 |
 |
 |
|
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Bill Dillon and Bill Winters Interviewed by BBC Radio
Peter Evans and Deborah Cohen from BBC radio interviewed two scientists from the USGS Coastal and Marine Geology Team in Woods Hole for a program about the influence of methane derived from gas hydrate on global climate at the Latest Paleocene Thermal Maximum (LPTM). The LPTM had a profound influence on the Earth's biota. Bill Dillon has been working to understand the processes that caused a huge Pleistocene seafloor collapse on the Blake Ridge off South Carolina. Gas hydrate-related processes apparently caused this collapse and he calculates that emissions during the collapse probably created more than a 4% increase in the atmospheric methane (compared to present atmosphere composition). Scientists studying the much older LPTM problem have suggested that the mechanism of gas venting was likely to be similar to that proposed by Bill for the Blake Ridge collapse. Bill Winters described our GHASTLI system (Gas Hydrate And Sediment Laboratory Instrument), which is a system used to study changes in physical properties produced by gas hydrate formation in sediment. Some of the important changes that are measured occur in acoustic properties (which allow us to survey for gas hydrate at sea using seismic profiles), and in strength properties (which affect the mobilization of sediments and, thus, seafloor slumping, collapse, and methane venting).
|
 |
in this issue:
Moloka'i Coral Reef Study Pt. 2 NOAA/USGS Benthic Habitat Initiative USGS/Geological Survey of Canada CMG "Youngster" Wins Science Award Woods Hole Community Activities Dillon & Winters on BBC Radio  |
|||||||||||||
U. S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
previous story
cover story:
