life in the Southwest
khannula | November 1, 2009Go to Dave's Landslide Blog for full details about this. I don't have access to the paper.
According to Dave Petley, there's a new paper in Nature Geoscience about the Slumgullion landslide. Slumgullion is in my greater neighborhood - it's in Colorado's San Juan Mountains, between Lake City (former home of Alferd Packer) and Creede (former home of Doc Holliday), and I think it's got the coolest name of any landslide (and possibly the coolest name of any geological feature). It's a strange landslide for its slow movement, and it's being monitored in excruciating detail by the US Geological…
khannula | August 21, 2009I've been trying to get some xeriscaping established this summer, and I've been very pleased with the plants that are growing. This one, Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, is supposed to become a groundcover, and it's spreading quite well. But with the flowers have come some interesting pollinating... things... that I can't identify.
The leaves in the picture are about a centimeter or two across, so that thing is pretty big. It moves like a hummingbird, hovering in place and then zipping to another flower. (In fact, when my kid was buzzed by one recently, he swore it had been a hummingbird.) It's…
khannula | August 17, 2009I've recently taken to using the magic of the internet to give my students access to readings, assignments, and images outside of class. It's great - if my sophomores lose their map, they can print another one. If a student misses class, there's no excuse not to do the homework anyway. If students can't draw their own pictures, they can print out images and study them on their own. And it's possible to go even further with online teaching materials - to have students prepare for class by doing online readings, or watching a video, or listening to a podcast, and then responding to online…
khannula | August 4, 2009There was a mountain lion in the courtyard of a local elementary school playground today.
A mountain lion.
At the elementary school.
A neighbor called the police, who called the Department of Wildlife, who shot the mountain lion. A young male, about 75 pounds, probably recently headed out on its own. Apparently that's the age they usually are when the DOW kills them for wandering around in town.
I just finished read The Beast in the Garden, this year's common reading at the college, so the story sounds eerily familiar. The Beast in the Garden is about the mountain lions that began showing up…
khannula | June 10, 2009There's a meme going around about plans for summer reading. While I was reading Sciencewoman's list, I realized that I was avoiding the meme. See, I didn't even manage to finish my spring reading list, so I'm not ready to talk about big plans for the summer.
I had good intentions. I read Dirt: the erosion of civilizations. I bought Last Child in the Woods, and brought it along on my spring break travels. And... I didn't finish it.
Here's the gist of the book: kids should go outside and play in wild, overgrown places. Really, they should. They'll be happier and healthier and more creative and…
khannula | May 6, 2009I'm neck-deep in a five-week summer class, and spending my evenings reading for class prep and thinking about how to run discussions. So I'm on a blogging semi-hiatus, at least until I've got an hour or two free of other commitments. In the meantime, I'll occasionally post some of my old favorites. This one was my first blog post ever, and was included in the 2007 Open Lab.
NPR has had this series, off and on, in which listeners record interesting sounds and then explain them on the air. I didn't have a recording device with me last weekend, but I literally stumbled across some of the most…
khannula | April 16, 2009Last night, we were having another one of those incredible dust storms that have been blowing in this spring (and which may be decimating the spring snowpack).
This morning, I woke up to this:
I was happy to see it - it will melt by the end of the day, and will keep the soil from being so incredibly dry.
I'm not sure this guy is so happy, though:
khannula | April 3, 2009I've been watching an aspen in my front yard this spring, and sending data to the National Phenology Network. (That's phenology, the study of recurring plant and animals phases, not phrenology.) We've had warm weather, cold weather, and windy weather, and blooming violets, crocuses, and dwarf irises, but the aspens haven't done much.
Until now. My aspen is blooming. Kind of.
There aren't any leaves yet, but this morning I noticed some things that reminded me of the fuzz on pussy willows back in Maine. So this afternoon, I took a closer look, and picked one. And... I think that must be the…
khannula | April 2, 2009My husband and I both had goals for our visit to the Grand Canyon at the beginning of this week. He wanted to give himself a workout that would leave him feeling sore all week. I wanted to check out the Trail of Time, an exhibit that some of my colleagues from New Mexico and Arizona had been developing. I didn't know whether it was complete, or where it started, but I'd been hearing Karl Karlstrom and Laurie Crossey talk about it for years.
