bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Section concerns addressed at Spring Meeting
Authors: Bales Roger C.
Published: October 2006

To keep abreast of current issues and plan future activities, Hydrology Section President Steve Burges brought a full agenda to the Executive Committee meeting held in Baltimore last May. The following highlights of that meeting are offered to keep you informed about what's new in the Hydrology Section.

To communicate scientific results more effectively to the press at the Fall and Spring Meetings, section Press Officer Harry Lins is organizing a media‐interest session that can highlight both science and policy aspects of a subject. Such a session will also help communicate scientific results to a more general audience. Special session convenors are also encouraged to open their session with a 5–10‐minute introduction that highlights important issues to be presented in subsequent papers. These introductions are intended mainly for press representatives and nonspecialists in the audience. In general, the press is not well versed on water issues, and there is often less press interest in hydrology than in other areas of geophysics.
Controversy over “Solar Flare Myth” explored
Authors: Miller James A.
Published: October 2006

Two years ago, Jack Gosling, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, ignited a controversy that centers on claims of a “Solar Flare Myth” [Gosling, 1993, 1994], an unfortunate choice of words that probably did not lead solar flare researchers to immediately endear themselves to its basic tenets or perhaps even to give it a fair trial. Before the first paper was widely publicized, I attended a seminar on “the myth” conducted by Gosling at the Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The reception was, as I recall, quite warm and anything but controversial. I suspect this is because the audience had been primed in the preceding years by Don Reames, who had basically been saying the same thing in his talks but who did not receive anywhere near the same press. However, no one likes hints of a myth associated with their work, and this calm environment was not to last; soon there were counterattacks from the flare community [Zirin], 1994; Hudson et al., 1995], which were answered in turn [Gosling, 1995], and the issue recently reached its zenith (it is hoped) with a jam‐packed special session at the 1995 Spring AGU Meeting in Baltimore, Md.
Deep blast
Authors: Anonymous
Published: October 2006

From southern New Mexico to the Great Slave Lake of Canada, scientists from the United States and Canada recently detonated 10 underground chemical explosions to generate a clearer picture of the Earth's crust and upper mantle. Called Project Deep Probe, the experiment is designed to see through the crust and into the upper mantle to a depth of 300 miles.

In the United States, Earth scientists from Rice University, Purdue University, and the University of Oregon are participating in the project. “Researchers hope to get a picture of the upper mantle beneath the Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Plateau, to understand the role the mantle played in formation and uplift,” says Alan Levander of Rice. To enhance that “picture,” 750 portable seismographs were placed along a roughly north‐south line extending from Crownpoint, New Mexico to Edmonton, Alberta. The seismic recordings will be used to enhance weak seismic waves that penetrated the upper mantle.
The evolving role of the U.S. Geodynamics Committee
Authors: Dickinson Bill
Published: October 2006

The U.S. Geodynamics Committee of the National Research Council (NRC) has a long history of producing reports and organizing symposia that have fostered pacesetting geophysical research. The Committee, which is part of the Board on Earth Sciences and Resources, within the Commission on Geosciences, Environment, and Resources develops and undertakes studies of the dynamic history of the Earth. Upon completion of the Upper Mantle Project, the Committee helped focus the research agenda for much of geophysics with its report, U.S. Program for the Geodynamics Project. In subsequent years, the Committee through its reports was influential in the development of the continental scientific drilling program, the International Lithosphere Program, and the continent‐ocean transects program. The Committee recently produced two reports: The National Geomagnetic Initiative (1993) and Mount Rainier Active Cascade Volcano (1994).
Multidisciplinary program studies land‐atmosphere interactions in semi‐arid regions
Authors: Wallace Jim
Published: October 2006

What are the consequences of climatic and human‐induced change on the water balance and ecological diversity of the Upper San Pedro River Basin (USPB), which spans the border between southeastern Arizona and northern Sonora, Mexico? What are the effects of such change at event, seasonal, interannual, and decadal timescales? The interdisciplinary Semi‐Arid Land Surface Atmosphere Program (SALSA) seeks an answer to these complex questions.
Hubble finds EGGs in an eagle's nest
Authors: Anonymous
Published: October 2006

Focusing the Hubble Space Telescope and its wide field planetary camera (WFPC) on a nebula 7000 light years away, astronomers have spied some newborns emerging from their EGGs.

The newborns are stars rising from evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs) in, appropriately enough, the Eagle Nebula(right). The EGGs—which appear as bulbous bumps protruding from the surface of these cosmic stalagmites of hydrogen and dust—are incubators of new stars, according to Jeff Hester and colleagues from the Arizona State University.
Sphere of influence
Authors: Anonymous
Published: October 2006

After years of New Age celebrity, the Biosphere 2 project is officially going legit. As part of a five‐year management agreement, the staff of Columbia University's Lamont‐Doherty Earth Observatory will oversee the research, as well as the educational projects and tourism operations, of the enclosed prototype of Earth situated in the Arizona desert. A consortium of scientists from Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, Yale, the Smithsonian Institutions, the Australian National University, and several other institutions has already set about designing experiments in biogeochemistry, sustainable agriculture, climate change, biodiversity, and ecology. Plans also are being made to turn Biosphere 2 into a “science education center devoted exclusively to how the world works.”
Earth interactions now inviting submissions
Authors: Anonymous
Published: October 2006

You may now submit articles to an exciting, new electronic journal copublished by AGU, the American Meteorological Society, and the Association of American Geographers.

