News

Alan V. Morgan

The following is the first part of a four-part series covering some of the volcanic activity which has taken place on the south coast of Iceland during the past 25 years. This section will cover some aspects of the eruption of Surtsey. Three later articles will cover the activity of the volcano Eldfell on Heimaey, during the early stages of the eruption, as it appeared a decade later, and finally as it is in 1998.

Shane Wilkinson
2A Earth Sciences

Marcia Coueslan

Kathleen Kemp, Tucker Barrie, Marcia Charles, Janet Parkin, Denise Payne and Michael Perkins

A report on the Joint National Science Teachers Association, Science Teachers Association of Ontario meeting, Toronto, November 22, 1996.

Alan V. Morgan.

Paul B. Downing

Reprinted from and article in Rock and Gem Magazine, 1991. 
Reprinted with permission.

Precious opal from British Columbia? Impossible! Except that, as I write this, I hold a specimen in my hand which shows bright flashes of red, green and orange fire. This is the first recorded find of precious opal in British Columbia - or anywhere in Canada. It is beautiful.

Alan V. Morgan

Ontario Science Centre, North York, Metropolitan Toronto.

Richard B. Wells National Drillers Buyers Guide, March 1997.

One of the advantages of being a geologist is that you often get to travel to places and see things being done in ways that are vastly different from back home. One example, that might be of interest to some of our readers, is the oil-mining operations of South Sumatra, Indonesia.

Caldera eruptions such as the one which produced Crater Lake, Oregon, were originally thought to be massive explosions which blew the top off the original volcano. Ferdinand Fouque, a French geologist, showed that the caldera could not have been formed by destruction of an earlier cone, since there was not enough material from the original cone in the deposits formed by the eruption. In his 1879 book on the eruption of Santorini, Greece in 1628 B.C. he concluded that the missing part of the volcano had sunk below sea level.

What were the forests like on southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia at various times during the past 10,000 years? How have fish populations changed in the past in Saanich Inlet, a fjord north of Victoria. How frequent were forest fires in the region and how were they related to climate? How many major earthquakes have there been in the greater Victoria area since the glaciers left? What can past changes in climate and oceanography tell us about what we can expect for the future on southern Vancouver Island?