Ron's Log: March 2021 Archives

« February 2021 | Main | April 2021 »

March 31, 2021

Four In Houston

Houston City Hall (1)
On the right, Houston City Hall; on the left, Heritage Plaza.

Downtown Houston at Night (1)
Downtown Houston at night.

Niels Esperson Building reflected in 801 Travis in Houston.

Tranquillity Park (5)
A fountain in Tranquillity Park, Houston.

Filed under Architecture,Photography | permalink | March 31, 2021 at 06:26 PM | Comments (0)

March 28, 2021

Four In Boston

Boston's Back Bay Viewed From A Beacon Street Penthouse (1)
The view from a Beacon Street penthouse, Kodachrome, 1989.

Wilted Cactus Flower (1)
Wilting cactus bloom on my windowsill in Boston, Agfa Scala, sometime in the 1990s. This cactus survived the move to California and is now THRIVING in my back yard.

Blanchard's (2)
Blanchard's Liquors in Allston, Agfa Scala, also sometime in the 1990s.

Looking West (Upstream) From The BU Bridge
Nighttime view of Allston and the Charles River upstream from the BU Bridge, Agfa Scala, 1990s.

Filed under Photography | permalink | March 28, 2021 at 05:54 PM | Comments (0)

Georgia

Filed under Politics | permalink | March 28, 2021 at 01:24 PM | Comments (0)

Wolf OR-93 Reaches Fresno

Farther south than any wolf in "modern times," they say, and along the way he managed to cross route 99.

Filed under Science | permalink | March 28, 2021 at 09:04 AM | Comments (0)

March 27, 2021

More Variety

Kansas City Southern Lines (1)
Kansas City Southern, Kodachrome, 2001.

Tip O'Neill Federal Building (2)
Tip O'Neill Federal Building in Boston, Kodachrome, 2002.

Zifcak - Swan Point Cemetery (1)
Zifcak plot in Swan Point Cemetery, 2001.

BU Bridge with Traffic (1)
BU Bridge, Agfa Scala.

Filed under Photography | permalink | March 27, 2021 at 05:03 PM | Comments (0)

March 26, 2021

Four More

Paul Knot - Swan Point Cemetery
The grave of Paul Knot in Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, Rhode Island, 2001.

John Stanton Slocum - Swan Point Cemetery
John Stanton Slocum, also in Swan Point Cemetery, 2001.

Historical Building (1)
Some historical building that I do not recall and have been unable to identify so far. If you have a clue, please leave a comment below. Kodachrome, 1992.

Interior (1)
Interior of another unidentified building, Kodachrome, 1992.

Filed under Architecture,History,Photography | permalink | March 26, 2021 at 06:45 PM | Comments (0)

March 25, 2021

Under the Lincoln Memorial

Filed under Architecture,History | permalink | March 25, 2021 at 03:51 PM | Comments (0)

Guns

Filed under Politics | permalink | March 25, 2021 at 03:32 PM | Comments (0)

Four Close-up Shots

Testing a recently acquired macro lens.

Filed under Coachella Valley,Photography | permalink | March 25, 2021 at 02:57 PM | Comments (0)

More About The Mission Creek Fault

L.A.'s biggest quake threat on overlooked part of San Andreas - Los Angeles Times Amina Khan
Scientists have pinpointed a long-overlooked portion of the southern San Andreas fault that they say could pose the most significant earthquake risk for the Greater Los Angeles area — and it’s about 80 years overdue for release.

But there could be a silver lining. If their analysis is right, experts say it’s possible that when a long-predicted and much more devastating earthquake hits, it may not do quite as much damage to the region as some scientists previously feared.

“That’s a significant reduction in risk for L.A. if this is true,” said longtime seismologist Lucy Jones, who was not involved in the study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

The San Andreas fault is a roughly 800-mile fracture that runs much of the length of California and is capable of producing a much-feared, massive temblor known simply as “the Big One.”

The San Andreas also serves as a major marker of the boundary between the Pacific and North American plates. As the plates move past one another, so do the two sides of the fault.

But the fault itself is caught by friction, and as the two sides move, strain builds up until it’s eventually released through earthquakes. The southern San Andreas carries roughly half the strain resulting from the plates’ motion, as much as 25 millimeters (about one inch) per year.

Not every part of the fault carries that strain equally, though. In Southern California, the San Andreas fault system is made up of many smaller “strands,” and it’s difficult for earthquake researchers to identify which parts of the fault system are most at risk of rupture.

