Hi Earthquake followers. The second quarter report may come as a bit of a surprise to you who saw our first quarter report, which surely indicated our planet might just shake into pieces at any time!

For those of you who are new to these reports, the explanation of averages is just below.

About The USGS and RHS1 Averages:

The USGS statistical averages are averages compiled from 1990 to 2000. That is when global tracking was achieved and we have no way of knowing for sure how accurately those statistics represent numbers before that time. There are scientists who did tracking, but there were also many very volatile areas that aren’t populated and it was impossible to track before. From old records we can assume that there have been more recently, but there is no way to know for sure.

We also use an RHS1 average which is 3 year statistical average which was drawn from my three year quake report from 2006, 07, 08 that I will compare the quarterly statistics to, so we can see a more current trend. At the end of this year we will add this average to the three year average, making an average of 4 of 5 years since the middle of the current decade. If data can be retrieved for 2009, a year in which our site was being rebuilt from hacker/virus injection damage, we will add those in to make a current half decade statistical average.

The Current Statistics for the 2nd Quarter of 2010:

8 Magnitude and Stronger:
We had none during the second quarter. We had one in the first quarter. The USGS average is 1, if any, per year. The RHS1 average is two per year. We are holding steady at low average for these massive quakes.

7 Magnitude and Stronger:
We experienced 5 of these extreme quakes this quarter. We had 3 during the first quarter. The USGS average is 17 per year RHS1 average is 11 annually, a 35% drop from the USGS average.
With 8 of these quakes at 1/2 year, we are high average for USGS averages, and 68% over for our RHS1 3 year averages.

6 Magnitude and Stronger:
We experienced only 29 of these quakes in the second quarter but had a whopping 48 during the first quarter, which brings us to a total of 77 at the half year mark. The USGS average is 134 per year. RHS1 average is up 16% and from the USGS at 159 annual mag 6 quakes per year. We are currently running below for the RHS1 3 year average at 96%, and high for the USGS 10 year average, running at 114%. Either way we are close to normal but over or under by just a bit depending on whose average you are comparing.

5 Magnitude and Stronger:
We experienced only 285 of these strong shakers this quarter – but we had extremely high numbers the first quarter – 565 of them! So far for the year that brings us to 850 mag 5 quakes at the mid year point.
USGS average is 1319 per year. The RHS1 average is only 1275 per year. If we continued this rate for the rest of the year we would see 129% of the USGS average and 133% of the RHS1 3 year average – a whole third more than average!

Despite a completely calamitous beginning to this year, quake frequency has slowed to a more normal rate of frequency than we could have expected from our first quarter. Of course with half of the year still in store for us, anything is yet possible. We could see either record highs or lows yet – but if frequencies continue as they did this quarter we will be having a pretty unspectacular quake year. When talking about earthquakes, unspectacular is a very good thing!

Tags: earth science, Earth Watch, Earthquake watch, Earthquakes, Geology, Geology events, Natural Disasters

With rock hunting season in full swing in the Northern country, I’ve been getting a LOT of emails about jewelry making.   Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned jewelry crafter, you don’t want to miss this opportunity to get all those tools you’ve been asking about on sale. The sale is over on the 23rd, so act fast. Please do send us a picture of your finished work, though – we sure like to see them!

Tags: crafts, gemstones, jewelry making supplies, jewelry making tools, lapidary supply, rock and gem hunters, rockhound supplies

Because gold hunting is taking on interest for so many recently, I’ve been posting some information here on the Gazette for avid new gold enthusiasts. It suddenly occurred to me, though, that I may have put the horse before the cart a little bit in some of my articles. I’m going to correct that now and let you in on exactly where the gold hunt really starts – and where it starts…is on paper.

Serious amounts of gold have been found in about 3 out of every 5 states in the US. While there is still untold amounts of gold to be found it’s not as easy as it was in the 1800’s to find open land to prospect. You can jump right in and start fishing through streams for a cache, but it can also be a risky and disappointing way to go about any serious prospecting. There are a few things to consider before loading up the mule and heading off to the mountains that will greatly increase your odds of success – and decrease your odds of ending up in court.

