STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A year after Superstorm Sandy tore through New York and New Jersey, displacing tens of thousands of people and racking up billions in property damage, the Red Cross is still facing criticism for its relief efforts.
Many storm victims and their elected officials slammed the nation’s leading relief agency just after Sandy’s landfall last Oct. 29 for being too slow to get volunteers and supplies out to the hardest-hit areas. Now, nearly 200 Sandy survivors say the Red Cross is denying funds they were promised last year to help them fix their homes.
The 132-year-old agency had raised $308 million for Sandy relief as of last month, and a spokeswoman says it has spent 90 percent of it so far, most in direct donations to victims and community organizations. While that figure pales in comparison to the more than $60 billion in federal funds approved for Sandy relief, the Red Cross is by far the biggest nongovernment player in relief efforts and is where most people go to donate if they want to help after any disaster. Even President Barack Obama urged people to contribute to the Red Cross to help with Sandy recovery efforts, calling it the "best" option for those who want to help storm victims.
Click image above for: Portraits of Hurricane Sandy slideshow. (Photos by Gordon Donovan/Yahoo News)
But many of those affected by the storm said the Red Cross took too long to get volunteers, staff and supplies to the hardest hit areas. James Molinaro, president of the Staten Island borough of New York City, flatly said people shouldn’t donate to the agency if they wanted to help survivors . The agency countered that it hadn’t been able to pre-position supplies and other assistance before the storm made landfall since that would have put staff in danger, and Molinaro later praised the Red Cross for their relief work on the island.
Last summer, a different set of complaints surfaced from a watchdog organization called the Disaster Accountability Project. The group filed a complaint in July signed by more than 150 Sandy survivors with the New York attorney general’s office over the Red Cross’s Move-In Assistance Program. The group claims victims were told by Red Cross caseworkers that they had qualified to receive up to $10,000 to repair their homes, only to find out later they no longer qualified. The mix-up led to crushing disappointment and added financial hardship for those attempting to put their lives back together, the complaint argues.
A total of 185 people had signed onto the petition as of mid-October, and Disaster Accountability Project founder Ben Smilowitz says he believes hundreds more were also denied the help after initially being told they qualified. Some who signed the petition, told by Red Cross representatives that a check was in the mail, hired contractors or made other financial decisions before the funding was revoked, Smilowitz said.
A spokeswoman for the attorney general, Melissa Grace, said the office would not comment on the Red Cross complaint, which is still pending. Meanwhile, the Red Cross says that it never changed its requirements for the program, but last summer said that some caseworkers had been misinformed and may have given out the wrong information to applicants.
One such applicant is Denise Rinzivillo, 44, who is currently living in her car after she lost a court case against her landlord, who evicted her from her Staten Island home last month. Rinzivillo was told in April by a Red Cross caseworker that she qualified for up to $10,000 in assistance because the house she was renting appeared infested with mold. Rinzivillo said she needed money for a deposit and first month’s rent to move into a new apartment.
Rinzivillo and her family had stayed in the rented house during Sandy, watching the water rise up to the stairs as if they were in a fishbowl. They continued to live in a few rooms upstairs for months after that, unable to leave and find a new place to rent because Rinzivillo’s husband, a butcher, had lost his job. Rental prices also went up on the island after the storm, making things more difficult still.
“The Red Cross came to my house and interviewed me, and wouldn’t come into the house because they smelled the mold from outside,” Rinzivillo said. “They handed me the paperwork right there and then. They told me I’m entitled to it.”
She filled out the paperwork, but learned later the criteria had changed for the rental assistance. She was told that she had to have stayed at a hotel funded by FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to qualify. Rinzivillo said she felt punished for choosing to stay at her house rather than relying on government assistance.
“I mean it’s ridiculous that they make me go through all this paperwork, running around and getting all this stuff, just to deny me,” she said. “I can’t keep doing it.”
Rinzivillo stayed at a city-funded hotel after she was evicted, and then spent her remaining savings on the hotel room before she ran out of money and moved into her car. She had to send her three dogs to a shelter in Brooklyn, where she’s worried they will be euthanized.
“Thanks to the Red Cross, I’m homeless,” she said.
The agency says it reviewed Rinzivillo's case and let her and her case manager know that she was eligible for assistance if she provided documentation. "To our knowledge, to date, she has not provided that documentation," spokeswoman Anne Marie Borrego said.
The Red Cross also insists the agency’s eligibility requirements for the Move-In Assistance Program have always been the same: that a person’s primary home had to have been destroyed, and that they had to have been living in a government-provided hotel or received the FEMA maximum grant for their home after the storm.
Borrego said that the program provided $16 million to 3,000 households affected by Sandy. They expect to give out another $5 million in move-in assistance before the program is over.
“We are reviewing the names of those who signed the petition,” Borrego said. “If there were errors made, we’re going to correct them.”
Borrego said that the program’s guidelines are important to prevent people who don’t actually need help from getting aid.
“When folks were texting $10 to Hurricane Sandy victims, they wanted to be sure we were going to spend those dollars wisely,” she said. “A vast majority of those who are applying to us are well-meaning, but we do occasionally find examples of fraud.”
Out of $308 million the Red Cross raised from donations, $280 million has been committed or spent already.
The organization says it learned important lessons from Sandy that it hopes to use to improve next time.
“Responding to disasters in large urban areas provides really unique challenges,” Borrego said. “We need to pre-position more supplies inside urban areas like New York City to ensure they’re more mobile.”
The group is now putting dozens of mobile trailers around the city with bulk relief supplies like blankets, chargers and flashlights so that if another huge storm strikes, those necessities will already be there.
