Geology

Geologists say Tuesday's magnitude-5.8 earthquake in Central Virginia released forces that have probably been building for tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of years. And the event may not be over. "Aftershocks are always a possibility, and they're...

When Debra Buczkowski was 7, in 1976, NASA’s Viking space probes were landing on Mars and sending images of the red planet back to Earth as part of their $1 billion mission. “I realized that no matter where I went on this planet, I couldn&...

HOUSTON -- Oklahoma’s largest-recorded earthquake was triggered by injection wells used by the oil and gas industry, according to a report released this week. The Tuesday report in the geoscience journal Geology is the latest scientific evidence...

The question of how an oil spill from the proposed Keystone XL pipeline might affect the Ogallala aquifer was raised again this month, in a report the U.S. State Department will use to help it decide whether to approve or reject the controversial project....

Moms with baby strollers race over smooth sand as if it were asphalt. Dads disappear under sugar-white sand, heaped on them by kids. And children jump in and out of the shallow water, shouting "Watch me, Mommy. Watch me!" Kids ... and moms ... and dads...

The last statewide map of Maryland geology, published in 1968, is out of print. Online versions of it are marked with a disclaimer that it's too imprecise for anything but "historical and illustrative purposes." But a push to drill for Marcellus shale...

HASTINGS, Minn. - Debbie Carlson can laugh at the irony: She's the wife of a well digger who can't find good water for his own family. Like one out of three wells in Dakota County, hers is so contaminated with nitrates she won't let anyone drink from it...

As sure as an automobile could not have been built by even the most enterprising Neanderthal, the appearance of humans on Earth could not have occurred without the myriad of developments that began with the birth of the universe, and continued with the...

I recently had the privilege of hanging out backstage with Bill McKibben on 350.org’s “Do the Math” tour. Any regular reader of this column has heard me talk about McKibben before. He’s the author and environmentalist who began his...

It has been a fallow interval at the blog because of some hectic days at the paragraph factory, domestic exigencies, and the like, but I am back today to advocate, in my small way, sanity. Immediately after the late election, the outbreaks of...

If an earthquake happens in western North Dakota and no one notices, did it really happen?  Yes, according to geologists.  Officials with the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources and the Earthquake Studies Office at the Montana Bureau of Mines...