Record-breaking 1.2-kilometer drill core unveils new insights into Earth's mantle

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

A record-breaking 1268-meter drill core into Earth’s mantle, collected from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in the North Atlantic, has provided a deep and detailed mineralogical glimpse of the oceanic mantle. The findings reveal new insights into mantle composition, Earth’s deep geology, and the potential biogeochemical conditions involved in the origins of life. Understanding the Earth’s mantle is crucial for comprehending important details of the Earth system, including terrestrial magmatism, crust formation, and the cycling of elements between the planet’s interior, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. Much of what is known is based on rocks dredged off the ocean floor. However, these samples often lack critical geological context and are subject to altered mineralogy due to igneous processes and seafloor weathering, including serpentinization. Although rock cores of abyssal peridotites – the primary rock of Earth’s upper mantle – can provide a continuous record, drilling the kilometer-deep holes required to obtain them has proved challenging.

 

Now, Johan Lissenberg and colleagues report the recovery and characterization of a nearly continuous 1268-meter-long drill core of serpentinized abyssal mantle peridotite from the mid-Atlantic ridge. The drill core was collected in 2023 during the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 399, from a hydrothermally active region called the Atlantis Massif. Lissenberg et al. documented significant mineralogical variations throughout the core at various scales, including in levels of serpentinization. The sample’s pyroxene content was also unexpectedly low compared to other abyssal peridotite samples worldwide, which could be due to high degrees of depletion and pyroxene dissolution during melt flow. And, contrary to common models, melt migration was found to be oblique to mantle upwelling. The authors observed hydrothermal fluid-rock interaction throughout the core, with oxidative weathering down to 200 meters. Gabbroic intrusions were also discovered to play an unexpected role in hydrothermal alteration and in regulating fluid compositions from peridotite-hosted hydrothermal vents, which have been proposed as models of environments where prebiotic chemistry may have led to the development of life on early Earth and other planetary bodies. “Decades of ocean floor sampling by dredging have painted a rough mineralogical picture of mantle. Yet, each new drilling mission reveals surprising views of mantle and formation of the oceanic crust,” writes Eric Hellebrand in a related Perspective. “More ambitious drilling projects will reveal important pieces to understand the biogeochemical effects of oceanic mantle.”

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adp1058 

Article Title

A long section of serpentinized depleted mantle peridotite

Article Publication Date

9-Aug-2024

Record-breaking recovery of rocks that originated in Earth’s mantle could reveal secrets of planet’s history

International team begin to unravel mantle’s role in life on 

Earth, volcanism and global cycles

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

 

image: 

The researchers say the rocks recovered from the mantle bear a closer resemblance to those that were present on early Earth rather than the more common rocks that make up our continents today.

view more 

Credit: Professor Johan Lissenberg

Scientists have recovered the first long section of rocks that originated in the Earth’s mantle, the layer below the crust and the planet’s largest component.

The rocks will help unravel the mantle’s role in the origins of life on Earth, the volcanic activity generated when it melts, and how it drives the global cycles of important elements such as carbon and hydrogen, according to the team.

The nearly continuous 1,268 metres of mantle rock was recovered from a “tectonic window,” a section of the seabed where rocks from the mantle were exposed along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, during Expedition 399 “Building Blocks of Life, Atlantis Massif” of the ocean drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution in Spring 2023.

With attempts dating back to the early 1960s, the recovery was a record-breaking achievement led by the International Ocean Discovery Program, an international marine research consortium of more than 20 countries that retrieves cores—cylindrical samples of sediment and rock—from the ocean floor to study Earth’s history.

Since then, the expedition team has been compiling an inventory of the recovered mantle rocks to understand their composition, structure and context.

Their findings, presented in the journal Science, reveal a more extensive history of melting in the recovered rocks than expected.

Lead author Professor Johan Lissenberg from Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said: “When we recovered the rocks last year, it was a major achievement in the history of the Earth sciences, but, more than that, its value is in what the cores of mantle rocks could tell us about the makeup and evolution of our planet.

“Our study begins to look at the composition of the mantle by documenting the mineralogy of the recovered rocks, as well as their chemical makeup.

“Our results differ from what we expected. There is a lot less of the mineral pyroxene in the rocks, and the rocks have got very high concentrations of magnesium, both of which results from much higher amounts of melting than what we would have predicted.”

This melting occurred as the mantle rose from the deeper parts of the Earth towards the surface.

Results from further analysis of this process could have major implications for the understanding of how magma is formed and leads to volcanism, the researchers claim.

“We also found channels through which melt was transported through the mantle, and so we are able to track the fate of magma after it is formed and travels upwards to the Earth’s surface.

“This is important because it tells us how the mantle melts and feeds volcanoes, particularly those on the ocean floor that account for the majority of volcanism on Earth. Having access to these mantle rocks will allow us to make the connection between the volcanoes and the ultimate source of their magmas.”

The study also provides initial results on how olivine, an abundant mineral in mantle rocks, reacts with seawater, leading to a series of chemical reactions that produce hydrogen and other molecules that can fuel life.

Scientists believe this might have been one of the underpinning processes in the origin of life on Earth.

Dr Susan Q Lang, an associate scientist in Geology and Geophysics at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who was a co-chief scientist on the expedition and part of a team continuing to analyse rock and fluid samples, said: “The rocks that were present on early Earth bear a closer resemblance to those we retrieved during this expedition than the more common rocks that make up our continents today.

“Analysing them gives us a critical view into the chemical and physical environments that would have been present early in Earth’s history, and that could have provided a consistent source of fuel and favorable conditions over geologically long timeframes to have hosted the earliest forms of life.”

