Chris Bolhuis: won't answer the phone. No, I [00:01:00] don't. Because she'll call me right back because they never, Have their phones. Like, I don't know what the

Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's like a parent thing to not do, to not

Chris Bolhuis: It is.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's unbelievable.

Chris Bolhuis: I'm expecting her to, Hey mom, I'm doing well. How are you? All right. Hey, just to let you know, you are on speakerphone and Jesse and I are recording and yeah. So, Hey, you're on planet geo mom. [00:01:30] Well, why do you have to get your glasses mom? Well, this is a phone call. You, you don't need your glasses. Well, mom, all right. I have a question though, cause I, I don't want, we talked about it on Friday. What was the word from a long time ago that you were impressed by? Oh, Perseverate.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Perseverate. That's what it was.

Chris Bolhuis: You thought it was a feldspar or

Dr. Jesse Reimink: [00:02:00] it was some mineral. Yeah, no, you're right. Perseverate. That's

right. Okay.

There we go.

Chris Bolhuis: And now Jesse just worked in bedraggled again to, to today's episode because, yeah, so that was the other word of the day for you. So One of your latest, uh, probably not the latest, but it was also very good. And, and I was going to comment on that, but I haven't gotten off to a good start. What, what was the episode about mom? [00:02:30] It was, uh, well Mom. Yes. What was the episode about, mom? The um, the word ice. Oh, garnets have eyes. Garnets. Yeah.

The garnets have eyes.

The

Dr. Jesse Reimink: uh, did I want to know the, her favorite word out of that episode? There

Chris Bolhuis: Oh, hold on, Jesse had a question. Jesse just asked what was your favorite word out of that episode? [00:03:00] I'm on the spot, though, aren't I? You are on the spot, yes, yeah. Ah, I did have a favorite word. You did. I did, but I can't think of it right now. Okay, was it Garnet? I just woke up from my nap. Well, how many naps a day do you take, Mom? Two. You're

lying, Mom. You take, you take multiple naps.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: She can send us an email with her favorite word of the day. That'd be great.

Chris Bolhuis: Okay, Well, Jesse [00:03:30] said he wants an email with the word of the day for the episode. All right. And

then Jesse will find a way to work it in.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: a to do list. It's perfect.

Chris Bolhuis: All right, mom. I gotta go. I'm working. I got my hard hat on. I'm working, man. Love you too. All right. Bye mom.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's too good. A joyous appearance on the I mean, that's too good right there. I mean, I could not have asked for anything more out of that discussion. It's those ones that have eyes. [00:04:00] Oh,

Chris Bolhuis: I was really wondering, I was actually doubting whether she was going to be able to remember what the episode had anything

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, right. But you know what, Chris? It was a good one.

though. it doesn't really

Chris Bolhuis: It was a good one. It was a good one.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: No memory of it, but it was a good one.

I'm damn sure of it.

Chris Bolhuis: So

funny.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: So

Chris, this is, we're going to keep it in the family here a little bit,

Chris Bolhuis: Yes, we are. We're keeping it in the

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, so this, there's a question. This is, [00:04:30] this is a listener, plural question, We got this from Valeria and also from my father. so the question really, well, there's kind of variations on the theme, but the theme of the questions were, are geological events getting more common?

and or worse. Those were kind of the two themes and it makes sense, right? You, you read the news and especially if you're a listener, who's listening to this podcast and you're not a geologist by training, and you're maybe like newly interested in geology, when you're newly interested in something, you start to read [00:05:00] more about it and pay attention to more to it.

And so you might All of a sudden, the volcanic eruption stories online might stand out, or the algorithms of Facebook and whatever might feed you more stuff like that. So, you might be seeing more news stories about volcanic eruptions, or earthquakes, or I don't know, Chris, what other stuff has happened that might,

Chris Bolhuis: No, that's actually a

really good point, I think maybe if you start reading stuff about geological events or, you maybe double click on some things because you have this maybe new interest in [00:05:30] geoscience. then you get more of it. Like you said, the, the Facebook or Instagram algorithms, are going to funnel that stuff your way. it's, it's freaky, but

that's a really good point.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: it's a good, I mean, I've noticed this myself. I typically I don't really scroll news, I guess. Like I read a few news sites that I subscribe to, that I go to regularly, like every day, but recently I've been, just kind of passively letting Google me news, uh, things.

