Earth & Planetary Sciences
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Tracey Weiss, Our Ocean Backyard | NEXTies: Earth & Sea celebrates Santa Cruz changemakers
Professor Andrew Fisher won the “Brainwave Award” for his groundbreaking hydrological research on urban flooding, saltwater intrusion and freshwater supply in the Pajaro River Valley. Darryl Wong and Gage Dayton of the Center for Agroecology won the “Big Idea Award” for their work on UC Santa Cruz’s recent land acquisition that strengthens conservation, sustainable agriculture…
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Lasers, fiber optics and tiny vibrations tease a way to warn about earthquakes
Emily Brodsky, a professor of earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the research, said “earthquake early warning could be dramatically improved tomorrow” if scientists are able to broker widespread access to existing telecommunication networks. Additional coverage in SFGate.
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San Jose: $197 million project completed to improve flood protection along south San Francisco Bay shoreline
“We’ve built megacities of the world on coasts,” said Gary Griggs, a distinguished professor of earth sciences at UC Santa Cruz, in 2022 when the Alviso project broke ground. “We didn’t think of sea level rise 100 years ago, and now we are having to pay the price.”
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Earthquakes Release Energy Mostly Through Heat, Not Ground Shaking
A new laboratory study in AGU Advances finds that shaking accounts for only 1 to 8 percent of the energy released in an earthquake, while up to a whopping 98 percent of that energy dissipates as heat. One advantage of the work is that it used a new technique measures the alignment of magnetic minerals…
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Caltrans to reopen Highway 1 at Regent’s Slide in Monterey County in March 2026
Professor Gary Griggs estimates that large slides on Highway 1 in Big Sur each cost some $50 million to fix, and proposes a toll for motorists to travel the stretch of highway. Caltrans estimates the total cost of repairing Regent’s Slide at $82 million.
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A Surprising Twist Puts Desalination Plants at the Bottom of the Ocean. Here’s Why
Although proponents of subsea desalination technology say it would have little effect on undersea life, others urge further research to gauge its impact on marine ecosystems. The twilight zone is “extremely important for many ocean processes such as the carbon cycle and nutrient cycling,” says Adina Paytan, a professor affiliated with the Institute of Marine…
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Parts of Bay Area could experience longer earthquake shaking than previously expected
Emily Brodsky, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz who was not involved with the study, commented on the importance of new findings about where earthquakes resulted in longer periods of shaking than expected. “When you actually have to build a building, you don’t want to just know, in general, it…
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Sea Level Rise – Iconic Santa Cruz surf spots could slip away with erosion
Gary Griggs, a coastal geologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, discussed measures the City of Santa Cruz has taken to protect West Cliff Drive. But, he notes the likelihood that storms will continue to wreak havoc in the long term. “Two studies show that waves seem to be getting bigger, more energetic. Not…
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Myanmar’s Devastating Earthquake in March Split the Earth at ‘Supershear Velocity’
A seismic station near Nay Pyi Taw registered ground motion data that were “immediately convincing of supershear rupture given the time between the weak, dilational P wave first arrival and the arrival of large shear offset of the fault” at the station, UC Santa Cruz’s Thorne Lay said in a Seismological Society of America statement.
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How did these class rings stay put for decades? Santa Cruz County beach mystery delights ocean expert
UC Santa Cruz coastal scientist Gary Griggs sees a scientific mystery in two lost-and-found class rings — including one buried for 44 years at Main Beach. Griggs says the stories challenge assumptions about coastal sand movement, raising new questions about how objects can remain so close to where they were lost despite decades of shifting…
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The Mysterious Inner Workings of Io, Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon
Researchers disagree on the best interpretation of the Galileo data. The magnetic signals “were taken as probably the best evidence for a magma ocean, but really they weren’t that strong,” said Francis Nimmo, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a coauthor of the new study. The induction data couldn’t distinguish…
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Big Waves and High Tides Can Be Just as Insidious as Hurricanes
“Large waves and high tides are already beating up the shoreline,” said Gary Griggs, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A 2019 study by a UC Santa Cruz associate professor, Borja Reguero, and others used satellite data and modeling to suggest waves had grown 0.47% more powerful…