Category: Earth & Climate

Louis Jacobs co-writes, consults for international paleo video

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date November 12, 2008

Vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs is scientific consultant and co-writer of a new 33-minute video just released by the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs introduces the “We Are SVP” video. An internationally known vertebrate paleontologist, he is a former president of the society.

The video features many other respected paleontologists from around the world, all of them talking about the work they do and its importance to science and society. The goal of the video is to educate students, teachers and the public about vertebrate paleontologists and the importance of their work.

“Because we study fossils, especially dinosaurs, we capture the imagination of children, and that makes vertebrate paleontology a gateway for all science,” Jacobs says in the video.

Also appearing is SMU geology student and SMU President’s Scholar Karen Gutierrez.

The society’s 2,300 members in 54 countries are scientists who study fossils of animals with backbones and complex brains, including dinosaurs.

Vertebrate paleontology’s findings provide the evidence for environmental change and contribute to understanding everything from climate change and evolution to ecology.

“Our field expeditions and our laboratory work provide the evidence for environmental change, including its most serious consequence — extinction,” Jacobs says in the video.

Jacobs joined SMU’s faculty in 1983. Currently he has projects in Mongolia, Angola and Antarctica.

His book, “Lone Star Dinosaurs” (1999, Texas A&M University Press) was the basis of an exhibit at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History that traveled the state. He is consulting on a new exhibit, Mysteries of the Texas Dinosaurs, which is set to open in the fall of 2009.

Jacobs is also known for his work documenting changes in fossil mammals in Pakistan, which helps scholars correlate climatic changes with evolutionary changes seen in animals, and which helps calibrate the rate of DNA evolution in mammals. He’s also credited for discovery of what’s now known as Malawisaurus, a plant-eating dinosaur that lived in Malawi, Africa, 115 million years ago.

In the early 1980s, Jacobs worked for paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey as head of the division of paleontology at the National Museums of Kenya.

The SVP video is narrated by “Law & Order” television star Sam Waterston. The video was produced by longtime New York theater producer Steve Cohen. Executive producer was Ray Marr of Shade Tree Studios in Dallas. Portions of the video were shot at the Museum of Nature & Science in Dallas.

Tags Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Karen Gutierrez, Louis L. Jacobs

Earth & Climate Economics & Statistics Plants & Animals

Biodiversity: Some species may always be endangered

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date November 4, 2008
No Comments on Biodiversity: Some species may always be endangered

Once hunted to near-extermination, the Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf reached an important milestone recently. With a population estimated at 1,500, the wolf re-established itself in the Yellowstone National Park area, and in March 2008 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed it from protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Almost immediately, hunters began petitioning the state offices of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming for permits to hunt the wolves, perhaps down to as little as 20 percent of their current numbers in some areas. Such a weighty issue begs the questions: How much hunting is safe for a given species? How many gray wolves can die before the species loses its chance at recovery?

Gray Wolf. Credit: John & Karen Hollingsworth/USFWS

Understanding the market forces that drive these environmental decisions is a vital yet missing piece of public policy on natural resource management, says Santanu Roy, SMU professor of economics in Dedman College and 2007-08 SMU Ford Research Fellow.

An expert in dynamic economic models and microeconomic theory, Roy focuses on the economics of natural resources and the environment.

Central to Roy’s model for managing biological species is a concern about how population size and uncertainty affect the flow of benefits and costs from the harvesting of resources and what it means for conservation and extinction when resources are managed optimally over time.

“The traditional model of biological harvesting usually considers only the market value and benefits of using these resources,” he says. “But there is an increasing consciousness of the value of biodiversity, that a species might be very valuable someday because of the biodiversity it helps provide.”

The traditional view of natural resources in general, and of biological species in particular, is as an investment asset, as something speculators can own or privatize, liquidate or conserve, Roy adds.

“These simple comparisons have to be abandoned,” he says.

As an example, Roy focuses on the critically endangered blue whale. Suppose an individual gained the right to own the entire stock of blue whales in the oceans, he says.

“If the blue whale population were doubling every year, it would be worth conserving from an investment standpoint. But, at present, it is growing at only 2 percent to 5 percent a year,” Roy says. “If you take all the available blue whales now, sell them at market price, put the money in the bank and enjoy the interest for the rest of your’s and your children’s lives, that’s more money than you could make by cultivating whales forever.”

Gray Wolf. Credit: Tracy Brooks/Mission Wolf.

But this approach fails to consider several factors unique to species, he says.

“There are peculiar challenges that come from the biological side of the story,” Roy says. “And these challenges must become part of the equation.”

One is the possibility of what biologists call depensation, if a population becomes too small, it collapses and cannot grow anymore.

