlorate was confirmed \u003c/a>near the landing site of the Curiosity rover. Confirmation of perchlorate over 5,700 kilometers apart indicates that the compound might be found almost everywhere on the surface of Mars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While manufactured perchlorate for rocket propellant or fireworks is relatively commonplace, naturally occurring perchlorate is extremely rare on our planet. It is only known to exist in a few very dry places such as Death Valley, California and in fairly high concentration in the Atacama Desert in Chile, \u003ca title=\"Photos of the Atacama\" href=\"http://www.livescience.com/31911-atacama-desert-chile-photos.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the driest place on Earth\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14030\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 120px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/S128-120x162.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-14030\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/S128-120x162.jpg\" alt=\"A future Mars colonist examines a rock on the martian surface\" width=\"120\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A future Mars colonist examines a rock on the martian surface. Credit/NASA\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mars is much drier than even the driest place on Earth, so it is not surprising that perchlorate is present there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists hypothesize that perchlorate forms naturally when volcanic activity releases a chlorine compound that undergoes chemical changes in the atmosphere and then falls back to the surface. It only stays put in the soil if it doesn’t get washed away. Scientists think that this process might be the same on both Earth and Mars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, future Mars colonists listen up: you can’t eat the dirt on Mars, but you might be able to turn it into rocket fuel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While perchlorate is not safe for human consumption in large quantities because of its detrimental effects on metabolism (and is even used as a pharmaceutical in rare cases), paradoxically, there are \u003ca title=\"Microbes' Rocket Fuel Metabolism Sheds Light On Ancient Life\" href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/05/microbe-rocket-fuel-metabolism-perchlorate_n_3016916.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">microorganisms on Earth that actually eat perchlorate\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perchlorate-metabolizing microorganisms on Earth are diverse and many have the ability to use a couple different chemical energy sources other than perchlorate. This gives scientists some hope that we could discover microbial life that could use or have used that ability to survive on the red planet\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14108\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/S044-e1392090054341.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14108\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/S044-e1392090054341.jpg\" alt=\"Future astronauts explore the Red Planet. Credit/ NASA\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Future astronauts explore the Red Planet. Credit/NASA\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>To be successful Mars colonists, future astronauts will need to know both the potential hazard and utility of the soil. Astronauts can use Martian soil to “live off the land” as building material, fuel, or a fertilizer, greatly reducing the cost of a Mars mission, which is one of the biggest barriers to sending humans to the red planet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One unusual compound that has garnered quite a bit of attention is called perchlorate; it has the potential to be both a blessing and a curse for future explorers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you think that you have heard of perchlorate before, it’s probably because perchlorate is a \u003ca title=\"Perchlorate in the Pacific Southwest\" href=\"http://www.epa.gov/region9/toxic/perchlorate/per_ca.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fairly common groundwater contaminant\u003c/a> here on Earth, especially in regions of California and other parts of the southwest United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A particular type of perchlorate called ammonium perchlorate is used as rocket propellant. If enough ammonium perchlorate finds its way into drinking water from rocket testing, launches or fireworks, it can be detrimental to human health. Excess perchlorate consumption harms the thyroid by preventing the synthesis of hormones that regulate metabolism.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Perchlorate has the potential to be both a blessing and a curse for future explorers.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>In 2008, scientists on the Phoenix lander team discovered perchlorate on the Martian surface. Last year, \u003ca title=\"Perchlorate Complicates Hunt for Life on Mars\" href=\"http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5709/perchlorate-complicates-hunt-for-life-on-mars\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">perchlorate was confirmed \u003c/a>near the landing site of the Curiosity rover. Confirmation of perchlorate over 5,700 kilometers apart indicates that the compound might be found almost everywhere on the surface of Mars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While manufactured perchlorate for rocket propellant or fireworks is relatively commonplace, naturally occurring perchlorate is extremely rare on our planet. It is only known to exist in a few very dry places such as Death Valley, California and in fairly high concentration in the Atacama Desert in Chile, \u003ca title=\"Photos of the Atacama\" href=\"http://www.livescience.com/31911-atacama-desert-chile-photos.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the driest place on Earth\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14030\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 120px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/S128-120x162.