Just after 3.20 am on Friday 12 August the Japanese prefecture of Fukushima was shaken by a large earthquake. At its epicenter (the point on the ground directly above the quake) this measured 5- on the Japan Meteorological Agency's Seismic Intensity Scale, which measures the effects of an earthquake rather than the amount of energy released. A 5- indicates people running out of buildings in panic, things falling from shelves, damage to non-earthquake resistant buildings and automatic gas cutoff devices present in Japanese buildings activating.
The location of the 12 August earthquake, and where it was felt.
There are differences of opinion about how deep the quake was, and how large it was on the Richter Scale (which does register energy released). The Japan Meteorological Agency (which also monitors earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis etc.) registered this quake as a magnitude 6 quake at a depth of 50 km, whereas the United States Geological Survey recorded this as a magnitude 5.2 quake at a depth of 9.9 km. Since the Richter scale is logarithmic (a magnitude 6 quake is 10 times as powerful as a magnitude 5 quake) and rock absorbs a lot of energy, either of these proposed quakes could have produced the observed effects.
This month a team lead by Darren Naish of the School of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Portsmouth publish a paper in the journal Biology Letters in which they announce the discovery of a new giant bird from the Cretaceous of Kazakhstan. The bird has been identified from a from a fragmented lower jaw from the Late Cretaceous Bostobynskaya Formation, northeast of the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan. It was named Samrukia nessovi in honor of the Samruk, a mythical, phoenix-like Kazakh bird and Lev Nessov, a Russian vertebrate palaeontologist who did much work in Central Asia.
The lower jawbone of Samrukia nessovi.
These fragments were initially reconstructed as the jaw of an oviraptosaur-like dinosaur and found there way to the Institut royal des Sciences naturelles de Belgique in Brussels, where they were discovered in 2010 by palaeontologist Pascal Godefroit. Godefroit recognized that there was a problem with the way the jaw was reconstructed, and contacted dinosaur expert Darren Naish and Gareth Dyke, an expert on fossil birds from University College Dublin. Together they were able to determine that the oviraptosaur reconstruction was wrong; the only parts of the specimen that were diagnostic of an oviraptosaur type dinosaur were plaster additions, which did not match well with the actual fossil, once these were removed a proper analysis of the fossil could be made, confirming Godefroit's suspicion that this was in fact the jaw of a large bird.
The oviraptosaur reconstruction of the jawbone.
Birdsare reasonably well known from the Cretaceous, but most specimens are small, chicken sized or less, whereas this was a much larger creature, with a lower jaw at least 30 cm in length. It is not possible to reconstruct a whole bird from a lower jawbone, but comparison with modern birds suggests a man-sized flightless bird or a flying bird with a wing-span of at least 4 m.
Two possible reconstructions of Samrukia, with a human and a more typical Cretaceous bird for comparison. By dinosaur artist John Conway.
These birds add to a more diverse picture of Cretaceous megafauna (big animals). Traditionally the Cretaceous, with the Jurassic and the Triassic has been referred to as the 'Age of Dinosaurs' or the 'Age of Reptiles', and the most familiar large fossils from the period have been the dinosaurs, along with the flying pterosaurs and several groups of extinct marine reptiles. In addition we have long been aware of large crocodiles and turtles from the Cretaceous. More recently palaeontologists have uncovered giant Cretaceous snakes, and Repenomamus a dog sized mammal from China, which has been found with dinosaur remains in its stomach.
Axial Seamount is a submarine volcano located on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, 480 km west of the Oregon Coast. It has been the subject of extensive study as it is extremely active and is of complex origins: it is on the intersection of the Cobb Hotspot Seamount Chain, and the Juan de Fuca extensional ridge; it is also close to the Blanco Fracture Zone. The seamount rises 700 m above the rest of the Juan de Fuca Ridge and about 1100 m above the surrounding sea floor; it is 1400 m bellow the sea surface. It is a biodiversity hotspot, hosting several 'black-smokers' - underwater hot springs producing super-heated mineral rich water, which support unique ecosystems.
The location of the Axial Seamount.