The international team of more than 30 scientists from the JOIDES Resolution expedition will continue their research on the recovered drill cores to address a wide range of problems.

Dr. Andrew McCaig, an Associate Professor in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, who was the lead proponent of Expedition 399 and a co-chief scientist on the Expedition added: “Everyone involved in Expedition 399, starting with the first proposal in 2018, can be proud of the achievements documented in this paper. Our new deep hole will be a type section for decades to come in disciplines as diverse as melting processes in the mantle, chemical exchange between rocks and the ocean, organic geochemistry and microbiology. All data from the expedition will be fully available, an exemplar of how international science should be conducted.”

Their paper, ‘A long section of serpentinized depleted mantle peridotite,’ is published in Science.

 

Core Description 

Caption: Professor Johan Lissenberg (left) and colleagues analysing the cores, which were recovered from a “tectonic window” on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Credit

Lesley Anderson, Exp. 399, JRSO_IODP

JOIDES Resolution 

Expedition 399 “Building Blocks of Life, Atlantis Massif” of the ocean drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution which recovered the 1,268m of near continuous mantle rock in Spring 2023.

Credit

Thomas Ronge (Exp. 399, JRSO_IODP)

Cardiff University is recognised in independent government assessments as one of Britain’s leading teaching and research universities and is a member of the Russell Group of the UK’s most research intensive universities. The 2021 Research Excellence Framework found 90% of the University’s research to be world-leading or internationally excellent.  Among its academic staff are two Nobel Laureates, including the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Medicine, Professor Sir Martin Evans. Founded by Royal Charter in 1883, today the University combines impressive modern facilities and a dynamic approach to teaching and research. The University’s breadth of expertise encompasses: the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences; the College of Biomedical and Life Sciences; and the College of Physical Sciences and Engineering. Its University institutes bring together academics from a range of disciplines to tackle some of the challenges facing society, the economy, and the environment. More at www.cardiff.ac.uk

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is a private, non-profit organization on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930, its primary mission is to understand the ocean and its interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate an understanding of the ocean’s role in the changing global environment. WHOI’s pioneering discoveries stem from an ideal combination of science and engineering—one that has made it one of the most trusted and technically advanced leaders in basic and applied ocean research and exploration anywhere. WHOI is known for its multidisciplinary approach, superior ship operations, and unparalleled deep-sea robotics capabilities. We play a leading role in ocean observation and operate the most extensive suite of data-gathering platforms in the world. Top scientists, engineers, and students collaborate on more than 800 concurrent projects worldwide—both above and below the waves—pushing the boundaries of knowledge and possibility. For more information, please visit www.whoi.edu

The University of Leeds is one of the largest higher education institutions in the UK, with more than 40,000 students from more than 137 different countries. We are renowned globally for the quality of our teaching and research. We are a values-driven university, and we harness our expertise in research and education to help shape a better future for humanity, working through collaboration to tackle inequalities, achieve societal impact and drive change. The University is a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, and is a major partner in the Alan Turing, Rosalind Franklin and Royce Institutes www.leeds.ac.uk

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adp1058 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

A long section of serpentinized depleted mantle peridotite

Article Publication Date

8-Aug-2024

SPACE

Events commemorate 55th anniversary of moon landing


Astronaut and Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin is pictured during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity on the moon on July 20, 1969.

 Photo courtesy NASA | License Photo

July 20 (UPI) -- Amid a full moon from San Diego to Houston to Florida to Washington, D.C., activities on Saturday will mark the 55th anniversary of the first lunar landing and men to walk on the moon.

NASA's two main visitor centers, the Johnson Space Center near Houston and the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island in Florida, have activities scheduled.

A gala also will take place Saturday night at San Diego Air and Space Museum with Buzz Aldrin, 94, the last surviving member of the three-man Apollo 11 crew, He'll be joined by astronaut Charlie Duke, who was the voice inside Mission Control for the July 20, 1969, moon landing.

Hours later Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon, then Aldrin followed him as Michael Collins flew in the Command Module circling the moon.

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Apollo 11 at 50: Space program transfixed Americans, changed pop culture
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NASA Johnson Space Center to dedicate building to Dorothy Vaughan, women of Apollo

Activities have been scheduled all week at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, which is near the launch of the spacecraft on July 16, 1969. The spacecraft returned to Earth on July 24 in the Pacific Ocean.

"Don't miss this opportunity to learn about humanity's ongoing journey of space exploration," the complex's website says. " Whether you recall the moment Apollo 11 touched the lunar surface, or you could be the first astronaut to visit Mars, Moon Fest Weekend promises to be an unforgettable experience for all ages."

One Giant Leap short film runs on the top of the hour.

A replica of the Atlas V rocket sits on its side as part of the tour of the space center.

The space center also looks ahead to the next mission to the moon: Artemis. The complex includes the Space Shuttle Atlantis with family-friendly activities scheduled there this weekend.

At the Johnson Space Center in Texas, a special presentation will culminate in a reconstruction of the memorable moon landing.

A panel discussion will explain "what it was like to be in Mission Control for the iconic Apollo 11 Mission that landed the first humans on the moon," according to the center.

Tours are conducted at the Historic Mission Control from which NASA led Gemini and Apollo missions.

On Friday, the center inaugurated the Dorothy Vaughan Center in Honor of the Women of Apollo, honoring the significant contributions and breaking of racial barriers by the late mathematician and NASA's first Black manager.

The National Air and Space Center in Washington, D.C., includes tours. The charred Apollo 11 craft is housed there.