And the reason I did that is because I had searched a couple [00:06:00] things that were geology related, and then I went on to the Google News site and just kind of clicked intentionally on geology, especially like critical minerals kind of, things. So, so it was like a really curated geology news site for me, this Google thing.

And then forget what I was doing. So, you know, as you over time, I kept going to it and then I clicked on non geology news things and now it's not all geology news. It's kind of driving me crazy because I like want

my really curated

Chris Bolhuis: yeah, it totally changes what you see. I know. I totally, I understand what you're saying and [00:06:30] it can be really annoying just because you click on

something. Then all of a sudden now that's what you start getting and

you get less of what you really want.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: to like revert back or I want to have my, I kind of want to have my algorithmic geology news fed to me because I was really interested. It was like mining news. a very niche subset of news that I was interested in reading only at certain amounts of time.

It wasn't giving me current events, but It was, had a single purpose for my life and now it's been diluted by all this other stuff cause I [00:07:00] clicked on it.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. So Jesse, let's frame this discussion in terms of what constitutes a geologic or, geoscience related event,

like a, disastrous kind of thing, or something that affects a lot of people,

we're talking about

really maybe four

or five things,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah, but I want to, so these like disastrous things, but I also want to ask you, what do you think if you are looking at geology news, let's say broadly [00:07:30] news, what categories of stuff are in there? I mean, certainly the disastrous stuff, which we'll talk about the four or five categories.

Are there other things that you either would see in your newsfeed or you would want to see in your newsfeed that are geoscience news that aren't disasters,

I guess.

Chris Bolhuis: right?

Well, you might see something biologically related,

right? And that's something you and I don't want to see

because you know, why, why, why would you, you know, but you know, we're actually those since, since COVID, you're going to see more of [00:08:00] that kind of thing with infectious diseases

and, you know, the bird flu or, all these kinds of things.

Right. So you, you're going to read about that. yeah,

And I think the other thing, there's not going to be a lot of chemistry related stuff per se. I don't, I don't see that, but outside of the geosciences, which there's a ton of, then you see, I think a lot of space

and astro related stuff.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: what about.

I agree completely like space and the other thing I think I might say is that we do see a lot [00:08:30] of, or another way to ask the question, Chris, like, Do you see a lot of, scientific discovery news? do you and your, your channels, do you get, get the, Oh, Geologists discovered some new phase at the Coromantel Boundary and here, you know, sort of pop science news press releases.

Do you, does that come across your, yeah, because that to me is like a different category. It's still geology news, but it's different category than like, you know, some volcano erupted somewhere.

Chris Bolhuis: that's right. just got one, uh, today. So as an [00:09:00] example is, uh, this new huge volcano that is recently discovered on one of Jupiter's

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. That's, Hey, that's geoscience. Definitely.

Chris Bolhuis: it's geoscience, it's Planetary geology, and, it's astro related too, so it kind of like fits a lot of different, uh, disciplines, maybe, I

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Checks a lot of Chris

Chris Bolhuis: it.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: boxes right there.

Chris Bolhuis: Ha ha, that's right, that's

right. Yeah, but they had like before and after pictures, which were, like, fascinating,

seriously. But the [00:09:30] articles, kinds of things, though, are skin deep,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: No, they totally are. Which we've kind of talked about before. It's a, a frustration. At times, because they only go skin deep, some, some of them, not all of them, some of them are a little buzzwordy. Many of them, depending on the site you're going to, are not buzzwordy and are actually kind of deep, at least take a crack at going deep, um, and accurate,

but many of

Chris Bolhuis: And it's so catchy and grabby that

it was like snagged from

somewhere. And then you, so you try to like pick out keywords that you can [00:10:00] do in more in depth search or find out what is maybe a little bit more about what's happening. And that can be very difficult because it's so new.

