Scientists find part of New Zealand's submerged "Pink Terraces"

From WHOI

They were called the Eighth Wonder of the World.

Until the late 19th century, New Zealand’s Pink and White Terraces along Lake Rotomahana on the North Island, attracted tourists from around the world, interested in seeing the beautiful natural formations created by a large geothermal system.
But the eruption of Mt. Tarawera on June 10, 1886, buried the terraces in sediment and caused the lake basin to enlarge, engulfing the land where the terraces stood.
For more than a century, people have speculated whether any part of the Pink and White Terraces survived the eruption.

Last week, scientists from New Zealand’s GNS Science, one of several government laboratories, in collaboration with engineers and scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and colleagues from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and NOAA-PMEL, located portions of the long-lost Pink Terraces.

The research team, using autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to map the bottom of Lake Rotomahana, are certain they have found the lower portions of the Pink Terraces on the lake floor.

Project leader Cornel de Ronde, of GNS Science, said the team was elated by the discovery.

“The first sidescan sonar image gave a hint of a terraced structure so we scanned the area twice more and we are now 95 percent certain we are seeing the bottom two tiers of the Pink Terraces,” de Ronde said.
Side-scan sonar and bathymetric data collected by two REMUS 100 AUVs clearly show crescent-shaped terraced structures in about 60 meters of water where the Pink Terraces were located prior to 1886.

They are covered by a brownish lake sediment. (video)

The free-swimming REMUS vehicles were developed by WHOI with funding from the US Navy and were operated by Amy Kukulya and Robin Littlefield of the WHOI Oceanographic Systems Laboratory (OSL) who travelled to New Zealand for the expedition.
Dan Fornari, a scientist with the WHOI Geology & Geophysics department, helped lead the expedition and, along with Marshall Swartz of the WHOI Physical Oceanography department, developed the underwater camera system used in the lake.

After detecting areas of interest with the AUV’s sonar systems, the team used the underwater camera system, developed with funds from the U.S. National Science Foundation, to capture images of the lake floor where they were able to photograph some of the stepped terrace edges.

Dr. de Ronde said the rest of the Pink Terraces were either destroyed during the eruption, or are still concealed under thick sediment not able to be penetrated by high-frequency AUV sonars.

The scientists found no sign of the larger White Terraces in the part of the lake that matched their location prior to 1886.
The two terraces, part of a very large on-land geothermal system, were separated by several hundred meters prior to the eruption.

Painting of the Pink Terraces prior to 1886.

(Painting courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library)

There are very few examples of large land-based geothermal systems that have been torn apart by an eruption and become inundated in this way.

Scientists hope the data collected during this expedition will help them better understand how geothermal systems respond to disruptions of this kind.

“It was very gratifying to take the tools and knowledge we’ve developed for ocean research and apply them to work in the lake, especially for a scientific project with so much Maori cultural significance.”

In 2009, WHOI signed a memorandum of understanding with GNS and New Zealand’s National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) to expand research and technology development collaborations across the scientific disciplines in the southwest Pacific and within New Zealand territorial waters.

In addition to the work in Lake Rotomahana, the organizations are also collaborating on deep ocean research on the Kermadec Seamounts north of New Zealand’s North Island using the Sentry AUV and TowCam deep-sea imaging system.

“We hope the success in Lake Rotomahana is the first of many scientific collaborations in this part of the world where there are many interesting research problems to investigate.”

The project was a collaboration involving GNS Science, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle, and the University of Waikato.

After this week’s discovery, de Ronde paid tribute to colleagues from WHOI, saying “This result would not have been possible without the team from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and their American colleagues. Their contribution has been huge.”

Links :

• YouTube : Cornel de Ronde explains Lake Rotomahana project

Rising seas will affect major U.S. coastal cities by 2100

This map shows where increases in sea level could affect the southern and Gulf coasts of the U.S.

The colors indicate areas along the coast that are elevations of 1 meter or less (russet) or 6 meters or less (yellow)

and have connectivity to the sea.
(Credit: Jeremy Weiss, University of Arizona)

From University of Arizona

The Gulf and southern Atlantic coasts will be particularly hard hit, research predicts.

Miami, New Orleans, Tampa, Fla., and Virginia Beach, Va. could lose more than 10 percent of their land area by 2100.

Rising sea levels could threaten an average of 9 percent of the land within 180 U.S. coastal cities by 2100, according to new research led by University of Arizona scientists.

