Dirty snow causes early runoff in Cascades, Rockies

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RICHLAND, Wash. -- Soot from pollution causes winter snowpacks to warm, shrink and warm some more. This continuous cycle sends snowmelt streaming down mountains as much as a month early, a new study finds. How pollution affects a mountain range's natural water reservoirs is important for water resource managers in the western United States and Canada who plan for hydroelectricity generation, fisheries and farming.

Chasing thundersnow could lead to more accurate forecasts

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COLUMBIA, Mo. – The job of one University of Missouri researcher could chill to the bone, but his research could make weather predicting more accurate. Patrick Market, associate professor of atmospheric science in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, is chasing storms in the dead of winter in order to release weather balloons that will produce data about the little-known phenomenon of thundersnow.

"One of the things we don't understand is how the cloud becomes electrified," Market said. "We hope to determine how the atmosphere is becoming unstable."

Great Lakes water level sensitive to climate change

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NARRAGANSETT, R.I. – January 13, 2009 – The water level in the Great Lakes has varied by only about two meters during the last century, helping them to play a vital role in the region's shipping, fishing, recreation and power generation industries.

But new evidence by scientists from the University of Rhode Island and colleagues in the U.S. and Canada, published last month in the journal Eos, indicates that the water level in the lake system is highly sensitive to climate changes.

Scientist names top 5 invasive plants threatening Southern forests in 2009

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Auburn, AL – U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS) Ecologist Jim Miller, Ph.D., one of the foremost authorities on nonnative plants in the South, today identified the invasive plant species he believes pose the biggest threats to southern forest ecosystems in 2009.

New technology needed to monitor rain forest 'tsunami'

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January-February GSA Bulletin media highlights

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Boulder, CO, USA - BULLETIN papers examine carbon-14 dating of marine mud fossils in Ireland that suggests high ice-sheet sensitivity to small climate changes; formation of Valles Marineris, Mars; a buried fossil forest in the Gold Hill Loess, Alaska; a 20-meter-high salt pillar near the Dead Sea; how shrimp affect groundwater flow in the Biscayne aquifer; a possible emerging natural gas play in the Appalachian Basin; and banded iron formations exposed by the Agouron South African Drilling Project.

Organic soils continue to acidify despite reduction in acidic deposition

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Preventing soil erosion in continuous corn

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MADISON, WI, JANUARY 12, 2009 - With recent increase in the cost of energy and subsequent explorations into alternative energy sources, the increased harvest of corn residue for cellulosic ethanol production is likely in the future. This may be especially true in fields where corn is grown continuously, in part because perennially high residue amounts favor annual harvests, and also because corn residue left on the soil surface is a source of inoculum for corn diseases.

Soil maps generate reliable Quaternary geologic map

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New training method helps surgeons evaluate their own minimally invasive surgery skills

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