There

haven't, there, There haven't, been, you know, papers published on this yet. This is just a, just something that was tossed out in the headline grabbed.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: No, that's, that's exactly right. So, okay. Sorry. Interrupted. Back to your, back to your initial point. If we're talking about geological events that hit the news, we're usually talking about some kind of disasters. What categories would you typically find in that?

Chris Bolhuis: So I would [00:10:30] think that?

okay. Earthquakes, obviously, uh, volcanoes, landslides and

mass wasting kind of events. And then

fourth would be, climate science, global warming, climate change, you know, more extreme weather events.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Hurricanes, typhoon, extreme weather. Yeah. I would

Chris Bolhuis: And, and so when you think about like, is there another category, like there's nothing that really jumps to mind with anything else,

[00:11:00] um, maybe flooding, but that's kind of

related to climate and

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I was going to say flooding. I guess you could maybe make an argument that like tsunamis are a different beast. but they're, they're usually related to an

earthquake, But

Yeah.

but, they're sometimes discrete events where the, the earthquake doesn't really matter.

It's the tsunami that matters. And we have repercussions I mean, I just saw one about as a seismology discussion, but it was, Some, tsunami or swa up in Greenland was like detectable by [00:11:30] seismometers across the world for like a week straight or something. a landslide in fjord happened anyway.

Uh, the, Yeah.

that kind of thing. So, but four

or maybe five categories,

Chris Bolhuis: and maybe you could throw in there, Water crises and like, uh, groundwater

depletion, stuff like that.

to droughts. And, but again, that has big time overlap with what's going on weather wise and climate

Dr. Jesse Reimink: No, I agree. so weather, we would have landslides or mass wasting, we would [00:12:00] have volcanoes, earthquakes, and then maybe a couple other accessory ones. But, but

those would kind of be the, the big categories. So the,

Chris Bolhuis: So of those four, let's just ask the question of those four. I would say the short answer to the questions from your dad and Valeria is no, they're not getting worse, but, two of them definitely, probably not. We're going to talk about the,

math and the statistics behind that. And then two of them quite possibly, yes.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: so earthquakes and volcanoes, those are the [00:12:30] categories of things that we would say, no, they're almost certainly not getting worse.

And we'll go through some of the statistics over the last 35 years in earthquake data, global earthquake data. We can then take the, the understanding of statistics that we use there, you could apply that to landslides. or extreme weather events, which would have the same underlying statistical principles.

And this would inform how climate scientists or landslide experts go about studying the impacts of, let's say, climate change on extreme [00:13:00] landslide events or on extreme weather events. And how you would say, okay, is it getting worse or not? You'd have to check a couple of boxes in the statistical world of to say with confidence that These are getting worse through time.

so I think this will be a helpful exercise, even though there's going to be a bunch of numbers, we're going to throw numbers at you. We're going to try and keep them straight here.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah,

Let's try to keep them like straight and, let's not over, overdo the number side of

it, but we're going to use earthquakes as our main focal [00:13:30] point. And again, remember that earthquakes and volcanoes, we're lumping them into the same category of, are these events getting worse as time goes on?

And the short answer is no. And we're going to use the statistics of earthquakes to prove this point or to talk about this point. And the reason we're going to use earthquakes is because you get a lot more data points with earthquakes, as opposed to volcanic eruptions.

a lot

a lot more

data points because there are, we're talking about on the order of 20, [00:14:00] 000 earthquakes that happen each year, all over the

world. and, you know, that's a, that's a staggering amount.

Um, that's, yeah, over 55 earthquakes per day. now I, I actually do this in my geology class. I think I've talked about this before, Jesse, that I have this nine by 13 wall map, I have this large wall and I've pasted an entire world map on

it. And then my geology students, every [00:14:30] Thursday morning, uh, one group, and then they'll rotate through groups. We'll come in early and plot. The earthquakes that have happened all over the world

now, just because I can't have them plotting like several hundred earthquakes each week,

I set the parameters at 4.