Earth Interactions will exploit the capabilities of electronic communication technology to add value to the publication of research results in the interdisciplinary Earth system sciences. The journal particularly encourages submissions that deal with interactions between the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere in the context of global issues or global change.
Anchor‐like force proposed for subduction zones
Authors: Carlowicz Michael
Published: October 2006

Two plate tectonics researchers have turned to a simple maritime tool to explain a 25‐year‐old mystery. Christopher Scholz and Jaime Campos have proposed that the action of a sea anchor, which is used to steady ships in deep water, provides an apt model of the forces at work when the Earth's crustal plates collide and why those collisions provoke powerful earthquakes in some subduction zones and just minor temblors in others.
Progress?
Authors: Anonymous
Published: October 2006

Scientists who were once protected by the hammer and sickle are now being bludgeoned with them, according to a report published in November by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Thousands of scientists, professors, and science teachers who had been affiliated with the communist regimes of Central and Eastern European nations are being purged from academic institutions under the premise of righting a perceived historical wrong.

More than 3,000 scientists in Bulgaria, as well as 884 university professors and 10,000 teachers in the German state of Saxony, have lost their jobs in the past 5 years. Nearly 6% of all Czech faculty members also have been fired. The purges—which are more reminiscent of the communist past than of a democratic future—are the result of government‐sanctioned programs to weed out public employees who may have received their positions due to their Communist affiliation.
Robert G. McQueen (1924–1994)
Authors: Brown J. Michael , Shankland Thomas J.
Published: October 2006

Robert “Bob” McQueen, who applied the methods of shock wave compression to study the behavior of Earth materials at high pressure and temperature, died October 18, 1994, after a brief illness. He had been an AGU Fellow since 1988.

Bob grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, and graduated from high school in 1942. He briefly attended Stanford until he was called into service in 1943. He resumed study at Denver University in 1946 and completed a masters degree in mathematics in 1949. He was hired as a weapons designer by Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in 1949 during the defense research expansion triggered during the emerging cold war. Bob's interest in the Earth's interior developed in the 1950s when he began to study equations of state of metals and silicates using shock waves.
1996 hurricane season should be calmer
Authors: Carlowicz Michael
Published: October 2006

On November 30, William Gray and Chris Landsea used their algorithmic “crystal” ball to foresee the 1996 hurricane season, and what they saw was less raucous than this year, but more blustery than the relatively calm years of the early 1990s. “At this point, we're seeing a season with considerably less activity than 1995 but considerably more activity than the seasons of 1991 through 1994,” Gray noted. “We'll see less activity next year compared to 1995, but that doesn't mean we won't see damage from the storms that do occur.”
Introduction to Geochemical Modeling
Authors: Maaloe Sven
Published: October 2006

Estimates of the composition of the mantle and the processes occurring within it require the combined application of geophysics and geochemistry. Albarede's new book provides convenient access to many of the theoretical geochemical methods developed during the last two decades, during which theoretical geochemistry developed considerably. Magma accumulation models combining mantle flow and geochemical changes were proposed, various statistical analyses were employed, and theoretical applications of isotope ratios were developed. This new text is the first to introduce readers to many of these theoretical geochemical methods.
Exploring the KT source crater: Progress and future prospects
Authors: Sharpton Virgil L.
Published: October 2006

It has been 15 years since an iridium‐enriched clay layer at the Cretaceous‐Tertiary (KT) boundary was discovered, providing the first hard evidence linking the most recent mass extinction event to a comet or asteroid strike [Alvarez et al., 1980]. Now it is widely accepted that the site of this collision is on the Yucatan platform, centered near Progreso, Mexico. The 200–300‐km‐wide crater lies buried beneath 300–1000 m of limestone laid down in the intervening 65 million years, and few clues of its presence remain at the surface, save an arcuate arrangement of water‐filled sinkholes centered approximately on the structure (Figure 1). Yet prominent circular anomalies in gravity and magnetic anomaly maps gained the interest of Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), and in the early 1950s they began an exploration campaign that included deep drilling to recover samples of the subsurface rocks. The buried feature became known as the Chicxulub structure. Pemex drilling continued throughout the early 1970s and by that time, three wells near the center had recovered silicate rocks with igneous textures, initially mistaken for volcanic rocks. Other wells, located between 130 km and 210 km from ground zero recovered breccia deposits hundreds of meters thick that showed evidence of catastropic or explosive conditions. By 1980, Antonio Camargo, a geophysicist at Pemex, felt the evidence pointed to impact, although a volcanic origin for the Chicxulub structure could not be ruled out.
Allegre receives the William Bowie Medal
Authors: Anderson Don L.
Published: October 2006

