Fear Lurks in Chile Volcano’s Shadow
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: August 9, 2008
Published: August 9, 2008
CHAITÉN, Chile — In the desolate silence of this once-vibrant town, now abandoned like a lunar landscape, the volcano still roars. Three months after erupting, for what scientists say they believe was the first time in 9,370 years, the Chaitén volcano continues to threaten to coat this formerly picturesque town with volcanic ash.
The aftereffects of the eruption in May destroyed half of the town of 5,000 residents. Uncertainty about if and when they will ever be able to return to the tranquil seaside life they cherished is tearing many of them apart.
What to do with the displaced has become a problem for Chilean officials, and Chaitén, tiny though it may be, has alerted them to the need to better understand the threats posed by hundreds of potentially active volcanoes in the country.
On May 2, the volcano that bears this town’s name burst into activity, spewing hot gases and ash 12 miles into the sky. Most residents left, as some scientists warned that the volcano could be heading toward an eruption on the scale of Mount Vesuvius, the volcano that in A.D. 79 wiped out the Roman city of Pompeii in less than a day.
Like Pompeii, Chaitén is only about six miles from the volcano. A Vesuvius-like explosion seems unlikely now, said Charles R. Stern, a professor of geology at the University of Colorado who specializes in geochemical evolution and volcanism in Central and South America. In May he alerted the Chilean authorities that such an explosion could happen.
The volcano was pushing ash and smoke only about two miles up into the sky as of Friday, said Jorge Muñoz, director of the Vulcanology Observatory of the Southern Andes, which is a part of Chile’s Geology and Mining Service. He said Saturday that the number of temblors recorded in the past 10 days averaged 10 a day, compared with 200 to 300 temblors a day at the end of July.
But lava has created a new solidified dome that could plug the volcano’s vent — like putting a lid on a pressure cooker — and lead to another explosion, he said.
“It is very difficult to say when this is going to stop,” Dr. Muñoz said. “There is less material being emitted, but the volcano could reactivate at any moment.”
While the initial eruption spared the town, 10 days later the river that runs alongside it, swollen with volcanic material and winter rain, overflowed its banks, dumping trees and soft gray mud over half of Chaitén.
The scene was surreal on a recent visit. Houses were filled nearly to the roof with the gray material, some broken in two by the weight of the sludge-filled water. A bus stood suspended in time on a main thoroughfare, buried to its windows. Where water once lined the banks of the town’s port, fishing boats now rest on the mud.
The town’s business district is now lifeless — a whistling wind caused the only ruckus on a recent rainy day. That and the rumbling sound of the volcano visible through the clouds to the north.
Residents continue to return to Chaitén to try to recover their belongings. They arrive by day and leave at night because the town has no electricity or running water. Some of the residents sleep in nearby villages, but many live in Puerto Montt, a large city 12 hours north of Chaitén by ferry, where the Chilean government has relocated them.
Pedro Vasquez, a former army colonel, moved to Chaitén eight years ago and retired here with his family. Now he regularly drives from Palena, a town about 68 miles away where his family has been staying.
Mr. Vasquez is trying to recover his home in Chaitén, or at least some of his belongings. On a recent visit, he leaned down to avoid hitting the ceiling as he walked over the gray mud that filled up more than half the house. The arm of a couch peeked through the dirt. A worker, using a shovel, revealed a buried television.
“The volcano is part of nature and this part of southern Chile is full of volcanoes,” he said. “I am not afraid of the volcano and neither is my family. We came back to work to reconstruct our house and our town. We are hopeful that our town will live on.”
But like many residents, Mr. Vasquez said he realized that might not be possible. He said the town, built in 1940, was should be moved.
The aftereffects of the eruption in May destroyed half of the town of 5,000 residents. Uncertainty about if and when they will ever be able to return to the tranquil seaside life they cherished is tearing many of them apart.
What to do with the displaced has become a problem for Chilean officials, and Chaitén, tiny though it may be, has alerted them to the need to better understand the threats posed by hundreds of potentially active volcanoes in the country.
On May 2, the volcano that bears this town’s name burst into activity, spewing hot gases and ash 12 miles into the sky. Most residents left, as some scientists warned that the volcano could be heading toward an eruption on the scale of Mount Vesuvius, the volcano that in A.D. 79 wiped out the Roman city of Pompeii in less than a day.
