May 18, 2026

News and notes

Here are some news items that I thought were interesting. For my news items, I try to stick to open access papers.

If you enjoy my blogs, bookmark the site and check on Mondays rather than relying on social media postings which can get lost in the shuffle. For my news items, I try to stick to open access papers.

Comments

If anyone has comments on any of my postings, please leave a comment on the Linkedin page for the posting or email me at raymondreichelt@gmail.com.

In response to last week’s posting, Marcus S. suggested checking out the mineral collection of the Museo Andres del Castillo in Lima, Peru. There are some good photos on the website. If you plan to go to Lima, check out the museum.

Geopolitics

Oil prices up to May 18, 2026
Credit: Oilprice.com

Marine Traffic in the Strait of Hormuz
Credit: marinetraffic.com

Iran War

• Ongoing coverage of the Iran War.

• Attack Drone Hits Near UAE Nuclear Power Plant.

• UAE to complete second oil pipeline bypassing strait of Hormuz by 2027.

• Iran allowing transit of Chinese vessels in Strait of Hormuz, Fars news reports.

• The battle for Hormuz risks sparking the next Iran clash: Bousso.

• Shipping industry fears fuel shortages as Iran war squeezes bunker fuel supply; related: Panama Canal slot auctions hit record $4m.

Other Geopolitics

• Fury Targets Starmer in One of Britain’s Biggest Political Street Protests.

• As Hormuz crisis rattles the world, eyes are on another key waterway.

• OPEC Fractures, the Draft Returns, and the Age of Consequences Begins.

• Russia Rocks Ukraine With Unprecedented 1,500+ Drones in One of Largest Aerial Attacks Ever.

• Xi confronts Trump over Taiwan.

• US in closely guarded talks to open new bases in Greenland.

• From Gail Tverberg: China and US Trade Talks: A Solution for Oil Shortages?

• The missing link in America’s critical minerals push isn’t mining – it’s processing expertise.

• US rare earth ambitions take big step forward in Greenland.

Research and News

• Digital archive of ephemerally preserved sedimentary structure in surf zone uplifted by the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake.

• Geomorphology: Local and regional tectonic controls on spatial patterns of erosion rate and topography in the Three Rivers Region, southeastern Tibetan Plateau.

• The Influence of Fluvial Incision on the Lithospheric Stress Field: A Numerical Approach.

• Bedrock testing of zircon annealing for detrital provenance studies: Raman and U-Pb analysis in the Adamello batholith (Southern Alps, Italy).

• Provenance and Petrological Evolution of Sand Injection Complexes: Insights From Heavy Mineral Analysis in the Paleogene Forearc Succession of the San Joaquin Basin.

• Balancing Earth's Deep Carbon Cycle.

• Biogeochemistry: Interaction of transition metals with carbonate green rust: Environmental applications and insights into ancient oceans.

• Thermodynamics of alkali feldspar solid solutions with varying Al–Si order: atomistic simulations using a neural network potential.

• Pulsed volcanic sulfur emissions linked to the end-Triassic terrestrial crisis.

• Mid-late Pleistocene evolution of fluvial landscapes in Central Amazonia: Shaping ecosystems and areas of endemism.

• The generation of geochemical gradients in the pre-caldera Glass Mountain high-SiO2 rhyolites of Long Valley, CA: Clues to the preservation of Rb-Sr isochrons.

• Geophysics and formation pressures: Evolution of the Vp/Vs ratio during deformation and implications for fault mechanics.

• Iron geochemistry: Occurrence of Schwimmeisen in a disused dewatering shaft.

• Magnesium/manganese in the lower mantle: High-pressure spin transition in (Mg,Mn)O.

• USGS, NASA Map Critical Minerals from 65000 Feet.

• Modern mantle-like μ182W signatures in Paleoarchean rocks from southern India.

• Ooh, shiny: Pennsylvania woman finds 3.09-carat white diamond at state park in Arkansas: the Geology of the Crater Of Diamonds State Park and Vicinity, Pike County, Arkansas.

• How understanding planet Earth became science.

• Coupled sulfur-silicon isotopes reveal supracrustal origin of Archean continents.

• From Vivid Maps: The Earth 70 Million Years Ago.

Planetary Geology

• Ferric Iron Content of Majorite Coexisting With Reducing Melt at 18 GPa: Implications for the Mantle Oxygen Fugacity of Mars and Earth.

• Minerals in meteorites: Revealing multiple ringwoodite and wadsleyite transformation mechanisms in a shock-melt vein using transmission Kikuchi diffraction.

Plate Tectonics

• Anisotropic Permeability Pathways Controlled by Intraslab Stress Heterogeneity in the Philippine Sea Slab Beneath the Ryukyu Arc.

