EGU Blogs

Geology

Rocks in the right place at the right time…

Rocks in the right place at the right time…

Flo looks two examples of the strange and important ways that geology and where it’s located can affect international governance and regulation. From the presence of tiny coralline islands to ownership of the Arctic!

I’ve always had an interest in the peculiarities of geology and geomorphology and the inordinate (sometimes almost absurd!) ways that they play their part in deciding on big international governance. Humanity has long-relied on the presence of geological features such as mountain ranges, coasts, rivers etc. to delineate ownership and basis on which to set ‘ground rules’.These geological features account for many historic and modern day national borders and so the odd rock in the right place at the right time can be very handy (or not, depending on which side of the coin you’re on…).  Sometimes this works well, countries such as India and Chile use enormous, previously impassable mountain ranges such as the Himalayas and the Andes as their natural borders and this has worked relatively well. Island states such as the UK assume their land borders at the point where land meets the sea, which also works for now but is ultimately just a function of current sea level. But in a dynamic world, the formation and loss of landmass and particularly changing sea levels will be shifting quite considerably in the face of human-induced climate change, and so the previously established rules and regulations about ownership and governance may start to become and bit less solid than it was…so where does this leave us?

I’m going to look at a couple examples of where geological features have influenced the distribution of governance responsibility among nations, and just how flimsy that burden of proof can get!

The Arctic

2007_Arctic_Sea_Ice - Copy (2)

The image shows a record sea ice minimum in the Arctic, taken in September 2007. Image Credit – NASA, Wikimedia Commons.

One great example of how small, uncontrollable things can influence major decisions and changes, is the right to ownership and governance of the Arctic. The ongoing in reduction of sea ice in the Arctic due to climate change and recent developments in technology that would allow development of Arctic resources has led to something of an arms race with countries laying claim to large tracts of the region. The scientific basis for many of these claims is based on the mapping of ocean ridges and where they sit in relation to the Arctic states (Canada, US, Russia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden).

The process for assigning areas of the Arctic is both scientific and political but nation states must prove through surveying that there is continuity and that they are geologically ‘attached’ to the Arctic by a ridge. The most recently lodged claim is that of Denmark, who, via Greenland a semi-autonomous Danish territory (another potentially fortuitous link in this chain), can lay claim to an area of 895,000 square kilometers due to the extension of the

Bathymetric map of the Arctic Ocean. Image Credit - NOAA, Wikimedia Commons.

Bathymetric map of the Arctic Ocean. Image Credit – NOAA, Wikimedia Commons.

Lomonosov ridge, according to a senior geophysicist with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. Denmark has filed a claim to the area to the UN linked to the ridge, and if successful will have access to a sizable chunk of the Arctic’s resources. The regulation that covers these kind of claims is the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea which states that nations are entitled to a distance of 200 nautical miles from their coast, any claims beyond this reach need to be supported by scientific data. This most recent claim is the fifth from Denmark who have also previously submitted claims north of the Faroe Islands (another Danish territory) and in an area south of the Faroe Islands. This builds on a body of work where Danish scientists surveyed a 2000 kilometer long underwater mountain range that runs north of Siberia, they concluded that this ridge is geologically attached to Greenland. All of the submissions await consideration by the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf , the Danish statement currently overlaps with with Norway’s continental shelf beyond 200

A USSR postcard depicting Soviet dominance of the Arctic! Image Credit - kristofer.b, Wikimedia Commons.

A USSR postcard depicting Soviet dominance of the Arctic! Image Credit – kristofer.b, Wikimedia Commons.

nautical miles and there are also potential overlaps with claims by Canada, Russia and the U.S.

Some people involved in the process had hoped that control of the Arctic would be decided on through a ‘Gentleman’s agreement’ rather than the tough negotiations that will now ensue.

