Geology Archives - The Sciku Project

September 12, 2024September 12, 2024

Geological Maps by Tom Lagasse

Geological maps
Mountains of information
Of the interior
by Tom Lagasse

Geologic maps are actually four-dimensional data systems, and it is the fourth dimension of time that is crucial to assessing natural hazards and environmental or socio-economic risk. To read a geologic map is to understand not only where materials and structures are located, but also how and when these features formed.

Further reading:

‘What are geologic maps and what are they used for?’, New Mexico Bureau of Geology & Mineral Resources, available: https://geoinfo.nmt.edu/publications/maps/geologic/whatis.html

‘The National Geologic Map Database’, U.S. Geological Survey, available: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/ngmdb/ngmdb_home.html

Author bio:

Tom’s poetry has appeared in The Silver Birch Poetry Series, Freshwater Literary Journal, The Eunoia Review, and in numerous anthologies. He will be one of the Writers in Residence at the Edwin Way Teale House at Trail Wood this summer. He lives in Bristol, Connecticut, USA. You can follow him on X/Twitter at @tomlagasse

See more sciku by Tom: Microplastics.

March 9, 2023March 9, 2023

Suspended by Michele Rule

Metal formation
Buried deep inside the moon
Suspended mass
by Michele Rule

When I read about the discovery of a huge metal mass buried deep underground below the surface of the moon, I immediately jumped to the idea of a spaceship crash site. But reading more I learned about several possible causes, one being an asteroid crash and the other related to the magma solidification of the Moon’s surface. Both involved the suspension of a metal “structure” in a large mass, five times the size of the big island of Hawai’i.

Further reading:

‘Astronomers Discover ‘Deep Structure’ Under Moon’s Largest Crater’, Futurism: https://futurism.com/the-byte/deep-structure-mass-moon-crater

‘Deep Structure of the Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin’, Geophysical Research Letters: https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL082252

Author bio:

Michele Rule lives in Kelowna BC where she writes poems and stories with two dogs, two cats and a supportive partner. Her first book is “Around the World in 15 Haiku”. You can find more of her writing via Linktree and on Twitter @michelerule.

July 17, 2020September 16, 2022

Glacier Mice by Dr. Jon Hare

unexplained movements
of a moss ball herd
island bioglaciology
By Jon Hare

My brother sent me an NPR story about a herd of fuzzy green “glacier mice”. The concept is crazy – small rocks, covered in moss, on a glacier, moving in tandem like a herd of miniature muskox. Hotaling et al. (2020) studied moss balls on an Alaskan glacier. They tagged the balls and tracked them for 54 days to understand their movement and then revisited the site over the next three years to understand persistence.

Photo credit – Tim Bartholomaus (http://tbartholomaus.org)

The moss balls moved in unison at approximately 2 cm day-1. Speed of movement was related to rate of ablation of the glacier surface: more ice melting, greater speed of movement. The direction of movement, however, was not related to ablation, nor slope, wind direction, or direction of solar radiation. Further, the moss balls persisted over years with an annual survival rate of 0.86, which equates to a greater than 6 year life span. It is hard to imagine a herd of moss balls surviving six Alaskan winters to move around together in subsequent summers.

These moss balls are also hotspots of biological diversity – they provide an island-like habitat for an array of organisms. How the biodiversity survives the winter is also unknown, as are the rates of colonization and extinction on the moss balls – raising questions of island biogeography on a glacier.

Original research: Hotaling, S, T. C. Bartholomaus and S. L. Gilbert (2020). Rolling stones gather moss: movement and longevity of moss balls on an Alaskan glacier. Polar Biology. https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs00300-020-02675-6

Dr. Jon Hare is a scientist who works in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. His research background is fisheries oceanography and climate change impacts on marine fisheries. Check out Jon’s other sciku ‘Owls of the Eastern Ice’, ‘Varves’, ‘Signs of Spring’ and ‘Cobwebs to Foodwebs’.