Not just space rocks: 6 things we’ve learned about Earth from meteorites and comets

The Conversation
July 16, 2024

Meteorites (Festa/SHutterstock.com)

Apart from the Sun, its planets and their moons, our Solar System has vast amounts of space rocks – fragments left over from the formation of the inner planets.

A large concentration of asteroids forms a vast ring around our Sun, orbiting it between Mars and Jupiter. Fittingly, it’s called the main asteroid belt. Comets are icy bodies of dust and rocks that originated even farther away – in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune and the Oort Cloud of debris surrounding the Solar System.

Extraterrestrial rocks come in many sizes. Generally speaking, asteroids are space rocks larger than one metre, while the smaller pieces (from two millimeters up to one meter in size) are known as meteoroids.

Regardless of where they come from, once these foreign rocks make it to Earth’s surface, we call them meteorites. But they are much more than just simple rocks from far, far away.

They have allowed us to estimate the age of our planet, and changed the course of evolution more than once. Here are six major ways meteorites and comets have contributed to Earth’s history or our knowledge of it.

1. The age of our planet

About 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-sized planet collided with the proto-Earth, changing the composition of our planet and forming our Moon.

During its first tens of millions of years, Earth was predominantly molten. It was too hot to form solid minerals and rocks, so the exact age of our planet remains unknown. But we do know it’s between the age measured from meteorites and the age of the oldest rocks we have been able to find and date.

The oldest minerals that have been reliably dated on Earth are tiny zircon grains found in Western Australia. The oldest one is 4.4 billion years old. However, scientists have also dated specks of calcium and aluminum found in meteorites, which yielded an older age of 4.56 billion years – the age of our Solar System.

So, thanks in part to the oldest age provided by a meteorite, our best estimate is that Earth formed around 4.54 billion years ago.



A slab of the Allende meteorite, the best-studied meteorite in history. It has many calcium–aluminum-rich inclusions dated to be 4.567 billion years old – the oldest known solids to have formed in the Solar System. Shiny Things/Flickr, CC BY-NC


2. The building blocks of life

The most plausible theory for the beginning of life on Earth is based on simple organic compounds that formed in space and were brought to Earth by meteorites and other celestial bodies.

During the Late Heavy Bombardment, a period between 4.1 and 3.8 billion years ago when more impact events hammered our planet, Earth’s surface was partially solid.
Amino acids, hydrocarbons and other carbon-based molecules arrived at our planet in carbonaceous chondrites (primitive meteorites, remnants from the early Solar System) and comets.

Once the early Earth was enriched with these organic molecules, chemical evolution followed. Eventually, life emerged on our planet. The earliest evidence is potential microbial life from 3.8 billion years ago, not long after the Late Heavy Bombardment.

Regardless of how life started, all theories agree on the need for a primitive ocean – or pools of water – that allowed early life on Earth to develop.


Photomicrograph of an ordinary chondrite meteorite found in northwestern Africa containing small spherical particles of minerals called chondrules. Circled is a barred olivine chondrule. Francisco Testa/From the author's personal collection

3. How we got our oceans

Meteorites and comets also played a major role in the formation of Earth’s oceans and atmosphere. Large quantities of water were delivered to our planet during the Late Heavy Bombardment.

In addition, water was released from Earth’s interior through volcanic activity during the Hadean Eon, the first eon in our planet’s history.

Water vapor, along with other gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia, nitrogen and sulphur, formed the proto-atmosphere. Rain began to fall once the temperature dropped below the boiling point of water, forming our primordial ocean.

Yes – the water we drink today is at least partly of extraterrestrial origin.

4. Changing the course of evolution

The extinction of dinosaurs happened about 66 million years ago. It’s linked to the second-largest known meteorite impact on Earth, the deeply buried Chicxulub crater in Mexico.


In contrast, the Late Devonian extinction about 380 to 360 million years ago cannot be explained by a single impact. Several factors have been proposed as potential causes, including multiple impacts, climate change, depletion of oxygen (anoxia) in the oceans and volcanic activity.

Repeated times during Earth’s history, impact events have influenced the survival and evolution of life on our planet.


The subtle impression of the Chicxulub impact crater is still visible on the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico today. NASA/JPL

5. Sampling Earth’s deep mantle and core

Scientists use a combination of methods to understand Earth’s internal structure: crust, mantle, core and their subdivisions. Seismology is the most important of them, which studies the propagation of seismic waves generated by earthquakes or artificial sources through Earth’s interior.

We have access to rock samples from the crust and upper mantle, but we will never be able to sample the deep mantle or solid core. Even if we had the technology, it would be astronomically expensive, and going down to such depths involves extreme pressures and temperatures.

Since direct sampling is impossible, scientists rely on indirect methods.

Pallasites and metallic meteorites are rocks from differentiated asteroids – ones that also have a mantle and core. Such space rocks are the closest we will ever come to sampling the deepest portions of our own planet. They help us understand its composition.

Pallasites are rare, and contain a silicate mineral called olivine embedded in nickel-iron alloys. It’s thought pallasites form in the boundary between the core and mantle-like regions of differentiated asteroids.

Metallic or iron meteorites are mainly composed of the nickel-iron alloys kamacite and taenite. They are the core fragments of differentiated asteroids, giving us clues to our own planet’s core.



Slab of Aletai iron meteorite, found in Xinjiang, China in 1898. Francisco Testa/From the author's personal collection

6. Meteorite impacts gave us huge gold and nickel deposits

The Witwatersrand rocks in South Africa host the world’s largest known gold reserves. This would not be the case without the Vredefort impact crater – the largest known impact structure on Earth – formed about 2.02 billon years ago.