Like Pompeii, Chaitén is only about six miles from the volcano. A Vesuvius-like explosion seems unlikely now, said Charles R. Stern, a professor of geology at the University of Colorado who specializes in geochemical evolution and volcanism in Central and South America. In May he alerted the Chilean authorities that such an explosion could happen.
The volcano was pushing ash and smoke only about two miles up into the sky as of Friday, said Jorge Muñoz, director of the Vulcanology Observatory of the Southern Andes, which is a part of Chile’s Geology and Mining Service. He said Saturday that the number of temblors recorded in the past 10 days averaged 10 a day, compared with 200 to 300 temblors a day at the end of July.
But lava has created a new solidified dome that could plug the volcano’s vent — like putting a lid on a pressure cooker — and lead to another explosion, he said.
“It is very difficult to say when this is going to stop,” Dr. Muñoz said. “There is less material being emitted, but the volcano could reactivate at any moment.”
While the initial eruption spared the town, 10 days later the river that runs alongside it, swollen with volcanic material and winter rain, overflowed its banks, dumping trees and soft gray mud over half of Chaitén.
The scene was surreal on a recent visit. Houses were filled nearly to the roof with the gray material, some broken in two by the weight of the sludge-filled water. A bus stood suspended in time on a main thoroughfare, buried to its windows. Where water once lined the banks of the town’s port, fishing boats now rest on the mud.
The town’s business district is now lifeless — a whistling wind caused the only ruckus on a recent rainy day. That and the rumbling sound of the volcano visible through the clouds to the north.
Residents continue to return to Chaitén to try to recover their belongings. They arrive by day and leave at night because the town has no electricity or running water. Some of the residents sleep in nearby villages, but many live in Puerto Montt, a large city 12 hours north of Chaitén by ferry, where the Chilean government has relocated them.
Pedro Vasquez, a former army colonel, moved to Chaitén eight years ago and retired here with his family. Now he regularly drives from Palena, a town about 68 miles away where his family has been staying.
Mr. Vasquez is trying to recover his home in Chaitén, or at least some of his belongings. On a recent visit, he leaned down to avoid hitting the ceiling as he walked over the gray mud that filled up more than half the house. The arm of a couch peeked through the dirt. A worker, using a shovel, revealed a buried television.
“The volcano is part of nature and this part of southern Chile is full of volcanoes,” he said. “I am not afraid of the volcano and neither is my family. We came back to work to reconstruct our house and our town. We are hopeful that our town will live on.”
But like many residents, Mr. Vasquez said he realized that might not be possible. He said the town, built in 1940, was should be moved.
Clash Over Rebirth of Mt. St. Helens
By CORNELIA DEANAUG. 17, 2009
CASTLE ROCK, Wash. — When Mount St. Helens erupted nearly 30 years ago, it flattened more than 150 square miles of forest, spewed millions of tons of mud and debris, filled the sky with ash and left at least 57 people dead. In the process, it also created an unusual outdoor laboratory where researchers have worked ever since to answer an increasingly urgent question: How do landscapes recover after violent disturbance?
It has long been “one of the most fundamental questions in ecology,” said Charles M. Crisafulli, an ecologist at the Pacific Northwest Research Station, an agency of the United States Forest Service, which manages the mountain. And if, as seems likely, a warming world brings more storms, fires, droughts and floods, the research on the mountain will only grow in importance. “Mount St. Helens allows us to evaluate things we could not evaluate anywhere else,” Mr. Crisafulli said.
But now the work is caught up in a debate over management of the mountain, designated after the eruption as the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. Some say the 110,000-acre monument should be a national park.
Some say the Forest Service should manage it differently. “There is a certain segment of the population who would say, ‘It’s been 30 years, and it’s over,’ ” said Peter Frenzen, whose job title with the Forest Service is monument scientist.
As one local resident put it in a letter to the Mount St. Helens Citizen Advisory Committee, appointed to make recommendations on the mountain’s fate, “throw out the study zone and let people recreate.”
On the surface, at least, that sentiment may seem to make sense. Over the years, so many researchers have spent so much time on the mountain that some call it the most-studied landscape on earth. But if much has been learned there, much remains unknown, and the process is playing out slowly, Mr. Crisafulli and Mr. Frenzen said one day recently as they hiked into the zone.