5 and

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, right. That's still a lot though. That's still probably a lot of earthquakes That they have to plot.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, they're plotting between, I would say 80 and sometimes 130 earthquakes a [00:15:00]

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Wow. Okay. Yeah,

that's a lot still. So what we're going to do, Chris, because again, that's, so there's a lot of information here. We're going to focus on large earthquakes and we're going to put the, the, the filter above a magnitude seven. So anything seven or above is what we're going to deem as a major earthquake, quote unquote, major.

And the benefit here is you said that number 20, 000 earthquakes each year are detectable. Okay. Now, our seismometers, we talked to Diana Roman like 3 or 4 years ago on this podcast. Our seismometers, the things she [00:15:30] used, they have gotten way better and they continue to get way better, meaning more sensitive.

But they've always been able, for as long as we've really had seismometers, They've been able to pick up a magnitude seven earthquake. So these have been detectable. for the last 35 years. So we're not like increasing our sensitivity to these big earthquakes.

So that's why we're going to focus on the big ones, the magnitude seven or above.

Chris Bolhuis: that brings up an interesting thought. First of all, Jesse Watson is clicking around in the background there. Your

dog is walking around,

making all kinds of noise. The [00:16:00] dog, needs to learn when, when we're working here,

that's a, that's right. Um, but it makes me think though, that there are more and more and more seismometers that are like strategically placed all over the planet.

I mean, you look at what happened in Yellowstone this past summer, this hydrothermal explosion and then what resulted from that. Well, a lot more seismometers were moved. They wanted to try to figure out what was going

on groundwater wise and so on. but that begs the point of like, why do people sometimes think [00:16:30] that maybe geologic events are getting worse is because we're just more aware of all of these events

than ever before. Right. You know, you have more equipment, you have social media, so it spreads faster. And I think that that plays into this idea or maybe perception that things are getting

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. No, that

I think that's exactly right. Exactly right. and so these big earthquakes have always been. I mean, these are big events. These are earth shaking events that, that send reverberations around [00:17:00] the planet that seismometers have been able to pick up for at least the last 35 years and more like last 50 or 60 years.

So, what we're going to go through is 1988 to 2021, the number of earthquakes, yeah. that have happened in a year that are larger than a magnitude 7, so 7 and above. And so Chris, the, the average here, if we look at all of those 35 years is

Chris Bolhuis: on. Hold on, Jesse. Hold on. Nope. Nope. Think about that a second.

Like we got to put, we got to push pause

on this and just [00:17:30] what, what do you think our listeners, what do you think the average number of massive earthquakes would be anywhere in the world on any given year?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: What would you

have said, Chris? what would you

Chris Bolhuis: I, so.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: would you have said

lower or higher than this number? I

would have too. I would have said lower.

too. I was thinking in the like handful. that's what I would have guessed.

Chris Bolhuis: think there's a reason for this though I would have to because you know, I typically don't See when we plot earthquakes in my geology [00:18:00] class every Thursday morning. there aren't many Sevens and above that we'll plot during the course of a year. We're not plotting 16 of

these, you know? So I think that what happens is when you have these really big earthquakes, let's, you know, 2011 Japan, earthquake that causes tsunami 9.

2. Well, you're going to get a lot of earthquakes then that are seven and above that are tied to that one

event.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: right. Yeah.

Chris Bolhuis: You see, you're going to get these

Dr. Jesse Reimink: related.

Chris Bolhuis: maybe that's why the number is higher [00:18:30] than what I would have

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Well, let's go into it. So the, the average here is more or less 16 is the average. And, and this, this is actually 16 is the average over the last 50 years. And we're only looking at the last 35 years of data. So our average of the data we're going to go through is 14 and a half.

So close to 16, not quite, but that's the number we're talking about more than a dozen is the average. Now, Chris, I don't think it's really effective. Well, maybe it is. I'll read through 10 of these numbers and just so that it gives you an idea of the [00:19:00] range that we're dealing with. Not every year has exactly 16.

