Exhuming my thesis, part III

Update 1: follow-on post here on the series revisiting maps or posting off-web.

Update 2: added an intriguing speculation on the adjacent Sudbury Nickel Irruptive

Following on Parts I & II here & here, here is an article on the breakup of Nuna Province in current N China: it gives new impetus to plate tectonics around 1.5GA - see Part II for another example -  such dynamic processes were proposed in my thesis paper over 40 yrs. ago here, where I applied recent plate dynamics to the Proterozoic of Southern Province of N Ontario Canada of similar age and make-up of Nuna Province. I looked at it from a structural geologic perspective, using intrusives cross-cutting relationships as date markers. The new paper actually dated similar intrusives in present day N China.

More maps, in 3D now

Update 2: found a textbook example of  "carving upstream" in this gorgeous video of the Uinta Mountains of Wyoming

Update 1: more offshore canyons crowning Antarctica found with new digital terrain data and give us a beautiful map @ bottom

This follows on the previous post here of an ongoing series of maps created for outlets that aren't necessarily on the web  - see label:revisit here and label:3D here - this is partly because I'm disengaging from socials; and that itself was partly because I had to let go of significant chunk of work on the internet for lack of resources (see §2 here). See my remaining web presence in the banner menu of the web view here.

My web footprint

Let me highlight the importance of the recent topic of AI my Community Interest Company delved into and I used in various forms shared in the last post here. Open this blog's  desktop version here, look at the stats at its right... and you'll see why the curve below spikes at far right here!

click to enlarge, original here

Ongoing crash course on AI

Update 1: a collection of AI "art" on Flickr 

Update 2: a French look into the future of AI

- new: AI-driven Comic & Symbolic Intelligence 

Update 3: added a note on "AI's little helpers"

Update 4: a manifesto of sorts closes this brief

Ongoing: add items of interest under "AI-ding Tool"

New twist: look for AI-assisted story-telling below

New tool: Perplexity summaries, last Medium Personal

New human-centeredness: with a little help from AI

Have I mentionned that AI will need skilled writers more than skilled coders? Forbes wrote here about a US efforts in that regard. The one thing AI won't replace,  acc. to the starred "AI-ding Tool" example below is curiosity:  it mirrors Steve Jobs' "stay hungry, stay foolish" at Stanford 2005 Commencement Address here.

Another map request

Update 2: added a new map post here in my ongoing series of revisiting here

Update 1: added at bottom a new map adding to an existing Antarctic project

Pyrénées

When visiting the nearby village of Pontacq (Flickr & village site), the glorious sunshine showed the Pic do Midi de Bigorre (Wikipedia) so clearly we could see the observatory atop! It's the left peak in the central massif below.

Reposting stories from original website

As I prepare to end this blog, let's follow on recent updates: 

Aug. '24: A return to my roots
Oct. '24: "Where in the world...", updated
Oct. '24: Global sea level rise revisited
Oct. '24: Northwest Passage Reloaded
Nov. '24: Cumbria classic revisited...
Dec. '24: Exhuming my thesis area... & Jan. '25: update
Jan. '25: London Thames Barrier... & Feb. '25: update
Feb. '25: Beechey Island update
Feb. '25: East Anglia Peatlands revisited

A conversation with AI (long read)

Update: a short read on Medium tells "the story behind the story" of American & French Revolutions.

Shakira YouTube channel posted this video #LMYNLWorldTourCDMX: 

How a confusion between CDMX (Ciudad Mexico) and MCDX (1410 in Roman numerals) lead to a far-ranging AI chat thru culture, geography, career and climate activism. MSFT Copilot (here) transcript (Italics: me, regular: Copilot):

East Anglia Peatlands revisited

Update1: see clipped oroginal and working vector datasets posted as detailed at bottom.

Update 2: added DIY map-mapping workshops & notes to help citzen science

Update 3: here at the end is the relevance of this sort of effort in a broader context

Update 4: worrying revisit of peatlands degradation with increased drought & extreme weather here: increased heat degraded carbon absorption, and that is mirrored in tropical forests turning into carbon emitters seen here

***

This follows on previous Peatlands blog posting here, last of the Community Engagement Series.

As news abounds about Arctic Permafrost & Peatlands degrading faster than thought (Copilot), this may be a good time to bring back some Natural England and Environment Agency data under Open Government License (OGL, National Archives). The upshot is that returning peatlands to their original state is the biggest climate change mitigator in the UK detailed here & here: briefly, peatlands either degraded thru neglect or converted to farm land, not only shrinks & stops being floodwater catchment, but it converts carbon sinks through sphagnum moss into carbon emitters thru windborne dried peat. In other words, re-watering peatlands dwarf efforts from other mitigation of climate change (see sources at bottom).

Beechey Island update

Update: see aerial shots from 1968 posted on Facebook Group "Remembering the Franklin Expedition" here

 A previous blogpost here almost 7 years ago showed how to use a niche product to create detailed elevation model of Beechey Island. Posted on Google Earth here (download & open it in Google Earth, see 'GE' below), it allowed to add a Parks Canada photo of the Franklin Expedition landing site: it was the first one uncovered by University of Alberta's Owen Beatty in 1984, the year before I spent a summer in the Arctic 'nearby' the other side of King William Isl. on the west shore mid-Boothia Peninsula... We were in fact told to report any unusual findings!

London Thames Barrier update

Update 1: here is the transcript of Hansen's latest "in plain English" (alt. here)

Update 2: here is the Climate Cultures article this map was used in, thanks Lola Perrin.

Update 3: here at the end is the relevance of this sort of effort in a broader context

Two weeks ago I recreated Sea Level Rise (SLR) and Risk of Flooding (RoF) maps for the lower Thames River near the Thames Barrier (blog) for a WhatsApp Group considering the future of its ageing infrastructure w.r.t. recent climate extremes. This week came a global and urgent update affecting Sea Level Rise, by James Hansen who sounded the alarm ~ 35 yrs ago (go to 1981 & 1988 in Medium): a paper incl. supplementary materials "Global Warming Has Accelerated" (Columbia) c/w companion webinar (Columbia).