The United Nations panel will eventually decide control of the area, and the sea floor boundaries will be settled by international negotiations but this process won’t begin until the  scientific data has been examined. This is expected to take 10-15 years, by which stage the politics around accessible resources in the Arctic will have intensifed due to increased global warming creating easier access to many of the oil and mineral reserves, so this topic isn’t going away!

Okinotori Islands

This tiny uninhabited set of islands, 1100 miles south of Tokyo in the Phillippine Sea is currently also responsible for lending control of a 160,000-square-mile economic zone in the surrounding waters. The most southerly of Japan’s landmass is only 7 miles around and it is just, and only just, keeping its head above water. Herein lies the problem, according the the UN’s ‘Law of the Sea’ ( useful but problematic bit of regulation), any claim to an exclusive economic zone, (such as Okinotorishima, or ‘distant bird island’) like the one in Japan is

Location of the Okinotorishima islands in the Phillippine Sea. Image Credit - ForestFarmer, Wikimedia Commons.

Location of the Okinotorishima islands in the Phillippine Sea. Image Credit – ForestFarmer, Wikimedia Commons.

dependent on the existence of a habitable island landmass existing in the area. If this island sinks beneath the water then the whole claim to the economic zone sinks with it, along with important mineral and fish resources for Japan. The claim, even if the islands stay above water isn’t uncontested, China disputes the ownership stating that  the islands are just a cluster of uninhabitable rocks and doesn’t fulfill the requirement of ‘habitable’ at all! While it’s true that no one lives there, the small area is host to a small man-made islet with a platform which is used as a weather monitoring station with a building that houses researchers.

The usefulness (and contention) of these islands and their slow sinking has not bypassed the Japanese government who have set up programs (and considerable investment) to keep the islands bobbing above sea level. The project to keep the island above water is two-fold, the Japanese government have installed protection around the island in the form of  cement, steel blocks and titanium mesh to protect from erosion and the increasing number of tropical storms.

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Map of Okino-Torishima, Pacific Ocean. Image credit – Ratzer, Wikimedia Commons.

However the ‘sinking’ is not just due to erosion and damage but also due to the low production of coral.  This is thought to be due to the warmer waters in the area lowering coral growth.  This loss of landmass and the important politics associated with it has meant that several agencies have made it a priority to revitalise the growth of  corals, although it’s not quite that simple! This involves applying a method of sexual reproduction developed over the past 20 years to cultivate corals. According to the fisheries agency, about $19 million ( of tax payers money…) has been spent to breed about 100,000 coral plants using the method with a success rate of approximately 20%. It remains to be seen whether this rock, doctored or otherwise, will be in the right place for the Japanese authorities in years to come…..

It’s worth reflecting that with both these examples, not only are they wholly reliant on the location of bits of geology to define long-lasting rules, regulations and potentially economic opportinities that can make or break countries but also these rocks (in a geological sense) are totally transient, and the ridges that secure the Arctic and the corals that secure the economic zone for Japan just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Throw in an exntending ridge of a destructive plate margin somewhere else and this fragile hierarchy would be thrown into disarray.

Further Reading

BBC News – Denmark challenges Russia and Canada over North Pole.

Phys.Org – Denmark claims North Pole link via Greenland ridge link

NPR.org – Denmark Claims Part Of The Arctic, Including The North Pole

Global News – Denmark claims North Pole through Arctic underwater ridge link from Greenland

New York Times –Growing Coral to Keep a Sea Claim Above Water

You Tube – China refutes Japanese claim about Okinotori Reef as island

Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus – The US-Japan-China Mistrust Spiral and Okinotorishima

 

 

Geology and the Autumn Statement

Geology and the Autumn Statement

So George Osborne donned the ceremonial red briefcase on wednesday and took to the helm in the House of Commons (rather inconsiderately while I was in Brussels and couldn’t follow the news…) to deliver the Autumn Statement, one of the two statements that the HM Treasury makes each year to Parliament upon publication of economic forecasts (the other being the Budget which is normally announced in March-time).