A few miles away, in land managed by Weyerhaeuser, a timber producer, thick stands of trees laboriously planted by hand immediately after the eruption rise 70 feet tall. But the zone is largely treeless, studded with house-size rocky chunks, called hummocks, that broke off the top of the mountain when it exploded. A few scrubby trees, like red alder, have re-established themselves, and ants, frogs, meadowlarks, beavers and other species have moved in. Still, Mr. Frenzen said, “The plant ecology and the forest ecology are only beginning. We have only seen the opening chapter.”
He and Mr. Crisafulli have worked at the volcano almost from the day it erupted, May 18, 1980. Mr. Crisafulli, then 22, had just joined the Forest Service as an ecologist, and Mr. Frenzen was a 21-year-old senior at the University of Washington. He had done some volcano research with one of his professors and was headed to graduate study in environmental sciences at Yale.
But at 8:32 a.m. that day, after weeks of small earthquakes and belching steam, the north face of Mount St. Helens fell away, the largest landslide ever recorded. And then, in what Mr. Frenzen calls “an explosive burst of throat clearing,” the volcano spewed steam, other gas and rock debris across the landscape, transforming it within hours into what appeared, at first, to be a dead zone buried in pumice and other debris. Shortly after, Mr. Frenzen’s professor offered him a job on the mountain, he recalled, “and it took me about 10 seconds to say yes.”
At first, researchers traveled to the site by helicopter; “they made us keep the blades turning” to facilitate a quick escape, Mr. Frenzen recalled. But soon they were measuring conditions and tracking the first plants and animals to emerge. (The fact that some burrowing creatures had survived the blast was one of the mountain’s first surprises.) Mr. Crisafulli marked off research plots that remain under study today.
“We have all benefited from their work” and the work of other scientists, said Representative Brian Baird, a Democrat whose district includes the mountain and who, with Democratic Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray of Washington and Representative Norm Dicks, a Democrat from a neighboring district, convened the advisory panel. “But the access people see things a fair bit differently.”
Also, Mr. Baird said, the Forest Service has struggled as firefighting costs ate into its budget. At Mount St. Helens the result has been delayed maintenance, road closings and, in 2007, the closing of the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center.
“There was no money for maintenance,” said Jeanne Bennett, director of the Mount St. Helens Institute, a private group that works with the Forest Service on education and other projects. Another center, the Johnson Ridge Observatory, replaced it, but it is open only in the warm months.
“The current situation is pretty depressing from a tourism standpoint, an economic standpoint,” said Sean Smith, policy director of the National Parks Conservation Association, a private group that favors moving the monument into the park system. According to an association report last year, the monument receives about $3.26 per acre in federal money annually. Even the least-financed monuments managed by the Park Service receive three times that, the report said.
But opponents of a shift say they fear the Park Service will limit even further hunters and people who use snowmobiles and other off-road vehicles. For them, study-area restrictions are bad enough. If people are allowed at all, they must keep to marked trails and they may not camp, build fires or walk their dogs. At Spirit Lake, once a prized fishing spot, they are barred altogether. The result is “contention,” Mr. Crisafulli and other researchers wrote in “Ecological Responses to the 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens,” a collection of research papers.
When the advisory committee called for public comment, Patrice Dick of Castle Rock urged them to require people seeking to conduct research on the mountain to demonstrate that the site offered them “truly unique” opportunities. Ms. Dick said she was “disgusted” by studies of, for example, the way deep-rooted plants were able to recover from the blast, a finding she called “intuitively obvious.”
“You don’t need 20,000 acres to see how vegetation comes back,” she said.
While some writers called the research effort “the highest use” for the site, others urged that it be done elsewhere or not at all. One writer dismissed it as “only monitoring.”
But only diligent monitoring — from the molecular to the ecosystem level, or “from ants to elk,” as Mr. Frenzen puts it — enables researchers to draw strong conclusions about how the landscape behaves.
The advisory committee’s tentative recommendations call for the research to continue, and for the monument to stay with the Forest Service. Paul Pearce, a committee co-chairman and a commissioner in Skamania County, which includes part of the monument, said the committee was not unanimous and would issue a formal recommendation later this summer.
Mr. Baird said that when the panel issues its report, he, Ms. Cantwell, Ms. Murray and Mr. Dicks would discuss its findings with the Forest Service, the Park Service and others. He declared himself “agnostic” on remedies but described the current situation as “not acceptable.”