The 1995 William Bowie Medal, given by AGU for outstanding contributions to fundamental geophysics and for unselfish cooperation in research, was presented to Claude Allègre at the AGU Spring Meeting Honor Ceremony on May 31 in Baltimore. The award citation is given here.
Clive Lister (1936–1995)
Authors: Sclater John G. , Davis Earl E. , Marline Beverly K. , Crampin Stuart
Published: October 2006

Clive Lister was born in Uxbridge, England, on February 8, 1936, to parents who had moved from Germany to England to establish a camera manufacturing business. Subsequently they realized how fortunate they were to have escaped from the horrors of the rise of Nazism. He went to St. Paul's School in Hammersmith and, after a spell of national service as a gunner in the British Army Air Corps, he attended Trinity College, Cambridge, on a senior scholarship. Clive entered Cambridge in 1956, received a B.A. in physics in 1959, and a Ph.D. in geophysics in 1962. After a short postdoctoral fellowship in La Spezia, Italy, and 2 years of working in industry for Willard Bascomb in the United States, he joined the faculties of the Geophysics Group and the Department of Oceanography at the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1965. There he remained until he took early retirement in 1990. Clive died of a massive heart attack at his home in Darrington, Wash., on August, 4 1995. He was 59 years old.
[Comment on “Multidisciplinary program studies land‐atmosphere interactions in semi‐arid regions”] San Pedro Riparian Corridor recently was treeless
Authors: Dickinson William R.
Published: October 2006

Readers may be intrigued by a fascinating footnote to the article on the Semi‐Arid Land Surface Atmosphere Program (SALSA) study of the Upper San Pedro River Basin (USPB) in Arizona (Eos, November 14, 1995, p. 465). Along the banks of the San Pedro River within the first congressionally designated Riparian National Conservation Area, the “narrow riparian corridor (50–300 m wide)” that has been declared one of the “12 Great Places of the Western Hemisphere” by the Nature Conservancy, has existed for no more than half a century! [See Richard Hereford, 1993 Geological Society of America Special Paper 282, 46 pp.]
Four are named Editors of Earth Interactions
Authors: Anonymous
Published: October 2006

Eric J. Barron of the Earth System Science Center at The Pennsylvania State University has been named chief editor of the new electronic journal, Earth Interactions. This journal will be co‐published by AGU, the American Meteorological Society, and the Association of American Geographers. The three societies jointly agreed on the appointment of Barron. Each of the societies also appointed an editor to the board. George F. Hepner for AAG is from the Department of Geography at the University of Utah, David T. Sandwell for AGU is at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Kevin E. Trenberth for AMS is at the Climate and Global Dynamics Division at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Recent observation indicates convection' role in deep water circulation
Authors: Send Uwe , Mertens Christian , Font Jordi
Published: October 2006

Deep convection is important in forming the dense water masses that lie below the ocean's surface and feed the global thermohaline circulation system. But the exact role that deep convection plays in these processes is a subject of much debate. Now, for the first time, a pulse‐like temperature signal, produced when water generated by convection drains into a deep boundary current, has apparently been detected in the Mediterranean. This observation provides clues to the mechanisms by which the dense water escapes the convection region and makes its journey. While up to 50% of the newly formed water could incorporated into the deep boundary current this way, no increase in its transport was observed.
Deadly quake
Authors: Anonymous
Published: October 2006

More than 250 people died and at least 15,000 were injured when an earthquake struck the Lijiang and Zhongdian regions of southwestern China at 7:14 p.m. local time on February 3. Over 300,000 people were left homeless, while temperatures hovered near the freezing point, as more than 186,000 homes were severely damaged—roughly 80% of the local total. Entire villages in the Yunnan Province were obliterated, with the worst damage coming in Dayan township and in the rural areas of White Sand and Gold Mountain. The death toll was expected to rise to at least 300, officials of the Chinese Red Cross estimated.
Near‐Earth asteroid mission to travel to 433 Eros
Authors: McFadden Lucy A. , Russell Christopher T. , Cheng Andrew F.
Published: October 2006

Just after Valentine's Day the Near‐Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft is scheduled to embark on a 3‐year long journey to the asteroid Eros (Figure 1) to study its geophysical state and its geochemistry. The three‐axis stabilized spacecraft, which is passively cooled and powered with fixed solar panels (Figure 2), was built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. It will launch aboard a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral on February 16. To further our understanding of asteroids and their role in the formation of the solar system, the spacecraft will orbit Eros for a year after its trajectory through the inner solar system (Figure 3). Once it arrives in February 1999, NEAR will use five scientific instruments to make measurements and transmit data to Earth through a 1.5‐m, fixed, high‐gain antenna at rates up to 27 kbits/s.
Hot new understudy
Authors: Anonymous
Published: October 2006

To calibrate a new set of instruments for the study of volcanoes, researchers are turning their sights to a local power plant.