The impact saved these gold deposits from erosion by covering the entire area with ejected material, concealing the ore-bearing layers beneath. If an ore deposit erodes, the material disperses and it wouldn’t make for profitable extraction.

Witwatersrand is the largest gold-producing district in the world. Which means the ancient meteorite impact has made an indirect, lasting impact on our society through the availability of this precious metal.

But that’s not the only such event. The third-largest known impact crater on Earth is the Sudbury Basin in Canada, formed 1.85 billion years ago. It hosts giant nickel deposits because the impact disrupted Earth’s crust, partially melting it and allowing magma from the mantle to rise.

This led to the accumulation of nickel, copper, palladium, platinum and other metals, producing one of the richest mining districts on the planet.

The author would like to acknowledge helpful feedback on this article from Prof Noel C. White, University of Tasmania.

Francisco Jose Testa, Lecturer in Earth Sciences (Mineralogy, Petrology & Geochemistry), University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Namibia: Major win for LGTBQ+ community

Jasko Rust

DW

June 21, 2024

A Namibian court has declared two laws banning same-sex acts unconstitutional. Members of the LGTBQ+ community say there is still a long road ahead.

Members of the public expressed their support for the LGTBQ+ community outside the court

Image: Opas Onucheyo/REUTERS

On a small stage in the garden of a house in the Namibian capital of Windhoek, half a dozen drag queens are rehearsing for their show the next day — Drag Night Namibia.

Each new pose is cheered on frenetically by the small crowd watching the rehearsal.

"The hardest working legs in drag," someone shouts as Aedin Mohrmann does a deep squat. Tonight he's wearing grey sweatpants, but tomorrow he will transform into his drag persona: Atlantis.

These drag performances are a safe space for Namibia's LGTBQ+ community, a place where they can feel free to be themselves.

Singer Lize Ehlers hosts rehearsals for Drag Night Namibia in her home

Image: Jasko Rust

"People are changing. I believe that visibility opens more minds," says Lize Ehlers.

The well-known Namibian singer is co-director of Drag Night Namibia and offers her home for rehearsals.

Events such as these are a chance to reach out to people outside of the LGTBQ+ community and engage them in dialogue, says drag queen Aedin Mohrmann. Opening a dialogue is his way of combating queer hostility. Mohrmann, like others in the country's LGTBQ+ community, remains cautious in everyday life.

"We simply have to be mindful," he told DW. "Even if it's just going to the shopping center. Just do what you have to do and go out."
LGBTQ+ community under pressure

Namibia's LGTBQ+ community is currently celebrating a major success in court. On June 21, 2024, Namibia's high court declared two colonial-era laws that criminalized sexual acts between men, to be unconstitutional. Still, life for members of Namibia's LGTBQ+ has become increasingly difficult in recent months.

Aedin Mohrmann presents his drag identity "Atlantis"Image: 

Aedin Mohrmann

In May 2023, the Namibian supreme court ruled that non-Namibian spouses of same-sex marriages that took place abroad must be given residency rights upon their return to Namibia.

A wave of homophobia followed.

"This backlash did not come from the (general) public," Omar van Reenen, a non-binary person who advocates for LGTBQ+ rights, tells DW. "It came from two actors: The government and religious extremists who fanned the flames of hatred."

High-ranking members of the ruling SWAPO party criticized the 2023 ruling. In a statement, the party expressed its "grave disappointment" and said it condemned all forms of "immoral and indecent acts." The SWAPO Youth League even referred to the ruling as "foreign cultural imperialism."

Van Reenen sees elements of state-supported homophobia in the actions of the country's politicians, and laments the marginalization of the queer community and the increase in hate crimes.

The past year has seen a number of shockingly violent homophobic crimes.

At the end of April 2024, a transgender woman was brutally murdered in an informal settlement of Windhoek. The 30-year-old was found with dozens of stab wounds and her mutilated genitals lying on her chest, according to police.

Ugandan could face death penalty under anti-gay law  01:40

Namibia politicians united against homosexuality

In response to the Supreme Court's LGTBQ+ friendly ruling in 2023, SWAPO politician Jerry Ekandjo introduced a bill in parliament. It includes an amendment to the Marriage Act of 1961 that defines marriage exclusively as a union between a man and a woman. It would also criminalize being a witness in a same-sex wedding and generally promoting same-sex marriages.

Laws such as those which were overturned on June 21, 2024, are the legacy of the colonial period in Namibia.

Image: Opas Onucheyo/REUTERS

The amendment was approved in both chambers of parliament with little protest and has been awaiting the president's signature for months.

"I think that the president has not yet signed the law because he knows that it is undemocratic," activist Omar van Reenen speculates.

The upcoming election campaign could also play a role. DW inquiries for comment to Jerry Ekandjo have so far gone unanswered.

Until the laws were overturned on June 21, 2024, sexual acts between two men could be prosecuted. Although convictions were relatively rare, rights campaigners said they have perpetuated discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community and caused gay men to live in fear of arrest.

A major win for the LGBTQ+ community

The decriminalization of same-sex acts is undeniably a major win for the LGTBQ+ community. Speaking of the ruling, Namibia's high court acknowledged that sexual practices were being criminalized solely on the basis of gender. The lawsuit was brought on by LGBTQ+ activist Friedel Dausab.

Many say the victory in court could mark a turning point for securing the rights of LGTBQ+ people in Namibia. "We need a precedent that we can rely on and that forms the basis for the protection of future generations" activist Omar van Reenen told DW.

For van Reenen, going to the Supreme Court is the next step, and that the court should make a statement about the status of LGBTQ+ rights in Namibia.