So I'm going to go from 1988, there was 6. 1989, there was 7. 1990, 18. 91, 16. 92, 13. 93, 12. 94. 13, then 20, 15, 16, 12, 18, 15, 16, 13, 15, 16, 11, 11. Okay, so you get the, you get the idea. There's a range, six on the low end, all the way up to 24 in 2010. There's 24 of these big earthquakes.[00:19:30]

So there's a big range in these things, but 16 is the average. So. I don't know, Chris, this was, was this a surprising amount of variation year to year, do you think, to you, or do you think your, your students, if you presented them this, would, would it be surprising amount of variation?

Chris Bolhuis: So to me, it's not surprising.

That there's this variation. maybe I would have expected more variation in this actually. Um, but I don't know. That's an interesting thought. I never, never really, uh, [00:20:00] never occurred to me to ask them

about this.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I, I'd be curious about the sort of knee jerk, the gut reaction, like okay, the average is 16, it can't be lower than 0. And it can go pretty high. What do you think the variation is? How much, how much does it oscillate around 16? Because I think my instinct here, Chris, is the same as yours.

Like, well, I know the answer, but the, there's a way to assess this. There's a statistically rigorous way to assess what the variation, how much it should bounce around 16 [00:20:30] is.

your gut is exactly right. It's about an appropriate amount of variation. Your, your gut is exactly right. And we'll go through the statistics that these kind of check out here.

but I'd be curious what your students think, like it,

Chris Bolhuis: Okay. Well, I I'll ask where this is now two episodes in a row, Jesse, that I have a homework assignment.

That

I have to bring because of this podcast, I gotta,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: your,

Chris Bolhuis: it into my classroom.

So,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: are getting a lot of busy

Chris Bolhuis: you

know, Jesse, here's, no, they're not, it's not busy work at all. Neither one of these things are, but here's the thing is [00:21:00] Jesse, have a harder time as I get older and more experienced and I know more stuff. I have a harder time getting through all my

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh yeah.

Chris Bolhuis: is getting ridiculous,

you know,

like Mr. Bolhuis, why are we still talking about rocks and minerals when we're on a week 39, you know, like,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, right, right, right. I move on, man.

Chris Bolhuis: yeah,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's funny. Yeah. Well, uh, you just get more eye rolls from the students. That's okay.

Chris Bolhuis: no, I know, but that's a rule. They can't eye roll

me. I don't like eye [00:21:30] rolls.

They

Dr. Jesse Reimink: no, no, no, no,

Chris Bolhuis: So now they do it just to, just to push my

buttons and

Dr. Jesse Reimink: of course. Well, that's

good too.

Chris Bolhuis: they can get a. Yeah. Get a reaction out of

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Um, okay. So Chris, out of those 35 years, like I said, the mean of these is, is 14 and a half, roughly. so Chris there, if you'll allow me to go into a little statistical weeds here, is that, that okay to just briefly

keep me out of It Keep me out of it though. So we're talking about extreme events here, these earthquakes, and we're counting extreme events. So zero up to some number. [00:22:00] And the statistics here, we use these all the time in my world, Chris, of mass spectrometry, where we are detecting ions, and actually detecting an ion in the back of a mass spectrometer is considered a rare event, because we, we detect somewhere above zero, zero to several billion per second, so, the statistics are the same here, and there's a generally accepted rule that The standard deviation and the standard deviation here is okay, we've got a mean of 16.

The standard deviation is every measurement that I make [00:22:30] every year of those 35. What's the average distance from the mean? average, how much deviation is there? What is the standard deviation in that population of 35 measurements? So how

Chris Bolhuis: Hold on. Is it the difference from the mean or the median?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: the difference from the mean? I mean, you can calculate them, you versus the median too, but the standard deviation is from the mean. Typically we refer to it that way. So yeah, good question though. So we're dealing with the mean and there's a whole bunch of assumptions about it being normal [00:23:00] distribution and all this stuff, but so if we assume that there's a generally accepted rule for how you calculate the standard deviation and the standard deviation is just the square root of the mean. of the number of events. So if we have 16 large earthquakes, the standard deviation should be around about the square root of 16, which, Chris,

Chris Bolhuis: which is four, which

yeah, but, but like it's perfect because if you look at the data that you just rattled off, [00:23:30] know, over the 35 years, the standard deviation is 4. 1, right where it should

Dr. Jesse Reimink: right where it should be, right? So, okay. what that means is this population is, is behaving as we think it should. If it's a rare event, a measurement of a rare event, either the event happened or it did not happen. Either an earthquake above seven happened or it did not. Either we counted an ion or we didn't count an ion.