“The International Whaling Commission basically stopped all harvesting of blue whales 30 years ago,” he says, “but the population hasn’t recovered. They don’t meet each other to mate that often.”

Another factor in Roy’s model is stock dependence of cost.

“If you take $100 out of your checking account and have a party, the enjoyment you get will not depend upon how much money you have left in the bank,” he says.

Roy%201.jpg “That’s not true for biological species, which become more and more costly to harvest as their populations shrink,” Roy says. This is one reason why species like the blue whale, almost paradoxically, stop losing their numbers once they are near extinction, he adds.

“If you’ve ever gone fishing,” Roy says, “you know that it’s very difficult to fish if there are very few of them.”

Conversely, if a population is large, its harvesting cost becomes small — a condition that took a toll on the American bald eagle in the past century, Roy says. Protections for the bird allowed its population to grow rapidly. The resulting easy harvesting gave hunters an incentive to drive them nearly to extinction.

“When a population increases, at some point it sharply decreases, because it becomes very economical to harvest,” he says. “These are the critical moments at which species can become extinct.”

Roy hopes his research will help steer public policy toward more intelligent management of biological issues, especially regarding extinction, he says. The U.S. government has long held “safe standards,” meaning the point at which a population is greater than a size critical to survival, as its conservation yardstick. But Roy’s work has shown that “some species may never be safe,” he says.

“The thing most lacking in public policy right now is that it doesn’t understand individual cases,” he adds. “We need to take much more of the available scientific information into account. What’s good for one species is not good for another.”

Roy, who joined SMU in 2003, earned his Ph.D. degree from Cornell University. He has published his work in the “Journal of Economic Theory” and other publications. — Kathleen Tibbetts

Tags Dedman College, Santanu Roy, SMU Department of Economics

Earth & Climate Economics & Statistics Energy & Matter

Earth’s inner heat holds promise of generating much-needed electric power in Northern Mariana Islands

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 29, 2008

A chain of 14, breathtaking Pacific islands is paradise lost without reliable electricity.

The Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth some 1,500 miles east of the Philippines, has seen its garment industry waste away in the face of global competition. Attracting replacement industry is difficult, in part because of the commonwealth’s undependable power supply. Rolling blackouts are the norm, caused by aging power plant equipment and the irregular delivery of expensive, imported diesel to run the plants.

SMU’s geothermal energy team of faculty and graduate students is aiming to prevent the Islands’ economic oblivion by helping to convert their volcanic heat into affordable, renewable energy.

“This [energy crisis] could be the United States 20 years from now,” says James E. Quick, associate vice president for research and dean of graduate studies at SMU.

Quick knows from his own work in the Marianas what it would mean for residents to cut their dependence on costly diesel fuel. He directed a volcano-monitoring program for the islands during his previous career with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Most recently Quick has served as a liaison for the island government in its search for renewable energy: He introduced Northern Mariana officials to SMU’s recognized experts in geothermal energy: David Blackwell, W.B. Hamilton Professor of Geophysics in Dedman College, and Maria Richards, coordinator of SMU’s Geothermal Lab.

In the Marianas, the SMU team is studying the potential applications for two different types of geo-thermal systems that use Earth-heated water and steam to drive turbines and produce electricity.

Testing has been completed on volcanic Pagan Island, where the results are being studied to determine if a large, steam-driven power plant like those found in California and Iceland may be a fit.

On Saipan, the most populated island in the Marianas chain, subsurface water temperatures are lower because there is no active volcano. Testing of existing water wells completed in early summer supports the potential for building smaller power plants designed for lower temperatures. Plans call for drilling a test bore hole on Saipan to confirm water temperatures at deeper depths.

Interest in geothermal energy has been growing against a backdrop of rising oil prices.

Google.org is providing nearly $500,000 to SMU’s Geothermal Lab for improved mapping of U.S. geothermal resources. Blackwell, who has been collecting heat flow data for 40 years, is credited with drawing attention to the untapped potential energy source with his Geothermal Map of North America, first published in 2004.

The Google.org investment in updating that map will allow Blackwell to more thoroughly mark locations where potential exists for geothermal development.

Blackwell and Richards are convinced that oilfields may be some of the most overlooked sites for geothermal power production in the United States. SMU’s geothermal team is offering an energy solution that would boost capacity in low-producing oilfields by using the deep shafts drilled for petroleum products to also tap kilowatt-generating hot water and steam.

The process of pumping oil and gas to the surface frequently brings up a large amount of hot wastewater that the industry treats as a nuisance. Install a binary pump at the well head to capture that waste hot water, Blackwell says, and enough geothermal energy can be produced to run the well, mitigating production costs for low-volume wells. It can even make abandoned wells economically feasible again.