As Mr. Frenzen and Mr. Crisafulli see it, the mountain still has a lot to tell about the recovery of severely disturbed landscapes. For example, immediately after the blast much of the downed timber was salvaged. Advocates of such salvage logging argued that leaving the downed wood in place would contribute to insect outbreaks and raise the risk of fire. But in the study area, “neither broad-scale insect outbreaks nor fire occurred,” Mr. Crisafulli and his co-authors wrote — at least, not thus far.
The effects of allowing or barring actions like salvage logging may not be known “for decades or even centuries,” they wrote. As Ms. Bennett put it, “30 years is not very long for a forest to grow,” adding, “In 100 years we may have a forest out there.”
It has long been “one of the most fundamental questions in ecology,” said Charles M. Crisafulli, an ecologist at the Pacific Northwest Research Station, an agency of the United States Forest Service, which manages the mountain. And if, as seems likely, a warming world brings more storms, fires, droughts and floods, the research on the mountain will only grow in importance. “Mount St. Helens allows us to evaluate things we could not evaluate anywhere else,” Mr. Crisafulli said.
But now the work is caught up in a debate over management of the mountain, designated after the eruption as the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. Some say the 110,000-acre monument should be a national park.
Some say the Forest Service should manage it differently. “There is a certain segment of the population who would say, ‘It’s been 30 years, and it’s over,’ ” said Peter Frenzen, whose job title with the Forest Service is monument scientist.
As one local resident put it in a letter to the Mount St. Helens Citizen Advisory Committee, appointed to make recommendations on the mountain’s fate, “throw out the study zone and let people recreate.”
On the surface, at least, that sentiment may seem to make sense. Over the years, so many researchers have spent so much time on the mountain that some call it the most-studied landscape on earth. But if much has been learned there, much remains unknown, and the process is playing out slowly, Mr. Crisafulli and Mr. Frenzen said one day recently as they hiked into the zone.
A few miles away, in land managed by Weyerhaeuser, a timber producer, thick stands of trees laboriously planted by hand immediately after the eruption rise 70 feet tall. But the zone is largely treeless, studded with house-size rocky chunks, called hummocks, that broke off the top of the mountain when it exploded. A few scrubby trees, like red alder, have re-established themselves, and ants, frogs, meadowlarks, beavers and other species have moved in. Still, Mr. Frenzen said, “The plant ecology and the forest ecology are only beginning. We have only seen the opening chapter.”
He and Mr. Crisafulli have worked at the volcano almost from the day it erupted, May 18, 1980. Mr. Crisafulli, then 22, had just joined the Forest Service as an ecologist, and Mr. Frenzen was a 21-year-old senior at the University of Washington. He had done some volcano research with one of his professors and was headed to graduate study in environmental sciences at Yale.
But at 8:32 a.m. that day, after weeks of small earthquakes and belching steam, the north face of Mount St. Helens fell away, the largest landslide ever recorded. And then, in what Mr. Frenzen calls “an explosive burst of throat clearing,” the volcano spewed steam, other gas and rock debris across the landscape, transforming it within hours into what appeared, at first, to be a dead zone buried in pumice and other debris. Shortly after, Mr. Frenzen’s professor offered him a job on the mountain, he recalled, “and it took me about 10 seconds to say yes.”
At first, researchers traveled to the site by helicopter; “they made us keep the blades turning” to facilitate a quick escape, Mr. Frenzen recalled. But soon they were measuring conditions and tracking the first plants and animals to emerge. (The fact that some burrowing creatures had survived the blast was one of the mountain’s first surprises.) Mr. Crisafulli marked off research plots that remain under study today.
“We have all benefited from their work” and the work of other scientists, said Representative Brian Baird, a Democrat whose district includes the mountain and who, with Democratic Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray of Washington and Representative Norm Dicks, a Democrat from a neighboring district, convened the advisory panel. “But the access people see things a fair bit differently.”
Also, Mr. Baird said, the Forest Service has struggled as firefighting costs ate into its budget. At Mount St. Helens the result has been delayed maintenance, road closings and, in 2007, the closing of the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center.
“There was no money for maintenance,” said Jeanne Bennett, director of the Mount St. Helens Institute, a private group that works with the Forest Service on education and other projects. Another center, the Johnson Ridge Observatory, replaced it, but it is open only in the warm months.
“The current situation is pretty depressing from a tourism standpoint, an economic standpoint,” said Sean Smith, policy director of the National Parks Conservation Association, a private group that favors moving the monument into the park system. According to an association report last year, the monument receives about $3.26 per acre in federal money annually. Even the least-financed monuments managed by the Park Service receive three times that, the report said.
