Maldives looking for new home...what ya gonna do when the sea level rises?

Have a look at these stories out about efforts in the Maldive Islands
to buy up land else where in anticipation of land loss resulting from
sea level rise.

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/12/0129232&from=rss

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/10/maldives-climate-change

National Security Trumps Potential Threats to Marine Life off the Coast of Southern California

Contribution from Seth Pelepko:

In a November 12, 2008 ruling, the Supreme Court decided that the nation's security interests should not be undermined by placing sharp constraints on the use of sonar during Navy training exercises off the coast of southern California. Environmentalists expressed concern that uninhibited use of sonar could harm marine life. Was the court's decision the right one, or is there a right decision? See link for more details.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96900519

Greetings from Long Branch NJ

nail holes in the sand caused by escaping air



View to the south note the playset conveniently placed just above the hightide line.

Groin and plunging breakers
View from the boardwalk

Longbranch NJ...playset on the beach

Note the groins in the background...newjerseyization!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Marlin stuck in oil rig rescued by ROV

Video of an ROV extracting a stuck Marlin from an oil rig.

Extremely high resolution panoramic imagery of coasts...Gigapan

This system provides access to unprecedented high resolution panoramic
images. To see what I mean have a look at this example from Hanauma
Bay on Oahu

http://www.gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=5322

If you zoom in just behind the beach you can even read the top line of
the white sign

Next time you are out on the beach...smile!

Shifting baselines at the coast

Check out this new flash video by Dr. Randy Olson, director of the
films Flock of Dodos and Sizzle.

http://www.psp.wa.gov/shiftingbaselines.php

To learn more about the concept of shifting baselines go here
http://www.shiftingbaselines.org/index.php

Today Show goes diving in Alvin submarine

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/27641853#27641853

Ann Curry of the Today show recently descended into the depths of the
Sea of Cortez

Follow up to last week's class presentation

Boston.com

Boothbay Register

A couple of links to stories related to the story about unexpected
waves in Boothbay Maine presented by Dr. Schwehr.

Bedform movies links

Here are some links to various videos of bedforms in flume tank
experiments and also from scanning sonar images collected in the field.

http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/seds/bedforms/extras/bedform_experiments.html

http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/seds/bedforms/extras/movies/ripple_flume.mov

Ripple flow dynamics video

Here is a short video showing a visualization of the flow dynamics of the separation point and vortices shed from a ripple in a flume test.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWAszNXY3Bs

Here is a video showing an oscillatory table for generating wave ripples

Art's Field Trip Photo Highlights

Landward and Upward Anyone?

Contribution from Seth Pelepko

Thanks to our friend, fellow student, and DNREC employee, Bart Wilson, I was able to post some overwash deposit aerial photographs captured late in 2007. The locations include South Bowers Beach (our first field trip stop) and Milford Neck. Note how the shore-normal road is serving as an artificial throat allowing sediment migration much further inland in the South Bowers Beach image.

View of the Rocky Coast of Maine

Here is a shot I took today while standing along the shoreline at Fort
Williams State Park in South Portland Maine showing the iconic
Portland Head Lighthouse.

A rocky cliff backed coastline in stark contrast to the coastline of
Delaware that we saw in our fieldtrip.

When Ooids go Kaboom!!!

Thanks to Seth for creating and sharing this video from his field trip last week. More about this in class on Thursday.

Contribution from Seth Pelepko

Journey to a ~500 Ma Ooid Shoal-Shoreface Sand-Microbial Reef System

Ever wonder what the outermost extent of the Laurentian shelf looked like in the Cambrian? Wonder no more...

LWB Refractories Quarry is a 240 foot deep, 86.5 acre surface mining operation in York County, Pennsylvania extracting high purity dolomite used in the manufacture of refractory brick. The deposit was discovered in 1946 and active mining commenced in 1950. The two major carbonate facies include a massive ooid shoal and neighboring microbial patch reefs. These deposits accumulated under high energy conditions at the shelf margin of the Laurentian continent during the Middle Cambrian (500 to 520 Ma). A modern analog is the well-studied, Late Pleistocene Great Bahama Bank. Exposure of the ancient patch reefs in-situ makes this location remarkably unique. Such Cambrian reef deposits have been noted as off-shelf slump blocks at other locations, but have rarely been observed in place. No other location in Pennsylvania is known to have in-situ exposures of the Ledger reef facies (de Wet, personal communication).

