Welcome to Rocky Planet!

A view across the San Francisco Volcanic Field to the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona. Taken by me, March 2017. Welcome to Rocky Planet! This blog is all about the geosciences, from the Earth’s surface down to its core (and even stuff going on off the planet). It is a little tricky to try to describe what you can expect out of Rocky Planet, so why not start with a little about me. I am Dr. Erik Klemetti (you can see me up in the banner, peering out at you). I’m a professor of Geosciences at Denison University – if you haven’t heard of Denison, we’re a small liberal arts college in the middle of Ohio. My field of specialty is volcanology, which you might admit is a little weird considering that I’m based out of the Midwest … but that’s OK! Geologists love to travel, so that’s what I do to my current field areas: the Lassen Peak area of California, Mt. Hood in Oregon and a little-known but surprisingly large volcanic area near Bend, Oregon called the Tumalo Volcanic Center. I’m into time. Well, that is to say, I’m interesting in how these volcanoes evolve over time and how long it might take them to go from a state of being in “cold storage” to eruption. Interested? You can check out a paper I published in PLOS One about my work at Lassen Peak. I'm originally from Massachusetts, but my background is what I call "Scandatino" -- my mother is from Colombia while my father's side of the family hails from Finland. So, I drink a lot of coffee, watch a lot of baseball (go Red Sox and Mariners!) and soccer. Oh yeah, and I also almost had a career in radio/music until I zigged and zagged back to geology. However, I’m betting many of you know me from my previous gig: writing Eruptions for the last 9 years. Eruptions was a blog focused on global volcanism and it was a blast (no pun intended) to write for all those years. You can find the archives of Eruptions here on Rocky Planet. Times change and so does my blog. Rocky Planet will cover all those geologic wonders that I find fascinating. Don’t worry, it will still be chock full of volcanism, but it is also going to get into earthquakes and rivers and Pluto and why sand is awesome and climate change and everything that tells a story about our planet and beyond. I’m hoping to cover research that might not be blasted across the mainstream media headlines, dispel those over-hyped disaster scenarios, debunk pseudoscientific beliefs in things like earthquake prediction. I will also try to bring in diverse voices across the geosciences – no, we’re not just a field of white men (nothing against white men), but geology is packed with such a panoply of voices. So, hopefully you’ll make Rocky Planet a regular interweb destination. I’ll be posting a few times a week depending on what the Earth feels like doing. If you need more, follow me on Twitter: @eruptionsblog (yes, I’m keeping the old handle). Leave a comment to say hello and let me know what you’d like to see on Rocky Planet as well or send me an email: rockyplanetblog on Gmail. I’m thrilled to get started here on Discover.