George Osborne and Danny Alexande make their way to the House of Commons for the Autumn Statement Announcement. Source - Getty UK

George Osborne and Danny Alexander make their way to the House of Commons for the Autumn Statement Announcement. Source – Getty UK

Statements in the run up to wednesday suggested that Science and Engineering were likely to be singled out as the Chancellor’s ‘personal priority.  In amongst all this were some announcements which relate directly to geology and in particular, Energy.

1 – North Sea Oil and Gas

The government announced plans to help maximise the economic benefits of the oil and gas resources in the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS). They estimate there is between 11-31 billion barrels still to be exploited and argue that it can provide considerable eonomic benefits to the UK through much sought energy security, high-value jobs and other things. These plans include setting out major reforms to the oil and gas fiscal regime which include a 2% reduction in the rate of the Supplementary Charge from 32-30%.

See 1.124 and 1.125 in the ‘Green Book‘ for more details.

2 – Investment fund for Shale Gas

The UK government has long championed shale gas development as a tool to increase the UK’s energy security, create new jobs and create tax revenue. As part of the government’s ongoing progress in shale gas development, the Autumn Statement detailed a new ‘£5 million fund to provide independent evidence directly to the public about the robustness of the existing regulatory regime’. The reasoning for this is that it will ensure the public is better engaged in the regulatory process.

See section 1.121 in the ‘Green Book‘ for more details.

3 – Funding for sub-surface testing facilities

An interesting inclusion is a £31 million fund for investment into creating so-called ‘sub-surface research test centres’ through the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). These will be designed to develop world leading knowledge of energy technologies such as shale gas and carbon capture and storage.

See section 1.122 in the ‘Green Book‘ for more details.

4 – Move towards developing the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon

As part of the governments commitments to decarbonisation targets they have announced plans for ‘closer discussions’ with the company managing the project at Swansea Bay, Tidal Lagoon Power Ltd to establish whether a tidal lagoon project is affordable and value-for-money for consumers. If this project were to progress it could become the first tidal lagoon project in the world.

For more information on the proposed tidal lagoon project see this story on the BBC News Website and see 1.129 in the ‘Green Book‘.

Swansea Bay where the new Tidal Lagoon would be located. Source - Kakoui, Wikimedia Commons.

Swansea Bay where the new Tidal Lagoon would be located. Source – Kakoui, Wikimedia Commons.

5 – Postgraduate Funding

And lastly there was a pretty important note about Postgraduate Taught Masters funding. The geological community has been dismayed at the lack of funding for postgraduate taught masters for sometime in particular becuase many of the Taught Masters Programs (such as Petroleums Geophysics and Hydrogeology) are seen as essential for careers in these areas. The lack of any funding framework for such courses, and the reduction in Industrial funding and scholarships has put real pressure on students wanting to pursue careers in this highly technical area. The government announced in the Autumn Statement that it will introduce a postgraduate loans system offering £10,000 to students under 30 (bit mean!) from 2016-2017. A consultation to inform the design of the scheme is set to follow early next year.

For more information on this announcement see this piece in the Times Higher Education webpage.

 

 

The wet with the dry: The geology of Siwa Oasis

The wet with the dry: The geology of Siwa Oasis

Flo takes us on a photoblog-trip to Siwa Oasis in Egypt where epic sand seas meet freshwater springs, saline lakes and sulphurous hot pools! 

Siwa Oasis, adapted from Google Earth.

Siwa Oasis, adapted from Google Earth.

The blog’s going on holiday this week! I spent a week in Egypt on holiday last month and braved the 10 hour overnight bus journey from the capital city Cairo to visit the breathaking beauty of the Siwa Oasis in the Egyptian sand sea of the Libyan desert. I have to say that the shift from big-city Cairo to Siwa via a 10 hour bus drive added a real sense of remoteness when we pulled into the town, bleary-eyed the following morning.

Map

Map of Egypt with the route from Cairo-Siwa, adapted from Google Maps.