But opponents of a shift say they fear the Park Service will limit even further hunters and people who use snowmobiles and other off-road vehicles. For them, study-area restrictions are bad enough. If people are allowed at all, they must keep to marked trails and they may not camp, build fires or walk their dogs. At Spirit Lake, once a prized fishing spot, they are barred altogether. The result is “contention,” Mr. Crisafulli and other researchers wrote in “Ecological Responses to the 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens,” a collection of research papers.
When the advisory committee called for public comment, Patrice Dick of Castle Rock urged them to require people seeking to conduct research on the mountain to demonstrate that the site offered them “truly unique” opportunities. Ms. Dick said she was “disgusted” by studies of, for example, the way deep-rooted plants were able to recover from the blast, a finding she called “intuitively obvious.”
“You don’t need 20,000 acres to see how vegetation comes back,” she said.
While some writers called the research effort “the highest use” for the site, others urged that it be done elsewhere or not at all. One writer dismissed it as “only monitoring.”
But only diligent monitoring — from the molecular to the ecosystem level, or “from ants to elk,” as Mr. Frenzen puts it — enables researchers to draw strong conclusions about how the landscape behaves.
The advisory committee’s tentative recommendations call for the research to continue, and for the monument to stay with the Forest Service. Paul Pearce, a committee co-chairman and a commissioner in Skamania County, which includes part of the monument, said the committee was not unanimous and would issue a formal recommendation later this summer.
Mr. Baird said that when the panel issues its report, he, Ms. Cantwell, Ms. Murray and Mr. Dicks would discuss its findings with the Forest Service, the Park Service and others. He declared himself “agnostic” on remedies but described the current situation as “not acceptable.”
As Mr. Frenzen and Mr. Crisafulli see it, the mountain still has a lot to tell about the recovery of severely disturbed landscapes. For example, immediately after the blast much of the downed timber was salvaged. Advocates of such salvage logging argued that leaving the downed wood in place would contribute to insect outbreaks and raise the risk of fire. But in the study area, “neither broad-scale insect outbreaks nor fire occurred,” Mr. Crisafulli and his co-authors wrote — at least, not thus far.
The effects of allowing or barring actions like salvage logging may not be known “for decades or even centuries,” they wrote. As Ms. Bennett put it, “30 years is not very long for a forest to grow,” adding, “In 100 years we may have a forest out there.”
Way Under the Sea, Violent Eruptions From Volcanoes
In 1999, seismographs detected a swarm of earthquakes at a spot on the Gakkel ridge, a midocean ridge that traverses the Arctic. A few expeditions to the area, north of Siberia about 350 miles from the pole, produced indirect evidence of explosive eruptions deep on the seafloor.
Explosive volcanism at such depths would be very unusual, said Robert A. Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. “People had been afraid to even suggest it, because it seemed so ludicrous.”Seafloor volcanoes do erupt violently, but in relatively shallow water. The Gakkel ridge spot is 13,000 feet down, and at such great depths it had been thought that explosive eruptions could not occur because there is not enough gas in magma to overcome the immense pressure.
So in 2007 Dr. Sohn led another expedition to the area, sending a homemade contraption down to the seafloor with high-definition video cameras and a sampling device. His team’s findings, reported in Nature, show conclusively that explosive eruptions occurred.
The evidence came in the form of fresh pyroclastic deposits, small bits of volcanic rock, spread over an area greater than four square miles. The researchers even found evidence of Limu o Pele, fragments of the wall of an exploding bubble of magma. A map of the area created using sonar showed what appeared to be cratered volcanoes that probably were the focus points of the explosions.
One possible explanation, Dr. Sohn said, is that carbon dioxide dissolved out of magma over a long period, forming a bubble of trapped gas perhaps five miles below the seafloor. Then the 1999 earthquakes would have weakened the crust, allowing the gas to rise, mix with rising magma and “blow the top off the seafloor,” he said.
Dr. Sohn said the work showed how much there is to be learned about what goes on along deep midocean ridges. For one thing, explosive volcanism like this involving the release of large amounts of carbon dioxide may not be so rare. “Our community is going to embrace this pretty quickly as a research topic,” he said.