Taken a step further, surplus electricity generated from an oilfield full of geothermal pumps could be distributed to outside users at a profit. This kind of double dipping makes sense for short and long-term energy production, Richards says.

“This is an opportunity,” she says, “for the energy industry to think outside the box.” — Kim Cobb

Tags David Blackwell, Dedman College, Geothermal Map of North America, Maria Richards, SMU Geothermal Lab

Earth & Climate Fossils & Ruins

Ethiopian fossils to shed light on climate change

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date December 1, 2007

A team of researchers led by paleobotanist Bonnie Jacobs and sedimentologist Neil Tabor of Southern Methodist University returned to northwestern Ethiopia in late December 2007 to spend almost a month collecting additional plant fossils and gaining a more thorough understanding of their geological context.

In December 2006, the team collected more than 600 plant fossils, which are on loan for study in labs at SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College. All told, the team has documented more than 1,500 plant fossils, hundreds of vertebrate fossils and numerous examples of ancient soils. This year they widen their search to better understand the geology, landscape, plant and animal communities, and climate of Chilga, Ethiopia, 28 million years ago.

The project, which also is training Ethiopian students in geology and paleontology, is funded by a $300,000, three-year grant from the National Science Foundation.

In this second year of the grant period, the team will collect from a fruit and seed deposit — to compare with that collected last year — sample leaves to provide information about insect plant-eaters, and explore for new fossil sites, according to Jacobs, associate professor, and Tabor, assistant professor, both in the Department of Earth Sciences.

The 2007-2008 Ethiopia crew

The project is expected to help scientists understand the world’s changing climate, by knowing about that of the past based upon plant fossils and ancient soils.

Documenting past climate at low latitudes, including in Africa, helps researchers understand global climate change. In addition, the early origins of Africa’s flora are largely a mystery. What we know comes primarily from hypotheses generated by the modern distributions of plants rather than from the fossil record.

Angiosperms, “flowering plants,” make up nearly all living plants in today’s tropical, subtropical and temperate regions. In Africa, little is known about how they changed and adapted between their evolutionary origins 130 million years ago and recent times. Chilga fossils provide a unique view of the Earth’s plant life 28 million years ago, and fill a gap in understanding the evolution of today’s tropical floras.

The 2006 effort focused on, CH-3, which was known to produce both plant and vertebrate fossils. Until last year, only 92 plant specimens had been collected from CH-3 and these all came from the surface. These are usually bigger, less delicate specimens because they’ve been exposed to erosion and perhaps moved from their original position in the sediment.
Bonnie Jacobs, Neil Tabor and crew

The researchers excavated into the hillside at CH-3, exposing the fossiliferous deposit and, after only eight days, collected 523 specimens — mainly fruits and seeds. Their finds included some things never seen before at Chilga, such as several flowers, some very tiny seeds, and a large fruit, all of which are still being studied.

Besides Jacobs and Tabor, the 2007 team included: SMU students Dan Danehy and Harvey Herr; John Kappelman, University of Texas at Austin; and Ellen Currano, Penn State University.

Tags Bonnie F. Jacobs, Dan Danehy, Ellen Currano, Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Neil Tabor

Earth & Climate Technology

Wave research sorts earthquakes, blasts, nuclear testing

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date June 1, 2006

SMU seismologist Brian W. Stump has travelled far and wide to better understand the sound waves and vibrations that occasionally burp and shudder through and around the Earth.

The past several years, Stump, the Claude C. Albritton Jr. Chair in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College, has expanded his research to China and South Korea.

His scientific view also has broadened to include the role played by the atmosphere as well as the Earth in wave propagation, an area of expertise. And serving on the board of directors of the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, or IRIS, has transformed him into an advocate for the increasingly collaborative discipline.

Collaboration is one purpose of a joint U.S.-China research project, “Study of Regional Broadband waves from Earthquakes and Man-induced Events in NE China,” north of Beijing where Stump has focused research attention since 2002.

Sponsored by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, SMU researchers and those from the China Earthquake Administration’s Institute of Geophysics have deployed a network of 15 seismic instrument stations to record broadband waves radiating 100 to 1,000 kilometers from earthquakes and such man-induced events as mining explosions.

The study sites incorporate areas of frequent earthquake activity, including Haicheng, where the first successful earthquake prediction was made more than 30 years ago. As forecast, a magnitude 7.3 quake struck Haicheng February 4, 1975, whereupon 90 percent of all buildings there collapsed. But “as a result of the prediction and evacuations in the days preceding the event,” Stump recalled in a Dedman College Master Lecture delivered last year, “no lives were lost in a region of three million inhabitants.”

In late July the following year, however, without any warning a magnitude 7.8 quake hit Tangshan, a city southwest across the Gulf of Liaoning from Haicheng. Nearly 250,000 people died.