I really didn’t know anything about Siwa at all before arriving there apart from noticing the numerous and ubiquitous boxes of Siwan bottled water around Cairo, not an industry I had associated with a small town in the middle of the desert. I’ve always thought of oases as being on a small scale and having a fabled quality and so suffice to say I wasn’t ready for the numerous lakes, springs and hot pools that abound in Siwa.

Siwa is an area of contrasts, the epic sand dunes visible to the west of town are juxtaposed with over a 1000 fizzing natural springs, sulphurous hot pools, and hypersaline lakes. It’s this unique collection of features that brought people to settle here over 12,000 years ago and continues to attract tourists, despite its remote location! And it is certainly bizarre to be in the middle of a desert and find that almost all the things to visit are water related.

History

Aside from the mind boggling landscape and geology, Siwa has an unusual and diverse history.  It is one of Egypt’s most isolated settlements, both geographically and culturally with a population predominantly made up of ethnic Siwans who speak Siwi, a distinct language of the Berber family with a smaller proportion of Arabic-speaking Egyptians. Historically, Siwa is famous as the home of the Oracle of Amun and the ruins of this temple can still be visited today.

View of Siwa Landscape from the Temple of Amun - Authors own image.

View of Siwa Landscape from the Temple of Amun – Authors own image.

It was here that Alexander the Great travelled (as well as founding Alexandria), during his campaign to conquer the Persian empire in 332 BC to consult the Oracle of Amun. There it is alleged the Oracle confirmed Alexander the Great as both a divine personage and the legitimate Pharoah of Egypt! The remoteness of the oasis meant that contact with the outside world was rare. The first record of a European visiting since roman times was the English traveler William George Browne who arrived in 1792 to see the ancient temple of the oracle. The oasis wasn’t even officially added to Egypt until 1819 and the first asphalt road to Siwa wasn’t built until the 1980’s! This isolation has served to preserve the delicate environmental and cultural balance of the Oasis. A small town of around ~23,000 people, Siwa’s economy is based on agriculture, largely olives and dates, some tourism and the water bottling plants dotted around the Oasis. But how did all this water come to be here? As with all things, we need to start with the geology!

Regional geology and geography

The area around Siwa is described as a ‘slightly undulating limestone plateau’ of Miocene age as the 1910 geological map of Egypt shows below and the vast areas of the map marked ‘Unexplored’ give you some insight as to how remote and difficult some of this terrain is.

Geological map

1910 Geological Map of Egypt by the Survey Department of Egypt. Image out of Copyright.

Siwa sits in the Qattara depression which spans the north west of Egypt. Much of the depression sits below sea level: at its deepest it sits at 133m below sea level making it the second lowest point in Africa. It is bounded by steep slopes to the North side and to the south and west it grades into the Great Sand Sea.

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Map of Egypt showing the location of the Qattara depression in blue – Source – Eric Gaba, Wikimedia Commons.

The depression is thought to be formed by the processes of salt weathering and wind erosion working together. The intense aelioan weathering causes the salt to crumble the depression floor and then the wind blows away the resulting sands.

Salt lamps

Souvenirs made from salt-rock for sale in Siwa. Image Author’s own.

Salt is an issue in Siwa (although it makes for a modest market in selling bottled salt and also salt-rock souvenirs such as lamps). A number of fresh water springs that occur naturally in the Oasis run into salt water lakes making a lot of the water useless. Often even the spring water has an elevated level of salt and so not good for agriculture. This limits agricultural production in the area to mostly hardy crops such as dates and olives.

Cleopatra

Just one of the 1000’s of springs in the Siwa area, this is ‘Cleopatra’s Pool’. The spring water here bubbles up from depth at pressure. Image Author’s own.

