Andrew Alden

Eighteen donors have given almost $1000 to support the Museum of the Earth today!

Let me know if you donate (minimum $20) and I will happily send you a coupon for 50% off of Earthquake Insights. That's normally $80 a year, so you can get a discount AND help out the museum.

DO NOT add an option that can be GAMED.

I disagree with the choice of marble; makes the room look dirty. Also, for historical accuracy, shouldn't it have a chamberpot?

Figure 1, oblique aerial view of the East Traverse Mountains, a small anomalous range on the Wasatch Front attributed to a gigantic landslide. A large quarry is exploiting its toe. "Pervasive brecciation . . . facilitates easy removal of aggregate materials and is key to our interpretation of a landslide origin. . . . underlining the lazard such large landslides might pose."

A giant Miocene landslide in the Wasatch Range, Utah - Geosphere paper. pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geospher...

M. King Hubbert?

Los Angeles will nearly double recycled water for 500,000 residents Los Angeles is set to double the size of a planned facility that will transform wastewater into purified drinking water, recycling enough water to meet the needs of 500,000 people.

A major shift in where L.A. gets water: The city will double the size of a project to transform wastewater into purified drinking water, producing enough for 500,000 people. The recycled water will allow L.A. to stop taking water from creeks that feed Mono Lake. www.latimes.com/environment/...

Paleontology is like asteroid hunting in leavening the study of strange and anonymous entities with human names and stories. Mineralogy too. Geologists don't name a lot of new rock types these days. All these sciences are humanities too.

C'mon, chip in along with me.

Perspective on the 2025 M7.7 earthquake in Myanmar Published in Science today: four new articles, and our perspective

⚒️ 🧪

Today, Science released a special issue about the M7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar in March. We were invited to write a perspective about the four research papers in the special issue.

Find our post, including the text of our perspective, here:

When Trump says "investigate," I think "torture."

Deeper Oakland | Andrew Alden | Substack A monthly newsletter focused on the geology of Oakland, California and the world in general. Click to read Deeper Oakland, by Andrew Alden, a Substack publication.

My Substack newsletter Deeper Oakland goes out tomorrow; til then, catch up on previous issues.

large colorful images of paleo lotería deck

mishmosh of 30 separate one-page printouts each crammed with figures

How to do/not do a scientific poster #GSA2025

Ok, this is really a few questions.

1st we don't really have direct evidence of what the initial crust of the Earth looked like--all we have left from anything like that are a handful of zircon grains that have been incorporated into much younger rock. Dating this material is also difficult.

12 hours of Hurricane #Melissa, one frame every minute. 🛰️🗺️

Geologizing on the bus: The 88 line Newly revised to take up part of the former 33 line, the 88 runs from the bedrock hills and uplands of Piedmont, through downtown Oakland, to downtown Berkeley. That’s three downtowns if you …

New blog post: geology along the 88 bus line, following previous post on the 18 line. These are quickies made to drop during my time out of town; they're of permanent value but I promise something meatier next post in 2 weeks.

Request to #GSA2025 attendees: I would like a copy of the QGG Division president's remarks at the award ceremony. She urged us to continue doing great science, and the way she put it was inspiring.

Surprised I didn't feel it in the Bay area

Martin Rudwick describes the 1700s practice in "natural history" of sharing key specimens across the "republic of letters" by means of professionally printed engravings, a concept called paper museums. Such images could be regarded as precursors of type specimens (and today's 3D replicas).

still true in October

Having just enjoyed a sea cruise to Mexico, I'm picturing an Southeast Alaska cruise encountering "a tsunami triggered by a rock slope failure. A very serious scenario is that a large cruise ship is overwhelmed and sunk. The loss of life could be very high."

airplane view of White Mtns on left, Sirmerra Necada on right. Both ranges are dusted with snow

White Mountains are white

Deadline is early December.

Feel free to be appalled

News article that says “no tsunami risk after San Diego quake confirms national weather service: San Diego rattled by unexpected earthquake”

Wow. Newsbreak keeps making up completely fictitious earthquakes. Pages of reporting on another earthquake that didn’t happen.

Missed you just now; takes so long to walk there I had to turn right round. This is a Texas-sized venue!

Also rare, a really decent food spread at the same occasion. Well done Div Treasurer (and past GSA Pres) Scott Burns

Standing ovations are rare at science meetings. It was electrifying to witness one last night at the QGG Division awards #GSA2025

Inside Trump's plan to eviscerate USGS and beyond - Center for Western Priorities Forced by a federal judge to partially reveal plans for firing federal employees, the Trump administration on Monday said it plans to “imminently” terminate more than 2,000 employees at the Interior d...

“The Monday filing outlines where 2,050 positions would be eliminated; the U.S. Geological Survey, the Bureau of Land Management, and the main Interior office would be especially hard hit. Regional offices with the National Park Service are also targeted for significant cuts.”

The posters at #GSA2025 are most easily scanned/browsed *crosswise* but are organized orthogonally, unlike the arrangement at GSA2024. Took me too long to figure this out; organizers take note.