Last week, researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory worked with the Public Service Company of New Mexico to study emissions from the stacks of a power‐generating station as a stand‐in for a real volcano. The geologists and geochemists are developing a remote sensing system that uses spectrometry and LIDAR (light detection and ranging) to analyze volcanic emissions, and Public Service's San Juan Generating Station releases many of the same constituent gases. Essentially, the researchers are trying to perfect techniques of detecting the presence and concentrations of such gases as sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and hydrochloric acid in the vented discharges from active volcanoes.
Frontiers of climate research extended by ocean drilling
Authors: Raymo M. , Jansen E. ,   ODP Leg 162 Shipboard Scientific Party
Published: October 2006

The Guinness Book of World Records will boast a new entry for record‐breaking core recovery next year. Almost 7 km of core was recovered by the Ocean Drilling Program's Leg 162, which returned to Iceland on September 3, 1995. But far more significant than the quantity of core recovered is its quality. The exceptionally high sedimentation rates that characterize many of the recovered sections have provided new insight into millennial‐scale variations in climate and oceanography in the North Atlantic, one of the world's most climatically reactive regions.
Comment on the Solar Flare Debate
Authors: Reid George C.
Published: October 2006

The controversy surrounding the “Solar Flare Myth” [Miller et al., 1995] is understandable, given the fairly extreme positions taken by the proponents and opponents of the “myth” [Gosling, 1993]. Having spent some time in the field of solar energetic particle events and their terrestrial effects, extending back even to the time when such events were unrecognized, I felt compelled to comment on one aspect of the controversy that I believe is clearly wrong as stated by the “myth” supporters. It is the statement that large energetic particle events have little, if any, connection with flares. This is directly contradictory to the observations made back in the late 1950s by ground‐based riometers, as described in several papers published in the late 1950s and early 1960s [e.g., Reid and Leinbach, 1959, 1961].
Bathing in new landscapes
Authors: Carlowicz Michael
Published: October 2006

It would be a rock climber's dream, were it accessible. But this 1600‐meter cliff is more likely to be descended than ascended. It is hundreds of meters below the sea.

Two hundred kilometers off the Gulf Coast of Florida, along the edge of the continental shelf, nature has built a mile‐high precipice by piling up the refuse of millions of years of marine life. The carbonate‐rich shells of sea creatures resist erosion, but every so often enough cool fresh water seeps from the low‐lying Florida mainland to the lower face of the slope and dissolves the carbonate. As the sea floor weakens, it collapses violently, creating sheer cliffs as steep as 45°.
Sea change
Authors: Anonymous
Published: October 2006

It's been 550 million years since the Earth has had an ocean composition quite like today's, according to a Johns Hopkins researcher. Contradicting the idea that the composition of ocean water has not changed much since the dawn of life, geochemist Lawrence Hardie asserts that the amounts of certain ingredients in seawater change over geologic time.

Studying ancient limestones and salt deposits, Hardie has observed that the concentration of salts in seawater fluctuates over time because of fluctuations in the two primary sources feeding the oceans: rivers and hydrothermal vents. Since hydrothermal water is 100 times as salty as river water, any change in the flow from these vents above mid‐ocean volcanic ridges can cause a radical change in seawater composition. The variations in heat and water released from hydrothermal vents lead to changes in concentrations of magnesium, calcium, potassium, and sulfates.
Communication means survival, policymakers say
Authors: Carlowicz Michael
Published: October 2006

First it was a solitary voice. That voice was joined by others and became a chorus. Now it is a cacophony, and unless you spent this winter in Antarctica or the South Pacific, you have heard it by now.

It is the sound of scientists and policymakers exhorting their colleagues to insert themselves into the national budget debate before they get shut out for good. The underlying messages are simple. First, the philosophical battle is over, and those who would cut the federal budget deficit have won. Second, scientists can no longer afford to live in a political vacuum.
Clinton delivers bare bones plan for 1997 budget
Authors: Carlowicz Michael
Published: October 2006

Congress and the White House have yet to finish negotiating and haggling over the U.S. federal budget for 1996, but the calendar and the law say that they ought to start thinking about 1997.

On February 5, President Bill Clinton issued a preliminary budget plan for 1997 that reflected his fiscal priorities as they were last stated in January, before budget talks with congressional Republicans broke down. Required by law to propose a spending plan by the first Monday in February, Clinton delivered to Congress what he termed a “thematic document,” one that gives a minimally detailed outline of how the federal government should spend the taxpayers' money in 1997.
Section concerns addressed at Fall Meeting
Authors: Bales Roger C.
Published: October 2006

To keep abreast of current issues and to plan future activities, Hydrology Section President Steve Burges brought a full agenda to the Executive Committee meeting held in San Francisco December 13, 1995. The following highlights of the meeting are offered to keep you informed about what's new in the Hydrology Section.

