Utah Geological Survey

IS TAR SAND MINING VIABLE IN UTAH

newwest.net

Tar sands development often conjures images of a bleak northeast Alberta landscape, scraped and scalped of its vegetation after being converted to sprawling strip mines from which much of Canadian oil imports to the United States originate.

But if a proposal by Alberta-based Earth Energy Resources survives environmentalists’ appeal, eastern Utah’s canyon country could become a backdrop for the only tar sands mine in the United States.

In 2009, Utah mining regulators approved EER’s proposed PR Spring Mine on state institutional trust land in Uintah and Grand counties northwest of Grand Junction, Colo. If the mine is successful, it could prove the viability of a Utah tar sands industry, possibly bringing a new level of energy development to the Colorado Plateau.

Tar sand, also called oil sand, bituminous sand or asphaltic sandstone, is oil-laden sedimentary rock most commonly extracted in Canada. Utah’s tar sands, however, are generally half as rich as Canada’s and require more processing to extract the oil.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that Utah tar sands harbor between 12 billion and 19 billion barrels of oil, with at least 2 billion barrels to be found at PR Spring.

The push to develop tar sands in Utah is a fairly recent phenomenon.

Determined to find a way for American oil shale and tar sands to become sources of domestic energy production, Congress required the U.S. Department of Energy to start up a tar sands and oil shale leasing program as part of the 2005 Energy Policy Act.

In 2008, the DOE completed an environmental study of its tar sands and oil shale program, outlining 11 potential tar sands development areas in Utah, the only state in which tar sands are thought to be economically recoverable.

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Utah Geological Survey

2010 WAS BANNER YEAR FOR DINOSAUR DISCOVERIES

deseretnews.com

In Utah’s arid, wind-swept deserts, paleontologists would be shocked to go an entire year without stumbling across the remains of a rock-encrusted dinosaur. Yet naming eight new species in 2010 was beyond their annual optimism.

“It’s actually a banner year,” said Mark Loewen, research curator and paleontologist for the Utah Museum of Natural History and adjunct assistant professor in geology and geophysics at the University of Utah. “Even back in the 1870s, when people first discovered dinosaurs here, there was never a year in which eight dinosaurs were named.”

Utah’s oldest, new stars include creatures like the Abydosaurus mcintoshi, Utahceratops gettyi and Hippodraco scutodens, horned, spiked and long-tailed creatures who inhabited Utah as far back as 125 million years ago.

“I’m not sure I could say one is more important than the other,” said Dan Chure, park paleontologist at Dinosaur National Monument near Vernal. “They’re all interesting depending on what type of scientific problem you’re working on. Some are more complete than others, but they’re all providing evidence on the evolution of dinosaurs that is important.”

The carnivorous terrors and prehistoric plant eaters were all found on Bureau of Land Management land in eastern Utah, except one, which was found in Dinosaur National Monument on National Park Service land.

Although the actual discovery of bones may have been several years ago, the process of excavating, lab research and getting a paper published in a journal constitute a dinosaur’s official “naming” — which happened eight times this year, said Don DeBlieux, paleontologist with the Utah Geological Survey.

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Utah Geological Survey

MIDSIZE QUAKE HITS SOUTHWESTERN UTAH MONDAY MORNING

sltib.com

A 4.6 magnitude earthquake hit southwestern Utah early Monday morning.

The 5:06 a.m. quake could be felt in the sparsely populated area about eight miles northwest of Circleville and eight miles west of Junction. Several people called the Seismograph Stations at the University of Utah to report they experienced the pre-dawn shaking. No damage or injuries have been reported.

“It’s a moderate-sized earthquake, so we’re unlikely to have significant damage,” said Keith Koper, director of the U.’s Seismograph Stations. “But people will definitely be aware of it if they are relatively close to the epicenter.”

