Chukhung, Nepal

Chukhung is a small climber's resort village located in a glacial valley 10 kilometers southwest of Mt. Everest.  The village is at an elevation of about 4730 meters (15,518 feet).  East of the village is a glacier that flows around the mountain called Imja Tse (Island Peak).  That glacier is easily visible in aerial imagery because of the ice-marginal lake that has formed between it, and another glacier to the west.  The terminus of the glacier appears to be steadily retreating to the east which is displayed in the gif below.

The gif shows the glacier in February 2003, May 2009, February 2010, and May 2013:

You can find it yourself on Google Earth using these coords:     27°53'N    86°56'E  

More info from sources referenced: Wikipedia

Check back for more in two weeks!

Karymsky Volcano, Russia

Karymsky: funny name, serious volcano.  Karymsky is a very active stratovolcano located on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula.  The Global Volcanism Program calls it the most active volcano of Kamchatka's eastern volcanic zone and describes its eruptions as vulcanian or vulcanian-strombolian. In late April or early May the volcano burped out enough ash to leave a beautiful, black, ash fall on the snow-covered landscape.  Landsat 8 snapped a picture of the area around the volcano on May 20, 2013, and that image was subsequently featured on NASA's Earth Observatory website.

The following gif shows the Landsat 8 image from May 20th and a previous, snowless image (which Google Earth lists as April 9, 2013 though I'm not sure I believe that...)

For some great photos of Karymsky follow these links:

• View from the north
• View from the south

You can find it yourself on Google Earth using these coords:     54°03'N    159°25'E  

More info from sources referenced: Wikipedia, Earth Observatory, Global Volcanism Program

Check back for more in two weeks!

Gila National Forest, New Mexico

I've noticed Google Earth tends to not have a lot of imagery with snow.  In the same sense that clouds in the imagery can hinder the view, snow-cover is probably considered a less-than-desirable condition.  When I do happen to come across an image with snow, I have to flip back and forth between the snow view and snowless view; it just looks way too cool!  I was trying to look around for some wildfire imagery from nearby this area when I stumbled across this beautiful summer-to-winter view not far from Whitewater Baldy Mountain.

The animation below shows 1.5 years from August 2011 to February 2013:

You can find it yourself on Google Earth using these coords:     33°18'N  108°35'W

More info: Gila NF, Whitewater Baldy

Check back in two weeks to see a terrifying scar in Oklahoma.

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Hawaii

First, a thank-you message for my readers: 

For the first year of running this blog, most of my audience were friends and followers on Google+, or those that follow the Geoblogosphere community (geology bloggers).  I would normally average about 100 views per post and had amassed 6,000 views by the one-year anniversary of this blog.  Last week a funny thing happened.  My latest post apparently caught the eyes of some folks who tweeted it around, leading to a rapid surge of retweets and shares on various message boards and online communities.  You can only imagine my surprise when I logged in the next day to see that my views had skyrocketed.  At first, most of my views were coming from the science community on twitter who had linked to my blog, but not long after, websites Slashdot and Instapundit posted links to me and popular bloggers Maria Popova and Ed Yong both shared my post as well.  In about 4 days, I went from 6,000 views to 70,000 views.  I am of course, very very ecstatic to have reached this feat.
There are a few people that really deserve recognition in helping me achieve this overwhelming popularity.  Charles Carrigan, Caroll Karns, and Ron Schott were some of the first readers of my blog, all of whom are bloggers themselves.  They shared encouraging words and constructive feedback that really helped me get started.  My best friend Phillip Kissell, spends a lot of time on Google Earth, perusing the globe with me.  He even wrote a guest blog for me.  My mom is probably my biggest fan and routinely brags about my blog to everyone.

So to all the friends, family, professors, online geology community, Google Plussers, and readers,  Thank you for everything!

Now, it's time to get back to business.

This week's post features the beautiful Big Island of Hawaii, an active volcanic hot spot and one of two states that I still have yet to visit.  The Pu'u O'o crater shown below is a cinder cone associated with the Kilauea Volcano and according to Wikipedia, it has been erupting since 1983.

The animation below shows the years: 2002, 2005, 2010, and 2011.  Some of the things to  observe here are:
The western end of the crater showing the most noticeable changes of shape.
The glowing lava visible in the 2011 image.
The addition of flows and cinder build up on the southeastern slope. 

I decided to try this animated gif version instead of the previous, image by image layout.  I don't particularly like how this limits the time you can spend looking closely at an image, but I post the coordinates at the bottom so you can copy paste them into Google Earth yourself.  I like that the animated gif condenses the space taken up by the blog and accentuates the change in details between each image.
However, I'm not sure how well the gif works on the smartphone view, so I may end up switching back to the old format if this becomes a big issue.  Just let me know I suppose.

Anyways...

You can find it yourself on Google Earth using these coords:     19°23'15.61"N     155°06'21.55"W

More info: Wikipedia: Pu'u O'o

Check back next week to celebrate the 2012 Olympic Games in Google Earth Time Machine style!

Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Mount Merapi is an active stratovolcano located on the island of Java.  It erupts fairly frequently, with larger eruptions happening every 10 to 15 years.  The most recent eruption was in 2010 and killed 353 people.  However, in 2006 another eruption occurred.  This eruption was less powerful but it was captured pretty well on satellite imagery.  The eruptions began around the end of April and lasted through May.  Below are before, during, and after images. 

(facts and figures from wikipedia)

May 12, 2006

Wait for it...

May 25, 2006

Kablammo!  Gasses and ash abound!

September 10, 2006

Check out those new lava flows!

You can find it yourself on Google Earth using these coords:      07°32'41.22"S    110°26'41.90"E

More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Merapi#2006_eruption

Check back next week to see the town that returned from the depths.

Sundial, West Virginia

Mountain destruction is one of the biggest problems facing the Appalachian region.  However, this problem is not part of some natural erosive process; it is entirely caused by the work of humans.  In fact, a handful of people have the power to put a stop to it right now if they wanted, but they aren't going to.

Mountaintop removal is a method of coal mining where the top of a mountain is blasted off in order to give cheap and easy access to coal seams.  The overburden material is then typically dumped in a valley or tossed back onto the remaining mountain as a pile of rubble.  As long as coal is in high demand, and no legislation is passed to end this practice, it will go on.

Not only is mountaintop removal an incredibly dangerous source of pollution (with coal dust and overburden being dumped at stream headwaters), but it is also a devastating loss of an iconic mountain system.  More and more people everyday have to watch as the mountains around their homes and towns are left in ruin, leaving a dirty, flattened wasteland where there was once a beautiful landscape.

April 23, 1996

December 31, 2002

June 07, 2009

If you want to help stop mountaintop removal, you can follow the "More info" link below.

You can find it yourself on Google Earth using these coords:     37°54'16.10"N      81°33'16.39"W

More info: http://www.ilovemountains.org/memorial/C301

Check back next week to see devastation by wildfire.