At the 1995 AGU Fall meeting there were 741 hydrology presentations in 62 sessions. Fifty‐five percent of these were in poster form. Over the past 3 years posters have gained acceptance by the hydrology community, and because they can reach a larger audience and can be viewed all day, they are the preferred medium for many presenters. In San Francisco our section continued the Outstanding Student Paper Awards Program that we initiated at the 1995 AGU Spring meeting. Up to 5% of papers given by student colleagues can be recognized as outstanding. Members who can help evaluate student papers in one or more sessions at the Spring Meeting are encouraged to volunteer. To do so, contact section Secretary Roger Bales (roger@hwr.arizona.edu).
Stevenson received the Whipple award
Authors: Shoemaker Eugene M. , Stevenson David J.
Published: October 2006

David J. Stevenson received the Whipple Award at the 1994 Spring Meeting in Baltimore. The award is given for outstanding scientific contributions to the field of planetology. The citation and Stevenson's response are given here.
IAHS 1995 met in Boulder
Authors: Rango Al
Published: October 2006

The International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) was one of six associations to convene symposia and workshops during the General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics in Boulder, Colo., from July 2–14, 1995

Scale issues were a common theme in many of the meetings and were discussed in symposia on the effects of scale on interpretation and management of sediment and water quality, models for assessing and monitoring groundwater quality, and tracer technologies for hydrological systems, and a workshop on hydrology and water resources in developing economies in light of global change. In the symposium on tracer technologies for hydrological systems, the attendees concluded that tracer methods have not been fully exploited. In the symposium on modeling and management of sustainable basin‐scale water resource systems, there was a strong interest in sustainability on the part of the hydrological community. In the workshop on hydrology and global change the attendees perceived an urgent need to use mesoscale models to scale down global circulation model output for use in planning large river basin management practices in developing countries. The organizers of a workshop on remote sensing algorithms in hydrology tried an informal, hands‐on approach, generating lively discussions and high attendance over 3 days.
New data set on surface radiation budget available on‐line
Authors: Darnell W. L. , Staylor W. F. , Ritchey N. A. , Gupta S. K. , Wilber A. C.
Published: October 2006

A new long‐term global data set of monthly average surface shortwave (SW) and longwave (LW) fluxes extending from July 1983 to June 1991 is now available. It is the product of computationally fast radiative transfer algorithms that compute global surface radiative fluxes using satellite data. The data set can be used in the development of general circulation models and in climate studies, including those that examine surface processes and interannual climate anomalies such as El Nino/Southern Oscillation and regional floods and droughts.
Turcotte receives Whitten medal
Authors: Rundle John B. , Turcotte Donald
Published: October 2006

Donald L. Turcotte was honored as the recipient of the Charles A. Whitten Medal at AGU's Fall Meeting in San Francisco, on December 13, 1995. The award is given for outstanding achievement in research on the form and dynamics of the Earth and the planets. The citation and Turcotte's response are given here.
Detailed ocean current maps may lie over the horizon
Authors: Carlowicz Michael
Published: October 2006

In another case of military swords being turned into scientific plowshares, two American researchers have used radar systems once designed to detect Soviet planes during the Cold War to map open‐ocean currents instead.

In the name of science, Thomas Georges and Jack Harlan of NOAA's Environmental Technology Laboratory borrowed some time last summer on the U.S. Navy's over‐the‐horizon (OTH) radar systems in both Virginia and Texas. Training the radars on the waters off of the southern coast of Florida, the researchers gathered enough data to deduce the surface motion of two 70,000 km2 swatches of the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. By bouncing 5–28 MHz radio waves off the ionosphere down to the sea surface and back, the researchers were able to derive the characteristics of the ocean surface from Bragg backscatter resonance.
Analytic Element Modeling of Groundwater Flow
Authors: Gambolati Giuseppe
Published: October 2006

Analytic Element Modeling of Groundwater Flow offers much more than one might anticipate from its title. It is an excellent tutorial on the subjects of groundwater flow and modeling groundwater with the analytic element method. I greatly enjoyed reading it, and I recommend it to any student of groundwater hydrology, as well as to researchers and professionals concerned with modeling regional groundwater flow in productive aquifers. Chapters 3 and 6 are particularly interesting.
No crying over spilt oil
Authors: Carlowicz Michael
Published: October 2006

They made the mess, and now they are going to make amends. In an agreement with the U.S. Department of the Interior, NOAA, and the state of Louisiana, the Chevron Production Company has agreed to create new marsh habitat in the Mississippi River delta in order to replace some of the habitat destroyed by a January 1995 oil wellhead failure.