Omar van Reenen founded the organization "Equal Namibia," which campaigns for the rights of queer people

Image: Jasko Rust

Drag queen Aedin Mohrmann is now calling for a referendum on the rights of LQTBQ+ people in Namibia, including their right to marry. He feels the public would vote in favor of the LGTBQ+ community. "It would certainly be close, but the majority would vote yes in the end" he told DW. Mohrmann is counting on the country's youth in particular — they understand that a united Namibia would be stronger.

This article was adapted from German by Martina Schwikowski.

Are African LGBTQ+ rights improving?  01:16

USCG Aids Supply Ship Taking on Water in the Caribbean

PUBLISHED MAY 28, 2024 2:05 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

 

The U.S. Coast Guard assisted an offshore supply ship named Sea Falcon that reported it was taking on water while sailing in the Caribbean. When the call was received, the master declared an emergency reporting that the pumps on his vessel were not able to keep up with the ingress of water.

The Sea Falcon, built in 1980, is a 121-foot (37-meter) supply vessel that is operating in the Caribbean. When the vessel, which is registered in Vanuatu, called for assistance it reported that there were four people aboard. It was carrying two vehicles, construction materials, glass, and a container filled with dry goods.

The vessel was approximately 22 nautical miles south of Puerto Rico when the call for assistance was received late on Friday, May 24. The Sea Falcon was traveling to Tortola, British Virgin Islands when the captain reported they discovered a crack in the vessel’s hull. The estimated rate of flooding the USCG reports was approximately 300 gallons per minute.

While calling for vessels in the area to assist, the USCG also dispatched an MH-60T Jayhawk helicopter.

Reaching the vessel, the Coast Guard put a rescue swimmer aboard the Sea Falcon to assess the situation. The rescue swimmer confirmed approximately three inches of water in the engine room due to a three-inch crack in the vessel’s hull. 

To aid with the situation, the Coast Guard lowered an additional pump to the vessel from the helicopter. They assisted in getting the pumping operation and the rescue swimmer confirmed the water level had decreased to about two inches before leaving the vessel.

The rescue swimmer was recovered by the aircrew and the Coast Guard helicopter returned to Air Station Borinquen. The Sea Falcon with the aid was able to continue to Tortola. She tied up at approximately 11:48 a.m. Saturday in the British Virgin Islands.

Two Rescued After Luxury Yacht Sinks Off St. Augustine

Courtesy St. Johns County Fire Rescue

PUBLISHED MAY 27, 2024 11:37 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

On Saturday, local first responders rescued two people from a sinking luxury yacht off the coast of St. Augustine, Florida. 

Just after 1130 hours on Saturday morning, Sector Jacksonville received a call on Channel 16 from the yacht Atlantis, an 80-foot Sunseeker. The operator believed that they had struck something in the water, and the vessel was flooding.

Coast Guard Station Mayport launched a boat crew to the scene, and the local sheriff's office, the police department, county first responders and nearby good samaritans all converged on the vessel. Local police marine units arrived first, and they safely rescued the two people aboard the yacht. One individual sustained minor injuries and was taken to a hospital for treatment.

The submerged object was likely a dredge pipe piling, according to St. Johns County Fire Rescue. Photos released by the rescue agency show a large hole in the bow of the vessel at the waterline. 

All images courtesy St. Johns County Fire Rescue

Atlantis was a 1999-built Sunseeker Predator 80 with a top speed of 45 knots, according to Boat International. Local media assessed its value as approximately $1 million. 

As of Saturday, the vessel remained partially afloat, with just the bow visible. The Coast Guard has marked the hazard with buoys and issued a notice to mariners to warn of the potential risk to navigation. The vessel's owner is making salvage arrangements, according to the Coast Guard.

A new approach to fighting wildfires combines local knowledge and AI

Potential operational delineations, or PODs, are helping U.S. land managers

A firefighter works at the site of a controlled burn during the 2022 Fairview Fire in Southern California.
MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES

By Nikk Ogasa

22 HOURS AGO

On June 4, 2021, amid flowering saguaros and prickly pear cacti, a wildfire bloomed in the Sonoran Desert in central Arizona. Its nascent flames gorged on nonnative grasses desiccated by a long, severe drought, and the fire was further nourished by the weather. A nearby weather station recorded a temperature of 36° Celsius (97° Fahrenheit). And it was so dry that the blades of firefighters’ bulldozers — used to clear brush — sparked small flames as the heavy vehicles dragged on rocks.

Fire ecologist Mary Lata of the U.S. Forest Service first heard about the fire over the radio while conducting fieldwork off to the north, in the Tonto National Forest. “I remember hearing them talking,” she says, “and little by little realizing they weren’t going to catch this one.”

By June 7, winds had blown the wildfire east-northeast into the Pinal Mountains, in the Tonto’s southern reaches. The flames ascended rapidly, overcoming rock cliffs — defying the expectations of veteran firefighters, Lata says — and sweeping through vast, unbroken stretches of chaparral. When the fire reached the highest elevations, crowned by pine forests, it swallowed those too.

The Telegraph Fire, as it’s now called, grew so intense that it began to create its own wind, its rising heat generating a convective force that sucked in air from the sides, Lata says. “Of all the fires I’ve worked on, Telegraph was the nastiest.”

On the fifth day, the fire neared the city of Globe. By then, it had already consumed an expanse that exceeded the area of Globe five times over. The blaze would go down as one of the largest conflagrations in Arizona history, engulfing some 700 square kilometers of land — equal to about half the area of Phoenix. But the fire would not swallow Globe.

Instead, on a ridge just outside the city, the Telegraph Fire encountered a bulwark, the vestiges of a bygone blaze.