The main Oasis lakes Birket al-Maraqi and Birket Siwa are saline and no marine life survives. Indeed some of the water is so salty that you can see crystals growing in the water. The salty soil of the oasis continues to be used to build the traditional mudbrick houses which creates a problem. While the salt helps to strengthen the walls of the house, it also melts in the rain. And it doesn’t take much to destroy the houses, in 1928, a major storm resulted in the local inhabitants abandoning their ancient town including the ancient Shali Fort found in the centre of the town. These days new houses are prefabricated to remove the risk of rain melting the building materials!

IMAG2175

Shali Fort in the centre of Siwa made from salty mud sourced from the oasis. You can see the damage sustained y the 1928 storm in the collapsing walls. Image Author’s own.

The Wet with the Dry

The Wet

With a mean annual precipitation of 8mm and many rainless years, the vast lakes in the region have something other than the weather to thank for their existence. The wide spanning Qattara depression contains a number of small basins on the floor which hold lakes. It is thought that these lakes were much larger during the Pleistocene Ice Age.  It is at the fossil shorelines of these lakes that you can find the bounty of fossils we saw on our trip. These days the levels of the lakes fluctuate seasonally with some lakes drying up completely during the summer seasons.

The numerous springs supply that supply water to the lakes is thought to have been underground for 30,000-50,000 years in the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System which is considered to be a non-renewable source of water in the North Africa area. It covers parts of Libya, Egypt, Sudan and Chad having  a huge storage capacity of ~200,000 bcm of fresh water.

Hot sulphurous springs at Bir Wahed. Image Author's own.

Hot sulphurous springs at Bir Wahed. Image Author’s own.

Whilst the features of Siwa Oasis are broadly natural phenomena there are some other beautiful water-related sites in the area which had a bit of a helping hand in their formation. Around 15km South-West of Siwa you come to the hot and cold springs of Bir Wahed. Both public bathing spots, the first is a sulphurous hot pool where you can relax under the desert sun, and the second is a large cold spring water lake. These two formed when a Russian or American ( depending on who you speak to) oil company came to do some prospective drilling in the 80’s. They didn’t find any oil but they did find water and their activity created the two mini-oases found there today. Now they serve as blissful tourist stops amid the dunes of the Great Sand Sea.

Bir Wahed

The cold spring lake at Bir Wahed, formed during prospective drilling for oil in the 80’s. Image Author’s own.

The Dry

Sand dunes in the Great Sand Sea. Image Author's Own.

Sand dunes in the Great Sand Sea. Image Author’s Own.

The Great Sand Sea seen to the West of Siwa Oasis is a 72,000 sq km behemoth of a desert (about the size of Ireland) and is made up predominantly of parallel seif dunes some over 100m high and over 150km long. The area has a rather morbid and adventurous past dating back 2,500 years ago when a 50,000 strong Persian army led by the Persian King Cambyses II  is thought to have drowned in the sands of the western Egypt desert during a sandstorm.   It was reported in 2012 that the remains of the army may have finally been found and thus solving one of archaeology’s biggest outstanding mysteries. Having spent the afternoon in the dunes, it’s wasn’t hard to see how you could lose your bearings without the aid of modern technology.

IMAG2281

Great Sand Sea, Egypt. Image Author’s Own.

The landscape of the areas is mainly shaped by aeolian processes causing deflation hollows (where the force of the wind is concentrated on a particular spot in the landscape), erosion can carve out a pit knowns as a deflation hollow. They can range in size from a few metres to a hundred metres in diameter.  Much larger, shallower depressions called pans can also form which cover thousands of square kilomeres.  The Qattara depression is one of the largest pans in the world, while Siwa is a smaller pan. The Great Sand Sea wasn’t always a desert and large areas are thought to have been submerged underwater as attested to by the presense of rich fossil-bearing sediments outcropping in the desert. The fossil finds in this area include a whale skeleton, a human footprint, oysters and echinoids up to Miocene in age.

Fossils found exposed in the Great Sand Sea. Imasge Author's Own.

Fossils found exposed in the Great Sand Sea. Imasge Author’s Own.