Sandy also drove home to the Red Cross just how extreme certain weather events can be. “We can have a hurricane followed by a snowstorm in a week,” Borrego said. “This is actually something that can happen.”
Update: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that the Red Cross has informed Rinzivillo that she is eligible for assistance and that James Molinaro praised the agency for its relief efforts a year after his initial criticism.
The newer, shinier, and freshly named iPad Air is finally here—and goddamn is it thin. But while super-skinny is nice and all, it doesn't necessarily make for a better device. So let's take a look at how the iPad Air compares to its toughest competition.
The federal government's beleaguered health care exchange site, HealthCare.gov, shares little in common with the e-commerce sites consumers use every day. On most e-commerce sites, prices are simple to find. Not so on HealthCare.gov. And that may be one of the reasons relatively few visitors to the site have actually enrolled.
Now, some suggested that in this era of eBay and Amazon, building an online health care marketplace just shouldn't have been this difficult.
Here's NPR technology correspondent Steve Henn.
STEVE HENN, BYLINE: Sina Djafari has built more than one successful online marketplace. He now builds software to make building new e-commerce sites even easier. And he says when you go to any website to buy something, you usually have just one or two simple questions you want answered before you click buy.
SINA DJAFARI: When I went to healthcare.gov for the first time, my only question I wanted answered was how much is this going to cost me? And I just really wanted that answer, you know, as soon as possible.
HENN: If that's the goal of healthcare.gov, Sina Djafari says it should have been designed to deliver an answer to that question as quickly and painlessly as possible.
DJAFARI: You want to actually encourage people to move as far along in the process as possible without requiring any information from them.
HENN: But before you can see how much your policy will cost, there are pages of forms to fill out. They're buggy. They crash. The reason for all this pain is that the price of insurance on the site will change depending on how much you make. The Affordable Care Act offers subsidies. It's the act's defining feature. So the website was designed to figure out what your subsidies could be as its very first step.
And to figure all that out, the sight requires all sorts of sensitive personal information. It requires passwords and protections and security questions. The Fed's built a brand-new IRS database that would look up tax returns to verify your income. And all of that has to happen flawlessly before you get any kind of answer to that basic question you came with: How much is this going to cost? Sina Djafari says it didn't have to be this way. Just think about how you shop for a mortgage. You can go to any one of a dozen websites and type in your income anonymously, then enter your best guess as to your current credit rating, and then type how much you want to borrow.
DJAFARI: You know, it's a marketplace system.
HENN: In fact, it's a pretty good analogy for the health care marketplace. You have a lot of different businesses offering products through one portal. But lenders on mortgage sites all agree to put off the tedious bits, like verifying your income until after you've had a chance to peruse the goods and make a decision. Still, this system works.
DJAFARI: If you don't put the right information in early on, you're wasting your time. So you might as well put in the most accurate information you can now so that when you get an answer, it's the right answer.
HENN: And in the mortgage industry - at least these days - everyone knows your income will actually be checked. In fact, the IRS offers income verification electronically to mortgage lenders. It's not instant, but it doesn't derail the process for applying a loan, either. Jeff Sutherland is CEO of Scrum Inc. He says problems like these should have been spotted long before the site went live.
JEFF SUTHERLAND: We should stop this in its tracks, reset it, fix it in the right way and probably get, you know, 99 percent of the people involved in this off the payroll, because all they did was screw it up.
HENN: Sutherland helped pioneer a software design philosophy that breaks big projects like healthcare.gov down into small, digestible tasks. But he says given how the site was developed and taken live with little testing, failure was almost inevitable. Steve Henn, NPR News, Silicon Valley.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
A little over two weeks after the folks in Cupertino released the gold master of the next desktop OS to developers, Apple has announced that OS X Mavericks will be available for download today at no additional cost. That's right, users running Snow Leopard and later will be able to nab the update ...
U.S. Ambassador to France Charles Rivkin (in red tie) leaves the Foreign Ministry in Paris after being summoned Monday following reports that the National Security Agency spied on French citizens.
Thibault Camus/AP
U.S. Ambassador to France Charles Rivkin (in red tie) leaves the Foreign Ministry in Paris after being summoned Monday following reports that the National Security Agency spied on French citizens.
Thibault Camus/AP
The fallout from revelations about the National Security Agency's spying activities continues: A key European Parliament committee approved new rules strengthening online privacy and outlawing the kind of surveillance the U.S. has been conducting.
NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson says the legislation could also have significant implications for U.S. Internet companies. Here's what she told our Newscast unit:
"If approved by the full parliament, the new rules will become the first joint protection law for Europe's 500 million citizens. It would replace outdated rules by individual countries that carried only tiny fines for violators.
"Under the new law, users would be able to ask companies to erase their personal data and limit user profiling. Companies that violate the new law would be fined up to 5 percent of their annual revenue, which could amount to billions of dollars.
"U.S. tech companies would no longer hand over to U.S. authorities private data of their European customers as they did to the NSA. Leaks about that surveillance have damaged relations between the Obama administration and European governments."
The panel's move came the same day Le Monde reported that the NSA monitored 70.3 million French phone records during a 30-day period. The report prompted outrage in France. Here's a tweet from the French Foreign Ministry:
But the NSA's activities have sparked outrage in other parts of the world, too. Here's a summary:
Indeed, NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked the agency's operations, said it's likely some EU leaders knew about the NSA's operations. He added that Germany's foreign intelligence agency is "in bed" with the NSA.
