Author: reb13001

Old Roman Aqueduct Found

A 2,300 year old aqueduct was just uncovered in Rome while working on a new Metro line.  The aqueduct was found 17 to 18 meters below the Earth’s surface.  The use of concrete bulkheads allowed them to be working that far below the ground.  At this depth in the Earth, archaeologists have uncovered a sequence of […]

Footage of Turbidity Current

This video shows a turbidity current 400 meters deep in the Mendocino canyon off the coast of California.  An underwater ROV captured the event.  In the video you can see the different stages/layers of the turbidity current pass by the ROV (dilute flow, dense basal layer) .

New Recording of a Turbidity Current

Researchers were able to record a large turbidity current in Monterey Canyon off of the coast of California in January.  The mass of sediment moved more than 50 km from a depth of 300 m below the sea level to more than 1800 m below the sea level.  The turbidity current moved over 8 m/s at […]

The Fastest Eroding Coast in Europe

Along the Yorkshire coast from Flamborough Head to Spurn Head, the coast is eroding faster than anywhere else in Europe.  The coastline loses an average of 5 feet of land every year and about 29 villages have been lost to the sea since the Roman Empire.  This area is bounded by the North Sea with […]

Assateague Island

Assateague Island and Ocean City have been losing land from sea level rise, extreme weather events, and subsidence. Since 1960 the sea level has risen 5 inches and storms have been becoming more intense in recent years. On Google timelapse you can see how the coastline has receded on Assateague Island, while long shore drift has […]

Yukon River Delta

This is the Yukon River Delta. It is a river dominated delta where the Yukon and the Kuskokwim rivers meet and empty into the Bering Sea in Alaska. It is one of the largest deltas in the world (129,500 sq km) and 25,000 people live on the delta. A lot of the delta is a wildlife refuge of […]

Aral Sea

On google earth timelapse you can see how the Aral Sea shrivels up to almost nothing. The Aral Sea is fed by the Amu Darya River in the south and the Syr Darya in the east/north. The Aral Sea began drying up after the Soviets began diverting the rivers for irrigation. By 2007 it was […]

Rainstorms in California

California is having a rough couple of weeks.  Over the weekend a huge rainstorm hit Southern California.  They received between 2-6 inches of rain, with almost 10 inches of rain in some areas.  Because the ground was already oversaturated from what has been a very wet winter, there were major flash floods and a few sinkholes.  There […]

Dunes on Mars

Figure 1. a) Features found on Mars, b) and c) features found in Namibia.   European scientists M.C. Bourke and H.A. Viles from the University of Dublin and the University of Oxford, have been studying coastal dunes in Namibia because they are similar to features that have been found on Mars. Based on their studies, […]

Erosion on the Oroville Dam Spillway

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/12/us/california-oroville-dam-failure/index.html The area around the Oroville Dam in California is currently being evacuated as the primary spillway of the dam has been damaged from erosion. This article shows the huge holes in the concrete spillway that were caused by overflow of the dam from recent large amounts of rainfall. California was facing a huge draught […]

Help for the Mississippi River from Obama

http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2017/01/mid-baratara_sediment_diversio.html One of the last few things President Barack Obama did was approve this sediment diversion on the west bank of the Mississippi River. This sediment diversion is a beginning part of the 50 year, $50 billion project to stabilize the wetlands and coastline of Louisiana. The diversion will move 75,000 cubic feet per second […]

Sediment Loss on the Mississippi River Delta

The Mississippi River Delta is losing a football field of wetlands every hour. This is partly because of all the levees being built along the Mississippi River to stop the river from flooding communities. The levees may seem like a good idea to the people living alongside the Mississippi, but the river needs to naturally […]