Four years earlier, lightning had sparked the Pinal Fire in this location, albeit under milder conditions. Recognizing the need to clear out vegetation that might feed future blazes, fire crews allowed the blaze to consume litter, seedlings and other brush near to the ground. Crews even ignited flames of their own, expanding the fire’s breadth.

Arriving at the Pinal’s leftovers, the Telegraph Fire “went from a running canopy fire, where it was killing about 60 to 70 percent of the trees that it had encountered, to a creeping ground fire, where it was killing about 1 percent of the trees encountered,” says Kit O’Connor, an ecologist at the Forest Service in Missoula, Mont. Eventually, the fire halted about a kilometer away from a neighborhood in Globe’s outskirts.

Had it not been for the Pinal Fire, the Telegraph Fire would have burned into town, Lata says. “There’s nothing we could have done to stop it.”

The 2021 Telegraph Fire (shown) became one of the worst wildfires in Arizona history. But as it approached the city of Globe, the fire slowed where a previous wildfire had burned away litter, seedlings and other brush near the ground.MARK HENLE, POOL/AP PHOTO

The decision to let the Pinal Fire burn had been guided by a new blueprint for wildfire management, known as potential operational delineations. PODs section the landscape into zones within which fires can feasibly be contained. The boundaries are determined before the fire season starts by a mixture of artificial intelligence and local knowledge. A POD network can help land managers identify opportunities to harness wildfires that ignite under manageable conditions. The hope is that if subsequent fires erupt amid extreme conditions, there will be less brush available to fuel their fury.

“If you have a fire that’s rushing towards homes, and there is no burned-out area or fuels cleared around those homes, they’re basically guaranteed to be lost,” says O’Connor, who has helped construct PODs throughout the West.

Today, POD networks sprawl across the West, from California to Washington and as far east as Minnesota. That coverage includes some 70 national forests, as well as state and private lands.

But as these wildfire blueprints spread, they face challenges. Keeping them updated to reflect the changing nature of the landscape is a crucial but difficult endeavor. And whether they will protect the interests of the Indigenous people who have managed the landscape for centuries remains to be seen.

But the need for a new strategy is massive.

Climate change and decades of misguided fire management have steadily stoked wildfires in the West (SN: 6/17/22). Compared with four decades ago, the average area burned by western blazes each year has more than doubled. During the region’s record-breaking 2020 wildfire season, thousands of fires burned an area larger than the state of Maryland. These blazes are now burning more than twice as many homes and buildings as at the beginning of this century — from 2010 to 2020, fires destroyed more than three structures for each 10 square kilometers burned. And scientists predict that more land, and more homes, will burn in the future.

Working with manageable wildfires, or those that emerge in ideal locations under favorable weather conditions, to clear away dense vegetation could help reduce the risk that bigger blazes pose to homes and people across the West. “We can’t make fire go away,” O’Connor says. But “there’s potential for huge benefits” in finding opportunities to use it.

Collaborating to change

On December 4 of last year, there was no smoke discernible in the sky above Monterey, Calif. The worst months of the state’s fire season — July to November — had passed. But as seasons go, so do they return. So on this day in Monterey, a crowd of firefighters, conservationists and researchers had gathered in anticipation of the fires yet to come.

“We’re sort of stuck between two paradigms,” Christopher Dunn told the group. Projected behind him were two images. On the left, a painting from 1905 depicts a member of the Blackfeet Tribe crouched on a prairie, setting fire to the grass with a flaming torch. On the right, a staged photo from 1955 shows a fire brigade of jeeps and a helicopter heading toward a smoking fire in the distance. “We need both of these,” said Dunn, a forestry researcher at Oregon State University in Corvallis.

In 1910, just five years after the birth of the Forest Service, the Big Blowup — some 1,700 wildfires in Montana, Idaho and Washington — burned over 12,000 square kilometers in just a couple days. As a result, Congress passed the 1911 Weeks Act, which effectively outlawed traditional uses of fire by Indigenous people. They had used fire for a trove of benefits, from corralling bison to clearing brushy areas for crops. Then in 1935, the Forest Service enacted the “10 a.m. policy,” in which every reported fire should be suppressed by the 10th hour of the next day.

Fast-forward to today, and about 98 percent of U.S. wildfires are suppressed before reaching 1.2 square kilometers. Suppressing most wildfires has allowed thick, continuous beds of vegetation to grow. Under extreme conditions, such fuel loads can nourish huge blazes like the Telegraph Fire. A landscape with frequent fire, on the other hand, tends to develop a patchwork of areas that burned at different points in the past, with vegetation at various stages of regrowth. Such pyrodiverse landscapes, with their rich mix of habitat types, can boost an area’s biodiversity, scientists suspect. What’s more, recently burned patches contain diminished fuel stocks, which can hinder the growth of wildfires even under extreme conditions, like the Pinal Fire scar did.

“We want more fire,” Dunn said. He was speaking to a crowd focused on developing PODs for lands in and adjacent to California’s Los Padres National Forest, along the state’s mountainous Central Coast between Monterey and Ventura.

The Tonto National Forest in Arizona is divided into PODs, zones in which wildfires can be contained. Color-coding helps plan responses: In green “maintain” zones, fires may be beneficial. In red “protect” zones, fires put people at high risk and should be suppressed. In purple “exclude” zones, fires should be put out to protect the Sonoran Desert ecosystem. In yellow “restore” zones, fires may be safe in certain conditions. If properly managed, “high complexity” orange zones could become restore zones.K. O’CONNOR

First introduced in a 2016 paper based on work led by the Forest Service in California’s Sierra Nevada, PODs are, at their simplest, polygons drawn on a map. Their boundaries typically follow features from where fire can be safely and effectively contained, like ridgetops, roads or rivers. These boundaries can also inform where prescribed burning, selective logging or other actions could be taken to reduce vegetation and minimize fire risk.