Just because a mine or claim is no longer worked does not mean that the gold is gone. That particular property might or might not be still be off limits to hunters. Public lands are not always free for all gold prospecting areas, either. Some public land contains claims and other places are off limits to hunting at all. Some areas are restricted hunting, meaning you can use a pan, but not a dredge, sluice, or other equipment. If you are thinking that you can just slip into off-limits areas and slip out without notice, you are taking one healthy risk to your wallet or freedom. By getting some research under your belt before diving into the creeks with your prospecting gear, you can avoid not only fines, arrests, or being shot for claim jumping, you can also get a pretty good idea where your best bet is to find a good productive placer. The search for records can be time consuming, but it is a “must” do for anyone serious about gold prospecting.

While you will want to know the ownership status of the land you wish to hunt, it’s not going to do you much good to hunt if there isn’t a decent amount of gold to be found in the area. You may have heard that gold can be found just about anywhere, but a few flakes dropped by glaciers aren’t really going to make a hunt worthwhile. You should start your search by studying mining records to find areas from which good amounts of gold have already been found. State Bureau of Mines offices will have information about mining in the areas you are researching. Remember, thousands of people already have searched the country for gold. You aren’t likely to make much headway in new and untouched territory. Your best bet is to stick with known territories. While some people believe that areas that contain mines are tapped out, this is rarely the case. Gold in these areas still works its way down into streams and forms placers downhill from the sources.

The BLM office in the area you are researching will have mining and mineralogy maps. Once you study these and are content with pursuing prospecting in an area, you will want to do another bit of study. The BLM also has maps containing land status plats that show the ownership of public lands. You will find there where you are free to prospect. You may also want to check for claims that have been abandoned.

Claims can become abandoned for many reasons. Some might be abandoned because the area had been worked until the claim quit producing. Others may just have never been fruitful in the first place. Others could be abandoned due to other difficulties that the owner encountered, such as inability to get to and from the claim, illness or death, and a myriad other reasons. If a claim is abandoned and the land is open to prospecting, you might be able to pick up the claim for a low price and continue work on it. If it has been a considerable amount of time since a claim has been worked, it may contain fresh gold which continues to wash down into placer areas over time.

Local assay offices are sometimes willing to provide information about their own records of gold assays from local area claims, although sometimes you will be charged for records searches. If the claim produced gold recently enough, someone in the office might just even remember if it produced well.

A bit of geological study about gold is always a good idea for those who are extremely serious about prospecting, too. What you learn may just help you identify “new” localities near the older, known ones.

While these studies can be time consuming, most areas have several months a year (in some places most of the year) which are not suitable for hunting in the field so these are excellent months to do your “indoor” prospecting.

Once you have the information you need about open land and available claims, you are then ready to go out into the field and try your luck in the 2010 Gold Rush.

For the latest in gold equipment to aid you in hunt Click Here

Tags: Geology, gold panning, Gold prospecting, rock and gem hunters, rockhounds

Sometimes it gets frustrating being webmaster. It’s a LOT of hard work to keep a site vital and valuable to its members and viewers. Many times the feedback and is next to nil from our side of the keyboard. Sometimes I wonder why I bother at all when I could just sit back and do my own research and continue becoming more informed on my own instead of spending endless days and nights doing the endless research, writing, creating, giving others a place to share, communicate, learn, and advertise their own related concerns.

Every now and then, however, a note arrives in my email box and let’s me know that my efforts are not in vain. Today I opened my email box to find this note:

Thank you for making it easy to use your site and all the info will keep me, the husband, and our 2 beautiful little ladies busy! We are so thankful for all the help you have given us. It was so easy to understand and so fun to learn all the history and search for all of these older not on the map places…it’s taught us more than to go get gold, but to learn our areas, our state history and how to really research what we are looking for. Links are great too!
– D’Anna

D’Anna – Thank YOU. It was awesome to hear that. You just picked a day that I really needed to hear it to write to us, too.

You see, RHS1 was becoming a vital resource for rockhounds. It took years to build and just after we really got into the swing of things with many contributors and members making friendships, sharing, having fun, and doing business here we were suddenly hit by a ruthless hacker, injected with some nasty virulent viruses, and generally had our whole php system wiped out…..for those that don’t know, that’s the system that allows us to build interactive programs such as our forums, photo gallery, and this gazette.