The Gulf and southern Atlantic coasts could be particularly hard hit. Miami, New Orleans, Tampa, Fla., and Virginia Beach, Va. could lose more than 10 percent of their land area by 2100.

The research is the first analysis of vulnerability to sea-level rise that includes every U.S. coastal city in the lower 48 with a population of 50,000 or more.

The latest scientific projections indicate that by 2100, the sea level will rise about 1 meter – or even more. One meter is about 3 feet.

At the current rate of global warming, sea level is projected to continue rising after 2100 by as much as 1 meter per century.

"According to the most recent sea-level-rise science, that's where we're heading," said lead researcher Jeremy L. Weiss, a senior research specialist in the UA's department of geosciences.

"Impacts from sea-level rise could be erosion, temporary flooding and permanent inundation."

The coastal municipalities the team identified had 40.5 million people living in them, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. Twenty of those cities have more than 300,000 inhabitants.

This map shows where increases in sea level could affect New Orleans, Virginia Beach, Va., Miami, Tampa, Fla., New York and Washington, D.C.

Weiss and his colleagues examined how much land area from the 180 municipalities could be affected by 1 to 6 meters of sea-level rise.

"With the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions, the projections are that the global average temperature will be 8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than present by 2100," said Weiss, who is also a UA doctoral candidate in geosciences.

"That amount of warming will likely lock us into at least 4 to 6 meters of sea-level rise in subsequent centuries, because parts of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will slowly melt away like a block of ice on the sidewalk in the summertime."

At 3 meters (almost 10 feet), on average more than 20 percent of land in those cities could be affected.
Nine large cities, including Boston and New York, would have more than 10 percent of their current land area threatened. By 6 meters (about 20 feet), about one-third of the land area in U.S. coastal cities could be affected.

"Our work should help people plan with more certainty and to make decisions about what level of sea-level rise, and by implication, what level of global warming, is acceptable to their communities and neighbors," said co-author Jonathan T. Overpeck, a UA professor of geosciences and of atmospheric sciences and co-director of UA's Institute of the Environment.

Weiss, Overpeck and Ben Strauss of Climate Central in Princeton, N.J., will publish their paper, "Implications of Recent Sea Level Rise Science for Low-Elevation Areas in Coastal Cities of the Conterminous U.S.A.," in Climatic Change Letters.

Weiss and Overpeck had previously developed maps of how increases in sea level could affect the U.S. coastline.
Strauss suggested adding the boundaries of municipalities to focus on how rising seas would affect coastal towns and cities.

For the detailed maps needed for the new project, the researchers turned to the National Elevation Dataset produced by the U.S. Geological Survey.
The NED provides a high-resolution digital database of elevations for the entire U.S.

The high resolution let Weiss and his colleagues identify the elevation of a piece of land as small as 30 meters (about 100 feet) on a side – about the size of an average house lot.

The researchers used the USGS database to create detailed digital maps of the U.S. coast that delineate what areas could be affected by 1 meter to 6 meters of sea-level rise.
The researchers also added the boundaries for all municipalities with more than 50,000 people according to the 2000 U.S. Census.

To increase the accuracy of their maps, the team included all pieces of land that had a connection to the sea and excluded low-elevation areas that had no such connection.
Rising seas do not just affect oceanfront property – water moves inland along channels, creeks, inlets and adjacent low-lying areas.

"Ours is the first national-scale data set that delineates these low-lying coastal areas for the entire lower 48 at this degree of spatial resolution," Weiss said.

The NED data set has some uncertainty, particularly for estimating elevation changes of 1 meter or less.
That means the researchers' ability to identify the threat to any particular small piece of land is better for larger amounts of sea-level rise than for smaller amounts of sea-level rise, Weiss said.

"As better digital elevation models become available, we'll be using those," Weiss said.
"The USGS is always improving the digital elevation models for the U.S."

Overpeck said, "The main point of our work is to give people in our coastal towns and cities more information to work with as they decide how to deal with the growing problem of sea-level rise."

Links :

• Marine GeoGarage blog : Climate change: Met Office halves 'worst case' sea level prediction
• ESRI : your future coastline ?
  

Google searching box in Marine GeoGarage using Lat/Lon

Some Marine GeoGarage users ask us about the way to find a place using latitude and longitude coordinates using the Google search box.
If you know the coordinates of a location, you can simply enter the coordinates into the search box to locate it on the Marine GeoGarage.