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-14030\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/S128-120x162.jpg\" alt=\"A future Mars colonist examines a rock on the martian surface\" width=\"120\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A future Mars colonist examines a rock on the martian surface. Credit/NASA\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mars is much drier than even the driest place on Earth, so it is not surprising that perchlorate is present there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists hypothesize that perchlorate forms naturally when volcanic activity releases a chlorine compound that undergoes chemical changes in the atmosphere and then falls back to the surface. It only stays put in the soil if it doesn’t get washed away. Scientists think that this process might be the same on both Earth and Mars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, future Mars colonists listen up: you can’t eat the dirt on Mars, but you might be able to turn it into rocket fuel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While perchlorate is not safe for human consumption in large quantities because of its detrimental effects on metabolism (and is even used as a pharmaceutical in rare cases), paradoxically, there are \u003ca title=\"Microbes' Rocket Fuel Metabolism Sheds Light On Ancient Life\" href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/05/microbe-rocket-fuel-metabolism-perchlorate_n_3016916.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">microorganisms on Earth that actually eat perchlorate\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perchlorate-metabolizing microorganisms on Earth are diverse and many have the ability to use a couple different chemical energy sources other than perchlorate. This gives scientists some hope that we could discover microbial life that could use or have used that ability to survive on the red planet\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Could We Find Tomorrow's Water Supply Under the Ocean?",
"headTitle": "Could We Find Tomorrow’s Water Supply Under the Ocean? | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13977\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/aquifer.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-13977\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13977\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/02/aquifer.png\" alt=\"Aquifer diagram\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Schematic diagram of a coastal aquifer system. In many places, fresh groundwater extends far out to sea and may constitute a water resource for coastal cities in dry places. U.S. Geological Survey diagram\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Underground boundaries between land and sea aren’t as stark as they are to us as we stand on the beach. Water knows this. Groundwater everywhere responds slowly to changes above, even geological changes. In most of the Earth’s crust, water moves around a meter per year. This enormous contrast between surface water and groundwater may be the big fact that hydrologists appreciate more than the rest of us, even geologists, who know a lot about slow things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seawater moving inland is a well-known problem for coastal cities. It arises when groundwater is pumped out faster than it can be replenished, and saltwater moves into the space. In the city of Fremont, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.acwd.org/index.aspx?nid=380\">Alameda County Water District\u003c/a> successfully manages saltwater intrusion in its major water source, the Niles Cone, by effectively building a wall of freshwater along the outer rim of the cone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The opposite situation, freshwater intrusion, can occur offshore. Fresh groundwater lying above sea level on land would have the pressure needed to push aside the denser, salty water of the ocean once it reached that level. And scientists have known for a long time about freshwater springs that occur offshore. In the 1970s, U.S. government geologists learned that fresh water may underlie the seafloor for a surprising distance offshore, up to 100 kilometers in places.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since that time, we’ve learned a lot more. Offshore freshwater makes sense when we consider the long series of ice ages Earth has been going through for the last 2-1/2 million years. When the glaciers are high, the seas are lowered by as much as 60 meters, which exposes a huge area of land—very fertile land, I should add. For many thousands of years, rains and rivers put fresh water into this ground. Between glacial periods (as we are today), the sea floods in to drown that land, chewing up its soils and forests in the advancing surf. But the groundwater, now offshore, remains fresh because the forces trying to push it out (density differences) are very small compared to the forces that put it in (gravity).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v504/n7478/full/nature12858.html\">The review paper in the December 5 issue of \u003cem>Nature\u003c/em>\u003c/a> pointed out that offshore fresh groundwater occurs around the world and could be significant for many countries that have short water supplies. Many news outlets treated this as a “discovery,” which in science journalism usually means only that reporters (or their editors) hadn’t heard of it before. What should Californians make of this news?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer is that we’ll need to support a lot of scientific exploration to learn what’s off our coast. The geophysical techniques available are limited in what they can tell us, so we’ll need a systematic program of borehole drilling to map out the possibilities. This expensive research has usually been for the benefit of oil and gas producers. It’s conceivable that petroleum companies could take an interest in producing water from their offshore leaseholds, though it’s pretty unlikely as a widespread strategy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But let’s look on the bright side and imagine how it could be. California wouldn’t have to deal with \u003ca>the uncertainties of international water law or maritime law\u003c/a>, so that’s good. Freshwater trapped since the height of the ice age could be pumped ashore and treated for use by cities, which have a strong economic interest in being independent of changes in weather and climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A prototype that might point this way is being planned by the water supplier for Monterey. California American Water has plans (\u003ca href=\"http://www.amwater.com/caaw/customer-service/rates-information/regional-desalination-project.html\">and money\u003c/a>) for a desalination plant that would treat seawater. Its scheme would drill sideways under the seafloor from a land-based rig and pump saltwater from beneath the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. \u003ca href=\"http://www.desalination.biz/news/news_story.asp?id=7417\">The agency has applied for a state grant\u003c/a> that will get the drilling started late this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If projects like this could tap fresh or even brackish water from offshore instead of seawater, the costs of desalination would be dramatically lower. Expect to hear about this topic from time to time. But I expect things to proceed at roughly the speed of groundwater itself.