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The article focuses on the environmental impacts of abandoned Silverton mines that collectively spill acid mine water.

An interview with Thomas Berger, a solar physicist and director of the National Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is presented about the importance of open data, funding of satellite missions, and prediction of severe geomagnetic storm.

The article discusses geophysicist W. Jason Morgan's hypothesis that narrow plumes of hot mantle rock rising from the core-mantle boundary of Earth are responsible for anomalous volcanism.

The article reports on the discovery of natural asbestos in Nevada in 2011 and in Arizona in the late 1990s which have caused concerns on potential health risks for local residents, as of March 2015. Topics discussed include a profile of asbestos and its forming environment, multiple ways of exposure to mineral fibers, and asbestos-related diseases like lung cancer and mesothelioma. Also noted is the current unpredictability of asbestos content in the air based on asbestos on the ground.

The article features the GeoCorps America program which is a partnership among the Geological Society of America, the National Park Service, and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management that puts geoscientists to work on short-term projects on federal lands. Topics include the growth of the program to encompass projects in more than sixty national parks and fifteen national forests and types of GeoCorps projects including research, education and interpretation and inventory and monitoring. INSET: TRY AND TRY AGAIN: GeoCorps Application Tips.

The article offers information on the Good Friday Alaska Earthquake and Tsunamis on March 27, 1964. Topics discussed include a magnitude-9.2 earthquake, the soil liquefaction in the silt and sand lenses, and the local tsunamis that killed eighty-two people. Recovery of the areas affected, the impacts of the disaster, and the development of the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska are also mentioned.

The article discusses whether meteotsunamis can be predicted, focusing on the meteotsunami that hit Chicago, Illinois shore that killed at least seven people including husband and wife Edward and Mae Gabriel, parents of 11 children, and Ted Stempinski while fishing at the waterfront park at Montrose Harbor. It presents a comparison of the characteristics of seismic tsunami and meteotsunami, Chin Wu of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and explains how storm triggers a wave. INSETS: A TSUNAMI BY MANY OTHER NAMES;A HISTORY OF TSUNAMI-LIKE WAVES ON THE GREAT LAKES.

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experience of floods in Boulder, Colorado in September 2013 due to a low-pressure weather system that led to mud, debris of flows and wiped out roads and bridges.

The article discusses the development of digital data for geosciences. Technological advances have led to changes in the way earth science is done. It suggests that cloud computing can save research data in geosciences. One of these developments is the National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program created by the U.S. Congress. One of the challenges facing the geosciences is the integration of all these data with software applications and models into a useful form.

The article reports on how seismometers are being used to study whales. One is the Keck network which is being used by researchers to investigate the potential correlation between the density of whales and the high levels of zooplankton found above the Endeavour hydrothermal vent fields on the Juan de Fuca Ridge in the U.S. and Canada. Another one studies baleen whales using data recorded on an ocean-bottom seismometer array in the Lau Basin in the Pacific Ocean.

The article features the Megacities Carbon Project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in California. Different observing systems, it says, monitor global carbon dioxide with the data collected being sent to the Earth System Research Laboratoy (ESRL) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for standard maintenance. It also notes initiatives of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. INSETS: Tokyo: The World's First City-level Cap and Trade Program;China: The Energy Implications of Urban Migration.

The article looks at the increasing number of fatalities and injuries due to volcano geotourism (VG) worldwide. It offers an overview of how popular VG is. It explains why many governments are promoting volcano tourism as well as adventure tourism. It explores the effects of gases, ash, lava flows and mudflows on tourists. It also discusses the challenges to implementing international safety guidelines for volcano tourists which include language barriers and the wide range of volcano types. INSETS: Health Risks of Vog;Common Sense Is Not Enough;Cruisin' for a Bruisin'.

The article focuses on passive acoustic technology, a new and more cost-effective technique to detect gas hydrate deposits. It is mentioned that the new method relies on ambient noise in the sea because sound travels more than four times as fast in water than in air. A schematic diagram comparing active and passive acoustic methods is presented. Also shown is a figure showing Hydrate Ridge and its continental margin, where a major amount of methane locked in gas hydrates is said to be buried.