Mexico
Der Speigelreported this week that the NSA had accessed an Internet domain linked to former Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his Cabinet. The agency also read current President Enrique Pena Nieto's emails before his election.
In a statement, the country's Foreign Ministry said: "This practice is unacceptable, illegal and contrary to Mexican and international law."
NPR's Carrie Kahn reported on the outrage when the revelations about spying on then-presidential candidate Pena Nieto became public. She said:
"Jorge Castaneda, who was Mexico's foreign minister from 2000 to 2003, said there were always suspicions that the U.S. was listening in on government conversations. He says if the accusations are true, then Mexico must find out if they inadvertently gave the U.S. easier access to all Mexican sources through their intelligence sharing in the fight against narcotrafficking."
Brazil
Brazilian President Dilma Roussef postponed her trip to Washington to meet with President Obama after it was reported that the NSA had spied on her, her top aides and Brazil's state-owned oil company.
She then went to the U.N. to deliver a broadside against U.S. spying and called for civilian oversight of the Web to ensure the protection of data.
The Brazilian reaction was perhaps the strongest from a country targeted by the NSA. As NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro reported:
"There's a couple of reasons for this. First off, issues of sovereignty. Brazil takes this extremely seriously. Brazil has a massive economy, a growing political clout on the world stage, aspirations, for example, for a seat at the U.N. Security Council.
"And you also have to remember the U.S.'s long history in the region of bloody intervention. And so, any act of perceived American overstepping is taken very seriously."
(The Washington Post has a list of 29 countries where news reports say the NSA allegedly carried out spying activities. It's worth a read.)
'Safe To Say They Are Angry'
While the official responses to the revelations have varied, as NPR's Tom Gjelten noted, "it is safe to say [people overseas] are angry.
"While Americans are protected against illegal searches under the Fourth Amendment, foreigners have no such protections from NSA snooping. NSA officials say they do not monitor foreign communications without an "intelligence purpose," but there is no court to oversee the surveillance activity.
"Edward Snowden's revelations of NSA surveillance were so appreciated in Europe that he was nominated for a human rights prize at the European Parliament."
In a previous report, Tom noted that the proposed redesign of Internet architecture following the revelations of spying could have one unforeseen consequence: It may actually lead to more online surveillance.
US drone attacks in Pakistan have killed at least 29 noncombatants since 2012 – deaths that could be categorized as war crimes, Amnesty International said today in a report released just a day before Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is set to meet with President Obama.
The report, “‘Will I be Next?’ US Drone Strikes in Pakistan” was released by Amnesty International in conjunction with a separate report by New York-based Human Rights Watch on US drone attacks in Yemen. The Amnesty report analyzed 45 publicly known drone attacks in the most commonly targeted region of Pakistan where the Taliban has been particularly active, North Waziristan, between January 2012 and August 2013.
The timing of the report's release puts perhaps the most sensitive issue in US-Pakistan relations in the spotlight as the two leaders meet.
President Obama publicly acknowledged a drone program in Pakistan in January 2012, and promised greater transparency in May 2013. “There must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured,” Obama said, noting that civilian deaths from drone strikes would haunt him and others involved in the administration’s hierarchy “as long as we live.”
Amnesty wrote in its report release that despite this, the US “still refuses to divulge even basic factual and legal information” on its drone program, which means little opportunity for victims’ families to press for compensation or take legal action.
“Secrecy surrounding the drones program gives the US administration a license to kill beyond the reach of the courts or basic standards of international law,” said Mustafa Qadri, author of the report.
“The tragedy is that drone aircraft deployed by the USA over Pakistan now instill the same kind of fear in the people of the tribal areas that was once associated only with Al Qaeda and the Taliban,” said Mr. Qadri.
According to Reuters, the Pakistani Taliban largely controls North Waziristan, in northwestern Pakistan, offering “safe havens to Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban who are fighting NATO troops across the border.”
The United States has carried out 376 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, the [London based] Bureau of Investigative Journalism says, with the death toll put at between 2,525 and 3,613. Local media reported that up to 926 of the dead were civilians.
Most of the time, the dead are militants although their rank is often unclear, residents, militants and Pakistani security sources have told Reuters. Government officials frequently say militant groups have killed 40,000 Pakistanis since 2001.
In the first publicized drone attack since Obama’s May speech, the Pakistani Taliban’s second in command, Wali-ur-Rehman, was killed in a strike along with at least five others.
"This is a huge blow to militants and a win in the fight against insurgents," one security official told Reuters at the time.
The Pakistani government has long condemned drone strikes, often citing civilian casualties, as well as territorial integrity and Pakistani sovereignty. Obama is set to meet Sharif at the White House tomorrow, and on Friday the United Nations is set to debate drones and transparency.
In its report, Amnesty found that US drones killed a grandmother, Mamana Bibi, in October 2012 while she was picking vegetables near her grandchildren. Another strike in July that same year killed 18 laborers near the Afghan border as they sat down to eat dinner. A subsequent missile strike killed many of those who came to the rescue of the first victims.
A big challenge in tallying civilian deaths is the difficulty of saying with certainty whether or not a military-aged victim of a strike is part of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or another extremist group, the report authors acknowledge. However, family and friends often insist their loved ones “had no connection to extremists,” reports the Los Angeles Times.
“American intelligence officials and their congressional overseers argue that in almost all cases the strikes have hit legitimate targets. Sorting out the truth in individual cases is often impossible,” the LA Times reports.
According to The New York Times, in communities often targeted by drones – for example, the northwest Pakistani town of Miram Shah, which has been hit 13 times since 2008 – the psychological stress has been palpable.
