Sunday, November 7, 2010

The Swarms!

Earlier this week, Ron Schott posted a beautiful set of dikes as a Where On Google Earth challenge:I didn't solve the puzzle, but I did spend several hours flitting about our planet's surface trying. It was solved by Peter L, who found it in northern Peru. So, several hours wasted, right? Well, not exactly. I found some pretty nice dike swarms myself, and rather than hold them until I win another WoGE, and take the chance I'd simply forget, I figured I'd share now. The first two are near a volcanic field in NW Saudi Arabia, the second two on Egypt's Sinai Penninsula. All the images will get much larger if clicked, and I've left the lat-long data at the bottom of the pictures, for more precise locations.



Incidentally, the closest I got in my searching to the actual location was in the Gulf of California area, where I didn't find any good dike swarms. The two main issues here are first, that I was focused on modern extensional tectonism, and second, I'm not really familiar with older rift areas. But I certainly don't consider this time wasted.

1 comment:

Silver Fox said...

I thought Suadi Arabia looked promising, but as you noticed, it didn't pan out. Otherwise, the "closest" I came was trying to find some part of the Independence swarm that would match.