#geochemistry

The cycling of water within Earth's interior regulates plate tectonics, volcanism, ocean volume, and climate stability, making it central to the planet's long-term evolution and habitability and a key scientific question. While subducting slabs are known to transport water into the mantle, scientists have long assumed that most hydrous minerals dehydrate at high temperatures, releasing fluids as they descend. Whether water can survive the extreme conditions of the deep lower mantle, however, has remained an open question.

Hello! 👁️🗺️

Our names are Ben and Mandy, and we’re reaching out to the disabled geoscience and community and its allies today with an announcement as well as an opportunity that we hope will interest you.

We’re organizing a zine on the theme of disability in geoscience (DiG). We hope that the project will do a lot of good for our community by bringing people together through sharing experiences with access, inaccessibility, stigma, and support.

We’re looking to bring at least two (2) more staff members on to the zine project to help us organize and moderate it. Possible mod activities include answering and sending emails, monitoring our Discord server, drafting posts, making graphics, attending weekly editorial meetings, generating review criteria, managing reviewers, and formatting drafts of the zine.

Our current project timeline goes through July 2025, the idea being that publication coincides with Disability Pride month next year.

If you are interested in learning more about us and/or this volunteer position, please provide us with some basic information about you through filling out this Google Form.

If you are interested in supporting the DiG Zine in general, you may follow us on Tumblr, X/Twitter, and/or Instagram. We also have a Discord set up that you can join via this invite link. If you would like to join the DiG listserv, DM us your email address.

Thank you for reading! We hope to see you in the DiG Zine community,

In what is now Mexico, dogs were raised and fattened on meat and maize between 250 and 900 CE, most likely by wealthy households. This is when the dog-transporting service began. Then, up to 400 miles away, humans transported the dogs to important Maya centers. They were about the size of a Chihuahua-terrier mix. Why did they do this? For consumption or as a sacrifice. These were the reasons these dogs were plump, weighing as much as 10-20 lbs (4.5-9 kg). The findings overturn the assumption that Maya dogs were just local village animals. Instead, they were economically important livestock. Transporting dogs hundreds of miles only makes sense if they were valuable, & fattened animals are more valuable for feasting.

As a geologist, I use the words oxidation and reduction a lot. For example:

These rocks have gone through oxidation.

Or this rock contains reduction spots.

But what do I mean when I say these things? Primarily, this has to do with iron and its properties (but other elements can be oxidized or reduced too). Iron is super reactive with oxygen, like best friends who go everywhere together. However, what iron isn't aware of is that oxygen isn't a good friend.

Reduction is the opposite of oxidation. It is the gaining of electrons. So, if one element is being oxidized, another is being reduced.

Making sense so far? Here is what the reaction for rust (which is what happened to those red rocks above) looks like:

Copper also oxidizes. A great example is the Statue of Liberty.

So the next time you pass by red cliffs you can sound super smart to your friends and family by telling them that those cliffs have been oxidized.

So, after a second year of my geological studies I wanted to get some field experience. One of my professors offered me an internship in his company so I obviously immediately agreed to it.

I won't be talking much about how we got there, I'll just say it wasn't exactly easy.

This place is hostile to anyone. Constant wind and dust storms (also, dust here contains a lot of pesticides), temperature drops drastically after the sunsets and it's really hot out there at daytime (up to 43°C and it was a middle of September).

We were there for one month, living in tents. There's one thing in particular that made it really hard for me to live there — salt layer on the surface, which you can see in pictures 4 and 5. It was so hard and sharp, that it made sleeping comfortably in my sleeping bag almost impossible (low temperatures and strong wind also added up to it). I also once tried to taste it. It wasn't great. Salt there tasted really bitter and had an awful chemical aftertaste.

My job was simple and mostly physical— collect and label samples of soil with, and gather the underground air with a piece of rebar, hollow tube, sledgehammer and a syringe. We worked 8 hour shifts everyday with one 15 minute lunch break at the middle of the day. It was pretty exhausting. Every time we got back to our camp one of us had to cook a dinner for others, then we prepared air reservoirs for our chromatography machines, and laid samples in the sun for them to dry.

Overall it was interesting to get some experience in lithology, learn how chromatography works and test my own resilience.

Feel free to ask questions!

by Elisabeth M. Hausrath, Professor of Geoscience at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Mars, one of our closest planetary neighbors, has fascinated people for hundreds of years, partly because it is so similar to Earth. It is about the same size, contains similar rocks and minerals, and is not too much farther out from the Sun.

Because Mars and Earth share so many features, scientists have long wondered whether Mars could have once harbored life. Today, Mars is very cold and dry, with little atmosphere and no liquid water on the surface − traits that make it a hostile environment for life. But some observations suggest that ancient Mars may have been warmer, wetter and more favorable for life.