The 1995 spill destroyed much of a highly productive marsh refuge and nursery for fish, shellfish, and waterfowl species in Dixon Bay, Louisiana. So now Chevron will pay to breach a levee and create a freshwater diversion into the Delta National Wildlife Refuge, a project that the refuge staff had already designed but could not fund. The influx of fresh water and sediment should help create new habitat quite similar to the marsh lost because of the oil discharge.
Face of Pluto emerges from the shadows
Authors: Carlowicz Michael
Published: October 2006

Pluto is so far from Earth—5.8 billion km—and so small—just two‐thirds the size of the Moon—that even the largest ground‐based telescopes have never been able to resolve its surface features. Now, for the first time since the discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, space scientists have seen the face of the most distant planet. Using the European Space Agency's Faint Object Camera aboard the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, Marc Buie of Lowell Observatory, and Laurence Trafton of the University of Texas at Austin collected a dozen visible light and ultraviolet images of Pluto in June and July 1994. Figure 1a is the global map of 85% of Pluto's surface, as assembled by computer image enhancement software from four separate images. Figure 1b reveals the opposite hemispheres of the planet as seen in blue light; the small, inset shots are actual photos from Hubble, while the larger images are drawn from a global map reconstructed by computer.
Monitoring Active Volcanoes
Authors: Swanson Don
Published: October 2006

Monitoring volcanoes is a surprisingly controversial enterprise. Some volcanologists argue that monitoring promises too much and delivers too little for risk mitigation. They trust only strict land‐use measures (and accompanying high insurance premiums in risky zones) and urge that funds be used for public education and awareness rather than for instrumental monitoring. Others claim that monitoring is more akin to Brownian motion than to science: lots of action but little net progress. Still other volcanologists acknowledge the potential value of monitoring for prediction and warning but despair at the difficulty of it all. And, finally, some shy from surveillance, fearing the legal consequences of a failed monitoring effort during these litigious times. They wonder, “Will I be sued if an eruption is not foreseen or if an instrument fails at a critical time?”
Schilling receives the Ewing medal
Authors: Tatsumoto M. , Craig Harmon , Schilling Jean‐Guy
Published: October 2006

The 1995 Ewing Medal, given for outstanding services to the marine sciences, was presented to Jean‐Guy Schilling at the AGU Fall Meeting Honor Ceremony on December 13, 1995, in San Francisco. The award citation and Schilling's response are given here.

“It is an honor and pleasure to present the citation that accompanies presentation of the Maurice Ewing Medal of the American Geophysical Union to Jean‐Guy Ernest Schilling in recognition of his outstanding contribution to marine geophysics.
Federal funding at a time of budget austerity
Authors:   Frank Press
Published: October 2006

I served as chair of a committee of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering that released a report last December entitled “Allocating Federal Funds for Science and Technology” [National Academy Press, 1995; Carlowicz, 1995]. The report had at least one salutary effect: it triggered a lively national discussion of science policy, much of it useful but some occasionally uninformed. The report was issued in an environment that can be characterized by the end of the Cold War, changing national needs, and the restructuring of research and educational institutions. It is also a stressful time when extraordinary opportunities for scientific progress are constrained by a future of austere R&D funding as both political parties struggle to honor their commitments to balance the federal budget in 7 years. In the interest of furthering debate, I will summarize the premises of the report, the principal recommendations, the main objections that have arisen, and our responses to them.
Lawmakers seek end to budget stalemate
Authors: Carlowicz Michael
Published: October 2006

On March 15, President Bill Clinton signed into law the tenth short‐term spending measure of the now‐sixmonth‐old 1996 fiscal year (FY'96), funding the federal government through March 22. At the same time, budget negotiators from both the Republican and Democratic parties scurried to put the finishing touches on a $166 billion‐omnibus appropriations bill, H.R. 3019, to pay the government's bills for the rest of the fiscal year.

As of March 21, parts of a dozen federal cabinet‐level departments and agencies still did not have a definitive budget allocation for FY'96. Nearly all national science research and development programs, agencies, and departments remained tied up by that budget struggle, though very little of the debate has anything to do with those programs (Eos, February 20). H.R. 3019 is designed to end the string of short‐term spending measures and to fund all federal departments for the remaining six months of the fiscal year. Congressional leaders hoped to have the bill passed by March 22, though many representatives anticipated that at least one more short‐term spending resolution would have to be passed before budget negotiations with the President could be completed.
Geomorphology and Land Management in a Changing Environment
Authors: Keller E. A.
Published: October 2006

The environment remains a hot academic subject. The research it generates is furthering our understanding of many environmental problems and solutions. Of particular importance is our emerging understanding of relationships between environmental change, land management, and Earth surface processes and landforms. This is the subject of Geomorphology and Land Management in a Changing Environment, a new addition to the British Geomorphologic Research Groups Symposia Series. The editors have compiled 18 chapters that cover a range of topics related to geomorphology, land use, environmental change, and the application of geomorphic principles to solving land management and environmental problems.
Federal budget: Look out 1996; here comes fiscal '97
Authors: Carlowicz Michael
Published: October 2006

The contradictions are everywhere. A 1997 federal budget proposal has been issued, but the 1996 budget still has not been passed. All of Washington is in a budget‐cutting mood, but thinking in a election year mode. And while discretionary funding—particularly for science—is under siege, just about every federal agency is asking for more money.