Like it's just a happened or did not. And these are the statistics. So if we had, if the mean was [00:24:00] 100, earthquakes above 7. Then the standard deviation, we would expect a variance around that of around 10. The square root of 100 is 10, so that's the kind of variance we would expect. And, the good

news.

Chris Bolhuis: 90 to 110.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: 90 to 110, that would be the average range. Okay. Alright, so that's good that the population there's scatter in it and the scatter is as much as we would expect. So now to the question of, is it getting worse? And so the way that people do this differs in different communities. If you pay attention [00:24:30] to, uh, like physics news.

If people are trying to detect, I don't know, I'm going to get the words wrong here, but they're trying to find some boson or something like the Higgs boson discovery or whatever. They usually need a measurement that is like five or seven standard deviations away from a non measurement. So they need something that's an extreme probability.

Like their data has to be extreme outlier to say, we detected a Higgs boson or something like that. if we use that, to say, [00:25:00] is the population is like 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, Are we moving in a positive direction? Is it five standard deviations away from the mean? The way that math works is we just take 16, our average, and say five times four.

Four is the standard deviation. Five is five standard deviations. That would give us 16 plus five times four is 36. And we did that. That's the high end. The low end would be 16 minus 20, which is zero. So that's the range we look for. And none of our data are even [00:25:30] close to zero

36, So

different communities would, would kind of narrow that. And I'm not entirely sure what the like. climate change, landslide community uses, or the extreme weather event community uses, you could use three standard deviations. And the range there would be 2 or 28. And again, none of our data are outside of that three standard deviation range.

And so Chris, a question for you. I made a little plot down here that. We're [00:26:00] both looking at of the, the number of earthquakes greater than seven versus year. And just the knee jerk. This is like, Do you think there's a trend in that? Like, cause

Chris Bolhuis: No, absolutely not. I'm looking at it right now. You could draw a, best fit line straight across.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Completely straight across it, right? Now,

Chris Bolhuis: You're completely straight across. there's no trend up or down.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: no trend up or down. You could, potentially, you'd be misleading yourself, but there are two data points. The 1988 and [00:26:30] 1989, the number of earthquakes there were both anomalously low. It was six earthquakes and seven major earthquakes in those two years. So the very beginning of our plot starts really low.

And even with that low start, It doesn't look like there's any trend in this data to more extreme values. And That's

really important because there's the phrase I can never remember who told it. It's, it's, there's three things. There's lies, damn lies, and statistics. and, and,

Chris Bolhuis: That's

Dr. Jesse Reimink: and like statistics. Yeah, it's a [00:27:00] great one, right? I'm embarrassingly, I've forgotten who said it initially, but lies, damn lies, and statistics. And I kind of believe in that. use statistics all the time and there's good use of statistics and there's ways to tell lies with statistics. And so you always got to do that kind of knee jerk gut check.

is there a trend in this data or am I really manipulating it? the answer here is no, especially if you plot that mean and the standard deviation on here, everything falls within the band of two or three standard deviations. There's no trend in this thing at [00:27:30] all. So the answer is no,

Chris Bolhuis: yeah, so, okay, this is really interesting, because I do, uh, an exercise that looks a lot like this scatterplot that you have

here, I do it actually with my freshmen and we look at a lake in Wisconsin and we plot the number of days. That this lake has ice on the lake where you

could walk across the lake.

So it's either ice on or ice off. And they've been [00:28:00] keeping really detailed records of these days for the last, since the 1860s.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: wow. So

this is days per year, like per winter, basically.