Brian W. Stump

“Earthquakes in that region aren’t understood very well,” says Stump, who earned his Ph.D. in geophysics from the University of California, Berkeley. That knowledge deficit has spurred project scientists to better understand the seismicity of that part of the world, with hazard reduction as one ultimate goal. More immediately, however, “the major emphasis is trying to understand the crust and mantle in this area,” he says.

Back to China
Stump returns to China in July for an American Geophysical Union conference in Beijing. Post doctoral fellow Rongmao Zhou will present a paper on the crust and upper mantle at each site. Stump identified Zhou, a 2004 SMU Ph.D. recipient from China, as “the key person” on the project. Zhou says he chose SMU over other universities because of Stump’s personality and reputation.

“He always is supportive of his students and colleagues,” Zhou says. “And he encourages us to explore new ideas and directions.” Although Stump and fellow SMU geophysics professors “make our geophysical program notable to the world,” Zhou says, it isn’t only with peers that Stump shares his enthusiasm.

Rongmao Zhou

Aileen Fisher served as Stump’s teaching assistant last fall for an introductory class, Earthquakes and Volcanoes.

“Even though the students were freshman and sophomore nonmajors, he made the class interesting and versatile,” Fisher says. “I know he spent at least two or three hours a week outside of class talking with some of these intro students who were just interested in the topic.”

Since 1999 another topic of interest to Stump and fellow SMU scientists has been a research project in South Korea, in which some experiments focused skyward. They followed sound waves through the atmosphere with acoustic gauges, as well as vibrations through the ground with seismometers.

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense and conducted jointly with the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources, the project follows the pioneering work of SMU’s Schuler-Foscue Professor of Geological Sciences Eugene Herrin in combining seismic and acoustic observations, Stump says.

“We call it seismo-acoustic analysis,” he says.

The South Korea project initially focused on locating and identifying industrial blasting events because Herrin had discovered that certain wave generators, including explosions and earthquakes, create not only seismic waves but also infrasound waves. Based on that discovery, Herrin was one of the first proponents of using seismo-acoustic analysis to identify mining explosions.

“Every country in the world uses mining explosions every day,” Stump says.

Eugene Herrin

Because blasts, a standard mining practice, are so prevalent, particularly as “small events below magnitude 4,” the ability to distinguish their wave characteristics from those of earthquakes is important, he adds. Equally important is the ability of seismologists to differentiate mining detonations from nuclear weapons tests.

Stump says that he knows of no weapons tests that have occurred since India detonated five underground nuclear explosions in May 1998, and Pakistan six. However, two seismic stations installed and operated by SMU continue in service to the International Monitoring System of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization in Vienna. One is in the Big Bend area of Texas and one in Nevada.

North Korea’s recent announcement to obtain and build nuclear weapons “makes understanding such a test event even more important,” Stump says.

“Certainly stating that they will develop the weapons and actually testing are two different things,” he says. “This difference drives the continuation of negotiations with the Koreans.”

New projects ahead
Stump, who in 2004 was honored with the yearlong Dedman Family Distinguished Professorship, joined SMU in 1983.

From 1994 to 1996 he assisted in the development of nuclear test-ban verification technology for the Department of Energy at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Stump also served as a Department of Energy technical adviser to the U.S. delegation to disarmament negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland.

That experience made it logical for the Seismological Society of America to tap Stump as one of two experts to convene special gatherings at a significant meeting in San Francisco in April.

Brian W. Stump

For the 100th Anniversary Earthquake Conference Commemorating the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Stump and William R. Walter of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory assembled studies and presenters for the “Nuclear Explosion Monitoring Anniversary Sessions.” The sessions took a retrospective look at nuclear monitoring seismology, the branch of science that came into being when seismographs detected the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico in July 1945.

Looking forward, Stump expresses excitement about EarthScope, a more than $200 million initiative to study North America’s crust and mantle as well as the processes that control its earthquakes and volcanoes.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, EarthScope brings together space, geoscience, telecommunications, and other specialists to compile a 3-D portrait below ground using seismometers, global positioning satellite receivers, satellite radar imagery, strain meters, and other collection and analysis instruments.

IRIS is a consortium of university and not-for-profit organizations committed to seismological research. Stump is a member of its board. The consortium manages the data sent in from a network of 100 fixed and 400 transportable EarthScope seismic stations.

“It’s only through collaboration and multiple participants that EarthScope is able to be accomplished,” Stump says. “The collaboration is improving the way seismology is being done. This is exciting because it changes the way my profession does business.”

Tags Brian Stump, Dedman College, Eugene Herrin, Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Rongmao Zhou