Geology Department

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WWU wins NASA contract to build new instrument to help Mars rover scientists 2019-10-07
First Mode and Western Washington Univ. win NASA’s nod to make Mars geology tool

Seattle’s First Mode team and Western Washington University say they’ve won a NASA contract to advance the technology for sizing up rocks on Mars.

The project, funded under NASA’s Solar System…

2019-10-04
Gigantic Pumice Raft from Underwater Eruption Is on a Wild Ride Across the Pacific Ocean

“We know so little about the seafloor,” said Jackie Caplan-Auerbach, a seismologist and volcanologist at Western Washington University.

It’s often said that 70 or 80 percent of the world’s volcanism happens on the seafloor, but this number is sketchy guesstimate, Caplan-Auerbach said. We…

2019-08-26
42 miles of open water and ocean swells to test state’s top women paddlers

Team member (and WWU faculty member) Jackie Caplan-Auerbach, a 52-year-old paddler from Bellingham, spoke about the specific difficulties paddlers encounter in the race.

“It’s open-ocean conditions,”…

2019-08-21
Is It GOOD or BAD to Use a Dynamite-Triggered Avalanche for an Apple Ad? We Asked Scientists

Jackie Caplan-Auerbach, a geologist at Western Washington University who studies the seismic signals produced by landslides and avalanches, told Motherboard in an email that the footage of the controlled avalanche didn't bother her as much as other sequences in the behind-the-scenes video.…

2019-07-26
Meet the 2018-19 Outstanding Graduates from the College of Science and Engineering 2019-07-23
What it takes to be a Scientist: A personal account into testing a new method 2019-06-11
A Year in the Life of a Glacier: A skier’s research tests new methods of monitoring glaciers

The birds chirp a dawn chorus and the winter rain has diminished. The disparity between the snowy alpine and the verdant lowlands is increasingly stark. Stubborn patches of snow make the rugged forest road impassable and the snowmobile crew has jerry-rigged a winch system to pull their burly…

2019-05-31
Scientists Witness the Birth of a Submarine Volcano for the First Time

Back on November 11, 2018, a planetwide rumble emanated from somewhere between eastern Africa and Madagascar. This strange signal, thought by scientists at the time to be related to a colossal but hard-to-identify magmatic process, was pinpointed to have come from 30 miles east of the…

2019-05-24
When will Kilauea erupt again? One scientist believes it could take years

After last year’s Kilauea eruption, another eruption at the volcano’s rift zones could be more than a decade away.

A former Hawaiian Volcano Observatory scientist told …

2019-05-21
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