Chris Bolhuis: yeah, yep. Days. Days on per year and it's, it's measured during the winter time. Yep. And, and so then if you take these groups and you plot all 100, yeah, 160 years

plus now of this data, it's not a flat

line. the number of days on [00:28:30] is less and less and less and less.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, that's really interesting. So, it's not quite the same, but you, that type of data,

on or off, can you walk

across it or not, it should generally follow the same, principles of these extreme events, counting statistics of extreme events, what we call, I mean, there's fancy words for it, but it's counting statistics is what we call it in our field of study.

And, and it should apply generally to that. You're counting days out of a year, but it's, it's not quite the same, but it's, I'd be curious to see the scatter. So look at the scatter. Is the scatter [00:29:00] like roughly approximate the

Chris Bolhuis: I can send it to you. Yeah.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: that'd be kind of interesting to

Chris Bolhuis: I don't know. I haven't looked at it from that standpoint. I haven't looked at it from a standard deviation standpoint.

which I will now, but I'll, I'll send you the plot. I'll

send you the,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: So do you do that for a lab? Oh, cool.

That's a good

one. I'd be interesting to compare that one, which. is probably changing due to climate change. I'm guessing like you're getting less

ice over days. Okay. compared to our earthquake data here, which is showing No change.

which no different, no, [00:29:30] no more extreme events basically.

Chris Bolhuis: so volcanoes are going to, they're, they're going to fit into this category

Dr. Jesse Reimink: That that was going to be my question was your instinct is that volcanoes would follow this. this. exact trend basically, right? Large

volcanic eruptions. Yeah,

for sure. and even probably have

more scatter because there's fewer as you said it from the outset. There's like fewer large volcanic eruptions that matter to society particularly. So,

yeah, we're going to be there's going to be even more variants or the standard deviation is going to be

[00:30:00] larger here. So,

Chris Bolhuis: going to be much bigger. yeah,

for sure. the other two, I think climate change is like pretty apparent that that's going to show a trend, things can get worse, you can get more extreme events more often, you know, because of a changing climate, but what about mass wasting?

Like what, consider let's say landslides and things like this. Is it possible that these are getting. Worse as time goes on, and just like, [00:30:30] think about that for a second.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: What would be the root cause

Chris Bolhuis: yeah, You and I both think that, yeah, there's absolutely a possibility that those events could be getting worse and worse and worse now that, begs the question.

How come? Right.

Look, can we talk about that a

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. And I also want to add an extra layer to that. How would you tell? So let's say, okay, let's play this out. Let's say landslides. All right, Chris, you and I, I can speak for you. I think we would say landslides are certainly possible that they're getting worse and here's why.

More rainfall, more [00:31:00] extreme rainfall events would saturate the soil and, and, you know, precondition it for landslides. also perhaps permafrost melting. up in the Arctic might be make, you know, conditions up in the North or in cold latitudes, more conducive to landslides. So there's a couple reasons why we might expect landslides be increasing.

So how would you test it? if I gave you a bunch of landslide data and said, here's the number of big landslides that occur in a given year. How would you say? Is it increasing? [00:31:30] How would you like kind of test that? Right. And the answer is

simple. It's kind of do the same statistical thing we just did.

It's like, look at the mean standard deviation and say, does it start to consistently deviate outside of two standard deviations? And is there a trend line that's

positive?

Chris Bolhuis: However, I think it would be more difficult to get good data on

just because, uh, you can't measure a mass wasting event with seismometers and, you know, things

like that. So it's harder to quantify that way, but I want to add to your list of [00:32:00] possible reasons though, in terms of why these kinds of events might be getting worse and like that has to do with us and development, we over steepened

slopes. We add weight to over steepened slopes. We also add water because we do irrigation, for lawns and things like this to over steepened slopes. And so just the, the encroachment of humanity to more extreme settings, geological settings. Where we're going beyond the angle of [00:32:30] repose,

steepest angle that a slope can remain stable.

We keep pushing that and pushing it and pushing it,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Oh, that's totally right. That's a good point. I hadn't thought through that.