Explosive volcanism at such depths would be very unusual, said Robert A. Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. “People had been afraid to even suggest it, because it seemed so ludicrous.”Seafloor volcanoes do erupt violently, but in relatively shallow water. The Gakkel ridge spot is 13,000 feet down, and at such great depths it had been thought that explosive eruptions could not occur because there is not enough gas in magma to overcome the immense pressure.
So in 2007 Dr. Sohn led another expedition to the area, sending a homemade contraption down to the seafloor with high-definition video cameras and a sampling device. His team’s findings, reported in Nature, show conclusively that explosive eruptions occurred.
The evidence came in the form of fresh pyroclastic deposits, small bits of volcanic rock, spread over an area greater than four square miles. The researchers even found evidence of Limu o Pele, fragments of the wall of an exploding bubble of magma. A map of the area created using sonar showed what appeared to be cratered volcanoes that probably were the focus points of the explosions.
One possible explanation, Dr. Sohn said, is that carbon dioxide dissolved out of magma over a long period, forming a bubble of trapped gas perhaps five miles below the seafloor. Then the 1999 earthquakes would have weakened the crust, allowing the gas to rise, mix with rising magma and “blow the top off the seafloor,” he said.
Dr. Sohn said the work showed how much there is to be learned about what goes on along deep midocean ridges. For one thing, explosive volcanism like this involving the release of large amounts of carbon dioxide may not be so rare. “Our community is going to embrace this pretty quickly as a research topic,” he said.
Rocks Made of Plastic Found on Hawaiian Beach
Patricia Corcoran
Plastic may be with us a lot longer than we thought. In addition to clogging up landfills and becoming trapped in Arctic ice, some of it is turning into stone. Scientists say a new type of rock cobbled together from plastic, volcanic rock, beach sand, seashells, and corals has begun forming on the shores of Hawaii.
“The article is intriguing and fascinating,” says geophysicist Douglas Jerolmack of the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the work. “If these things can be preserved, then they might be a nice marker around the world of when humans came to dominate the globe and leave behind their refuse in mass quantities.”
Geologist Patricia Corcoran of the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, and Charles Moore, captain of the oceanographic research vessel Alguita, stumbled upon the new rocks on a beach on the Big Island of Hawaii. These stones, which they’ve dubbed “plastiglomerates,” most likely formed from melting plastic in fires lit by humans who were camping or fishing, the team reports this month in GSA Today. Although anywhere there is a heat source, such as forest fires or lava flows, and “abundant plastic debris,” Corcoran says, “there is the potential for the formation of plastiglomerate.” When the plastic melts, it cements rock fragments, sand, and shell debris together, or the plastic can flow into larger rocks and fill in cracks and bubbles to form a kind of junkyard Frankenstein.
Corcoran says some of the plastic is still recognizable as toothbrushes, forks, ropes, and just “anything you can think of.” Once the plastic has fused to denser materials, like rock and coral, it sinks to the sea floor, and the chances it will become buried and preserved in the geologic record increase.
Corcoran and her team canvassed Kamilo Beach on the Big Island for more of the rocks and found plastiglomerate in all 21 sites they surveyed. She says people have already found plastiglomerate on another Hawaiian island, and she expects there to be much more on coastlines across the world. Plastiglomerate is likely well distributed, it’s just never been noticed before now, she says.
Jerolmack agrees. “All around the world where there’s trash being openly burned in mass quantities, you can imagine there are even larger melted plastic deposits” where plastiglomerate could form.
The discovery adds to the debate about whether humanity’s heavy hand in natural processes warrants the formal declaration of a new epoch of Earth history, the Anthropocene, says paleontologist Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the study. Plastics in general are so pervasive that they’ve been documented in a number of surprising places, including ingested in wildlife and on the sea floor. The mass of plastic produced since 1950 is close to 6 billion metric tons, enough to bundle the entire planet in plastic wrap. Combine plastic’s abundance with its persistence in the environment, and there’s a good chance it’ll get into the fossil record, Zalasiewicz says. “Plastics, including plastiglomerates, would be one of the key markers by which people could recognize the beginning of the Anthropocene.”
How long the plastic will endure remains a matter of debate, however. Jerolmack says he doubts the material will stick around in the fossil record. After all, plastic melts, and rocks often pass through hellish depths and temperatures through tectonic processes and burial. Geologist Philip Gibbard of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom says he imagines that plastics might “revert back to a source of oil from whence they came, given the right conditions of burial.” But Zalasiewicz and Corcoran say that isn’t true for all the plastic. Some of the material can be preserved as a thin carbon film, much like the way fossil leaves are preserved. Zalasiewicz says that in some rare cases, in that etch of carbon “you may well be left the shape for a flattened plastic bottle.”