The Juan de Fuca Ridge, including Axial Seamount, was discovered by the SEASAT satellite using satellite alimentary, a technique which bounces radio-waves of the sea-floor to build up a three dimensional picture. SEASAT was a satellite launched by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1978. It carried a range of instruments intended to study and monitor the world's oceans. Its mission was short-lived, being cut off by a massive short-circuit 105 days after its launch.
In 1981 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Survey Ship Surveyor carried out a bathymetric study of the area using ship mounted sonar and thermal mapping equipment. This identified a number of thermal hotspots.
In 1983 the ridge was explored by the NOAAs submersible Pisces IV and 1984 by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's DSV Alvin, between them discovering a number of black smokers. The Axial Seamount was named for its position on the intersection (Axis) between the Juan de Fuca Ridge and the Cobb Seamount Chain.
The DSV Alvin.
The seamount was further investigated by the NOASS Discoverer in 1991 and the German research ship RV Sonne in 1996. Later in 1996 the NOAA founded the New Millennium Observatory at Mount Axial, the first ever permanent monitoring station at a submarine volcano.
In January 1998 this reported a marine eruption on the site; when the site was visited in February it was found that there had indeed been an eruption, burying some of the station's equipment but confirming that the station was indeed able to detect eruptions.
In April this year (2011) monitors on the seamount once again detected signs of an eruption, and in late July a visit by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institutions ship RV Atlantis revealed that there had indeed been an eruption, with extensive lava flows, already showing signs of new colonization by benthic animals.
The Juan de Fuca ridge marks the extensional margin between the Juan de Fuca Plate and the Pacific Plate. The Juan de Fuca Plate is thought to be a remnant of an ancient plate known as the Farallon Plate, a once vast plate now largely subducted beneath the North American Plate. There are three remnants of this plate remaining off the west coast of the US; the Juan de Fuca Plate, the Gorda Plate to the south and the Explorer Plate to the north. The Juan de Fuca Ridge was once part of the longer Farallon Ridge, which ran along the eastern margin of the Farallon Ridge before it was fractured into three parts.
The former parts of the Farallon Plate.
TheCobb Seamount Chain runs from the Aleutian Trench off the south coast of Alaska south to Axial Seamount. It is gets its name from the Cobb Seamount, which is 500 km west of the Washington coast, and was named after the research vessel MV John M Cobb; this can cause some confusion as other objects on the seafloor of the NE Pacific are also named after this vessel (Cobb) and are not necessarily related to the seamount chain.
At 2.45 pm local time on Tuesday 9 August 2011 the city of Pierre, state capital of South Dakota, was shaken by a small earthquake. Residents reported feeling shaking and hearing several loud booms. According to the United States Geological Survey the quake took place roughly 1 km west of the city, at a depth of about 15.6 km. It measured 3.4 on the Richter Scale. The U.S. Army's Corps of Engineers is conducting a check on the Oahe Dam, 8 km upstream from the city on the Missouri River.
Pierre, South Dakota.
South Dakota is located in the central part of the North American continent, far from any plate margin. It does have some faulting, associated with the uplift of the Rocky Mountains far to the west, which cause the occasional minor earthquake. Earthquakes were recorded in South Dakota in 1872, 1877, 1879, 1895, 1911, 1915, 1928, 1938, 1946, 1961, 1964, 1967, 1975, 1978, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1986, 1987, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2010. No major damage or serious injuries have ever been recorded.
Mount Karangetang (sometimes known as Api Siau) is a stratovolcano (a cone shaped volcano formed from successive layers of ash and lava) located on Siau Island, roughly 130 km to the north of Sulawesi, or a third of the way to the Philippine Island of Mindanao. It is one of the most active volcanoes in Indonesia and frequently erupts several times a year.
The location of Mount Karangetang.
The volcano started to spit gas and lava 600 m into the air towards the end of last week, then this morning (8 August 2011) a large explosion was followed by an ashfall on the volcano's slopes causing people to flee in panic. Early reports suggested that one person had been injured by the ashfall, and several more were missing, although local search and rescue authorities have now found the missing people and confirm the injured man only fell while fleeing, receiving cuts and bruises.
Local people were right to be concerned about the eruption, Mount Karangetang has a vicious reputation, having killed three people as recently as June 1997, when a pyroclastic flow entered a village. Another pyroclastic flow killed six people in May 1992. Siau Island is only 10 km × 5 km at its widest and is dominated by the Mount Karangetang, yet it is home to 22 000 people, 600 of whom live on the upper slopes of the volcano.