This all happened at a time we were losing our wonderful technician to real world concerns and health issues. It took major amounts of unpaid efforts and time to find another able and willing tech and to build this back to an interactive place again. Having to start all over with the slow process of building our community back, the frustrations sometimes become overwhelming. It’s very hard to be patient building the second time around.

All in all, an email like this one, a post in the forum, or a picture posted in the Gallery actually mean something to the staff here at RHS1. We enjoy our community and it makes all the time and effort worthwhile when we see others finding it a valuable and fun place to stop, learn, share, and make friends.

Your email just provided me with another month’s worth of patience for rebuilding our community, and we appreciate you, too, D’Anna. Thanks again. A further Thanks to all of our contributing members here at RHS1. After all – the bottom line is that RHS1 isn’t about us – it’s about YOU.

Tags: rock and gem hunters, rockhound forums, rockhounds, rockhoundstation1.com

Sure gold is “where you find it”. Anyone even thinking about taking up prospecting has heard that one. It’s probably the most frustrating answer any beginning prospector ever hears when asking where to look for gold. Where the heck exactly is “where you find it” located and why do people keep telling you that?

While that answer is a bit frustrating for the beginner there is a lot of truth in it. Gold can turn up in some pretty unusual places. Sometimes it has been sprinkled through areas by ancient glaciers or waterways. There are stories of people finding gold and thinking they had found a place to stake a claim, to discover later that they had only found the remnants of some unfortunate prospector’s lost cache. Trains and carts being wrecked while hauling gold to smelters have spilled loads of ore which might be found later in the streams downhill.

While you might run into bits of gold scattered by such events, you might also appreciate a word of where you might be more statistically inclined to make an actual strike of some good concentrations of “color”. It’s really not as mysterious as it has been made to sound.

When you get to a gold bearing region you must choose a spot to hunt. Your main concern is that you are not hunting on someone else’s property or claim. There are places you can still be shot for this, and some places where the claim owners take this right very seriously, so always make sure you know you are not “claim jumping” before you dig in.

The best place for the beginner to start is where you know that there are mines or claims uphill and upstream from your chosen location. Gold will wash downhill into a stream over time. If you can find a spot where a stream flowing downhill from known gold localities converges with the stream you are going to hunt, this is a terrific place to start.

Gold is heavy. It can be carried by a rapid current, but when the current slows down, the gold will drop to the creek bed. Start by hunting down stream from a converging creek or area of color uphill from you. Look for spots in the creek where fast moving water is impeded or slows down. The base of a small waterfall is always worth checking as are areas where the current is diverted by large rocks. Bends of the creek where water rushes in the middle but slows along the shore of the bend are another good area. Don’t be afraid to be creative. I know a man that swept a year’s living expense worth of gold from an old corrugated pipe that ran under a road where a creek passed through. The grooves of the pipe had served as a sluice to catch the grains and nuggets.

When panning, you will want to dig a bit rather than just scoop from the top dirt. You might find some traces of color just scooping the top of the creek bed, but because of its weight, gold will work it’s way down until it eventually hits something that prevents it from going any further. The smaller the grain or the more recently it has been dropped, the closer to the surface you might find it. The deeper you dig, the more you will find if you are searching a good area. Cracks and crevices in rock are also a great place to find grains of gold, but you may need special suction equipment to get it out. There are items you can buy very inexpensively that will help you do that.

Just as there are the right places to look for gold, there are also the right times of year. You will want to wait until late summer or early autumn which is when the streams are at their lowest and slowest. A good plan is to go look the creek over during it’s high season and take notes of the currents when the water is high. Returning later during the low season, you will already have an idea of good places to look for gold that has been spilled by the full spring currents.

Through practice you will soon become able to size up good spots on a creek to pan. When you take your cache and proudly show it off, if someone asks you where you got it, you can just smile and say “it was right where I found it”.