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Utah Geological Survey

LATEST UTAH DINOSAUR BRINGS NUMBER OF NEW SPECIES NAMED IN 2010 TO EIGHT

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Had Utah’s newest dinosaur not gone extinct, it might have evolved into a highly intelligent creature, scientists speculate.

“Its skull is six times larger than other dinosaurs,” said Scott Foss, regional paleontologist with the Bureau of Land Management.

But Geminiraptor suarezarum’s large brain case is not its only unique feature. It had an inflatable upper jaw bone and feathers on its arms and legs and, as Utah’s eighth new dinosaur species of the year, it’s a record breaker, too.

“One [find] is unusual, eight is outstanding,” said Scott Foss, regional paleontologist with the Bureau of Land Management, of the newest creature featured in a paper published Wednesday in the online journal PLoS ONE.

The upper jaw bone of the meat-eating creature, small enough to fit in the palm of the hand, was discovered in 2004 in a formation in the Crystal Geyser area near Green River, where it lived 125 million years ago. It is the oldest species found in North America belonging to the “raptor-like” troodon group of dinosaurs.

Foss said worldwide there about 700 named dinosaurs.

“This string of dinosaur descriptions means that a full one percent of all known dinosaur species were described from lands in Utah during 2010,” said Foss. “That’s what’s interesting and fun about this.”

Seven of the new species were found on BLM land and one in Dinosaur National Monument.

State paleontologist Jim Kirkland, who co-authored the paper and was at the site when the discovery was made, said the jawbone is hollow and could be inflated “like a balloon.”

Kirkland said he is unaware of such a characteristic in other fossilized dinosaurs and can only speculate on its purpose.

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Utah Geological Survey

TWO NEW DINOSAUR SPECIES FOUND AT UTAH SITE

sltrib.com

Utah’s Cedar Mountain Formation has yielded two new species of iguanodont, cousins of the famous iguanodon, the plant-eating, beaked-mouthed dinosaur known for its ability to walk on its hind legs.

Working on federal land in two eastern Utah sites, teams led by the Utah Geological Survey discovered the two specimens in 2004. It took years of careful fieldwork to extract the bones, which include a nearly complete skull, and prepare them for study.

The most carefully dated of the two was discovered near Arches National Park by Andrew Milner, of the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site. It was estimated to be 124 million years old and dubbed Hippodraco.

The survey’s Don DeBlieux discovered the other specimen near Green River. This one was dubbed Iguanacolossus.

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Utah Geological Survey

APPLIANCE REBATE PROGRAM TO END SOON

deseretnews.com

A state incentive program that gives cash to people who trade in their old, energy inefficient appliances is coming to a close.

Cash for Appliances, a popular program that has helped more that 12,000 people cut energy costs by upgrading to Energy Star rated appliances, has less that 10 percent of its funds remaining. The program is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and operated by the Utah State Energy Program.

Applications for the program are available at www.cashforappliancesutah.com and must be completed, signed and accompanied by all required documentation including model and serial numbers for all new appliances.

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Utah Geological Survey

HISTORY'S BIGGEST LUNGFISH POPS UP IN NEBRASKA

newscientist.com

The biggest lungfish on record has been uncovered in an unexpected place – a drawer in the Nebraska State Museum in Lincoln.

Kenshu Shimada of DePaul University in Chicago was searching the drawers for specimens of fish teeth. For a while, the largest one he came across was the size of his thumb. Then he discovered a “humongous” one, 117 mm wide.

James Kirkland, state palaeontologist at the Utah Geological Survey, identified the tooth as coming from the upper jaw of a lungfish in the extinct genus Ceratodus, a freshwater bottom-feeder which used massive tooth plates to crunch shelled animals.

Lungfish are among our closest living piscine relatives. Kirkland and Shimada estimate the new Ceratodus was at least 4 meters long, beating the previous record of 3.5 meters for an African fossil. The largest living lungfish come in at almost 2 meters.