While the strike rate has dropped drastically in recent months, the constant presence of circling drones — and accompanying tension over when, or whom, they will strike — is a crushing psychological burden for many residents [of Miram Shah].
Sales of sleeping tablets, antidepressants and medicine to treat anxiety have soared, said Hajji Gulab Jan Dawar, a pharmacist in the town bazaar. Women were particularly troubled, he said, but men also experienced problems…. ...
In the aftermath of drone strikes, things get worse. Many civilians hide at home, fearing masked vigilantes with the Ittehad-e-Mujahedeen Khorasan, a militant enforcement unit that hunts for American spies. The unit casts a wide net, and the suspects it hauls in are usually tortured and summarily executed.
Glacial buzz-saws, gold in fool's gold, fingerprints in sea water, and fluvial iron
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
18-Oct-2013
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Contact: Kea Giles kgiles@geosociety.org Geological Society of America
New Geology articles posted online ahead of print 16 October 2013
Boulder, Colo., USA New article postings for Geology cover glacial erosion and glacial slip; the work of marine organisms in changing the face of Earth; collisional shortening in the Central Alps; changes in sediment transport in Taiwan after typhoon Morakot in 2009; a new type of iron formation, dubbed "fluvial iron formation"; kimberlites in South Africa; using fossil marine plankton records in 70-million-year-old sediments as indicators of sea ice formation and retreat; and Greenland Ice Sheet behavior.
Highlights are provided below. GEOLOGY articles published ahead of print can be accessed online at http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/early/recent. All abstracts are open-access at http://geology.gsapubs.org/; representatives of the media may obtain complimentary GEOLOGY articles by contacting Kea Giles at the address above.
Please discuss articles of interest with the authors before publishing stories on their work, and please make reference to GEOLOGY in articles published. Contact Kea Giles for additional information or assistance.
Non-media requests for articles may be directed to GSA Sales and Service, gsaservice@geosociety.org.
Selective glacial erosion on the Norwegian passive margin
Adrian M. Hall et al., School of Geography and GeoSciences, University of St Andrews, Irvine Building, North Street, St Andrews KY16 9AL, Fife, Scotland, UK; amh22@st-andrews.ac.uk. Co-authors: Karin Ebert, Johan Kleman, Atle Nesje, and Dag Ottesen. Posted online ahead of print on 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34806.1.
Glaciers cut down and cut deep, carving deep valleys in mountains. This efficient erosion -- the glacial buzz-saw -- operates best at the snowline where glaciers are thickest and fastest moving. But can glaciers also cut horizontally to create low angle surfaces or plateaus? That's what has been claimed recently to have happened during the Ice Age on the west coast of Norway. We provide evidence that the plateaus have been cut into by and so are older than cirques and valley glaciers. We also find no relationship to cirque distribution or to Pleistocene snowlines. The gentle, high elevation surfaces of this and other glaciated passive margins are largely inherited from Neogene non-glacial, fluvial environments. Yet Pleistocene glacial erosion has done far In Norway than to cut its magnificent fjords -- many hundreds of meters of soft rocks must have been removed from the coastal and inshore zone to account for the huge sediment volumes offshore.
Does gold in orogenic deposits come from pyrite in deeply buried carbon-rich sediments?: Insight from volatiles in fluid inclusions
Damien Gaboury, Laboratoire de Mtallognie Exprimentale et Quantitative (LAMEQ), Universit du Qubec Chicoutimi (UQAC), 555 Boulevard de l'Universit, Chicoutimi, Qubec G7H 2B1, Canada; dgaboury@uqac.ca. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34788.1
Orogenic gold deposits form an important class of hydrothermal deposits distributed in metamorphic volcano-sedimentary belts worldwide. It is accepted that gold-bearing fluids are generated by metamorphic dehydration reactions at depth (about 5 to 12 km) following mountain building during tectonic collisional events. However, the source of gold remains speculative and because of that, key criteria for selecting favorable areas for exploration is lacking. Recently, it was proposed that gold in primary nodular pyrite hosted in organic matter-rich shale was the source. Results presented here by Damien Gaboury provide an independent validation of this model. It was postulated that if gold-bearing fluids are derived from organic-rich material, fluids involved in the formation of gold deposits should contain some hydrocarbon species. Fluid inclusions are microscopic bubbles of trapped fluids in minerals. Fluid inclusions from selected deposits around the world were analyzed for volatile composition by solid-probe mass spectrometry following a unique technique developed by the author. It is demonstrated that ethane (C2H6) is sourced from thermally degraded organic matter, hence providing a reliable tracer. The C2H6 content is recorded in fluids from Meso-Archean to Cretaceous gold deposits, providing support for a general model where fluids and gold were sourced from deeply buried, carbon-rich, and pyrite-gold-bearing sedimentary rocks.
Tectonic forcing of Early to Middle Jurassic seawater Sr/Ca
Clemens V. Ullmann et al., University of Copenhagen, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, and Nordic Center for Earth Evolution (NordCEE), ster Voldgade 10, 1350 Copenhagen-K, Denmark; c.v.ullmann@gmx.net. Co-authors: Stephen P. Hesselbo, and Christoph Korte. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34817.1.