POD networks resemble geometric cobwebs, typically strung together during the fire off-season in workshops attended by land managers, tribal members, fire crews, researchers and other local stakeholders. The workshops allow for the proactive sharing of knowledge that might otherwise remain siloed, O’Connor says. “It really helps to involve all the different players in the long-term management of a piece of ground.”

For the second part of the workshop, Dunn and his colleagues spread large topographic maps across tables in two rooms, showing various sections of Los Padres National Forest and proximal lands.

Some of the maps were shaded in where wildfires had burned recently or where measures to reduce flammable vegetation had occurred. Other maps were colored over by a machine learning algorithm that draws from data on topography, fuel characteristics, road networks and historical fires to predict and map the most effective locations for stopping a blaze. This “potential control line” model doesn’t know the land as well as local land managers, but it can help them reach a consensus, O’Connor says.

There were also maps colored by another algorithm, called the suppression difficulty index model. It tells “you how difficult it would be to move people and equipment to any part of the landscape,” O’Connor says. In other words, where it’s hardest to fight a fire from.

Dunn tasked workshop participants with drawing PODs on these maps, using the shaded and colored areas as guides for where to sketch boundary lines. With sharpies in hand, attendants began drawing dark lines on the maps, sometimes following features accentuated by the models, other times diverging. Discussions filled the air.

“The only way to keep going this way is a really gnarly ridge.”

“We used this section on the Dolan Fire. It was good.”

“That road doesn’t go all the way through anymore.”

“It does.”

In some national forests, PODs are augmented with another tool, the Quantitative Wildfire Risk Assessment, or QWRA. These assessments chart where a fire may be most damaging, taking into consideration the locations of homes, endangered species habitats, timber resources and other assets.

When dressed with QWRAs, skeletal POD networks metamorphose into vibrant mosaics, mostly in the colors of a stoplight. When PODs are colored green, they signal areas that could benefit ecologically from fire and where a fire is unlikely to damage resources. Here, letting wildfires burn may be a go. Alternatively, a red POD contains a lot of resources at risk of being lost in a fire. Any emerging fires should probably be stopped. Some PODs fall into an in-between yellow category: The POD could benefit from fire, but only under the right conditions.

With these ratings in hand, land managers can strategize how best to handle fire. The 2017 Pinal Fire emerged in a yellow POD, which firefighters let burn.

After the Monterey workshop, the hand-drawn lines were digitized and made publicly available for viewing on the Risk Management Assistance Dashboard, an online platform developed by the Forest Service in 2020 where users can follow up with comments and suggest alterations.

PODs can also be updated in follow-up workshops in subsequent years. But gathering people year after year is easier said than done. “For [PODs] to be useful, they have to be updated,” says forest and wildlife researcher Michelle Greiner of Colorado State University in Fort Collins. The landscape changes over time. But keeping PODs up-to-date, or even in the awareness of land managers and fire crews, “takes a lot of time and a lot of capacity,” she says, “and I think it kind of remains to be seen if that’s something that’s going to be sustained.”

One step the Forest Service has taken is to hire regional analysts responsible for keeping POD networks updated and relevant, O’Connor says. “We want to make sure that we’re expanding on and growing out of what’s already been done,” he says. “We don’t want these tools to be forgotten.”

POD networks (outlined in black) extend across some 70 national forests and on state and private lands in the United States. Some recently drafted POD networks, such as the one for Los Padres National Forest, are not shown.U.S. FOREST SERVICE

Cultural conflicts

Drive about six hours north of Monterey, and you’ll find yourself in the Klamath Mountains, which straddle the California-Oregon border. For thousands of years, Indigenous people from the Karuk, Yurok, Hoopa Valley and other tribes have lived in this rugged region.

Indigenous people’s setting of frequent, low-intensity fires yielded many ecological benefits, such as promoting elk habitat and restoring nutrients to soils. In fact, Karuk and Yurok burning practices, along with naturally ignited fire activity, promoted the stability of a forest in the western Klamath Mountains for a millennium, a 2022 study showed. But suppressive fire policies over the last century have drastically changed the land.

“If you could look back 150 years ago, you would see a landscape that was shaped by fires,” says Nolan Colegrove, a district ranger for the Forest Service and a member of the Hoopa Tribe. In the Klamath Mountains where Colegrove works, lofty Douglas fir trees crowd many patches of land once occupied by grasses or shrubs.

A unique POD network has taken root here. Its development has been led by the North Coast Resource Partnership, or NCRP, an organization helmed by elected officials from the region’s tribes and counties. Across 49,000 square kilometers of northwestern California, the partnership works on projects that benefit local communities and watersheds. Usually, the Forest Service leads the development of PODs, Dunn says. Here, the tribes and counties took up the work. This ensures that everyone in the community is involved, says Will Harling, director of the Mid Klamath Watershed Council, a nonprofit that collaborates on the POD network. Harling notes that when the Forest Service develops a POD network, the agency doesn’t always seek the support or buy-in of everyone in the community. “Everybody that has skin in the game needs to be around that table, or else it doesn’t work,” he says.

Invitees to NCRP’s POD workshops included representatives from local tribes, county governments, the Forest Service, industrial timber, municipal fire departments, homeowners associations, and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Bringing everyone together was eye-opening, revealing how past efforts to reduce wildfire risk had failed, Harling says.