Case in point: the bouquet of fault strands — Garnet Hill, Banning and Mission Creek — that crosses the Coachella Valley. Scientists long thought much of the southern San Andreas fault’s slip occurred along the Banning strand and the Garnet Hill strand; the Mission Creek strand, they said, didn’t take much of the strain at all.

But the new findings turn that idea on its head.

Kimberly Blisniuk, an earthquake geologist at San Jose State University, went looking for evidence that earthquakes had caused landforms to move across the surface. She found them at Pushawalla Canyon, a site along the Mission Creek strand in the Little San Bernardino Mountains.

There, right next to the water-carved canyon, she saw a series of three ancient “beheaded channels” — long depressions in the desert that looked like they were once part of the original canyon before earthquakes shoved them aside.

Blisniuk walked the area to get a better look at these telltale signs of ancient rupture. In each of the channels, she and her team dated the ages of rocks and soil.

The oldest channel, which lay about 2 kilometers (more than a mile) away from the current canyon, was roughly 80,000 to 95,000 years old. The second, about 1.3 kilometers (less than a mile) away, was about 70,000 years old; and the third beheaded channel, about 0.7 kilometer (less than half a mile) away, was about 25,000 years old.

Based on these three landmarks, the researchers calculated that the average slip rate for the Mission Creek strand was about 21.6 millimeters (less than an inch) per year. At that rate, they realized, it accounted for the vast majority of the strain along the southern San Andreas fault.

By contrast, they calculated that the Banning strand had a slip rate of just 2.5 millimeters per year.

“I was really excited,” said Blisniuk, who said it took years to produce the data needed to make a convincing case that the ancient channels did indeed once connect to Pushawalla Canyon.

“The San Andreas fault is one of the best studied faults in the world, and there’s still so much we can do” to better understand it, she said.

Because the southern San Andreas fault is likely to experience ground-rupturing earthquakes at an average rate of one every 215 years or so — and because the last such earth-shaker in the southernmost section took place in 1726 — we’re about 80 years overdue, Blisniuk said.

About six to nine meters of elastic strain have likely accumulated along the fault since the last one, the scientists said — which means that when it finally releases, the ground will likely shift roughly 20 to 30 feet. Whether it takes a single quake, or many of them, to go that distance remains to be seen, Blisniuk said.

The discovery “looks like it could be a landmark study,” said Thomas Heaton, an emeritus professor of engineering seismology at Caltech who was not involved in the research.

Lucy Jones is now retired from the U.S. Geological Survey. But in 2008, she led a group of more than 300 scientists, engineers and other experts to study the potential consequences of the Big One in detail. The result was the ShakeOut Earthquake Scenario, which predicted that a 7.8 magnitude earthquake on the San Andreas fault could result in more than 1,800 deaths, 50,000 injuries and $200 billion in damage and other losses.

The new findings could alter that scenario and make it less grim, Jones said. Here’s why: The Big One can only be triggered by a massive rupture on a long stretch of the San Andreas fault, something on the order of 200 miles. If that rupture ended up traveling along the Banning strand — as the ShakeOut model assumed — its east-west tilt would send energy into the San Bernardino Valley, the San Gabriel Valley and finally into the Los Angeles Basin.

But if the rupture were to follow the Mission Creek strand, its more northwesterly orientation would divert some of that energy away from the L.A. Basin, sparing it some of the devastation.

Sarah Minson, a research geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Northern California, stressed that the new findings did not change the region’s total seismic hazard — just the way it’s distributed.

“I personally would love to see this sort of [analysis] applied to more areas,” she said.

Ultimately, Jones said, “This is a piece in an ongoing debate and not yet completely resolved — probably won’t be, until we have the earthquake.”

Heaton agreed.

“It would almost be a surprise to me as a scientist if the real earthquake, when it happens, plays out in a way that’s really close to what we imagined,” he said. “The earth is always surprising us — it’s always reminding us that we need some humility in this business.”

Filed under Coachella Valley,Desert Hot Springs,Science | permalink | March 25, 2021 at 09:17 AM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2021

A Variety

Manhattan (1)
Manhattan, but I can't say exactly where, Kodachrome, 1994.

125 Summer Street - Boston (2)
125 Summer Street, Boston, Kodachrome, 1991.

Flowering Succulent (1)
A succulent flowering on my windowsill in Boston, Kodachrome, 1990. I have this type growing in my front yard in Desert Hot Springs now.

Wagon Master General, a soldier of the revolution, Kodachrome,f 1989.