Earth's surface changes slowly, because of plate tectonic processes, long-term changes in climate, and even due to the activities of living organisms. On timescales of millions of years, these acting forces leave specific fingerprints in the chemical composition of seawater. Marine organisms record information about seawater composition in their shells. Fossil shell remains of such organisms can be used to estimate the variations of seawater composition through time and to evaluate the acting forces, leading to the observed variability. Around the Triassic-Jurassic transition (~201 million years ago), fundamental changes in the plate tectonic setting commenced and one of the most severe mass extinction events known from the geologic record occurred. The evolving seawater composition during ~37 million years after this important transition was tracked here by measuring the concentration and isotopic composition of strontium in the shells of oyster-like bivalves and belemnites -- extinct, marine predators. The observed patterns are attributed to an overall decreasing importance of strontium from weathering continental rocks with respect to strontium derived from Earth's mantle at the Mid Ocean Ridges. A major impact on seawater composition, related to the changing and recovering ecosystems, and the spreading of calcite producing nannoplankton, however, is not indicated.
Three-dimensional insight into Central-Alpine collision: Lower-plate or upper-plate indentation?
Claudio L. Rosenberg, UPMC University of Paris 6, ISTEP, F-75005, Paris, France; claudio.rosenberg@upmc.fr. Co-author: Eduard Kissling. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34584.1.
Accommodation of collisional shortening in the Central Alps varies dramatically along strike. In the western Central Alps, 90% of shortening is accommodated in the thickened lower plate. In the eastern Central Alps, 90% of shortening is accommodated in the upper plate. In the central part of the Central Alps shortening is almost equally partitioned between the two plates. Whereas the upper plate indents into the thickened accreted lower plate in the Simplon section, it is the lower plate that indents an intensely deforming upper plate in the Engadine section. In the west, the Ivrea mantle body increases the strength of the Adriatic upper plate and Barrovian metamorphism weakens the lower plate. Therefore, along-strike transfer of shortening from one plate to the other appears to be a manifestation of along-strike changes of rheology deep in the crust.
Altered regional sediment transport regime after a large typhoon, southern Taiwan
Michelle Y.-F. Huang, Research Center for Environmental Changes, Academia Sinica, Taipei 115, Taiwan; michelleyfhuang@gmail.com; ae2612@hotmail.com. Co-author: David R. Montgomery, Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-1310, USA. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34826.1.
Analyses of river-suspended sediment response to record-breaking regional rainfall in southern Taiwan during typhoon Morakot, 7-9 August 2009, reveal systematic changes in the regional sediment transport regime as characterized by rating curve parameters. These changes result in much greater sediment concentration, and thus sediment transport, in subsequent low-flow events after the typhoon, an effect that amplifies and extends the influence of such extreme events through increased low-flow sediment transport. Findings by Michelle Huang and David Montgomery show that the rating curve exponent is not constant contrasts with the conventional assumption that large events influence sediment yields through increased intercept values, thereby supporting the interpretation that basin sediment delivery influences both rating parameters, and increases post-event low-flow sediment transport. Surveys of landslide density and riverbed grain sizes before and after typhoon Morakot support the interpretation that the observed changes reflect an altered sediment transport regime and a shift from channel migration and bank erosion to reworking of landslide debris and enhanced bed mobility as the dominant processes supplying fluvial sediment.
Late Cretaceous winter sea ice in Antarctica?
Vanessa C. Bowman et al., School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK; v.c.bowman@leeds.ac.uk or vcbowman@gmail.com. Co-authors: Jane E. Francis, and James B. Riding. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34891.1.
Scientists have found evidence of sea ice at a time in the geological past when forests covered Antarctica and the climate was thought to be very warm. Geologists from the University of Leeds, UK, and the British Geological Survey, supported by the British Antarctic Survey, undertook fieldwork and laboratory analysis over a period of four years. They interpreted the record of fossil marine plankton in Cretaceous sediments (70 million years ago) as indicators of sea ice formation and retreat. This implies that ice sheets may have existed on Antarctica under a high CO2 climate. These results help us reconstruct the history of the Antarctic ice sheet in order to understand how the ice sheet is responding to climate warming today and how it may behave in the future.
A re-evaluation of the Pleistocene behavior of the Scoresby Sund sector of the Greenland Ice Sheet
Jan Sverre Laberg et al., Department of Geology, University of Troms, N-9037 Troms, Norway; jan.laberg@uit.no. Co-authors: Matthias Forwick, Katrine Husum, and Tove Nielsen. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34784.1.
The Greenland Ice Sheet is the largest ice sheet outside of Antarctica. The amount of water stored equals seven meters of global sea-level rise so that the future behavior of the ice sheet is of global concern. However, limited data on the past dynamics of the Ice Sheet exceeding the ice-core records have led to partly contradictory reconstructions. Whereas the Scoresby Sund sector of the Greenland Ice Sheet has been suggested to be stable and not much larger than at present during the peak Pleistocene glaciations, the southeastern sector of the Ice Sheet has been inferred to be much more dynamic. Jan Sverre Laberg, Matthias Forwick, Katrine Husum, and Tove Nielsen present seismic data showing that glaciogenic debris-flow deposits dominate the earlier than ca. 2.58 Ma succession of the Scoresby Sund Trough Mouth Fan on the East Greenland continental margin, suggesting much more frequent expansions of the Greenland Ice Sheet to the shelf break than found previously. This rapid response of the glacier to climate forcing indicates how dynamic is the glacier ice front and what one might expect of the glacier as the influences of climate warming become more pronounced.
Riverine mixing and fluvial iron formation: A new type of Precambrian biochemical sediment
Peir K. Pufahl et al., Department of Earth and Environmental Science, Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia B4P 2R6, Canada; peir.pufahl@acadiau.ca. Co-authors: Franco Pirajno, and Eric E. Hiatt. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34812.1.