Contrasting permeability characteristics between the facies transformed the ooid shoal into dolomite while leaving the relatively impervious reef facies as limestone. At least three stages of dolomitization have altered the ooid shoal substrate. One initial phase occurred early on and is believed to be related to periods of subaerial exposure resulting from fluctuating sea levels. Evidence of such emergent conditions are not pervasive in the deposit, but have resulted in a shoreface interpretation for one area flanking the ooid shoals (de Wet, personal communication).

Other interesting exposures at the quarry include the Ledger Formation "white marble", Triassic fanglomerate, and the off-shelf Kinzers Formation. The "white marble" comprises a series of dedolomitized zones believed to be associated with Triassic extensional faulting that marked the beginning of tectonism associated with the break-up of Pangaea. The fault zones were higher permeability and preferentially exposed portions of the Ledger dolomite to circulating calcite-rich fluids (de Wet, personal communication). In some areas, undersaturation of migrating fluids opened up cavities and vugs (paleokarst) that later received an influx of Triassic hematitic sediment (de Wet and Hopkins, 1). A fault contact between the Ledger and the Triassic fanglomerate facies is revealed near the northwestern corner of the quarry (de Wet, personal communication). Such conglomeritic deposits were known to have formed the northern boundary of the Gettysburg basin, a lacustrine setting during most of the Triassic (Smoot, 198-199). The fanglomerate is composed of coarse clastic detritus derived from the Ledger and Triassic sediments and is cemented with mud- to silt-sized hematitic material (de Wet, personal communication). Finally, the Kinzers Formation, which is exposed at the base of the quarry, is well known for its lowermost member, the Emigsville, a deposit of exceptional preservation that captured the "Cambrian Explosion" (Skinner, 2005).

For a more detailed discussion of the deposits being mined at the LWB Refractories Quarry and their origins along with some excellent figures, please check out Dr. Carol de Wet's website at:

http://www.fandm.edu/x12035.xml

For more pictures from the field trip and reference information navigate to:

http://udel.edu/~spelepko/my_homepage/
(select links near lower left hand side of page)

Ike links and Images

http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/ike/photo-comparisons/bolivar.html

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/09/15/us/0915-IKE_index.html

http://texascoastgeology.com/Hurr%20Ike/Ikeflight/index.html

http://texascoastgeology.com/Hurricanemaps.html

Ok this is actually Gustav but shows the LIDAR topographic comparison
of before and after for Dauphin Island
http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/gustav/lidar/

Seth Pelepko

Contribution from Seth Pelepko:

Not that I have much time for television watching these days, but I stumbled upon this gem within the last month and found that it definitely has some relevance to the "coastal zone." The show is called Project Earth and it airs on the Discovery Channel Fridays at 9:00 PM (see link below). It basically has provided a springboard for some innovative earth scientists and engineers that feel they are nearing a solution for the world's impending global warming/rising sea-level crisis and would like to test their ideas at the pilot scale level. The most notable episode I can recall, although the details are not all firmly in place, involved enriching zones in the ocean to stimulate the growth of organisms (probably planktonic forams or coccolithophores?) that would consume CO2 to construct tests, die, and sink to be incorporated into the carbonate stratigraphic column, thus helping lower CO2 globally available to the atmosphere. Knowing what we know about marine ecosystems and the fine balance between natural systems, is this plan really ready for full scale implementation? I wish I had been able to view the entire episode and pick up some more of the details, but even with an incomplete data set in hand, my instinct is that this approach to curbing sea-level rise is potentially ill-advised and could usher in a marked shift in the equilibrium characterizing marine ecosystems. Anyone see this or have an opinion?

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/project-earth/project-earth.html

Latest Advisory on Hurricane Ike

Here is the National Hurricane Center's latest track and predictions
for the path of Hurricane Ike. Taking aim at the central Texas coast.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graphics_at4.shtml?5day#contents