Don’t forget folks — You can find everything you need for a successful gold season at: Black Cat Mining

Tags: Gold, gold panning, Gold prospecting, gold prospecting tips, prospecting equipment, rock and gem hunters

The Snyder Pow-Wow in Calavares county, CA  was a real success this year, it seems from the large amount of vendors and visitors having fun there yesterday.  I was a bit wowed when I got there as I  hadn’t expected the event to be so large.  It took me around an hour of wandering around just to find Bob (RHS1 member, coldwatergold).  I won’t pretend I was in any hurry to get to his club’s tent after I got to the show, though.  What an interesting array of rocks and fossils, not to mention a few other things I had to walk through to get to there.  Bob’s tent, by the way, was the Calavares Rock and Gem Society tent.  That was a fun bunch of folks to talk to.

There were a few pretty spectacular rocks in that place this year.  I talked to many vendors who I hope we’ll see pictures from in the photo contest In June.  I saw a few specimens that are spectacularly vote worth at the very least.  It was also fun just standing around shooting the breeze with people who don’t give you the RCA dog head tilt when you say you’re “a rockhound”.

I saw the best piece of Graveryard plume I’ve ever seen there (and am really hoping to have that pic entered in the contest) and some of the nicest chunks of Virgin Valley black opal I’ve seen to date, too.

Thanks go out to Al who was at the Tuolumne Sunshine Mine display with owner, Gilbert Gonzalez.  If the soapstone I get after talking to Al about “what to do” in this neck of the woods is anywhere near as nice as some of the specimens he had, I’m going to have a lot of fun on the find and afterward, too.  Gilbert had a pretty spectacular display of gold there, too.  I enjoyed that one.

The most spectacular display of the day, for me,  was the tourmaline and sunstone display at the Spectrum Mine booth. The tourmalines were gorgeous, greens, pinks, watermelons, predominated.  One  pencil like and beautifully faceted raw crystal that went from green on one side to a watermelony pink was particularly striking.  The sunstones were plentiful,  with both cut and polished sunstones of the pink tones with copper inclusions.   I caught a good look of their items just as they were packing for the day.  When petite Jessica picked up that huge glass display with all those beautiful tourmalines in it and carried them to the back of her rig I held my breath a little bit.  If she’d dropped that case, I know it would have brought a few tears to my eyes – I’m sure she’d have completely melted down.

The best part of the show apart from the people I met though was while people were packing their wares for the day and I was walking to the gate to leave.  Okay some background is called for here.

A few years back in Idaho, I found this really neat little “rock” that sparkled like it had metal in it – I thought it was some different metal dusts cemented together from some sort of mining procedure or another.  It was a pretty piece and so I took it home and never really looked at it under a light with a loupe.

So when I saw something just like it at the show, I ducked under the tent the folks were trying to shut down to find out what that thing was.  Well it turned out to be corundum.  So I came home and got that rock  in the sun with a magnifier glass and it is phenomenal.  The crystals are a too thin for lapidary, but as a display piece, it is beautiful.   It was better “finding” it the second time than it was the first.  I can’t believe I had it all this time and never looked at it closer. The metal shine on the faces completely disappears at some angles and allows me to see the sheer beauty of that blue.  Next time I am in that area I can hope to find something a bit more phenomenal.  At least I’ll recognize it for what it is even if I do see some metalic sparkles in the light.

I took a few pictures at the show but won’t know what turned out and what didn’t for a few days.  It’s the first time I ever used that camera so I’m not sure how skilled my shooting was.  Whatever turns out will be on the photo gallery in a few days.  Maybe some more of my finds will, too as long as I have the camera accessible.  The corundum, I’m afraid is going to have to wait until I can get a worthy shot of it and to do that I might have to find someone who knows more about photographing minerals than I do.

Until next time

Life’s Short, Rock Hard.

Tags: California rock and gem shows, gemstones, Gold prospecting, lapidary rough, lapidary supply, rock and gem hunters, rockhound equipment, rockhound events

RHS1 member, Bob Young (coldwatergold) just emailed me the other day about a huge rockhound pow-wow going on next weekend in Calaveras County, so of course I had to stop by the Gazette and tell everyone about it.  I’ll be at the show around noon on Saturday to meet Bob and his rockhound friends.  If you are in the area I hope you stop by.  It sounds like it is going to be a lot of fun.   I’ll  have pics and some gab about the show in a few weeks, so if you don’t get to go,  you can come here and find out what it was that you missed.

