Geology

Scientists suspect that parts of the San Joaquin Valley have started to sink again after years of stability, a troubling development that geologists say can be traced to increased pumping of groundwater. State water managers are worried that falling land surfaces could damage the California Aqueduct, which carries water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the valley and Southern California. To measure the extent of the problem, the U.S. Geological Survey is launching a three-year study that will use sophisticated satellite tracking to map sagging land in the valley's arid floor in western Fresno and Kings counties.

Winding lazily into the Sierra Nevada, California 140's two asphalt lanes for generations served as the busiest road to Yosemite, with more than 1 million visitors each year rolling up the route to the magnificent granite valley. But of late, the natural world has gotten in the way. A dozen miles from the park, the old road has disappeared, its once-bustling blacktop buried under a rubble pile broad as two football fields.

Geological tests to determine if a water conduit and a highway tunnel can be built between Riverside and Orange counties are scheduled to begin this week in the rugged Santa Ana Mountains . The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California plans to drill two deep holes to explore groundwater levels as well as rock and soil conditions along the routes of the proposed projects.

British scientists set sail Monday on the new research ship RRS James Cook to study why a huge chunk of Earth's crust is missing, deep under the Atlantic Ocean -- a phenomenon that challenges conventional ideas about how Earth works. The team aims to survey an area 10,000 to 13,000 feet deep where the mantle -- Earth's deep interior normally covered by a crust miles thick -- is exposed on the sea floor.

WHAT: Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument, N.M. WHERE: North-central New Mexico, 40 miles south of Santa Fe, 55 miles north of Albuquerque WHY TAKE THE DETOUR: Leave the galleries and chile \o7ristras \f7of urban New Mexico behind for a half-day trip to this wonderland of cone-shaped rock formations, where you can hike, picnic or just marvel at an uncanny natural phenomenon.

Scientists have identified an expanse of rock in Greenland as a remnant of Earth's crust dating back 3.8 billion years, a finding that shows the dynamic geological process called plate tectonics was occurring early in the planet's history. A Norwegian team reported Friday in the journal Science that these ancient layered rocks from southwestern Greenland originally were formed on the sea floor of primordial Earth.

A rock the size of three football fields may have crashed into the California landscape more than 35 million years ago, creating a 3.4-mile-wide crater west of Stockton, San Diego State University researchers reported this month at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. The impact would have created a 1,500-megaton explosion.

The west side of Fresno County has dipped as much as 30 feet since 1925, leaving roadways warped and utility poles tilted, according to scientists. U.S. Geological Survey officials are now worried it will damage Interstate 5 and the California Aqueduct, which carries water to Southern California. The formerly flat land sank when farmers pumped water from deep underground. In the 1970s, people were forced from their homes when the ground south of Mendota went from flat to rolling hills.

Scientists believe they have solved the mystery of what caused the most rapid global warming in known geologic history, a cataclysmic temperature spike 55 million years ago driven by concentrations of greenhouse gases hundreds of times greater than today. The culprit, the researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science, was a series of volcanic eruptions that set off a chain reaction releasing massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.

Scientists have identified the Godzilla of fungi, a giant prehistoric fossil that evaded classification for more than a century, U.S. researchers reported Monday in the journal Geology. A chemical analysis has shown that the 20-foot-tall organism with a tree-like trunk was a \o7Prototaxites\f7 that became extinct more than 350 million years ago. The giant originally was thought to be a conifer, or a lichen, or algae. "A 20-foot fungus doesn't make any sense," said geophysicist C.