• The Roles of Climate and Tectonics in the Tectonomorphic Evolution of the Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest) Region, Eastern Nepal Himalaya.

• Multi-Proxy Thermal History of Basin Heating During Cordilleran Orogenesis in the Magallanes-Austral Retroarc Foreland Basin, Patagonian Andes.

• Crustal and Upper Mantle Structure Beneath the Corinth Rift Using Receiver Function Analysis.

• Sublithospheric diamond constraints on the state of deeply subducted slabs.

• Tectonics and Sliver Motion in Costa Rica: Strain Partitioning Constrained by GNSS Velocities Data.

• The Tuno terrane and evolution of the northernmost part of the North Atlantic Archean Craton, West Greenland.

• Flux and Isotopic Composition of Sedimentary Carbon Subducting Along the World's Trenches.

• The Southwestern Rift of Africa: isotopic evidence of early-stage continental rifting; Phys.org summary here.

Paleontology

• Scientists Found Massive Dinosaur Footprints on a Cave Ceiling From a 165-Million-Year-Old World Turned Upside Down.

• Fossil weasel: New materials of the rare fossil mustelid Cernictis hesperus (Carnivora, Mammalia) from the Pinole Tuff genotype locality in California.

• The Hipparionini horses (Equidae, Perissodactyla, Mammalia) from the Late Pliocene of Jradzor (Armenia).

• Avian remains from Venta Micena (Baza Basin, Granada Geopark) shed light on the Early Pleistocene wetland environments and trophic dynamics of the Southern Iberian Peninsula.

• Eco-phenotypic diversity in European Middle Pleistocene Hippopotamus populations.

• Formation processes of Late Miocene Hipparion Red Clay vertebrate assemblages from northern China: taphonomic constraints on palaeoecological and biochronological interpretations.

• Fossilization of forams: Bioerosion Drill Holes Increase Carbonate Dissolution in the Planktonic Foraminifer Globigerinoides ruber.

• A new early monofenestratan pterosaur from the Mörnsheim Formation of southern Germany.

• Proposed Ediacaran meiofaunal burrows from Brazil are pyritized algal/microbial consortia; ScienceDaily summary here.

Ore Deposit and Energy Geology

• Shale gas geology: Prediction of Fault and Fracture Density From Seismic Attributes and Machine Learning Models Calibrated With Borehole Image Logs.

• Linking Mississippi Valley-type deposit size to metal provenance.

• The source of the gold in Carlin-type gold deposits.

• Rare earth elements in phosphorite from Maknassy-Mezzouna basin (Central Tunisia): Geochemical features, paleoenvironmental indicators and implications for economic resource potential.

Mining and Energy

• US shale gas and tight oil production: 2026 Q1.

• Canada Clears Path for West Coast Oil Pipeline Build.

• U.S. industrial natural gas consumption expected to hit records in 2026 and 2027.

• The truly staggering cost of ‘cheap’ renewable energy.

• The Math Isn’t Mathing: US Natural Gas Shortfalls by 2030.

• First Quantum says Panama has lost $3.5B from mine halt.

• Coal plants persist as a large barrier to the global solar energy transition; Phys.org summary here.

• First RITM-200 reactor unit manufactured for Leningrad nuclear icebreaker.

• Video from Tony Heller: Analyzing Oil Production.

• China’s new 800-cycle lithium-sulfur battery could nearly double drone flight time.

• Art Berman: The Price Isn’t Right: Fundamentals Don’t Support $100 Oil.

• Mexico's Pemex says fire inside its Oaxaca refinery fully extinguished, six injured.

• First Quantum’s Peru project joins ranks of copper giants.

• From Mining.com: World’s 10 Biggest Copper Mines (2026 Rankings).

• Uranium – Cameco Guidance Hanging by a Thread, Implications for Market Purchases.

• 80 Mile gets exploration permits to begin drilling at Disko project in Greenland.

• Global Coal Demand Surges as Middle East Energy Crisis Deepens.

Environmental Geology and Hydrogeology

• World's largest carbon capture complex gets go-ahead in Ottawa's oilsands 'grand bargain'.

• Quebec mining company fined $100M for polluting fish-bearing waters.

• Air Contamination and Mass Fractionation Correction in Groundwater From a Hydrocarbon System.

• A novel method to estimate baseflow using open-source well data.

• Community-led small-scale managed aquifer recharge can slow drought propagation: Sociohydro(geo)logical evidence from Oaxaca, Mexico.

• The impact of lead-zinc mining activities on watershed environment with respect to lead (Pb) isotopes: A case study in typical mining areas of the western Qinling Mountains, China.

• France: The Thau inverted aquifer: when an underwater spring absorbs salt water and threatens groundwater.

