Science Selections

by Cheryl Rofer

Science magazine frequently has good stuff in it, but it’s available on the internet by subscription only. So I pull pages out of the dead-tree version to make posts from. Sometimes Science's Eureakalert has short versions on line. Here are a few recent goodies.

The Lusi mud volcano on Indonesia’s Java Island is still going strong, despite the various attempts to stop it. (Last WhirledView post here.) Geologists disagree as to where the mud is coming from and what caused the volcano. Indonesian courts have ruled the volcano a natural disaster, absolving the drilling company Lapindo Brantas of responsibility. The mud has covered 750 hectares and has destroyed the homes of 30,000 people. (13 June)

Since I last googled that subject, a couple of new articles on the mud volcano have shown up. The photo is from Reuters, via The Guardian. You can see the scale of it from the trucks and earthmovers that are building the dams. Time Magazine reports here. Lots of satellite images from the National University of Singapore here.

Imagery from the LANDSAT satellites is being made available free on the internet. The data are of the whole world, in multiple spectral ranges. All newly acquired data will be made available, and the archives are being opened up during the rest of this year. This will be invaluable for following all sorts of changes over time: vegetation cover, city growth, bodies of water, probably Lusi as well. NASA LANDSAT site, USGS LANDSAT site (23 May)

Who’s got the biggest carbon footprint in America? If you guessed those car-crazy Californians, you’re wrong. The biggest carbon emissions per capita are all in the eastern part of the country. This report, from Brookings, tells why. And it makes some policy suggestions to lessen our carbon dioxide emissions. (13 June)

Deserts may be taking up some of that carbon dioxide. Measurements in western China and Nevada suggest that desert soils account for some of the good luck we’ve had so far, with more carbon dioxide disappearing than scientists have expected. It’s not clear whether the carbon dioxide is going into the soil itself or living communities that form crusts on the surface. I’ll suggest that in just a couple of years, watering some of the soils in my yard has produced some underground cementation. But I can’t say whether that’s calcium carbonate, let alone whether it’s from the air or it’s being dissolved and reprecipitated. But it’s the kind of thing you might see if moistened alkaline desert soils are taking up carbon dioxide. (13 June)

Comments

[Claudia Lewis]

Cheryl:

Do you have a link to more information on desert soils taking up carbon?

[Cheryl Rofer]

Claudia - The article is in the 13 June Science. Here's a link to the subscription-only article.