Ralph B. Peck, Professor Emeritus of Foundation Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign died of congestive heart failure on February 18, 2008, at his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was born in Winnipeg, Canada, to his American parents, Orwin K and Ethel Huyck Peck on June 23, 1912. [Editor] More after the break [/Editor]
The US Army Corps of Engineers has issued a report that indicates the eastern portion of the levee system that protects Bernard Parrish will need to be raised by 11-ft to 29-ft to protect against the 100-year hurricane. Levees along Lake Pontchartrain were designed in the 1960s for what was then considered to be 200-yr and 300-yr hurricanes. Now they are judged sufficient for the 100-yr event. More at NOLA.COM.
A teenage girl strolling on the beach in Pacifica, California was buried alive by a landslide. She was buried up to her chest, and a passer-by dug her out with his bare hands while more soil and rock fell around them. Story at KTVU San Francisco. See a nice oblique aerial photo of the beach prior to the landslide here. Those slopes don’t look particularly stable to me but what do I know?
Local Leadville, Colorado officials are very concerned about a backup of heavy metal impregnated water that is backing up behind a 2.1 mile partially collapsed drainage tunnel. The volume of water is approximately 1 billion gallons or enough to fill 1,500 Oympic-sized swimming pools.Officials are very concerned about the potential for a catastrophic collapse. Source: CNN. (Photo by foto3116)
The International Journal of Geoengineering Case Histories has formally announced their second issue. Apparently when I posted about it previously, they had only two of the four papers.
This second issue contains four case histories that come with additional downloads. In particular, check out Dr. Edmund Medley’s Paper on the 2006 Hawaii Earthquakes. He has some neat photos including some in 3-D (more about his 3-D photos).
I had an earthquake engineering course in my geological engineering undergraduate program, and an excellent teacher, but man, the math gave me fits! Well, apparently my time has finally come to make the effort to understand it again. A retired Canadian geophysicist/engineer is writing a series of articles on seismic analysis. Read more… (Photo by trochee)
More problems for the US Department of Energy related to the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository. The New York Times is reporting that the DOE is already 10 years behind in a commitment made to Power Companies to store their nuclear waste, and according to the DOE, it will likely be at least another 10 years before they are able to begin accepting waste for permanent storage. Who cares you ask? Well, the US has already payed out $342 million in 60 lawsuits filed by utility companies, and that total could reach $11 billion according to government estimates or $35 billion according to industry estimates before Yucca Mountain finaly opens and begins accepting waste. Source: New York Times by way of Ontario-geofish.
Boulder, CO, USA –Studying the arrangements of sediments and sedimentary rocks in Earth’s near-surface layers received a recent boost from a new volume published by the Geological Society of America. Stratigraphic Analyses Using GPR, GSA Special Paper 432, offers a state-of-the-art overview of ground penetrating radar applications in the field of shallow subsurface stratigraphic analysis. [more…]
Stereo photography has long been a tool for geoengineers with respect to aerial photos. But many people are not aware that you can use stereo photography with ground based targets to create 3-D photos. I beleive the technical term is terrestrial photogrammetry (useful if you want some technical articles on the subject). [Red/cyan anaglyph by E. Mathieson]
Dr. Edmund Medley of Geosyntec, owner of the Bimrocks website, has a page on the topic of 3-D Photos in Geoengineering at the GeoEngineer.org website. On it he has several PDF versions of presentations on the topic that have many examples of the applications of this type of thing to geoengineering projects and suggestions for how to implement it.
Furthermore, Dr. Medley extended a gracious offer to mail Red/Cyan anaglyph 3-D glasses to any GeoPrac.net visitors who are interested. Contact him through his Bimrocks website.
The US Army Corps of Engineers, New Orleans district is looking for an unprecedented 100 Million Cubic Yards of Clay to be used for reconstruction and fortification of levees in the New Orleans area. Once borrow sources are approved by the Corps, they will likely be contracting directly with a USACOE contractor constructing one of the projects associated with New Orleans Hurricane Protection System. Material specs are USCS classification of CL or CH, <35% sand, PI < 10, organic content < 9%.
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