In August 2004 thousands of geologists from all over the world shared recent developments in Earth science at the quadrennial International Geological Congress (the 32nd) in Florence. The themes of the congress were the renaissance of geology and the application of geology to mitigate natural risks and preserve cultural heritage. Among the points made in the message from the organizers of the congress were that societies face complex problems and the geologic sciences must play a key role in finding solutions for them and that geologists must communicate both with the public to build awareness of the role of geology and with governments to ensure the long-term sustainability of the Earth for human habitation.
Among the many symposia on environmental geology were presentations that demonstrated how geology affects human health. People breathe in and drink substances that have been incorporated into the atmosphere and water from rocks and soils. Health can suffer from either an excess or a deficiency of some of these substances, including iodine, fluorine, arsenic, dust, radon gas, and asbestos. In recent years, for example, the litigation arising from the lung problems caused by just one of the substances—asbestos—has led to huge financial losses for the companies that mined it or manufactured asbestos products. Growing recognition of the significance of such health-related issues was manifested by the launching of a new organization to deal with them: the International Medical Geology Association.
Enrico Bonatti of the Institute of Marine Science of the Italian National Research Council in Venice delivered one of seven plenary lectures, “The Internal Breathing of the Earth.” He described the relationships between volatile materials in the mantle, plate tectonics, and the Earth’s climate with many complex geologic illustrations. One example bearing on current concerns about global warming was the enhancement of volcanism about 100 million years ago through deep-Earth thermal effects. This episode increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which could have caused the unusually hot climate, the existence of which scientists had deduced from an analysis of the oxygen isotopes found in deep-sea sediments of that age.
The potential for volcanoes to influence long-term global climatic changes by the emission of carbon dioxide had been discussed for many years, but it was in 1986 that geologists learned of the devastating short-term effects of volcanic carbon-dioxide emission. Volcanic carbon dioxide escaped from solution in the waters deep within Lake Nyos, which occupies an old volcanic crater in Cameroon, and killed 1,800 people by asphyxiation. In 2004 Michel Halbwachs of the Université de Savoie, France, and coauthors reported the results of their continuing studies on the causes and mechanisms of such events, which are called limnic eruptions. The seepage of carbon dioxide into the lake is less than one-tenth the flow of carbon dioxide into the air in the volcanic area of Mammoth Mountain in California, for example, but the deep, stagnant layers of water in Lake Nyos trap the gas under pressure. A large volume of the gas can suddenly bubble to the surface and spread over the surrounding area. The scientists reported on mitigation procedures that they had developed in which a vertical plastic pipe carried deep CO2-rich water up toward the surface. The degassing of the CO2 from the water as it rose created a self-sustaining flow of water through the pipe.
The Geological Society of America’s presidential address by Clark Burchfiel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discussed how GPS (Global Positioning System) data from parts of India and China were forcing field geologists to look in new ways at crustal structures and geologic processes. International cooperative studies with Chinese geologists through the previous decade or so had been directed toward sorting out the complex geologic rearrangements arising from the collision of the Indian landmass with that of Asia. The mapping of enormous and intricate fault systems by field geologists had begun to be complemented in dramatic fashion by GPS-derived information giving the direction and rate of motion of many individual points across the vast terrane.
Reports by Matthew Pritchard and Mark Simons of Princeton University and the California Institute of Technology and Alessandro Ferretti of Tele-Rilevamento, Milan, and colleagues from Italy and the U.S. demonstrated how measurements from satellite radar instruments, which complement GPS studies, had revolutionized tectonic studies of topographic maps and deformations of large and small areas of the crust. Applications included the study of volcanoes, active faults, landslides, oil fields, and glaciers. The technique that was used, called InSAR, involved successive imaging of a given area using synthetic aperture radar (SAR). The images were then superposed to generate interferograms, revealing changes in elevation that had occurred during the time between measurements.
Pritchard and Simons summarized the InSAR results gathered over 11 years from the central subduction arc of South America, a region along the Pacific coast containing about 900 volcanic structures. They studied the deformation within four circular volcanic structures having diameters of 40–60 km (25–37 mi). The deformation within each structure was greatest at the centre, with a displacement of 10–20 cm (4–8 in), and decreased symmetrically from the centre. Of the four structures (none of which was an actively erupting volcano), two structures were associated with the inflation of large stratovolcanoes and one was associated with the sinking of a large volcanic caldera. The scientists calculated that these deformations could be explained by the injection or withdrawal, respectively, of magma at a depth 8–13 km (5–8 mi) below the surface. The connection between fairly frequent short-lived pulses of magma movement at depth and surface eruptions remained uncertain. Monitoring deformations through the use of InSAR was expected to become a critical tool for understanding volcanic hazards, elucidating the processes at depth that lead to an eruption.
Ferretti and colleagues modified the InSAR technique, improving its precision sufficiently to measure surface motions with an accuracy of better than one millimetre per year (0.04 in per year). Using this technique to reveal complex patterns of surface motions in the San Francisco Bay area, they found that the San Andreas strike-slip fault was accommodating 40 mm per year of relative motion and the Hayward fault was slipping by about 5 mm per year. Throughout the area the rate of tectonic uplift was generally less than one millimetre per year, with some local regions of more rapid uplift. Areas of unconsolidated sediment and fill flanking the bay exhibited the highest rates of change, with a subsidence of about two centimetres per year. Superimposed on the slow tectonic uplift of the East Bay Hills area of 0.4 mm per year were deep-seated creeping landslides in the Berkeley Hills moving downhill at an average speed of 27–38 mm per year, accelerating during wet months and ceasing during summer months.