The deposition of Precambrian iron formation is perhaps one of the least understood phenomena in the Earth sciences. This iron-rich sedimentary rock precipitated in some way from seawater and therefore holds important clues about the composition of the early oceans and atmosphere as well as the evolution of life. For example, the appearance of large, economically important iron formations reflects photosynthetic oxygenation of the oceans and atmosphere approximately 2.5 billion-years-ago. In this paper, Peir Pufahl, with Franco Pirajno and Eric Hiatt, introduce a new type of iron formation, fluvial iron formation, which formed by mixing river discharge and seawater in coastal environments. Their results are significant because it shifts the locus of known iron formation precipitation processes into estuarine settings, providing a new window for understanding ocean-atmosphere development on the early Earth.
Kimberlite (U-Th)/He dating links surface erosion with lithospheric heating, thinning, and metasomatism in the southern African Plateau
Jessica R. Stanley et al., Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA; jessica.stanley@colorado.edu. Co-authors: Rebecca M. Flowers, and David R. Bell. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34797.1.
Documenting the response at Earth's surface to processes at depth is a central challenge in continental tectonics. Kimberlites are ultramafic magmas derived from a depth greater than 150 km, famous for bringing diamonds to the surface, as well as other information about the state of the lithosphere in the form of mantle xenoliths. Though less well studied, kimberlites also contain xenoliths from sedimentary units present at the time of eruption, which may have since eroded away. In this study, Jessica Stanley, Rebecca Flowers, and David Bell combine constraints from sedimentary xenoliths with cooling histories derived from apatite (U-Th)/He dating of kimberlites to constrain 1-2 km of Mesozoic erosion across the interior of South Africa. This erosion pulse is contemporaneous with heating, thinning, and metasomatism of the lithosphere below documented in the mantle xenoliths from these same pipes. Thus, the data presented here appear to record the surface response to active processes in the mantle.
Glacier slip and seismicity induced by surface melt
Peter L. Moore et al., Department of Geological and Atmospheric Science, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA; pmoore@iastate.edu. Co-authors: J. Paul Winberry, Neal R. Iverson, Knut A. Christianson, Sridhar Anandakrishnan, Miriam Jackson, Mark E. Mathison, and Denis Cohen. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34760.1.
Peter Moore and colleagues installed instruments for measuring seismic activity, sliding, and stress at the bottom of Engabreen, a glacier in northern Norway where a hydro-power facility allows human access to the glacier bed. The instruments measured pronounced glacier response to meltwater input during the onset of summer melt in May 2010 and 2011. This paper documents three separate episodes in which surface melt or precipitation introduced a pulse of water to the glacier bed and our instruments measured the glacier's response. The added water briefly enhanced glacier sliding as it pressurized cavities between the ice and underlying bedrock, locally lifting the ice. Enhanced sliding ceased, however, when the increased cavity size and connectivity allowed the water to be evacuated from the cavities more efficiently -- a few hours in each case. During each of these events, broadband seismometers in the tunnels a few meters below the glacier bed detected tilt, interpreted as a slight deformation of the rock as water pressurized basal cavities. Though measurements also suggest that enhanced sliding at the bed exploited a frictional interface, no seismic activity directly associated with this slip could be resolved.
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Glacial buzz-saws, gold in fool's gold, fingerprints in sea water, and fluvial iron
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
18-Oct-2013
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Contact: Kea Giles kgiles@geosociety.org Geological Society of America
New Geology articles posted online ahead of print 16 October 2013
Boulder, Colo., USA New article postings for Geology cover glacial erosion and glacial slip; the work of marine organisms in changing the face of Earth; collisional shortening in the Central Alps; changes in sediment transport in Taiwan after typhoon Morakot in 2009; a new type of iron formation, dubbed "fluvial iron formation"; kimberlites in South Africa; using fossil marine plankton records in 70-million-year-old sediments as indicators of sea ice formation and retreat; and Greenland Ice Sheet behavior.
Highlights are provided below. GEOLOGY articles published ahead of print can be accessed online at http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/early/recent. All abstracts are open-access at http://geology.gsapubs.org/; representatives of the media may obtain complimentary GEOLOGY articles by contacting Kea Giles at the address above.
Please discuss articles of interest with the authors before publishing stories on their work, and please make reference to GEOLOGY in articles published. Contact Kea Giles for additional information or assistance.
Non-media requests for articles may be directed to GSA Sales and Service, gsaservice@geosociety.org.
Selective glacial erosion on the Norwegian passive margin
Adrian M. Hall et al., School of Geography and GeoSciences, University of St Andrews, Irvine Building, North Street, St Andrews KY16 9AL, Fife, Scotland, UK; amh22@st-andrews.ac.uk. Co-authors: Karin Ebert, Johan Kleman, Atle Nesje, and Dag Ottesen. Posted online ahead of print on 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34806.1.
Glaciers cut down and cut deep, carving deep valleys in mountains. This efficient erosion -- the glacial buzz-saw -- operates best at the snowline where glaciers are thickest and fastest moving. But can glaciers also cut horizontally to create low angle surfaces or plateaus? That's what has been claimed recently to have happened during the Ice Age on the west coast of Norway. We provide evidence that the plateaus have been cut into by and so are older than cirques and valley glaciers. We also find no relationship to cirque distribution or to Pleistocene snowlines. The gentle, high elevation surfaces of this and other glaciated passive margins are largely inherited from Neogene non-glacial, fluvial environments. Yet Pleistocene glacial erosion has done far In Norway than to cut its magnificent fjords -- many hundreds of meters of soft rocks must have been removed from the coastal and inshore zone to account for the huge sediment volumes offshore.