Mount Karangetang.
Siau Island is part of the Sangihe Islands, a group of volcanic islands running north from the northernmost point on Sulawesi to the southernmost point on Mindanao. Conventional geology places this in the eastern Sunda Plate, but geologist Colin Macpherson of the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Durham, has developed a new model of geology in the region. Under Macpherson's model the Sanghi Islands lie on the western margin of a northward extension of the Molucca Plate, which is being subducted beneath the Sangihe microplate to the west. To the east of this the Molucca Plate extension is being subducted beneath the Halmahera Plate. This is not yet universally accepted.
Intensity map for the Gulf of Corinth quake. The purple star marks the site of the quake, the circles places where people reported feeling the quake. Larger circles indicate more people felt the quake, and the colour represents the intensity felt by the reporter.
Southern Greece and Turkey lie on the boundary between the Eurasian and African Plates on two smaller plates, the Aegean Sea Plate (underlying the Peloponnese, Attica, The Cyclades Islands, Crete, the Dodecanese Islands and Turkey to the southeast of the Taurus Mountains) and the Anatolian Plate (underlying most of the rest of Turkey). Northern Greece and the north coast of Turkey lie on the Eurasian Plate. Both countries are highly prone to earthquakes because of this.
The Aegean Sea and Anatolian Plates.
The Aegean Sea Plate is moving southwest with regard to the Eurasian and Anatolian Plates, and being subducted beneath the African Plate to the south. Its margin with the Eurasian Plate is a divergent and a transform margin at different points. Beneath the Gulf of Corinth it is a transform margin, where the plates are moving apart. In theory such a margin has the potential to become a new ocean, such as the Atlantic, with two continental plates moving apart and a rift zone creating new oceanic crust in between. However this is unlikely to be the fate of the Gulf of Corinth, as the Eurasian Plate is moving south over it (albeit at a slower rate than the Aegean Sea Plate is drawing away), the African Plate is advancing on it from the south, with the Aegean Sea Plate being subducted and destroyed beneath it, and the Anatolian Plate is moving in from the East.
Greece has a long history of Earthquakes. The most recent earthquake related fatality in Greece was in July 2008, when a woman was killed in an earthquake in Rhodes. In June the same year an earthquake on the Gulf of Corinth killed two people and made 2000 more homeless. In the past earthquakes in Greece have tens of thousands of people, caused tsunamis which have devastated the Egyptian and Levantine coasts and destroyed the Colossus of Rhodes. An earthquake which destroyed much of Sparta was one of the events leading up to the Peloponnesian War.
On the 4th of August 2011 the United Nations Environment Program published its report into oil pollution in the Ogoniland area of the Niger Delta in Nigeria. The report paid particular attention to the oil giant Shell, who have been a dominant player in the area for many years, and who have been widely condemned for their poor environmental record.
Ogoniland is located in the southeast of Cross River State, Nigeria.
It lacks official status and has no precisely defined borders.
The Niger River has been flowing into the Bight of Benin since at least the Cretaceous. During this time it has meandered back and forth across what is now southern Nigeria, as well as moving back and forth with the rise and fall of the sea level. The river caries a great deal of sediment with it, which is dumped when it reaches the sea forming the delta. Over time the organic material within the sediment forms pockets, which are then heated and crushed by the overlying sediment (increasing pressure also increases temperature, and vice versa, which is why aerosol sprays, undergoing rapid decompression, are cold), forcing water out of more complex organic compounds (dehydration) and forming pockets of gas and oil.
The formation of sediments in a generalized delta basin.
The petroleum industry has been exploiting these reserves since the late 1950s, when Nigeria was still a British colony. The first commercially exploitable oil reserves were discovered by Shell in 1956, but by 1960 when Nigeria gained independence, other companies, such as Mobile, Gulf Oil and Texaco, had also begun extracting oil in the Delta region, though to do this they needed to gain licenses through Shell, who had been granted a monopoly in 1938. The British granted monopolies to companies like Shell as they did not have the man-power to run a licensing system themselves. Britain had a large empire and a limited supply of colonial officials. As long as companies granted monopolies would still license other companies rights to exploit natural resources, then revenues were guaranteed and the colonial administration was satisfied. However this system often meant that local enterprise was locked out of bidding for contracts, or greatly disadvantaged compared to European and American companies, since licenses would be granted from the monopoly holder's headquarters, usually in London, rather than by a local colonial administration.