The article reports that North Dakotans may have been breathing erionite-contaminated gravel dust and may face the danger of contracting mesothelioma, a deadly cancer that takes decades to appear. North Dakota has been discovered to contain large deposits of rocks bearing erionite and for 30 years the chalky, grey-brown rock was crushed and spread on roads, playgrounds, and parking lots. Residents are facing risks with news that the mineral has caused cancer in some villages in Turkey. INSETS: THE MINERAL: ERIONITE;FEDERAL OFFICIALS WARN WORKERS;PREVENTING ANOTHER LIBBY.

The article examines the toxic legacy of gold mining in Johannesburg, South Africa. The author reports that more than a century of mining in the Witwatersrand goldfields near Johannesburg has left the region littered with mounds of waste that are underlain by a deep underground network of abandoned mine shafts that are being gradually filled with water. The author adds that the mines are producing less and less gold and more sulfuric acid. INSETS: South Africa's Trio of Famous Geologic Features;No Laughing Matter;A Global Problem.

The article offers information on the benefits Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program to students, scientists and researchers in the U.S.

The article offers brief information on the volcanic eruption that occurred on March 17, 1944 in Mount Vesuvius.

The article features Jamestown, Rhode Island, on Conanicut Island. It is both a residential community and a seaside resort. One of the beaches of the town is part of a two-mile trail system encircling Watson Farm, a working farm operated by Historic New England, with the aim of preserving some of the town's original rural character. From the top of the 1787 windmill near the Quaker Meetinghouse, one will see the Claiborne Pell Bridge. The Jamestown Historical Society is hosting an exhibit about how the bridges changed life on the island.

The article reports on how the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Meteorite Photography and Recovery Project or the Prairie Network had tracked and recovered the Lost City meteorite in Oklahoma. Topics include the fireball the blazed across the skies above Oklahoma on January 3, 1970, and the calculation done by researchers to determine the impact location or landing zone of the meteorite.

The author reflects on her family's tour of 19th-century gold mines in Colorado and the issue of child labor in mines. Topics covered include the ore richness of the Bachelor-Syracuse gold mine, the memory of the breaker boys or young children who sort coal for up 12 hours a day and the shortened life spans of hard rock miners. Also mentioned is the benefit of progressivism to mineworkers.

The article focuses on the U.S. Congress' dissolution of the Fossil Cycad National Monument in the Black Hills of South Dakota on September 1, 1957. Topics discussed include Yale University paleobotanist George R. Wieland's role in the site's initial designation as a national monument in October 1922, as well as its eventual demise, a brief overview of cycads, and the federal government's ownership of fissionable material or any other fossil remains that will be recovered from the site.

The article focuses on the volcanic eruption from lakes in Africa including Lake Monoun and Lake Nyos in Cameroon on August 15, 1984 and August 21,1986 respectively. It mentions that the Nyos eruption killed more than 1700 people as well as cattle, wildlife, birds and insects. It further informs that George Kling, a geochemist, went to Lake Nyos to study aquatic biogeochemistry of the lake before eruption.

The article discusses the history of the tar pits at Rancho La Brea in Los Angeles, California. Franciscan friar Juan Crespi with the Spanish expedition of Gaspar de Portola described the region of La Brea as having large amounts of tar in August 1769. The paleontological importance of the site was realized when a canine tooth was discovered in the 1870s by land owner Henry Hancock. Starting in 1969, researchers had reportedly reopened Pit 91 to asses the full variety of fossils in the site.

The article discusses various aspects of the Kennewick Man prehistoric skeletal remains discovered in Kennewick, Washington. Background is presented on archaeologist James Chatters' initial studies of the skeletal remains. The article highlights the legal dispute between archaeologists and Northwest Native American tribes caused by the discovery of the skeletal remains. The skeletal remains bore resemblance to the Ainu people of Japan, according to scientists.

The article discusses the Richardton meteorite that hit Stark County, North Dakota on June 30, 1918. Witnesses' accounts of the meteorite are highlighted. Discoveries made by physicist John Hamilton Reynolds in the Department of Physics at the University of California at Berkeley while studying a fragment of the meteorite are highlighted. The significance of Reynolds' discovery of extinct radioactivity for scientists' efforts to understand the universe is cited.