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "We've thought about drilling offshore for oil and gas long before we thought about finding fresh water there. A recent review paper in \u003ci>Nature\u003c/i> has brought the topic of offshore fresh groundwater to wider visibility.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer is that we’ll need to support a lot of scientific exploration to learn what’s off our coast. The geophysical techniques available are limited in what they can tell us, so we’ll need a systematic program of borehole drilling to map out the possibilities. This expensive research has usually been for the benefit of oil and gas producers. It’s conceivable that petroleum companies could take an interest in producing water from their offshore leaseholds, though it’s pretty unlikely as a widespread strategy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But let’s look on the bright side and imagine how it could be. California wouldn’t have to deal with \u003ca>the uncertainties of international water law or maritime law\u003c/a>, so that’s good. Freshwater trapped since the height of the ice age could be pumped ashore and treated for use by cities, which have a strong economic interest in being independent of changes in weather and climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A prototype that might point this way is being planned by the water supplier for Monterey. California American Water has plans (\u003ca href=\"http://www.amwater.com/caaw/customer-service/rates-information/regional-desalination-project.html\">and money\u003c/a>) for a desalination plant that would treat seawater. Its scheme would drill sideways under the seafloor from a land-based rig and pump saltwater from beneath the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. \u003ca href=\"http://www.desalination.biz/news/news_story.asp?id=7417\">The agency has applied for a state grant\u003c/a> that will get the drilling started late this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If projects like this could tap fresh or even brackish water from offshore instead of seawater, the costs of desalination would be dramatically lower. Expect to hear about this topic from time to time. But I expect things to proceed at roughly the speed of groundwater itself.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
"airtime": "SUN 9pm-10pm",
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"meta": {
"site": "radio",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.commonwealthclub.org/podcasts",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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}
},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
"title": "Freakonomics Radio",
"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
}
},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
"info": "Hosted by Terry Gross, \u003cem>Fresh Air from WHYY\u003c/em> is the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. One of public radio's most popular programs, Fresh Air features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.",
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"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"id": "here-and-now",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/hiddenbrain.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
"subscribe": {
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Science-Podcasts/Hidden-Brain-p787503/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510308/podcast.xml"
}
},
"how-i-built-this": {
"id": "how-i-built-this",
"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510313/podcast.xml"
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
"imageAlt": "KQED Hyphenación",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
"meta": {
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/6c3dd23c-93fb-4aab-97ba-1725fa6315f1/hyphenaci%C3%B3n",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC2275451163"
}
},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/xtTd",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Masters-of-Scale-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mindshift-podcast/id1078765985",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/show/on-our-watch",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
"title": "PBS NewsHour",
"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "pbs"
},
"link": "/radio/program/pbs-newshour",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
"rss": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/show"
}
},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
"title": "Perspectives",
"tagline": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991",
"info": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Perspectives_Tile_Final.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Perspectives",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/perspectives/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 14
},
"link": "/perspectives",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id73801135",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/432309616/perspectives",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/perspectives/category/perspectives/feed/",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93dzIua3FlZC5vcmcvcGVyc3BlY3RpdmVzL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BlcnNwZWN0aXZlcy9mZWVkLw"
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},
"planet-money": {
"id": "planet-money",
"title": "Planet Money",
"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/sections/money/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/M4f5",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Planet-Money-p164680/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510289/podcast.xml"
}
},
"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Political Breakdown",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 5
},
"link": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
"subscribe": {
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e0c2d153-ad36-4c8d-901d-f1da6a724824/political-breakdown",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/572155894/political-breakdown",
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