Here’s the Info about the Pow-Wow if you are interested in dropping by and having some rockhound type fun, too.

36th Annual Snyders’ Valley Springs POW WOW

May 7-9, 2010

Tags: California rock shows, children's activities, gemstones, gold prospectors, lapidary rough, rock and gem hunters, rockhound equipment, rockhound events, rockhound supplies

Earthquake Watch 2010 1st Quarter Report

There are a lot of people right now who will say that quakes have increased in frequency.  As of this quarter, they are absolutely correct.  There have been an extremely large amount of earthquakes this quarter – when we speak of 5 and six magnitude quakes, anyway.  7 magnitude quakes are actually about average or below, depending on which average you are using and we’re at the average for 8 magnitude.

Most of the overage of 5 magnitude quakes is aftershock from major quakes.  Chile’s recent 8.8 magnitude quake was the seventh largest in recent history and that area rumbled with 5 magnitude aftershocks for several weeks.  Only now are they tapering off.  The aftershocks of major quakes always have the capability of raising the stats for a quarter.

What is different about the recent quakes is they are all happening at depths of either 35 kilometers or 10 kilometers globally.  We are undergoing a shift in the lithosphere at these depths.  Many of the plate borders have already responded to the shift.  There are still areas that haven’t that we really hope will not be effected.

All in all, some of the stats are a bit startling, but there is still three quarters of a year for them to normalize and equal out.

The USGS statistical averages are averages since 1990.  That is when global tracking was achieved and we have no way of knowing for sure how accurately those statistics represent numbers before that time.  There are scientists who did tracking, but there were also many very volatile  areas that aren’t populated and it was impossible to track before.  From old records we can assume that there have been more recently, but there is no way to know for sure.

We also have an RHS1 3 year statistical average which was drawn from my three year quake report from  2006, 07, 08  that I will compare the quarterly statistics to, so we can see a more current trend.

What are the statistics?

8 Magnitude and Stronger:
We had one so far this year.  The 8.8 magnitude that hit Chili last month was the 7th largest in recent history.
The USGS average is 1, if any per year.  The RHS1 average is two per year.

7  Magnitude and Stronger:
We only had three of these this quarter.  The USGS average is 17 per year so we are light of average by around 30%.
RHS1 average is 11 annually, a  35% drop from the USGS average.  If this rate continues we will be  light by one per year so can still be considered in a very average range for these severe events.  In the first weeks of the 2nd quarter, however, you will see these quakes buck up to just barely over RSH1 averages and headed toward USGS averages.

6 Magnitude and Stronger:
Um….wow.
We had 48 of these strong shakers in this quarter.  This amount is over average any way you look at it.
The USGS average is 134 per year.  RHS1 average is up 16% from the USGS  at 159 annual mag 6 quakes.  At the rate of occurrence we saw this quarter we would be seeing  192 of these shakers. If this rate continues we will be 31% over the USGS average and  18% over the RHS1 average.   Ten of these quakes can be attributed to aftershocks of the 8.8 magnitude quake in Chile.  All but a few occurred at depths of 10 – 35 kilometers.  5 were at depths of greater than 100kms.  The rest were shallow quakes of 10 to 35 kilometers, with a few ranging to 50 kms deep so again we are seeing a rash of very shallow quakes for the most part.

5  Magnitude and Stronger:
Another Wow here and add a Yikes.
We had 565 magnitude 5 quakes this quarter.  A continuance of this rate would put us at a whopping 2260 for one year. That is a 42% increase from the USGS average of 1319 per year.  It is an even  larger increase from the RHS1 average which is only 1275 per year.  For the three years of tracking at RHS1, we actually had fewer than average mag 5 quakes. We are sitting on a 44% increase from the more recent 3 year average.  Again, many of these quakes – literally hundreds were aftershock tremors of strong quakes.

Aftershocks can be expected after any major quake.  The statistics for average amounts of quakes are built over years and the years always include some major quakes so the statistics do reflect these aftershocks as well as random quakes.  This year as our major quakes are occurring at shallow depths, we’re getting massive amounts of aftershocks, too. We are also experiencing these shallow quakes around the globe generally as well.  Doomsday sayers can  have fun with this shift in the lithosphere, but if you aren’t real fond of “end of the world” stories, you’re in the right place because I’m not going to tell you one.