After independence Nigeria became a federal republic, divided into three states (Eastern, Western and Northern Nigeria), but was plagued by inter-ethnic tensions, a legacy of the British colonial policy of divide and rule. In 1966 the civilian government was overthrown in a bloody coup by a group of mainly Igbo military officers (from Eastern Nigeria), who were in turn overthrown in a counter-coup by a group of northern military officers. This lead to widespread anti-Igbo (and anti-eastoner-in-general) rioting in Northern Nigeria, followed by a mass exodus of Eastern Nigerians living in the North, and the emergence of a successionist movement in Eastern Nigeria.
A conference hosted by Ghana in January 1967 failed to reach a satisfactory solution, and on 30 May 1967 Eastern Nigeria, including the oil-rich Niger Delta, proclaimed independence, as the new state of Biafra, under the leadership of Colonel Odemegwu Ojukwu, the former governor of Eastern Nigeria. On the 6th of July Nigeria invaded Biafra (this was described as a 'police action'; there was never actually a declaration of war). The Biafrans were hopelessly outgunned by the much better equipped Nigerian Army, but were determined not to surrender, at least in part because they expected a repeat of the massacres in Northern Nigeria, which the northern dominated government had refused to prevent. Biafra received a great deal of sympathy from outside the country, but little actual support. The result was that the Nigerian Army became bogged down in Biafra, with heavy casualties on both sides, and no solution in sight.
In 1969 the British government (which had refused to even meet a delegation from the Biafran Government, despite widespread public support in the UK) began to greatly step up shipments of arms to Nigeria. This enabled the Nigerian Army to mount an assault in December 1969 that finally toppled the Biafran Government in January 1970. The British Government claimed that it was necessary to oppose Biafran independence as it to do otherwise would have encouraged tribal succession across Africa.
After the war Eastern Nigeria was reintegrated into Nigeria, but faced severe penalties. All Eastern Nigerian government and military personnel who had become Biafrans were assumed to have resigned their jobs. Any homes left by East Nigerians either fleeing from other parts of the country, or more directly fleeing the conflict in East Nigerian cities were deemed to have been abandoned, confiscated by the Nigerian Government and re-allocated to government supporters. A new Nigerian currency had been introduced in 1968, and all money held in bank accounts by East Nigerians now had to be converted into this currency, but the amount that they could redeem was set at twenty Nigerian pounds, all other savings being lost.
The oil industry also suffered, with production dropping steadily throughout the conflict. Shell, the largest company in the Delta, remained officially silent during this time, relying on British support for the Nigerian Government to resolve the crisis in its favor, but Elf Aquitaine (now part of Total) petitioned the French Government to intervene on behalf of the Biafrans.
Up until this point the post-colonial Nigerian Government had chosen to follow the same policy towards the oil industry as the British Colonial regime; namely collecting taxes and revenue from licenses, but not getting directly involved. This was now to change.
In 1969 the Government of General Yakuba Gowon introduced new regulations on the division of oil revenues. Up until this point oil revenue had been divided equally between the state in which it was extracted and the federal government. Now the federal government was to receive 100% of the revenue, and it would decide what (if anything) the individual states would receive.
In 1971 the Nigerian government nationalized the oil industry, forming the Nigerian National Oil Corporation to run the industry. The 1970s were boom time for oil producers, and the combination of a military government with strong ethic bias, complete control of the oil industry by that government, and the marginalization of the population in the oil producing areas, proved to be a toxic mix, fueling the birth of a wealthy national elite, a political economy based on patronage and corruption and deepening ethnic and religious tensions. During this period oil began to dominate the Nigerian economy, so that while revenue from oil rose, other areas of the economy, such as agriculture, were ignored and allowed to stagnate. This trend continued under successive military and civilian governments in the 1980s & 90s, with Nigeria slowly becoming more indebted and more dependent on oil.