On March 18, President Bill Clinton delivered a detailed budget request for fiscal 1997 (FY '97) and a plan for 1998–2002. The Executive Branch and all its agencies are asking Congress for $1.65 trillion to spend in FY '97, roughly 4% more than is expected to be spent in FY '96. The budget deficit for FY '97 is estimated to be about $140 billion.
Scientists seek to improve graduate education in the geosciences
Authors: Fiske P. S. , Smith G. , Smith W.
Published: October 2006

Academic science, willingly or not, may be headed for structural change similar in magnitude to the changes it faced at the end of World War II. Research funding in many areas of the geosciences is feeling the pinch of federal budget belt‐tightening. New job openings in research, academia, government, and industry are dwindling, and many graduating Ph.D.s have to seek employment in areas that are, at best, marginally related to their training.

A research culture developed in an environment of expansion is poorly suited to an era of limited resources. Since academic research is closely linked with graduate education, we must consider the question: How should our programs adapt to the changes in the external environment in which academic science must function? If our graduate programs do not meet our students' needs, we may not only be failing as educators, but we may also find it increasingly difficult to attract the qualified students that we need to keep our programs and research efforts healthy.
Modern Glacial Environments: Processes, Dynamics and Sediments
Authors: Jansson Peter
Published: October 2006

Modern Glacial Environments: Processes, Dynamics and Sediments focuses on the processes involved in forming the glacial landscape. Approximately 30% of the Earth's land surface was covered by ice during the Pleistocene. The landscape formed by the great ice sheets still intrigues the scientific world. Today present‐day ice sheets are used to investigate the processes that created the glacial landscape and the landscape, in turn, is used to deduce the behavior of former ice sheets. This view is a simplification but essentially true; glaciologists and glacial geologists are studying the same process‐morphological system to achieve different goals. Modern Glacial Environments: Processes, Dynamics and Sediments, edited by John Menzies, aims to bridge the gap created by this division, a feat never before attempted in a single volume.
Group convenes to discuss deformation‐enhanced fluid flow
Authors: Holness Marian
Published: October 2006

An international group of geologists met in Edinburgh, Scotland, in September 1995 to discuss recent progress in understanding the interrelationships between rock deformation and fluid flow. Channeled flow of magmas or volatile fluids in crustal fractures is a familiar concept, but the emphasis of research into deformation‐enhanced fluid flow is moving toward an analysis of rock transport properties during ductile, rather than brittle, deformation. This subject is applicable to the complete spectrum of fluid‐bearing environments in the Earth including the movement of volatiles (for example, H2O and CO2) during crustal metamorphism, and the extraction of basaltic melt from the mantle. Under the aegis of the Metamorphic, Tectonic and Volcanic Studies Groups of the Geological Society of London, and the Mineralogical Society, a 3‐day meeting was convened to bring together scientists working on all aspects of this diverse problem. The meeting concentrated on several major themes: segregation, ascent, and emplacement of granitic magmas; the extraction of basalt from partially molten mantle; and devolatilization of metamorphic rocks.
Better position
Authors: Carlowicz Michael
Published: October 2006

The U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) will soon become more accurate for civilian users, improving the quality of navigation and of some types of scientific research. The Clinton Administration announced March 29 that within a decade, the federal government will stop degrading the civilian GPS signal and will allow nonmilitary users access to the same clear signals that U.S. troops rely upon.

Designed as dual‐use system with primary use by the American military, the GPS is a constellation of 24 satellites that allows soldiers to determine their exact positions (in latitude and longitude) anywhere in the world. While the GPS is operated by the Department of Defense (DoD), scientists and adventurous civilians have been able to purchase small, portable GPS devices. However, the U.S. military has kept to itself a capability known as “selective availability” that provides a much more precise signal than is available to the public. According to the White House, that selected signal will be available to all users within 4–10 years.
Topographic Effects in Stratified Flows
Authors: Larock Bruce E.
Published: October 2006

Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it, an adage says. Similarly, many fluid mechanicians this century have sought to describe accurately the flow phenomena occurring when fluid moves past an object or irregular terrain, but usually the fluid model and/or the body shape had to be substantially simplified to make the problem tractable. In this new monograph, Peter Baines has really “done something about it.” He makes significant progress in describing the flow of homogeneous and especially stratified real fluid flows over uneven topography, whether it be ridges on a laboratory model or a real mountain.
Exploring the volcanic‐rifted margins of the North Atlantic
Authors:   ODP Leg 163 Shipboard Scientific Party
Published: October 2006