Finding sea-living fossils in the desert reminded me of just how powerful geological understanding is. Standing looking out over the wind shaped dunes, it’s hard to imagine a thriving shallow sea existing here, but that it did and the deposits and fossils help us to observe and understand past environments, however different they may have been! Water Management

Well

Groundwater Well in Siwa. Image Author’s Own.

Groundwater is the only source of water in Siwa which is used for home use as well as for agriculture and the local economy including the four companies that now bottle water in Siwa. For 1000’s of years the natural system was sustainably preserved but emerging pressures from development, tourism and climate change could put this  delicate water system and the ecosystems it  supports at risk.

Since the 1960s the Oasis has experienced significant changes in activity patterns which have had an impact on land use and water management. These days in drier parts of the year the Oasis lake is often dry leaving only mud flats behind due to local government irrigation practices siphoning water away from the lake.

The large size of the Qattara depression and the fact that it’s at a very low altitude has led to several proposals to create a massive hydroelectric project in northern Egypt rivalling the Aswan high dam. Interest in this has waned slightly in recent years but future stability in the country could create the climate for development and this would have significant impacts on the Siwa region.

Policy Focus: 1 – Creating value from Waste

Waste and recycling is a growing issue in a world where abundant resources are diminishing. This week Flo Bullough looks at recent policy activity in the area of ‘valuing waste streams’ and the geo-relevant example of Rare Earth Elements.

This week, the House of Lords Science and Technology committee has been taking oral evidence on the topic of ‘Generating value from waste’ with a particular focus on the technology and processes used to

House of Lords Chamber. Source - Wikimedia Commons

House of Lords Chamber. Source – Wikimedia Commons

salvage raw materials from waste and what the government can do to encourage and assist progress in this area.

This topic was also discussed in a recent European Commission consultation on the Review of European Waste Management Targets and the Raw Material initiative which highlights the importance of recycling to ensure safe access to raw materials. Consultations like these seek to engage with experts in the relevant field and are useful research and fact-finding exercises to inform future government policy.

This is all part of a wider plan to try and incorporate the disposal and cost of waste into the manufacturing life cycle. Additionally, waste is not just a cost burden but can also be a source of valuable materials that can be recycled.  In 2009 Friends of the Earth published a report entitled Gone to Waste – The valuable resources that European countries bury and burn. This included data on the value of the waste we don’t recycle and the associated CO2 emissions. The report also attempted to calculate the monetary value of recyclables. They found that in the UK in 2004, the value of materials classified as ‘key recyclables’ that had been disposed of as waste,  was a minimum of £651 million (based on values for materials such as glass, paper, iron, steel and biowaste. Rare earth elements were not included in their study).

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Landfill Site. Source – Wikimedia Commons.

Geo-Relevant Example – Rare Earth Elements

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Internal view of an iPhone. Rare earth elements are used in the manufacture of electronics such as smart phones but when replaced often end up in landfill. Source – Wikimedia Commons

The concept of valuable waste is particularly true of the rare earth elements that end up in waste streams through discarded electronics. Demand for rare earth elements is soaring while scarcity and market cost is increasing. Rare earth elements are essential to many commonplace electronics such as mobile phones and computers as well as in renewable technology such as wind power. The supply of these materials is finite and the market is currently dominated by China (see this excellent post from Geology for Global Development on the issue) which has its own geopolitical implications and so increasing focus from both an environmental and economic perspective is to extract these valuable materials from waste streams.

In terms of current research into Rare Earth Element recycling, Japan is the only place where significant research is being undertaken. An example of this is Hitachi who are aiming to be able to recycle electric motor magnets. It was also announced last year that the US is to build a $120 million ‘Critical Materials’ institute in Iowa which will focus, amongst other things on developing recycling techniques.

For more information see the following links:

Chemistry World – Recycling rare earth elements using ionic liquids

Mining.com – Rare earths recycling on the rise

POST note from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology – Rare Earth Elements