Filed under Architecture,Cactus,History,Photography | permalink | March 24, 2021 at 09:05 PM | Comments (0)

8 More Millimeters

While [the Mission Creek strand of the san Andreas fault] was long believed to have a slip rate of around 14 millimeters per year, the paper, published in Science Advances, argues that it's actually around 22 millimeters..

Part Of The San Andreas Fault Is Moving Way Faster Than We Previously Thought

Updated March 24, 2021 11:17 AM Published March 24, 2021 11:15 AM

As if the San Andreas fault wasn't concerning enough, research just released today shows that a nearby portion of it is moving much faster than scientists previously thought.

It's called the Mission Creek strand and it runs from around Indio, through Desert Hot Springs and into the San Bernardino Mountains.

While it was long believed to have a slip rate of around 14 millimeters per year, the paper, published in Science Advances, argues that it's actually around 22 millimeters.

"This particular strand of the San Andreas fault has been interpreted to not be very active," said Kimberly Blisniuk, a geochronologist at San Jose State University and lead author on the study. "It's actually very active and is the fastest slipping fault for the San Andreas in Southern California. Therefore it has the highest likelihood of a large magnitude earthquake to occur on it in the future."

A few millimeters might not sound like a lot but when we're talking about massive tectonic plates pushing up against each other, the stress adds up.

"Higher slip rates on faults mean more risk," said Morgan Page, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena and one of the developers of the Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast. Page was not associated with the recent study. "It means stress is accumulating faster on that fault and you would need basically either more earthquakes or larger earthquakes over centuries to relieve that stress."

All of which means that this particular strand on the San Andreas has a greater risk than was previously understood. How much of an additional risk? It needs to be assessed.

Any infrastructure in that area, like water or gas lines which run over the fault itself, will need to be looked at with a critical eye, given that offsets of as much as 30 feet could occur in the event of a major quake.

"Their study is in a region where the San Andreas fault is quite complex," said Sally McGill, a geology professor at Cal State San Bernardino. "This is a substantial step in improving our understanding of how the Southern San Andreas fault works."

Regardless of what happens on the Mission Creek strand, we know that sizable earthquakes on the San Andreas are possible.

Like... at any moment.

So now is always a good time to get your earthquake kit ready.

Filed under Coachella Valley,Desert Hot Springs,Science | permalink | March 24, 2021 at 01:14 PM | Comments (0)

March 23, 2021

Around Boston

Provincetown II Ferry at Commonwealth Pier
Provincetown II, the old, slow Boston-Provincetown ferry, docked at Commonwealth Pier, Kodachrome, 1991.

Back Bay Station under construction, 1986.

Charles River & Longfellow Bridge (1)
The Charles River, Kodachrome, 2002.

Construction Silhouettes (1)
Construction in Back Bay Boston, Kodachrome, 1982.

Filed under Architecture,Photography | permalink | March 23, 2021 at 08:29 PM | Comments (0)

March 22, 2021

1982-1983

Kansas City City Hall Elevator Doors
Elevator doors in Kansas City City Hall, 1982.

Copley Square in Springtime (1)
Copley Square in springtime, Kodachrome, 1982.

Nantucket Lightship (1)
The Nantucket Lightship, Kodachrome, 1982.

Picnicking at Tanglewood (1)
At Tanglewood, Agfachrome, 1983.

Filed under Photography | permalink | March 22, 2021 at 08:09 PM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2021

Four in Massachusetts

Sunday School Building at Christian Science Center
The Sunday School building at the Christian Science Center in Boston, Kodachrome, 1984.

Dome of the Annex of the Mother Church of Christian Science (2)
The dome of the Annex of the Christian Science Mother Church seen behind other buildings, Ektachrome, 1989.

Rainy Day at Tanglewood
Tanglewood, Kodachrome, 1983.

Sears Warehouse in Fenway
Sears warehouse in the Fenway, Kodachrome, 1985.

Filed under Architecture,Photography | permalink | March 19, 2021 at 06:50 PM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2021

Four At Hidden Valley

Filed under California,Photography | permalink | March 18, 2021 at 07:19 PM | Comments (0)

March 17, 2021

Old Ones From New England

Flowing Water (2)
Somewhere in New England, 1986.

Workers Atop The Old John Hancock Building
The beacon atop the old John Hancock building in Boston, Kodachrome, 1988.

Tulips and Shadows
1986.

Sculpture (1)
Some historical figure in Boston, but I don't recall who, nor do I recall the location. If you recognize him, please leave a comment. Agfachrome, 1983.