Our crust shifts periodically just as our magnetic poles do.  A few years ago I found out that our magnetic North pole is traveling toward Siberia at the rate of 25 miles a year.  As a magnetic pole travels, matter will align with it just as it always does.  When this alignment begins to effect the centrifugal force, land mass will move.  That appears to be the case in the current frequencies of quakes as they are all being experienced at the same depths globally and the plate boundaries are being shaken with extreme strength indicating severe pressure on them.  If you find this movement frightening, if you live on a subduction zone or major fault line, you have a right to be worried.  So far several of these zones have been experiencing strong quakes. As far as the end of the world?  Um…don’t count this shaking being an indication of it.   Our magnetic poles shift fairly often.  They have done so several times in the last few hundred years and so far humans seem to be surviving as a species even though there are more people living in zones with catastrophic potentials.  If masses of people live in a volatile subduction zone area, we will see massive destruction when the zone snaps.  We will see destruction from tsunamis as humans continue to build in tsunami prone areas of coastlines.

While there is still no sure-fire means to predict earthquakes, the recent trend makes it likely that other plate boundaries will snap in the near future. You will find information about two of the most volatile subduction zones in the May RHS1 Connector newsletter.

Until then, may all your shaking take place on a dance floor.

<a href=”http://www.mylivesignature.com” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://signatures.mylivesignature.com/85678/heysal/3d7cebe4711209357a777bce172bf9a1.png” border=”0″ style=”border: 0 !important; background: transparent;” /></a>

Tags: earth science, Earth Watch, Earthquake watch, Earthquakes, Geology, Natural Disasters, rockhounds, rockhoundstation1.com

Just a note about the upcoming Pow Wow Club event near the Saddle Mountain Washington area.  I’ve been there and the some of the petrified wood there is spectacular.   If you like Rockhound get togethers, this is one you don’t want to miss.  You can read more about it in the March Newsletter – which includes a download to help you find the event and/or contact the club:

http://www.rockhoundstation1.com/newsletter.html

Tags: petrified wood, rock and gem hunters, rockhound events, rockhound newsletter, Rockhounding Washington, rockhounds, Saddle Mt, Washington

Hi Everyone. 

I want to remind everyone to get their BEST pictures of their most awesome finds ready.   On  June 1st  we will start our CALENDAR PICTURE CONTEST.   The 13 pictures with the most votes will be featured in the 2011 Gem Hunter’s Showcase Calendar.  The Picture with the most votes will be featured on the cover.

Each picture will include a caption with the finder’s name, the region the stone was located, and any contact information – such as shop names and locations and/or websites that the winner would like to have included.  Free advertising and some high test bragging rights for those of you finding the most awesome gems and taking great photos.

Please do make sure that the pictures you send are of gems that YOU find.  RHS1 is not responsible for plagiarized  material. If you use someone else’s pictures or info and get caught doing so, it will be YOU that is responsible, not RHS1.   I’m pretty sure our rockhound community is above this kind of thing, but legally – I have to put up this statement, so here it is.

TO ENTER THE CONTEST
1. You must be a member of RHS1 to participate in this contest.  Registration is free – membership is always free. Make sure to put us in your email so your confirmation doesn’t go to your spam folder.  If you have difficulties registering,  just drop me a line and I will activate you myself.

2. Send your picture  to us via the “contact US” button by June 1st, 2010.  Include your username,  the name of the mineral specimen, and what region you found it in.    We will accept 2 pictures from each contestant.

Pictures will be posted on the Photo Gallery on June 1st  with instructions about how to vote.  Voting will continue until the last day of August 2010 – On September 1st  we will announce the winners.

HAVE A ROCK SHOW COMING UP IN 2011?  STAY TUNED FOR INFORMATION ABOUT HOW TO HAVE YOUR SHOW LISTED ON THE CALENDAR so nobody will forget to visit your show!

I’m looking forward to some spectacular pictures this year!

Tags: Gem Hunter's contest, gemstone picture contest, gemstones, rock and gem hunters, rockhound calendar, rockhound photo gallery, rockhounds, rockhoundstation1.com