Tag Archives: paul cutler

Evidence Emerges of Ancient Lake in California’s Eel River

*Ecological changes from lakebed may have led to two different populations of once-related steelhead trout*

A catastrophic landslide 22,500 years ago dammed the upper reaches of northern California’s Eel River, forming a 30-mile-long lake which has since disappeared. It left a living legacy found today in the genes of the region’s steelhead trout.

Using remote-sensing technology known as airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and hand-held global-positioning-systems (GPS) units, scientists recently found evidence for a late Pleistocene, landslide-dammed lake along the river. (more…)

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Something Odd Is Happening With Namibia’s Weather

*Southwestern African country is no arid desert–this year*

Something’s up with the weather in Namibia, say geoscientists Kyle Nichols of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and Paul Bierman of the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vt.

Nichols and Bierman should know. They’re just back from the western mountains and coastal plain of this sparsely populated African country.

Usually, western Namibia is a dusty place where the stream beds are sand and the “lakes” are nothing more than flats of dried mud.

Not now. (more…)

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