The scientific party of Ocean Drilling Program Leg 163 traveled to the east coast of Greenland last September and October to study continental rifting, the creation of new ocean floor, and the birth of mantle plumes. Much of the narrow continental margin of East Greenland is made up of a 2000‐km‐long belt of lava flow accumulations up to 20‐km‐thick that erupted above sea level, then cooled and subsided, and now dip seaward.
“Enlightning” observation
Authors: Carlowicz Michael
Published: October 2006

Reviewing images of storm patterns from the top down, some atmospheric scientists have learned that gathering storm clouds tend to release their fury on each other before they jolt the Earth's surface. And the more sparks that fly between the clouds, the more severe the storm will be on the ground. Those observations could help atmospheric scientists predict severe weather more accurately.
We must reach out to the public
Authors: Perfit Michael , Fornari Daniel J.
Published: October 2006

Faced with the current budget crisis, legislators and leaders of federal agencies are asking scientists to communicate why continued and even expanded funding of basic sciences is important to America. There have been repeated requests for oceanographers to communicate the importance of their science to the public at large and to legislators at both state and federal levels. It is often difficult, however, to find opportunities for public and legislative outreach.

On March 17, 1996, Neal Lane, Director of the National Science Foundation, and Jerry Lewis (R.‐Calif.), Chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee for VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies, which oversees NSF, participated in a dive off the coast of California in the Deep Submergence Vehicle (DSV) Alvin. The dive was part an ongoing effort to improve science and operational systems on Alvin and to ensure that the submersible systems are ready for the next science program. It followed a 3‐month shutdown of the facility imposed, in part, by budget cutbacks. The engineering dives are funded by the National Science Foundation, The U.S. Navy Office of Naval Research, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the facility operator. In addition to testing out a new, integrated navigation software package for DSV operations, several vehicle systems and a new digital imaging system were tested.
NSF director says “Use it or lose it”
Authors: Lane Neal
Published: October 2006

Director Neal Lane shared his excitement for scientific progress and discovery when he discussed his recent experience during the Alvin submersible dive off Catalina. The quoted material below is taken from comments he made during his presentation of the National Science Foundation budget at a meeting held on March 19, 1996, just 2 days after the Alvin dive.
Revised forecast: Another stormy summer ahead
Authors: Carlowicz Michael
Published: October 2006

After predicting in November 1995 that the 1996 hurricane season would be less active than the typical year (Eos, December 12, 1995), William Gray and his colleagues from Colorado State University have revised their forecast. Plugging updated atmospheric data into their statistical model, the researchers are now predicting seven hurricanes—two of them intense (category 3, 4, or 5)—and 11 named storms for the summer and fall of 1996. Net tropical cyclone activity for the hurricane season, which lasts from June 1 to December 1, should be 105% of the 25‐year average, according to Gray.

In November, Gray and Chris Landsea of NOAA's Hurricane Research Division predicted eight tropical storms and five hurricanes (two intense), less than the historical averages of 9.3 named storms and 5.7 hurricanes per season. The change in expectations is the result of new accounting for trends in temperature and barometric pressure in Africa and around the Atlantic Basin.
Seismic images of crust beneath Iceland contribute to long‐standing debate
Authors: White R. S. , Minshull T. A. , Richardson K. R. , Smallwood J. R. , Staples R. K. , McBride J. H. , Maguire P. K. H. , Brandsdóttir B. , Menke W. ,   the FIRE Working Group
Published: October 2006

Since the 1970s there has been an ongoing debate about whether the crust beneath Iceland is relatively thin (<15 km) and hot, or thicker (>20 km) and cooler. New results from the Faeroe‐Iceland Ridge Experiment (FIRE) conducted in the summer of 1994 suggest that it is thicker and cooler.

This major land‐sea study investigated the crust generated where the North Atlantic spreading center intersects the Iceland mantle plume and mapped the transition from thickened oceanic crust to the continental fragment on which the Faeroe Islands sit. Seismic techniques were used to obtain a 600‐km profile of the area (Figure 1). Preliminary results suggest that a 20‐km‐thick crust is being generated beneath the northern Neovolcanic Zone of Iceland, with a high‐level crustal magma chamber beneath Krafla. In northeast Iceland, the igneous crust is considerably thicker, reaching 35 km, while along the Faeroe‐Iceland Ridge it varies between 25–30 km.
The sounds of science
Authors: Carlowicz Michael
Published: October 2006

As scientists carefully study some aspects of the ocean environment, are they unintentionally distressing others? That is a question to be answered by Robert Benson and his colleagues in the Center for Bioacoustics at Texas A&M University.

With help from a 3‐year, $316,000 grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Benson will study how underwater noise produced by naval operations and other sources may affect marine mammals. In Benson's study, researchers will generate random sequences of low‐frequency, high‐intensity (180‐decibel) sounds in the Gulf of Mexico, working at an approximate distance of 1 km from sperm whale herds. Using an array of hydrophones, the scientists will listen to the characteristic clicks and whistles of the sperm whales to detect changes in the animals' direction, speed, and depth, as derived from fluctuations in their calls.