But the POD approach has sparked disputes. For instance, the data in PODs are publicly available, while much of the ecological and cultural knowledge that tribes possess may be too sensitive for public disclosure. In POD workshops, Indigenous people may help delineate POD boundaries on their historic lands while withholding where along those lines tribal resources exist. Later on, those lines may be treated by fire crews in unexpectedly destructive ways.

“A lot of our [culturally] sensitive areas are on ridges and mountaintops and in these places where [control] lines and other suppression tactics are often constructed,” says Vikki Preston, a member of and cultural resources technician for the Karuk Tribe. When fire crews unaffiliated with tribes come in to clear brush and thin the forest, they can damage or destroy ceremonial trails, archaeological sites and other important tribal resources.

“I’ve seen dozers go through a mushroom patch that people have been picking for generations, and all of a sudden they don’t grow there anymore,” says Bill Tripp, a member of the Karuk Tribe and its director of natural resources and environmental policy.

The Karuk Tribe now tries to assign tribe representatives to accompany any fire crews on POD lines to ensure that culturally important resources are protected.

The strategy was implemented during last summer’s Six Rivers National Forest Lightning Complex Fires. After a flurry of lightning strikes ignited dozens of fires across the Six Rivers National Forest and Redwood National and State Parks in August, a bout of rainfall that dampened the blazes provided land managers with safe conditions to let the fires burn on and to ignite some flames of their own.

Using PODs to identify suitable ridgelines, fire crews accompanied by cultural representatives set flames that crawled downhill to converge with the wildfires. Those strategic ignitions burned areas that the wildfires may have reached eventually, Colegrove says, but they probably burned in a gentler manner. The fire crews took advantage of a natural fire behavior; in the absence of winds, descending blazes generally move less vigorously than those going uphill. So most of the land affected by the set fires burned at low or moderate intensity, Colegrove says. Compared with high-intensity fires, which can move fast and consume entire trees, low- and moderate-intensity fires spread slower and stick closer to the ground, clearing ground-level vegetation.

A low-intensity fire stays close to the ground and mostly clears out low-lying vegetation and spares taller trees. A high-intensity fire, however, can climb into tree canopies and cause the complete loss of leaves and needles. But a lack of low-lying vegetation can slow these destructive blazes or even prevent them.GRID-ARENDAL/STUDIO ATLANTIS/FLICKR (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED)

Such mild fires can be immensely beneficial. In conifer forests like the Six Rivers National Forest, low-intensity blazes reduce the risk of future high-intensity fires by about 64 percent, researchers reported last year in Science Advances, with the effects lasting at least six years.

Though the human-lit flames burned within 100 meters of Harling’s home, he found the risk worthwhile. “After 20 years of community organizing with the Karuk Tribe and partners, the federal agencies finally gave us a chance to use beneficial fire on the landscape,” he says.

Tribal consultations should be integrated into the process of treating lands within a POD, Tripp says. Simply opening the doors for those discussions will spotlight the need to build relationships, he says.

In its 2023 Tribal Action Plan, the Forest Service highlights the importance of assigning a tribal liaison to every wildfire response. Perhaps PODs could be used to illuminate where such liaisons could be most effective, Tripp says. If a POD is developed on land where there is no documented framework for collaborating with a local tribe, he says, that could provide the impetus for bringing on a liaison to build a relationship.

A new language for wildfire

Head to the very center of Arizona, and you will probably end up near Payson. The town is surrounded by the Tonto National Forest and by the world’s largest contiguous stand of ponderosa pine. A few of those scaly-barked, droopy-needled trees are within view of Lata’s office.

“We know that this area burned on average about every seven years,” Lata says, referring to the time before widespread fire suppression began. So long as humans are around, that fire frequency is unlikely to return. “There aren’t going to be a lot of places where we let the natural disturbance cycle play its role, because even though we now understand how important fire is … we don’t have the freedom to put that much fire back in the system,” she says. There’s a limit to how much fire and smoke people will tolerate.

During the Six Rivers National Forest Lightning Complex Fires in 2023, fire crews lit flames to mitigate damage by naturally ignited wildfires. Here, firefighters burn brush with a drip torch to forestall a blaze that threatened a home.W. HARLING

Nonetheless, PODs should help get more fire onto the landscape, and not just through the management of naturally ignited blazes. Managers of the Tonto forest use PODs to identify areas that would benefit from prescribed burning to clear away brush and thus improve wildlife habitat, reduce wildfire risk or reap other ecological benefits.

“It’s kind of a no-brainer to use the PODs as boundaries for those projects,” Lata says.

Others agree. In 2019, the San Juan National Forest of Colorado began integrating PODs into their plans for prescribed burning. That same year, the San Isabel National Forest in Colorado used a POD network to help identify where to clear brush for firebreaks that could help contain future fires. And in 2020, the Washington State Department of Natural Resources also started using PODs to prioritize such treatments and to explain to private landowners why treatments were necessary, and why certain areas were being prioritized for treatment over others.

It helps to have a tool that can show landowners why their neighbors’ property should be treated first, says forest sciences researcher Cole Buettner of Colorado State University. In a 2023 study, he evaluated how PODs have been used in these “non-incident contexts,” as they’re called. “It can help get a lot of support for what you’re doing.”

Perhaps in this regard, PODs serve their most vital function. In translating visions for fire into lines and colors on a map, PODs become a communal language through which a new relationship with wildfire may be forged.

These polygons simplify the conversation, Lata says. “We can just say POD, and we all know what that means.”

A version of this article appears in the April 20, 2024 issue of Science News.

CITATIONS

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About Nikk Ogasa  is a staff writer who focuses on the physical sciences for Science News. He has a master's degree in geology from McGill University, and a master's degree in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.