“The article is intriguing and fascinating,” says geophysicist Douglas Jerolmack of the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the work. “If these things can be preserved, then they might be a nice marker around the world of when humans came to dominate the globe and leave behind their refuse in mass quantities.”
Geologist Patricia Corcoran of the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, and Charles Moore, captain of the oceanographic research vessel Alguita, stumbled upon the new rocks on a beach on the Big Island of Hawaii. These stones, which they’ve dubbed “plastiglomerates,” most likely formed from melting plastic in fires lit by humans who were camping or fishing, the team reports this month in GSA Today. Although anywhere there is a heat source, such as forest fires or lava flows, and “abundant plastic debris,” Corcoran says, “there is the potential for the formation of plastiglomerate.” When the plastic melts, it cements rock fragments, sand, and shell debris together, or the plastic can flow into larger rocks and fill in cracks and bubbles to form a kind of junkyard Frankenstein.
Corcoran says some of the plastic is still recognizable as toothbrushes, forks, ropes, and just “anything you can think of.” Once the plastic has fused to denser materials, like rock and coral, it sinks to the sea floor, and the chances it will become buried and preserved in the geologic record increase.
Corcoran and her team canvassed Kamilo Beach on the Big Island for more of the rocks and found plastiglomerate in all 21 sites they surveyed. She says people have already found plastiglomerate on another Hawaiian island, and she expects there to be much more on coastlines across the world. Plastiglomerate is likely well distributed, it’s just never been noticed before now, she says.
Jerolmack agrees. “All around the world where there’s trash being openly burned in mass quantities, you can imagine there are even larger melted plastic deposits” where plastiglomerate could form.
The discovery adds to the debate about whether humanity’s heavy hand in natural processes warrants the formal declaration of a new epoch of Earth history, the Anthropocene, says paleontologist Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the study. Plastics in general are so pervasive that they’ve been documented in a number of surprising places, including ingested in wildlife and on the sea floor. The mass of plastic produced since 1950 is close to 6 billion metric tons, enough to bundle the entire planet in plastic wrap. Combine plastic’s abundance with its persistence in the environment, and there’s a good chance it’ll get into the fossil record, Zalasiewicz says. “Plastics, including plastiglomerates, would be one of the key markers by which people could recognize the beginning of the Anthropocene.”
How long the plastic will endure remains a matter of debate, however. Jerolmack says he doubts the material will stick around in the fossil record. After all, plastic melts, and rocks often pass through hellish depths and temperatures through tectonic processes and burial. Geologist Philip Gibbard of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom says he imagines that plastics might “revert back to a source of oil from whence they came, given the right conditions of burial.” But Zalasiewicz and Corcoran say that isn’t true for all the plastic. Some of the material can be preserved as a thin carbon film, much like the way fossil leaves are preserved. Zalasiewicz says that in some rare cases, in that etch of carbon “you may well be left the shape for a flattened plastic bottle.”
'We May Be Slowly Running Out Of Rocks'
RALEIGH, NC—A coalition of geologists are challenging the way we look at global stone reserves, claiming that, unless smarter methods of preservation are developed, mankind will eventually run out of rocks.
"If we do not stop using them up at our current rate, rocks as we know them will be a thing of the past," renowned geologist Henry Kaiser said at a press conference Tuesday. "Igneous, metamorphic, even sedimentary: all of them could be gone in as little as 500,000 years."
"Think about it," Kaiser added. "When was the last time you even saw a boulder?"
The scientists warned that, although people have long considered the world's rock supply to be inexhaustible, it has not created a significant number of new rocks since the planet cooled some 3.5 billion years ago. Moreover, the earth's rocks have been very slowly depleting in the last century due to growing demand for fireplace mantels, rock gardens, gravel, and paperweights.
Kaiser claims that humanity has "wreaked havoc" on the earth's stones by picking them up, carrying them around, and displacing them from their natural habitat.
"A rock can take millions of years to form, but it only takes a second for someone to skip a smooth pebble into a lake, and then it is gone." Dr. Kaiser said. "Perhaps these thoughtless rock-skippers don't care if they leave our planet completely devoid of rocks, but what about our children? Don't they deserve the chance to hold a rock and toss it up and down a few times?"