Does gold in orogenic deposits come from pyrite in deeply buried carbon-rich sediments?: Insight from volatiles in fluid inclusions
Damien Gaboury, Laboratoire de Mtallognie Exprimentale et Quantitative (LAMEQ), Universit du Qubec Chicoutimi (UQAC), 555 Boulevard de l'Universit, Chicoutimi, Qubec G7H 2B1, Canada; dgaboury@uqac.ca. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34788.1
Orogenic gold deposits form an important class of hydrothermal deposits distributed in metamorphic volcano-sedimentary belts worldwide. It is accepted that gold-bearing fluids are generated by metamorphic dehydration reactions at depth (about 5 to 12 km) following mountain building during tectonic collisional events. However, the source of gold remains speculative and because of that, key criteria for selecting favorable areas for exploration is lacking. Recently, it was proposed that gold in primary nodular pyrite hosted in organic matter-rich shale was the source. Results presented here by Damien Gaboury provide an independent validation of this model. It was postulated that if gold-bearing fluids are derived from organic-rich material, fluids involved in the formation of gold deposits should contain some hydrocarbon species. Fluid inclusions are microscopic bubbles of trapped fluids in minerals. Fluid inclusions from selected deposits around the world were analyzed for volatile composition by solid-probe mass spectrometry following a unique technique developed by the author. It is demonstrated that ethane (C2H6) is sourced from thermally degraded organic matter, hence providing a reliable tracer. The C2H6 content is recorded in fluids from Meso-Archean to Cretaceous gold deposits, providing support for a general model where fluids and gold were sourced from deeply buried, carbon-rich, and pyrite-gold-bearing sedimentary rocks.
Tectonic forcing of Early to Middle Jurassic seawater Sr/Ca
Clemens V. Ullmann et al., University of Copenhagen, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, and Nordic Center for Earth Evolution (NordCEE), ster Voldgade 10, 1350 Copenhagen-K, Denmark; c.v.ullmann@gmx.net. Co-authors: Stephen P. Hesselbo, and Christoph Korte. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34817.1.
Earth's surface changes slowly, because of plate tectonic processes, long-term changes in climate, and even due to the activities of living organisms. On timescales of millions of years, these acting forces leave specific fingerprints in the chemical composition of seawater. Marine organisms record information about seawater composition in their shells. Fossil shell remains of such organisms can be used to estimate the variations of seawater composition through time and to evaluate the acting forces, leading to the observed variability. Around the Triassic-Jurassic transition (~201 million years ago), fundamental changes in the plate tectonic setting commenced and one of the most severe mass extinction events known from the geologic record occurred. The evolving seawater composition during ~37 million years after this important transition was tracked here by measuring the concentration and isotopic composition of strontium in the shells of oyster-like bivalves and belemnites -- extinct, marine predators. The observed patterns are attributed to an overall decreasing importance of strontium from weathering continental rocks with respect to strontium derived from Earth's mantle at the Mid Ocean Ridges. A major impact on seawater composition, related to the changing and recovering ecosystems, and the spreading of calcite producing nannoplankton, however, is not indicated.
Three-dimensional insight into Central-Alpine collision: Lower-plate or upper-plate indentation?
Claudio L. Rosenberg, UPMC University of Paris 6, ISTEP, F-75005, Paris, France; claudio.rosenberg@upmc.fr. Co-author: Eduard Kissling. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34584.1.
Accommodation of collisional shortening in the Central Alps varies dramatically along strike. In the western Central Alps, 90% of shortening is accommodated in the thickened lower plate. In the eastern Central Alps, 90% of shortening is accommodated in the upper plate. In the central part of the Central Alps shortening is almost equally partitioned between the two plates. Whereas the upper plate indents into the thickened accreted lower plate in the Simplon section, it is the lower plate that indents an intensely deforming upper plate in the Engadine section. In the west, the Ivrea mantle body increases the strength of the Adriatic upper plate and Barrovian metamorphism weakens the lower plate. Therefore, along-strike transfer of shortening from one plate to the other appears to be a manifestation of along-strike changes of rheology deep in the crust.
Altered regional sediment transport regime after a large typhoon, southern Taiwan
Michelle Y.-F. Huang, Research Center for Environmental Changes, Academia Sinica, Taipei 115, Taiwan; michelleyfhuang@gmail.com; ae2612@hotmail.com. Co-author: David R. Montgomery, Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-1310, USA. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34826.1.
Analyses of river-suspended sediment response to record-breaking regional rainfall in southern Taiwan during typhoon Morakot, 7-9 August 2009, reveal systematic changes in the regional sediment transport regime as characterized by rating curve parameters. These changes result in much greater sediment concentration, and thus sediment transport, in subsequent low-flow events after the typhoon, an effect that amplifies and extends the influence of such extreme events through increased low-flow sediment transport. Findings by Michelle Huang and David Montgomery show that the rating curve exponent is not constant contrasts with the conventional assumption that large events influence sediment yields through increased intercept values, thereby supporting the interpretation that basin sediment delivery influences both rating parameters, and increases post-event low-flow sediment transport. Surveys of landslide density and riverbed grain sizes before and after typhoon Morakot support the interpretation that the observed changes reflect an altered sediment transport regime and a shift from channel migration and bank erosion to reworking of landslide debris and enhanced bed mobility as the dominant processes supplying fluvial sediment.
Late Cretaceous winter sea ice in Antarctica?
Vanessa C. Bowman et al., School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK; v.c.bowman@leeds.ac.uk or vcbowman@gmail.com. Co-authors: Jane E. Francis, and James B. Riding. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34891.1.
