Sierra Nevada

Snow. Glaciers. Icecaps, River flows. All of these are vulnerable to climate change, especially rising temperature. This isn't just theory. It’s now observable fact.   Scientists worry about the growing threat of climate change because the global climate is tied to everything that society cares about: human and environmental health, food and industrial production, water availability, extreme events, and more. Figuring out how all these pieces tie together is difficult. And many of us, from scientists to the public to policy makers, have only a partial understanding of the true implications of…

One of the reasons that climate change is such a big issue is because the global climate is an integral part of the Earth’s entire ecosystem, tied to so many of the big and little things that society cares about. Figuring out how all these complicated pieces tie together is hard, as is linking these pieces together in the minds of the public so that we – and our policy makers – can grasp the true implications of a changing climate and plan for them. Because this is so important, I expect that many of my future posts here will address this issue, but let me start with one example: the…

Mineral King valley in California. Well, we are in the peak of the summer, so Eruptions will be running a bit of summer schedule while I'm off away from the interweb tubes. First off, from July 11-20, I'll be off in the mountains, doing some much-needed fieldwork with my (first) undergraduate research student. We'll be up in the Mineral King area of Sequoia National Park looking at some old rhyolites and granites - we're talking Triassic and Jurassic submarine and subaerial calderas! We'll hopefully be taking a look at zircons in these rocks to help constrain the timescales of these enigmatic…