The article discusses top discoveries in the fields of paleoanthropology and paleontology in 2012. An analysis of tartar on the teeth of 2-million-year-old Australopithecus sediba revealed that the species was vegetarian. Paleontologists discovered a 190-million-year-old dinosaur nesting site in South Africa. Scientists also discovered a new species of flying reptile from the Late Jurassic era.

The article focuses on balancing the terrestrial contribution of dams and groundwater pumping to sea level. Geographical hydrologist Yoshihide Wada says that the extraction of groundwater are becoming the most important terrestrial water contribution to sea-level rise. It also mentions that the study by Leonard Konikov, hydrogeologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, reveals that nearly quarter of the total groundwater depletion happened from 2000 to 2008.

The article discusses the study at the journal "Nature Geoscience" which focuses on the upwelling zone off the coast in Peru and tackles the production of depth nitrous oxide.

The article reports on the declining use of water by Americans according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which has been tracking water use since 1950, and presents the views of Mike Connor, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, on the same. INSET: Where the water goes.

The article discusses a study conducted by Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory geologist Erik R. Venteris and colleagues and published in the "Journal of Environmental Quality" which states that arsenic levels in Ohio soils are higher than the recommended standards of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Topics cited include the risks related to arsenic in the environment, the assigned screening levels for soil arsenic and the dangers of exposure to arsenic

The article focuses on the dangers of Valley Fever, known medically as coccidioidomycosis, a disease caused by a soilborne fungus contracted by inhaling spores in airborne dust that can sometimes lead to death. Topics discussed include the symptoms of the disease, the three acute cases of Valley Fever that occurred in Washington DC in 2010 and 2011, and the susceptibility of geoscientists, as well the wildlife, to the disease. A historical overview of Valley Fever's fatal cases is presented. INSETS: VALLEY FEVER'S DEADLY HISTORY;Longer season for Rocky Mountain wildflowers.

The article presents research on the association of warm temperature in the Eastern U.S. with climate change.

The article discusses studies on geological analogs that can evaluate the behavior of carbon dioxide once injected in the earth. One research studied dolomites and analyzed the isotope ratios of carbon dioxide that were released by the reaction of acid to dolomites to estimate the rate of dolomite formation. Another study measured the thickness of travertine deposits around the Green River Basin in Utah and used uranium-thorium dating to assess the rate of carbon dioxide leakage.

The article discusses a research study on the observation of temperatures in the upper atmosphere of Antarctica that showed a cold bias range of 0.5 to 4 degrees Celsius. It references a study published in "Geophysical Research Letters" that used meteorological data in the region using the dropsonde instead of the radiosonde data on the coast through the Global Positioning System (GPS) radio occultation technique. Conclusions showed a potential for improving precision of climate reasearch.

The article examines impact models that suggest the formation of the moon from Earth's collision with a protoplanet. It cites the giant impact theory in 1975 which proposed the formation of the moon from the same Earth material. It explains the Canup Impact Model developed by Robin Canup of the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, and the Cuk and Stewart Impact Model proposed by Harvard University's Matija Cuk and Sarah Stewart.

The article offers information on a study that reconstructed global temperatures at the end of the last ice age. The study offers further confirmation on the role played by carbon dioxide in driving global warming. It is conducted by Jeremy Shakun of Harvard University and colleagues including Peter Clark, a climatologist at Oregon State University.

The article discusses the debate that ensued after the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and the International Union of Geological Sciences joint committee recommended replacing the units for dates and for durations with units based on the annus (a) for all instances to unify time units between disciplines. Opponests are cited to argue that the recommendation only adds confusion. Adding words like ago is suggested rather than using unstated, insiders-only definition.

The article discusses the history of Project Mohole, an ocean drilling program launched in 1961 that aims to drill through the earth's crust and retrieve a sample of the mantle. It was cancelled in 1966 before Phase II was completed due to insufficient funds. Also cited is a report from the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program in June 2011 which concludes that drilling to the mantle is definitely possible in light of existing industry solutions to the many technological challenges faced before.