IMPORTANT : the place you want to find must necessary be located on land
If your type some coordinates at sea, the search bow will not provide you any answer.


The behaviour of this general Google search box is different from the behaviour of the Search Maps box in Google Maps
Example : www.maps.google.com
If the geographical position is located at sea, you get a red balloon showing the exact position.
If the geographical position is located on land, you get a red balloon showing the closest known address on the map and a green arrow showing the exact position (with translation in decimal degrees)
With the Google Maps search box, prefixing the coordinates with 'loc:' give you the exact position for the red balloon.

This Google Maps search box is not available for the Google Maps API used for Marine GeoGarage.

In the Marine GeoGarage, how to find a location on land using latitude and longitude ?

In order to do this, the latitude and longitude can be in either Degrees, Minutes, seconds, or in decimal form.
So by way of example, here is how to enter Latitude and longitude into the Marine GeoGarage Google search box, using the following GPS coordinates.
For example : Latitude: 40 Deg. 46 min. 41.53 sec. / Longitude: -73 Deg. 58 Min. 3.05 Sec.

All you do is enter the following into Google search field:

Co-ordinates – specify the latitude and longitude as in +40 46 41.53 -73 58 3.05 (note that it is not necessary to put the degree and minute signs and that a full stop between the longitude and latitude can be put in or left out), Google Search interprets this format as co-ordinates and either expands the co-ordinates and / or supplies a map with the co-ordinate location in the center.

• DD°MM.MMMMM' : 40°46.69217' -73°58.05083' or 40 46.69217' -73 58.05083' or N 40° 46.69217 W 73° 58.05083 and this GPS coordinate will show up in Marine GeoGarage
  
• DD°MM'SS" : 40°46' 41.53" -73°58' 3.05" or 40 46' 41.53" -73 46' 3.05"
• DD.DDDDD : Additionally, if your latitude and longitude numbers are in decimal format, like say, 40.7782028 -73.9675139 there is no need to convert over to the degree minutes, seconds, notation.

The other solution is to use the Marine GeoGarage URL generator which generates some GeoGarage URL with some WGS84 Lat/Lon in decimal (see blog)

Healthy oceans

Oceans are changing rapidly and radically, with profound consequences for humanity

From Voice of America News

"Oceans are changing," said Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Administrator of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration or NOAA.
"They are changing rapidly and radically, with profound consequences for humanity."

In her keynote address, January 20th, to National Council for Science and the Environment's National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment – 2011 Our Changing Oceans – Dr. Lubchenco noted that a little over a decade ago, the Pew Oceans Commission - an independent non-governmental organization - and the U.S. Commission for Ocean Policy began assessing the state of the world's oceans.

"Both Commissions concluded that a hidden crisis was well underway," said Dr. Lubchenco, "and both concluded that despite many good efforts, the global picture is one of depletion, degradation and loss of resilience."
The root causes identified included a failure of understanding and a failure to properly manage human activities affecting marine ecosystems.

While scientists studied declining ocean ecosystems, much of the knowledge they accumulated was not understood by non-scientists.
"Most citizens, policy-makers, and businesses were not much aware of the knowledge that was relevant to their decisions," said Dr. Lubchenco.
"The breadth of scientific knowledge was not being incorporated into policy and management decisions," she said.

To help address this gap, Dr. Lubchenco said it is necessary to "encourage scientists to share their knowledge broadly," not just with scientists, but with society at large.

To strengthen and update our approach to oceans governance, the U.S. Congress took action in reauthorizing the Magnuson-Stevens Act (see NOAA).
The new act emphasizes ecosystem management and ending overfishing in U.S. waters.
A number of U.S. states began to improve marine ecosystem-based management and neighboring coastal nations formed regional alliances to collaborate on ocean efforts.

"Progress on multiple fronts provided impetus to create a more systemic and comprehensive framework for effective and integrated action," said Dr. Lubchenco.

"In June 2009, President Obama established his Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force and charged it with making recommendations to 'enhance national stewardship of the ocean, coasts and Great Lakes and promote the long term conservation and use of these resources'."

And on July 19, 2010, President Obama signed an Executive Order establishing the United States' first ever National Ocean Policy – a policy based on good governance informed by sound science.

New initiatives are being taken, said Dr. Lubchenco, but we need to commit to "a quantum leap in our collective efforts – in our roles as scientists, teachers, public servants, citizens, activists, consumers, and environmental stewards."