Continued Kaiser, "We are on a collision course to a world without rocks."
Geologist Victoria Merrill, who has been at the forefront of the rock conservation battle since 2004, said there are simple steps people can take to reduce their rock consumption.
"Only take as many rocks as you absolutely need," said Dr. Merrill, author of the book No Stone Unturned: Methods For Modern Rock Conservation. "And once you are finished with your rocks, do not simply huck them into the woods. Place the rock down gently where you found it so that others may look at the rock and enjoy it for years to come."
Merrill went on to point out that, even if there were some "magic hole" in the earth's crust that could miraculously spew out rocks every 10 years or so, modern society's obsession with rocks means that we would still run out of them far more quickly than they could be replenished.
"Just look at the pet rock craze: In 10 years, millions upon millions of rocks were painted, played with, and discarded like trash," Merrill said. "Looking back, mankind's arrogance and hubris is startling."
But critics of the movement have already begun to surface, claiming that Kaiser and his colleagues are simply preying on people's fears of losing rocks.
While acknowledging that we should reduce our dependence on foreign rocks, many have argued that the current rock supply could easily last for the next 2 million years, by which time technology will have advanced enough to allow for the production of endless quantities of cheap, durable basalt.
Others who oppose the rock-loss theory claim that rocks were put on the earth to be used by humans in marble statues or kitchen countertops as they see fit.
"Take the Rocky Mountains, for example: There's plenty of rocks right there," Colorado resident Kyle Peters said. "It's our right as Americans to use as many rocks as we need for whatever purposes we decide, and no scientist is going to scare me into thinking otherwise."
"This country was built on rocks," he added. "Remember that."
"If we do not stop using them up at our current rate, rocks as we know them will be a thing of the past," renowned geologist Henry Kaiser said at a press conference Tuesday. "Igneous, metamorphic, even sedimentary: all of them could be gone in as little as 500,000 years."
"Think about it," Kaiser added. "When was the last time you even saw a boulder?"
The scientists warned that, although people have long considered the world's rock supply to be inexhaustible, it has not created a significant number of new rocks since the planet cooled some 3.5 billion years ago. Moreover, the earth's rocks have been very slowly depleting in the last century due to growing demand for fireplace mantels, rock gardens, gravel, and paperweights.
Kaiser claims that humanity has "wreaked havoc" on the earth's stones by picking them up, carrying them around, and displacing them from their natural habitat.
"A rock can take millions of years to form, but it only takes a second for someone to skip a smooth pebble into a lake, and then it is gone." Dr. Kaiser said. "Perhaps these thoughtless rock-skippers don't care if they leave our planet completely devoid of rocks, but what about our children? Don't they deserve the chance to hold a rock and toss it up and down a few times?"
Continued Kaiser, "We are on a collision course to a world without rocks."
Geologist Victoria Merrill, who has been at the forefront of the rock conservation battle since 2004, said there are simple steps people can take to reduce their rock consumption.
"Only take as many rocks as you absolutely need," said Dr. Merrill, author of the book No Stone Unturned: Methods For Modern Rock Conservation. "And once you are finished with your rocks, do not simply huck them into the woods. Place the rock down gently where you found it so that others may look at the rock and enjoy it for years to come."
Merrill went on to point out that, even if there were some "magic hole" in the earth's crust that could miraculously spew out rocks every 10 years or so, modern society's obsession with rocks means that we would still run out of them far more quickly than they could be replenished.
"Just look at the pet rock craze: In 10 years, millions upon millions of rocks were painted, played with, and discarded like trash," Merrill said. "Looking back, mankind's arrogance and hubris is startling."
But critics of the movement have already begun to surface, claiming that Kaiser and his colleagues are simply preying on people's fears of losing rocks.
While acknowledging that we should reduce our dependence on foreign rocks, many have argued that the current rock supply could easily last for the next 2 million years, by which time technology will have advanced enough to allow for the production of endless quantities of cheap, durable basalt.
Others who oppose the rock-loss theory claim that rocks were put on the earth to be used by humans in marble statues or kitchen countertops as they see fit.
"Take the Rocky Mountains, for example: There's plenty of rocks right there," Colorado resident Kyle Peters said. "It's our right as Americans to use as many rocks as we need for whatever purposes we decide, and no scientist is going to scare me into thinking otherwise."
"This country was built on rocks," he added. "Remember that."