Scientists have found evidence of sea ice at a time in the geological past when forests covered Antarctica and the climate was thought to be very warm. Geologists from the University of Leeds, UK, and the British Geological Survey, supported by the British Antarctic Survey, undertook fieldwork and laboratory analysis over a period of four years. They interpreted the record of fossil marine plankton in Cretaceous sediments (70 million years ago) as indicators of sea ice formation and retreat. This implies that ice sheets may have existed on Antarctica under a high CO2 climate. These results help us reconstruct the history of the Antarctic ice sheet in order to understand how the ice sheet is responding to climate warming today and how it may behave in the future.
A re-evaluation of the Pleistocene behavior of the Scoresby Sund sector of the Greenland Ice Sheet
Jan Sverre Laberg et al., Department of Geology, University of Troms, N-9037 Troms, Norway; jan.laberg@uit.no. Co-authors: Matthias Forwick, Katrine Husum, and Tove Nielsen. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34784.1.
The Greenland Ice Sheet is the largest ice sheet outside of Antarctica. The amount of water stored equals seven meters of global sea-level rise so that the future behavior of the ice sheet is of global concern. However, limited data on the past dynamics of the Ice Sheet exceeding the ice-core records have led to partly contradictory reconstructions. Whereas the Scoresby Sund sector of the Greenland Ice Sheet has been suggested to be stable and not much larger than at present during the peak Pleistocene glaciations, the southeastern sector of the Ice Sheet has been inferred to be much more dynamic. Jan Sverre Laberg, Matthias Forwick, Katrine Husum, and Tove Nielsen present seismic data showing that glaciogenic debris-flow deposits dominate the earlier than ca. 2.58 Ma succession of the Scoresby Sund Trough Mouth Fan on the East Greenland continental margin, suggesting much more frequent expansions of the Greenland Ice Sheet to the shelf break than found previously. This rapid response of the glacier to climate forcing indicates how dynamic is the glacier ice front and what one might expect of the glacier as the influences of climate warming become more pronounced.
Riverine mixing and fluvial iron formation: A new type of Precambrian biochemical sediment
Peir K. Pufahl et al., Department of Earth and Environmental Science, Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia B4P 2R6, Canada; peir.pufahl@acadiau.ca. Co-authors: Franco Pirajno, and Eric E. Hiatt. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34812.1.
The deposition of Precambrian iron formation is perhaps one of the least understood phenomena in the Earth sciences. This iron-rich sedimentary rock precipitated in some way from seawater and therefore holds important clues about the composition of the early oceans and atmosphere as well as the evolution of life. For example, the appearance of large, economically important iron formations reflects photosynthetic oxygenation of the oceans and atmosphere approximately 2.5 billion-years-ago. In this paper, Peir Pufahl, with Franco Pirajno and Eric Hiatt, introduce a new type of iron formation, fluvial iron formation, which formed by mixing river discharge and seawater in coastal environments. Their results are significant because it shifts the locus of known iron formation precipitation processes into estuarine settings, providing a new window for understanding ocean-atmosphere development on the early Earth.
Kimberlite (U-Th)/He dating links surface erosion with lithospheric heating, thinning, and metasomatism in the southern African Plateau
Jessica R. Stanley et al., Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA; jessica.stanley@colorado.edu. Co-authors: Rebecca M. Flowers, and David R. Bell. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34797.1.
Documenting the response at Earth's surface to processes at depth is a central challenge in continental tectonics. Kimberlites are ultramafic magmas derived from a depth greater than 150 km, famous for bringing diamonds to the surface, as well as other information about the state of the lithosphere in the form of mantle xenoliths. Though less well studied, kimberlites also contain xenoliths from sedimentary units present at the time of eruption, which may have since eroded away. In this study, Jessica Stanley, Rebecca Flowers, and David Bell combine constraints from sedimentary xenoliths with cooling histories derived from apatite (U-Th)/He dating of kimberlites to constrain 1-2 km of Mesozoic erosion across the interior of South Africa. This erosion pulse is contemporaneous with heating, thinning, and metasomatism of the lithosphere below documented in the mantle xenoliths from these same pipes. Thus, the data presented here appear to record the surface response to active processes in the mantle.
Glacier slip and seismicity induced by surface melt
Peter L. Moore et al., Department of Geological and Atmospheric Science, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA; pmoore@iastate.edu. Co-authors: J. Paul Winberry, Neal R. Iverson, Knut A. Christianson, Sridhar Anandakrishnan, Miriam Jackson, Mark E. Mathison, and Denis Cohen. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34760.1.
Peter Moore and colleagues installed instruments for measuring seismic activity, sliding, and stress at the bottom of Engabreen, a glacier in northern Norway where a hydro-power facility allows human access to the glacier bed. The instruments measured pronounced glacier response to meltwater input during the onset of summer melt in May 2010 and 2011. This paper documents three separate episodes in which surface melt or precipitation introduced a pulse of water to the glacier bed and our instruments measured the glacier's response. The added water briefly enhanced glacier sliding as it pressurized cavities between the ice and underlying bedrock, locally lifting the ice. Enhanced sliding ceased, however, when the increased cavity size and connectivity allowed the water to be evacuated from the cavities more efficiently -- a few hours in each case. During each of these events, broadband seismometers in the tunnels a few meters below the glacier bed detected tilt, interpreted as a slight deformation of the rock as water pressurized basal cavities. Though measurements also suggest that enhanced sliding at the bed exploited a frictional interface, no seismic activity directly associated with this slip could be resolved.
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