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Utah Geological Survey

73 UTAH SCHOOLS TO GET SOLAR PANELS TO GENERATE ENERGY, TEACH CHILDREN

deseretnews.com

A wet and gloomy Monday, the sun nowhere in sight, was the setting for the announcement at Hillside Middle School that 73 solar panels will be installed atop 73 schools across Utah.

The solar photovoltaic arrays will be placed on the roof of at least one school in each of Utah’s 41 school districts to generate renewable energy for the schools and teach schoolchildren about energy efficiency and alternatives.

“I think it’s really cool that as a school, we can make a difference by being ‘green’ and not wasting as much energy,” seventh-grader Annie Connolly said. “It’s cool that we are different from other schools that pollute the earth.”

“This is an incredibly exciting day,” said Gil Sperling, a U.S. Department of Energy senior adviser for energy efficiency and renewable energy. “As far as I know, Utah is the first state in the country to systematically implement this kind of program.”

Educating students and teachers about energy is one of the main goals of the Solar for Schools programs.

“Solar for Schools gives us an opportunity to educate students about the role of energy in their lives,” said Elise Brown, renewable energy coordinator for the Utah Department of Natural Resources. “It is our hope that students who benefit from this program will go on to inform and inspire others about this very important topic.”

More than 200 Utah teachers will attend a class this year sponsored by the National Energy Foundation. They will learn how solar, wind and geothermal energies work, with a special focus on the implications of renewable energy in Utah.

Sperling said the Solar for Schools program has four major benefits — strengthening the economy by reducing dependence on imported oil, offsetting carbon emissions by the increased use of solar energy, creating jobs, and increasing awareness and education about energy efficiency.

The DOE estimates that over a 20-year span, the effect of the Solar for Schools program will be the equivalent of planting 11,000 trees.

“This program is about educating students, teachers, parents and the community at large,” Sperling said. “People are going to look at these panels and say, ‘This is what we ought to be doing.’ ”

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Utah Geological Survey

PREPARE YOUR FAMILY FOR A DISASTER IN YOUR AREA

mormontimes.com

If highway construction projects have taught commuters anything, it’s that even a single lane restriction can bring traffic to a crawl. Now imagine the impact on your commute because of a unexpected force of nature — like a strong earthquake, a blizzard, flooding rains or a tornado.

Along Utah’s Wasatch front, a fault spans 240 miles, and 80 percent of Utah residents live along its path.

The Utah Geological Survey notes the fault “has the dubious distinction of being one of the longest and most active normal faults in the world.”

Other areas of the country are also near fault lines. And along the Wasatch fault, several dozen freeway overpasses cross the main corridors near which the fault travels.

Other areas are more prone to conditions that tornadoes form in. And others live in the paths of hurricanes. Still, blizzards, fires and other storms can prompt evacuations or paralyze an area.

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Utah Geological Survey

SAGA OF SNAKE VALLEY: BATTLING OVER UTAH WATER

KCSG.com

Dean Baker, a rancher and activist for the protection of water rights in west-central Utah’s Snake Valley, could become wealthy by selling his property to the Southern Nevada Water Authority. The principal communities in the Snake Valley, from north to south, are Callao, Trout Creek, Partoun, EskDale, Baker, and Garrison.

“People don’t understand me,” Baker said, referring to his refusal to sell.

What makes Baker’s property valuable is that it is a coveted water source. But after 55 years of ranching, Baker isn’t ready to give up his home or see his agriculture and livestock suffer because of underground pumping.

According to the Great Basin Water Network, the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), the water agency for Las Vegas and Henderson, Nev., proposes to pump up to 200,000 acre-feet annually from eastern Nevada and western Utah and send it through 300 miles of pipeline to support larger cities. This comes to about 65 billion gallons of water per year.

Ecologists and hydrologists estimate the water table will drop as much as 100 feet in the first 10 years of the pipeline, killing the current vegetation and wiping out the wildlife and livelihoods of the rural communities including the Snake, Spring, Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar valleys.

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