Geological insights from the newly discovered granite of Sif Island between Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers

Large-scale geological structures have controlled the long-term development of the bed and thus the flow of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). However, complete ice cover has obscured the age and exact positions of faults and geological boundaries beneath Thwaites Glacier and Pine Island Glacier, two major WAIS outlets in the Amundsen Sea sector. Here, we characterize the only rock outcrop between these two glaciers, which was exposed by the retreat of slow-flowing coastal ice in the early 2010s to form the new Sif Island. The island comprises granite, zircon U-Pb dated to ~177–174 Ma and characterized by initial ɛNd, 87Sr/86Sr and ɛHf isotope compositions of -2.3, 0.7061 and -1.3, respectively. These characteristics resemble Thurston Island/Antarctic Peninsula crustal block rocks, strongly suggesting that the Sif Island granite belongs to this province and placing the crustal block's boundary with the Marie Byrd Land province under Thwaites Glacier or its eastern shear margin. Low-temperature thermochronological data reveal that the granite underwent rapid cooling following emplacement, rapidly cooled again at ~100–90 Ma and then remained close to the Earth's surface until present. These data help date vertical displacement across the major tectonic structure beneath Pine Island Glacier to the Late Cretaceous

Current status of design and construction of ENCOAL Mild Gasification Plant

The ENCOAL project is demonstrating for the first time the integrated operation of several process steps: a. Coal drying on a rotary grate using convective heatin; b. Coal devolatilization on a rotary grate using convective heating; c. Hot particulate removal with cyclones integral solids cooling; and deactivation-passivation; e. Combustors operating on low-Btu gas from internal streams; f. Solids stabilization for storage and shipment; g. Computer control and optimization of a mild coal gasification process. The product fuels are expected to be used economically in commercial boilers and furnaces and to significantly reduce sulfur emissions at industrial and utility facilities currently burning high sulfur bituminous fuels or fuel oils thereby reducing acid rain-causing pollutants. The design and construction of the ENCOAL demonstration plan was done on a fast track basis, that is, these activities were extensively overlapped

Current status of design and construction of ENCOAL Mild Gasification Plant

The ENCOAL project is demonstrating for the first time the integrated operation of several process steps: a. Coal drying on a rotary grate using convective heatin; b. Coal devolatilization on a rotary grate using convective heating; c. Hot particulate removal with cyclones integral solids cooling; and deactivation-passivation; e. Combustors operating on low-Btu gas from internal streams; f. Solids stabilization for storage and shipment; g. Computer control and optimization of a mild coal gasification process. The product fuels are expected to be used economically in commercial boilers and furnaces and to significantly reduce sulfur emissions at industrial and utility facilities currently burning high sulfur bituminous fuels or fuel oils thereby reducing acid rain-causing pollutants. The design and construction of the ENCOAL demonstration plan was done on a fast track basis, that is, these activities were extensively overlapped

How to Control Wind Erosion

Excerpts from the report: Wind erosion seriously threatens any area of low, variable precipitation, where drought is frequent, and temperatures, evaporation, and windspeeds are high. It is the dominant problem on about 70 million acres of land in the United States—an area that includes 55 million acres of cropland, 9 million acres of rangeland, and 6 million acres of "other" land. Good farming practices, such as crop rotation and controlled grazing, adequately protect about 34 percent of this land, but specific wind-erosion control is needed on about 46 million acres. Each year about 4.8 million of these acres undergo moderate to severe damage. Wind erosion is most serious in the Great Plains, but it also occurs around the Great Lakes in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio, along the eastern seaboard, in the Southeastern Coastal Areas, and in the Northwest, especially in newly irrigated areas

Basement-hosted sand injectites: use of field examples to advance understanding of hydrocarbon reservoirs in fractured crystalline basement rocks

Sedimentary injectites hosted within basement rocks, where preserved on land, offer a means to investigate the geometry, extent, dimensions and spacing of fractures that form an interconnected network within faulted/fractured crystalline host rock. Hydrocarbon occurrences within fractured basement are of high interest following the success of basement-targeted exploration in the North Sea and UK continental shelf. In some cases, these settings lack direct access to the fractured basement that constitute the crystalline-rock reservoir, due to the presence of a thick sedimentary cover. For this reason, we investigated two regional-scale crystalline-rock-hosted systems of sedimentary injectites and sediment-filled fractures that occupy basement fracture arrays within granitoids. Localities are in the Serre massif of Calabria, Italy and the Front Range of Colorado (USA). The injected sediment within fractures acts as a natural ‘proppant’ that maintained open pathways for fluid migration or accumulation. Study of the arrays of sediment-filled fractures and faults advances our understanding of unconventional fluid migration pathways, controls upon the porosity and permeability, and the potential of crystalline basement rock to act as a hydrocarbon reservoi

ANTscape: Antarctic paleotopographic maps for the last 100 million years

ANTscape is a project of the Antarctic Climate Evolution (ACE) Research Program to develop a series of maps to show changes in Antarctic paleotopography over the last ~100 million years. The reconstructions will provide a base for summarising a range of paleoenvironmental data, and for use as inputs for the next generation of ice sheet-ice shelf models. The present-day bedrock topography from the SCAR BEDMAP project will be used as a starting point for reconstructing past paleotopography, moving to BEDMAP 2 when it becomes available. Six maps, one for each significant climatic regime or shift, are planned: 4, 14, 34, 50, 70 and 92 Ma. Work is well advanced on the map for 34 Ma (Wilson and Luyendyk, 2009, Geophysical Research Letters). This is a time that is far enough back for there to be a significantly different topography, but not so far back that reconstruction is seriously unconstrained. It is also of great interest to paleoclimatologists as the largely ice-free landscape on which the first continental ice-sheet formed. The maps prepared by ANTscape will depend not only on restoration of Antarctic continental geography by reversing tectonic movements and elevation changes, but also the restoration of sediment eroded from the continent and deposited around and beyond the Antarctic margin. This will require modeling changes to the Antarctic landscape from erosion (Jamieson et al., 2010, Earth & Planetary Science Letters) and estimates of sediment volumes through the Circum-Antarctic Stratigraphy and Paleobathymetry Project (CASP). For further information see www.ANTscape.a