Glaciers and Climate Change

• Lots of recent papers on glaciers in The Cryosphere from the EGU.

• Co-development of physical and biological variables on glacial hillslopes over millennia.

• Periglacial environment: Mapping Subsea Permafrost Distribution in the Canadian Beaufort Sea With Marine Seismic and Deep Learning.

• Gas hydrate dissolution triggered by subglacial groundwater flushing during deglaciation.

• Vanishment of very small glacierets throughout the Northern and Central Andes of Chile.

• Daily briefing: Ice core is the longest-ever continuous record of Earth’s climate.

• Temperature-dependent feedbacks drive the pattern of Antarctic temperature change.

• 2024 global temperature record is consistent with model-predicted warming.

Bad Science

• Gotcha! Odd language mistakes may help identify fake papers.

• LLM hallucinations in the wild: Large-scale evidence from non-existent citations.

Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Geohazards

Seismic Monitor

Active Volcano Map

Volcanoes

• Smithsonian / USGS Weekly Volcanic Activity Report.

• United States Geological Survey (USGS) Volcano Observatories:

• Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles: Happy 25th Birthday YVO!

• Cascades Volcano Observatory Weekly Update.

• Volcano Watch – A "window" into forecasting fountaining episodes at Kīlauea's summit.

• Long-term deformation and surface change of the Heisei-Shinzan lava dome revealed by integrated monitoring.

• Geophysical Signals Induced by Magma Propagation: Insights From Analog Experiments.

• Insights into the internal structure and mechanical behavior of Copahue volcano (Argentina–Chile).

• Investigating magmatic processes on the Reykjanes Peninsula, Iceland, with local earthquake tomography.

• Water driven iodine degassing from basaltic volcanic systems.

Earthquakes

• Spatial and Temporal Variations in Slip Rate Over Millions of Years on an Extensional Fault System and Implications for Seismic Hazard.

• Ultra-low friction graphene oxide in the Atotsugawa Fault System.

Geohazards

Wildfires – May 18, 2026
Credit: Canadian Wildfire Fire Information System

• Canada's first confirmed tornado of 2026.

• Strong global radiative effects from wildfire dark brown carbon.

Free Geology Books and Other Stuff

Free geology books can be downloaded from these sites:

• OreZone Readers and Experts Telegram Channel; the Ore Zone channel also shows employment opportunities for geologists.

• The Groundwater Projecthas many groundwater geology books for free downloadtogether with free online courses, listed here.

• Free Groundwater Modeling Courses from the HydroGeoCenter.

• Lectures on groundwater from the IAH, on YouTube.

• From Western Australia: Carbonatite, lamprophyre and host rocks in the northern Aileron Province.

• The Geology of Indonesia: Volume 1 and Volume 2.

• Brett Davis’ book on veins in a deforming rock mass: “The Veining Bible”; also at this site.

• From the Mineralogical Society of America: Handbook of Mineralogy.

• Systematic geochemical classification of felsic igneous rocks of the Yilgarn Craton.

• From the Arizona Geological Survey: Geochemistry Diagram Generator v 1.0.

• Online app: Australia’s full national topographic library at your fingertips.

Upcoming Events

• GAC-MAC 2026 St. John's NL, St. John's Convention Center, May 25-28, 2026.

• 8-11 June 2026, World Geothermal Congress 2026, Calgary Telus Convention Center.

• June 9–10, 2026, Critical Minerals for Defence, Marriott Downtown CF Toronto Eaton Centre.

• PEG2026: 11th International Symposium on Granitic Pegmatites; 16th–19th August 2026, in Perth, Western Australia.

• August 23 – 28, 2026, 24th Annual Conference of the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences, Montreal, Canada.

• 14-18 September 2026 , IAH 2026, 53rd Congress of the International Association of Hydrogeologists; Budapest Congress Center.

• September 24, 2026, 25 years of Extraordinary, Oakridges Moraine Groundwater Program, The Village of Black Creek, 1000 Murray Ross Pkwy, Toronto, ON.

• September 30 - October 3, 2026 SEG 2026 Conference Salt Lake City, United States.

• Paleoamerican Odyssey 2026, October 14-17, 2026, Santa Fe Convention Center, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

• November 2-3, 2026 CCMEC 2026 Victoria Inn Hotel & Convention Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

• 12-20 August 2028, Geosciences for Humanity, 38th International Geological Congress, in the BMO Centre, Calgary.

• Society of Petroleum Engineers Distinguished Lecturer Schedule.

• American Geophysical Union List of Upcoming Meetings.

• The Geological Society: Events & Courses.

• Upcoming Distinguished Geoscience Australia Lectures (DGALs).