FEATURES

22 Storm Soundings: New Technologies for Tracking Hurricanes
Tropical cyclones can intensify quickly prior to landfall — sometimes more quickly than forecasters can gauge and give warning to coastal communities. Scientists are now looking for new, speedier ways to track changes in an approaching storm’s power.
Carolyn Gramling

28 Meteorite Strikes Peru!
On Sept. 15, 2007, a meteorite crashed into a small village in northern Peru. As word of the meteorite spread, meteorite hunters and geologists alike descended on the region to collect pieces of the space rock and to study what it left behind.
Lionel E. Jackson Jr., Peter Brown, Jay Melosh and Dolores Hill

34 Exploring Karst in Guilin, China
Traveling to China for the Olympics? Try straying off the beaten path to visit a geologically fascinating place, such as Guilin in southeast China. Nowhere else in the world will you experience such a dramatic, fairytale-like landscape.
Jordan Clary

NEWS NOTES

7 News Shorts
8 Hazards of a sea breeze
9 Hundreds of quakes rock Reno suburbs
10 Seaweed confirms Monte Verde dates, but also migration patterns?
11 Afghanistan flights reveal natural riches
11 Life extended for leaning tower
12 Desperately seeking salt dome
13 Petroleum reserve filling halted
14 Un-greening the Sahara
15 Models made Antarctica warmer
16 Methane on the rise
17 Mapping Arizona’s cracks
17 Fossilized mother and baby found
18 Nitrogen: too much of a good thing
19 Fungus depletes uranium
20 U.S. releases national climate change assessment
20 Phoenix lands on Mars, sends back images
21 Perchance with a bang

VIEWS

58 A COMMENT ON...
Geoengineering: It’s Not a Panacea
Geoengineering is not a cure-all for a warming climate. In fact, such measures may create more problems than they solve.
Alan Robock

59 A COMMENT ON...
Geoengineering: Perhaps Palliative Medicine
Though geoengineering is more of a painkiller than a cure for the ills of global warming, perhaps it can relieve some of the symptoms while we take the necessary steps to reduce emissions.
Ken Caldeira

60 GEOLOGIC COLUMN
Whole Lot of Shaking Going On
New Mac laptops come equipped with motion sensors, which, along with freely available software, are all you need to create your own seismic station.
Lisa A. Rossbacher

DEPARTMENTS

4 FROM THE PUBLISHER
5 LETTERS: Perspectives from readers

38 TRENDS & INNOVATIONS
Charcoal: Out of the Grill and into the Ground
Charcoal is making a comeback, but not where you might think: Instead of putting it into the grill, some scientists are advocating putting it into the ground to boost soil fertility and to sequester carbon.
Cassandra Willyard

40 EDUCATION & OUTREACH
False Alarms Foster Real Skills
Volcanology courses prepare students for understanding the science of a volcano, but most don’t prepare students for dealing with the human aspect of a volcanic crisis. One teacher is working to change that.
Nicole Branan

43 GEOMEDIA
Books: The Dark — But Fascinating — Side of Science
Games: BP Helps the Sims Go Green
Books: Ten Minutes on Supercontinent: Ten Billion Years in the Life of Our Planet
Web: Sharing Across Borders

48 CROSS-SECTION: A puzzle
49 WHERE ON EARTH?
50 GEOMARKETPLACE
52 CLASSIFIEDS: Career opportunities

56 BENCHMARKS
July 11, 1979: NASA’s Skylab Tumbles Down

57 DOWN TO EARTH WITH...
Biogeochemist and cave diver Stephanie Schwabe

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