Links :

• NOAAnews : From hope to action, making healthy oceans everyone’s business
• JointOceanCommissionInitiative (Meridian Institute)
  
• OceanConservacy : Proposed funding cuts to NOAA endanger lives and livelihoods

China plans Colombian rail link to challenge Panama canal

Chinese plans for a rail link in Colombia could compete with the Panama canal
which transformed global trade when it was opened in 1914

From TheGuardian

It is a dream that bewitched Spain, ruined Scotland, stumped France and empowered the US: a path from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.

The ambition unleashed ruinous follies in Panama's jungles until the US finally finished a canal in 1914, an engineering feat that transformed global trade.

Now, almost a century later, China is envisaging a new link between the seas: a rail link through Colombia – a potential rival to the canal that would crown China's economic push into Latin America.

Beijing on Monday confirmed an announcement by the Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, that both governments are considering a rail connection from Cartagena, in the Caribbean, to the country's Pacific coast 280 miles (450km) away.

The president's office refused to say which Pacific site was being considered.

The railway would facilitate the export of raw materials such as coal, as well as opening the way for Chinese imports.

"It's a real proposal ... and it is quite advanced," Santos told the Financial Times.

"The studies [the Chinese] have made on the costs of transporting per tonne, the cost of investment, they all work out."

map (1927)

Few doubt China can carve a path through the northern tip of south America.
It has, after all, carved a 550km railway to Tibet, rebuilt Angola's railways and is busy erecting a giant industrial port in Brazil.
The question is whether the railway would be cheaper or faster than the Panama canal, which is only a third as long and undergoing a $5.25bn (£3.3bn) expansion to double its capacity.

Panama also has an 80km railway connecting both sides of the isthmus, but until now the canal's main competition has been the rail link from California to the US eastern seaboard, which is faster but more expensive.

Could Colombia's railway compete?
President Santos seemed to have little doubt, stressing the "incredible" number of Chinese delegations pitching proposals.
The railway would require a production and assembly hub in a new city south of Cartagena, he said.

"I don't want to create exaggerated expectations, but it makes a lot of sense. Asia is the new motor of the world economy."

With Chinese financing, the project would be a viable and attractive way for Bogota to ease transport bottlenecks in its mining industry, said Heather Berkman, a Eurasia Group analyst. "Colombia is no position to refuse offers of investment in its infrastructure. They need financing from outside sources and this makes sense for them."

Bogota also hopes the plan will focus Washington's mind on ratifying a stalled free trade accord.

"The Colombians have made it clear if there's no movement on the FTA this year they will court other parties. So there is pressure on the US."

The railway would hardly have the same impact of the canal a century ago but would be a symbol of China's economic incursions into what the US once considered its backyard.
Latin American exports to China leapt to $41.3bn between 2000 and 2009. China is Colombia's second largest trade partner after the US, with bilateral trade rising from $10m in 1980 to more than $5bn in 2010.

However, the railway project could yet join a list of venerable pipedreams.
In 1534 King Charles V of Spain ordered a survey for a route through Panama, hoping for a strategic edge over the Portuguese.

In 1698 a Scottish flotilla landed in Darien, a remote wedge of rainforest straddling what is now Panama and Colombia, hoping to found a colony and a gateway to the new world.
The venture collapsed and bankrupted Scotland, hastening its loss of independence to England.
"If the Scots had been successful the canal might have been constructed in Darien, by Panamanians speaking English in a lowland Scots dialect!" rued Jim Malcolm, a Scot and former British ambassador to Panama, in a 2005 booklet.

A French effort in the 1880s under Ferdinand de Lesseps, who built the Suez canal, foundered because of poor planning and disease which killed about 22,000 workers.

1939 "Historical Map of the Canal Zone and Vicinity showing various routes, settlements between 1502 and 1855

The US revived the canal project in 1903 after encouraging Panama, then part of Colombia, to secede and hand control of the waterway to Washington.

In 2006 Nicaragua revived its own long-held dream of a rival canal but the idea quickly faded.
It did not have Chinese backing.Links :

• BBCNews : China and Colombia announce 'alternative Panama Canal'
• TheGuardian : China goes on the rails to rival Panama canal
• FT : 'Dry canal' latest twist in tangled tale of isthmus
• FTblog : Colombia’s smart canal
• YouTube : A time-lapse journey through the Panama Canal from the Atlantic to Pacific Ocean onboard a cruise ship / History Panama canal construction 1934 / History of the Panama canal I & II