Although the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (the successor to the Nigerian National Oil Corporation) in theory runs and owns the Nigerian oil industry, in practice it is run by subsidies of multinational corporations. These are 55-60% owned by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and have to have 'Nigeria' in their name, but otherwise operate as arms of their parent companies, with successive Nigerian Governments having been content to receive the income from oil without feeling the need to become involved.
The Niger Delta is (or was) a biodiversity hotspot on great importance. It hosts a combination of lowland rain forests, freshwater swamps and water-ways, mangroves and offshore islands. This area provides a home to about 20 million people, belonging to 40 ethnic groups.
An aerial view of the Niger Delta.
As early as the 1980s people were starting to raise concerns about the environment in the Niger Delta. In 1983 a report by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation warned that pollution from the oil industry was slowly poisoning the Delta environment. Because oil in the Niger Delta is located in many small pockets the country is criss-crossed by an extensive network of oil pipelines. A combination of poor maintenance and acts of sabotage (both politically motivated and by people stealing oil) has lead to millions of barrels of oil being spilled from these pipelines. This has happened over a long period of time, with many small leaks, rather than one spectacular leak or spill, but amounts to between 9 and 13 million barrels of oil (2-3 times as much as was spilt in the Gulf Oil Spill of 2010) all of which lingers on in the environment.
Oil pipes in the Niger Delta.
At the same time the Delta has seen a deepening humanitarian crisis. The government has maintained a monopoly over property rights in the Delta, enabling it to confiscate any land needed for use by the oil companies. Since the government has a major financial interest in the oil companies and does not see itself as representing the people of the Delta, this has been pursued ruthlessly. In this respect the government can be seen as a private company, owned by the wealthiest 1% of the Nigerian population, and viewing the Delta as a colony to be exploited.
This has lead to an ongoing confrontation between the people's of the Delta on the one side and the oil companies and Nigerian Military on the other. In 1990 a Nigerian TV Produced called Ken Saro-Wiwa founded the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), a protest group outspoken about pollution and corruption in the Niger Delta in general and Ogoniland in particular. A talented writer and broadcaster, Saro-Wiwa was able to raise the profile of the Ogoni people on the international stage, but this served to antagonize the military government. In 1994 a raid by the Nigerian Military into Ogoni territory killed an estimated 2000 people and raised 30 villages to the ground. In 1995 Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni leaders were arrested and held for 17 months before being subjected to a show-trial and executed.
Video from the MOSOP, briefly explaining their grievances.
The scientists from the United Nations Environment Program spent 14 months in Ogoniland compiling their report. They examined over 200 locations, 5000 sets of medical records, dug 142 monitoring wells and 780 boreholes and talked to over 23 000 people.
Members of the UN team at a field site in Ogoniland.
The UN team found water contaminated by oil and benzine (a highly carcinogenic hydrocarbon compound) in wells, with in one area 8 cm of oil sitting on top of the water. Many areas of mangrove were dead, with roots covered in a bitumen-like substance. These mangroves are an important breeding ground for many fish, which use the exposed root systems as nurseries for their young. Oil spills often caught fire, creating a crust of ash and tar over the land, through which nothing could grow. Tidal creeks throughout the region had a surface layer of oil on the water more-or-less permanently, with only the thickness varying. The widespread pollution was causing a huge reduction in the number of fish (a staple of the local diet) available, although contrary to local suspicions the fish were not hazardous to eat, as they will avoid the oil at all costs. The pervasive nature of the pollution is likely to be adversely affecting the health of around a million people.
Oil burning after a spill from a Shell pipeline in Goi-Bodo in 2004.
Shell attributed this to sabotage.
The report also found that artisanal refining, a process by which local people 'steal' oil and attempt to refine it themselves, presented a serious threat to lives and was responsible for isolated pollution events. Shell have long claimed that this artisanal refining is responsible for all pollution in the Delta. The UN report strongly denied this, and noted that Shell consistently failed to follow its own guidelines on environmental protection.
The UN report suggests that some areas of contaminated land could be cleaned within five years, but that heavily impacted areas of mangrove and freshwater swamp will take at least thirty years to clean up. It also notes that this process cannot begin till after all ongoing pollution has ceased. The report also puts a cost of US$1 billion on the first five years of the cleanup, which is likely to prove hard to obtain.
