Posted on 10/20/2020 9:33:20 PM PDT by BenLurkin
A team of geologists at the University of Houston College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics believes they have found the lost plate in northern Canada by using existing mantle tomography images—similar to a CT scan of the earth's interior. The findings, published in Geological Society of America Bulletin, could help geologists better predict volcanic hazards as well as mineral and hydrocarbon deposits.
"Volcanoes form at plate boundaries, and the more plates you have, the more volcanoes you have," said Jonny Wu, assistant professor of geology in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "Volcanoes also affect climate change. So, when you are trying to model the earth and understand how climate has changed since time, you really want to know how many volcanoes there have been on earth."
Wu and Spencer Fuston, a third-year geology doctoral student, applied a technique developed by the UH Center for Tectonics and Tomography called slab unfolding to reconstruct what tectonic plates in the Pacific Ocean looked like during the early Cenozoic Era. The rigid outermost shell of Earth, or lithosphere, is broken into tectonic plates and geologists have always known there were two plates in the Pacific Ocean at that time called Kula and Farallon. But there has been discussion about a potential third plate, Resurrection, having formed a special type of volcanic belt along Alaska and Washington State.
Using 3-D mapping technology, Fuston applied the slab unfolding technique to the mantle tomography images to pull out the subducted plates before unfolding and stretching them to their original shapes.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
Tom the Son came by. He decided he wanted a university parking pass - now that he’ll be going to class in person in a couple of weeks - for his birthday which was last October. We bought him a new pair of work shoes, too.
LOL
“Presidents’ Day,” so nothing will happen”
With Bidoff in the Kremlin, that just made I laugh. :)
Nothing worse than foot pain for persistence.
Nothing broken I hope.
Don’t know. I’ve had it for months. Foot and ankle, so I think it’s more than one thing.
Yes, our current one is particularly undistinguished.
A lot of the time, pain in one bone in the foot affects another bone either in the foot or the ankle/heel bones. Don’t be surprised if it’s arthritis in multiple bones.
Now I need to sort the clothes and head out the door to the laundry room.
Happy Monday, friends!
And totally forgettable if we could discount what he's undoing and the damage that he's causing to the American people. But don't get me started.
Another pensive kitteh!
Good morning.
The laundry is done, or at least done enough to where I could leave the laundry room.
Inwardly, I’m groaning at what is left to do. Unngh.
BUT! It’s another day, and with luck, the sun will shine on my front window. ;o]
Have a large swig of fatalism and hope for the sunshine! It has stopped raining here, for now.
It’s still trying to rain here, without much luck, but at least the wind is no longer blowing.
I’ll try to get at least two more boxes packed today. Maybe I’ll get more than that done, but I don’t want to wear me out again! As long as I PACK!
No, don’t wear yourself out.
The sun is coming up here.
The sun won’t be coming up here for another hour or two.
In the meantime, I’ve decided I’m going to pack up the dishes. The only time I’ve used them is when James and Abbie came to eat in January of 2019. They may as well be boxed up. And I’ll pack at least one more box of books, maybe two, to help empty the one bookcase. I’ll send a pic of the third shelf a little later.
For now, I’ll go hang the shirts.
Today’s special animal friend is the Cooper’s Hawk, Accipiter cooperii, a medium-sized bird of prey found across the North American continent from Canada to Mexico. The Accipiter genus, sometimes called “the true hawks,” includes around 50 species of diurnal hawks. Members of this genus are known for their extremely agile flight, which allows them to hunt among forest trees or suburban buildings and other clutter. My back yard is visited with some regularity by a large, female Cooper’s Hawk, mainly for rest or basking purposes, although she sometimes takes a dive at a squirrel or dove.
Cooper’s Hawks are above average size for accipiters, with females growing up to 20 inches in length and 36 inches in wingspan. Males are considerably smaller than females in both length and weight, and birds west of the Rocky Mountains are usually smaller than those to the east. Adults have a gray or blue-gray back, black cap, and red eyes. The chest and belly are white, heavily barred with rust red. They have fairly stocky bodies, stout legs heavily feathered above the feet, and relatively shorter wings and a longer tail than some other hawks.
Cooper’s Hawks can flourish in a variety of habitats, but their preference is for mature deciduous or mixed forests with canopy cover between 55% and 70%. They have been found in open grasslands in Mexico and prefer pine forests over deciduous in the American Southwest. For a raptor, they have a wide range of calls both during mating season and at other times of the year. The science of studying bird calls is developing rapidly due to the growing ease of making and digitally analyzing recordings. For further reading, see the website of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Male Cooper’s Hawks build their nests high in trees. The stick-built nests can be more than two feet in diameter, with a smaller cup (about 6 inches) in the center, lined with bark flakes or small, green twigs. The male feeds the female for about two weeks before she lays 2 to 6 eggs in the nest and continues bringing food during the incubation and after hatching. The eggs hatch in 30 to 36 days, and the babies remain in the nest about another month, flying at about 5 weeks old. Compare this to 20 ... 21 ... 23 ... years to get our own young out of the nest. Sigh.
The diet of Cooper’s Hawks includes many other birds, especially larger species such as doves, robins, and jays, as opposed to chickadees or finches. They also eat many small mammals, including bats, as well as (in some habitats) reptiles and occasionally insects. This variety is to be expected given the very wide range of their habitats. You don’t become a widespread, successful species if you’re a picky eater.
Like many other raptors, Cooper’s Hawk populations were greatly reduced by the effects of DDT in the 20th century. Since the elimination of this pesticide, populations have rebounded dramatically, and they are now considered a species of least concern by conservationists. However, there are many conservations efforts involving other raptors which are beneficial to this species as well.
Good morning. Happy Monday. We are expecting more snow this evening. But at least the temperature is up above 20 so it’s not so cold as it has been.
Which makes me wonder, when the wind isn't blowing, what is it doing?
Yes, and a mighty fine-looking bird they are, too!!
I just worked myself into a tizzy, but I think it was the smell of the Marks-A-Lot that did it for me. *foosh*
The dishes are out of the cupboard, packed in boxes and the boxes are stacking up, but I think I’m going to have far too many more boxes than I will need. I probably shouldn’t have let Kate talk me into taking them, but I didn’t really know how many there were.
When I go to Walmart the next few times, I’ll have to get their small boxes because most of the boxes I have from Kate would be too heavy when the books were in them. I also need more packing paper. Too bad I can’t find any excelsior...
When the wind isn’t blowing here, it’s doing the same thing it did in Vegas: It sucked!
Good morning. Another gloomy day, here. I haven’t seen the mountain, but I suspect there is some snow.
Good morning, ArGee. Do you get the day off work?
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