The rangers working at the main visitor center had heard about it at a briefing, and had some pamphlets hidden behind their desk, but weren't quite sure…
khannula | April 1, 2009It's the Small Human's spring break, which means all kinds of work-juggling. The family took off for four days and went to the part of Arizona which is not apparently being auctioned off on e-Bay to balance the state's budget.
It's strange enough driving through eastern Arizona during daylight savings time - most of the state doesn't observe it, but the Navajo reservation does, and the edges of the reservation are a patchwork of state, BLM, reservation, and private land. I had enough trouble keeping track of the time, let alone the date.
I'll try to do some real blogging about it (because…
khannula | March 22, 2009This is a post for World Water Day. See more posts about transboundary water at Cr!key Creek.
For the past two years, my intro Earth Science students have been doing a project monitoring one of our local rivers. On the one hand, it's just another stream, small enough for students to safely wade into it with a current meter. On the other... it's our town's water source, and every drop of it is promised at least once, for irrigation, for municipal water supplies, for fish, for electricity, for a treaty between the US and Mexico.
The Florida River (Flor-EE-da, the Spanish word for "flowery") is…
khannula | March 15, 2009Geotripper got a new camera for his birthday, and has been taking pictures of mountains. I haven't posted enough pictures since I got my camera in December, so here's a view of my daily commute:
Here, let me label it for people who don't make a habit of seeing geology in landscapes (picture below fold):
The dreaded Mancos Shale, which is found on all the lower slopes in the background, was deposited near the western shore of the great interior seaway of North America, about 90 million years ago. My colleagues who are into fossils tell me that there are some massive clam shells in it, if you…
khannula | March 10, 2009Spring has sprung in the geoblogosphere! In Virginia, Callan has been hiking on the Billy Goat Trail. In Colorado, Geology Happens has crocuses. And spring fever has even hit the New York Times - Andy Revkin is posting Youtube videos of Pete Seeger singing about maple syrup.
Hey, I can play, too. Look - I've got violets (pictures under the fold):
Actually, I took that photo on Sunday. If I go out this morning, maybe I'll be able to pick 148 more, and then I'll be able to start making that yummy-sounding violet custard pie that Janet made for pi day.
Oops.
khannula | March 4, 2009There has been a lot of cool stuff posted while I was getting this blog set up. From my Google Reader shared items:
Exotic rocks. There's an art exhibit in Oakland, California, that includes metamorphic rocks from Maine. Why? Because the schists sound like xylophone keys when they're struck. I knew there was a reason why I liked hitting metamorphic rocks with my hammer...
Fermi paradox meets the timescale. Why haven't we been visited by intelligent life? Well, if we had been visited by intelligent life sometime during Earth's 4.6-billion-year history, odds are that there wasn't any…
sb admin | March 3, 2009I know it doesn't feel like spring on the East Coast of the US, what with the big snow day yesterday. But it's been in the 60's here for the past three days, and in the 50's before that. At my elevation (6800 feet), the snow is gone except in the shade and on north-facing slopes. It's nice, but worrisome: my mountains are the headwaters of the Rio Grande and part of the Colorado, and our snow is the water supply for cities and farms from Texas to California. March is supposed to be the big snow month here. We'll see.
In the meantime, I'm watching spring arrive. And this year, I'm going to try…
khannula | March 3, 2009I know it doesn't feel like spring on the East Coast of the US, what with the big snow day yesterday. But it's been in the 60's here for the past three days, and in the 50's before that. At my elevation (6800 feet), the snow is gone except in the shade and on north-facing slopes. It's nice, but worrisome: my mountains are the headwaters of the Rio Grande and part of the Colorado, and our snow is the water supply for cities and farms from Texas to California. March is supposed to be the big snow month here. We'll see.
In the meantime, I'm watching spring arrive. And this year, I'm going to try…