Chris Bolhuis: yeah, there's probably a lot of things that we do that could contribute to. big events like this that are getting worse.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: in those, things in the, uh, kind of climate change induced category for sure, and I don't know, I haven't, um, it'd be interesting to pull the, the statistics of like hurricanes or typhoons, or, or [00:33:00] kind of big weather events like that, or extreme Yeah, basically extreme weather events that should behave in the same statistical manner as these earthquakes.

You know, we're dealing with counting extreme events. So, it'd be interesting to pull that data. Maybe that's another for another episode, probably, but to look at that and say, Oh, yeah. Okay. Does it, get outside of the range that the sort of scatter? Does it scatter outside of that

range? it progressively over time.

So,

interesting.

Chris Bolhuis: You know, another idea would, be to, to like look at the use of lidar [00:33:30] where we can see through the canopy down to the regolith of the earth's

surface. And you can then see these mass wasting landslide kind of scars that have been covered up and are invisible, but LIDAR sees right through it. then we can see where events have happened before. think of the Oso slide that happened in Washington a few years ago, and they've went back over this with LIDAR. And Oh, my gosh, you can see these [00:34:00] massive slides

that are really?

obscured now.

Yeah.

It's really, really interesting. Yeah.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: if we did that lighter exercise, we'd have to, um, back out for the Chris Bolhuis tractor effects because those are going to show up like a big red light at Hudsonville, Michigan. All the landslides induced

by Chris's tractor work.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. I did something too. So I, I wanted to attach my snowblower

while the weather's warm, You know, so I don't like freeze my hands on all the steel. So I'm just so impressed. I [00:34:30] love my tractor. I got my snowblower

attached and then detached and I can, I can, do

it in under 10 minutes.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Do you have like a brush hog

Chris Bolhuis: No, but I got to get one. I need a brush hog.

Yeah. Yeah. I have an undercarriage so I have a 60 inch Boeing deck on it

and it's a quick connect so I can drive right over it and connect it. And then I can drive back off it and drop it just like in 10 seconds flat. I've got a bucket I have a ballast box on the back and I have my snowblower.

So.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: snowblower goes in the front

Chris Bolhuis: Those are my [00:35:00] attachments. I, yeah, and then I'm going to put forks in the back

of it on my three point hitch in the back That's what I'm going to move wood with in the winter. I'm going to put a big bin on the back of it and lift it up and down to my forks. So, um, I got it all planned

out.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: a great,

Chris Bolhuis: I'm good to go.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: just,

it's like, uh,

Chris Bolhuis: Can you imagine? I know you can, you can see this, me and my, my snowmobile suit,

like all

all done up,

all all did up

and with my cup of coffee in my hand. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I can't wait. [00:35:30] Bring it on.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: You're going to just be out there bobbing around in your

tractor. I'm excited

Chris Bolhuis: I'm a simple guy, Jesse.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: weeks. Come, uh, come visit and check out this tractor.

Chris Bolhuis: That's right. Hey, I'll put you in the bucket and take you out to get the

mail.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: as long as you give me a beer, I'll sit

Chris Bolhuis: We'll put you in

the front end loader.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Absolutely. That

sounds

Chris Bolhuis: you will. It's a plan.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay. Done. Can't wait for

that.

Chris Bolhuis: can sit right in the

Dr. Jesse Reimink: We'll be hanging out in the tractor. Heck Yeah, that's

the best.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: stuff, man. Hey, uh, what do you

Chris Bolhuis: That's right. Yeah, I think Ron [00:36:00] and Valeria, thanks for the question.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: it was a good one.

Chris Bolhuis: and Yeah, it was

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Absolutely.

Good question. Excellent. Hey, there's a couple of ways to support us. First of all, we have merch, Planet Geo merch now on the website, planetgeocast. com. You can go to our merch page and we got some hats and some shirts there you can buy, you can also download our Camp Geo mobile app. That's, uh, you know, that's a good way to support us.

We have a bunch of visual podcast series there for sale. And we have a ton of free content, basically the intro class to geosciences there for free. [00:36:30] That's the first link in your show notes works really great on all your mobile platforms. Send us an email, planetgeocast at gmail. com and follow us on all the social medias at planet geocast.

Chris Bolhuis: Cheers.

Jesse Reimink

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