A 20-acre slab of Rattlesnake Ridge continues its downward slide near Union Gap, but at a significantly slower rate, officials say.

Stephen Reidel, a research professor of geology at WSU’s Tri-Cities campus, said rocks from the slide falling into the nearby Columbia Asphalt quarry are likely to form a buttress that will stop the slide in its tracks.

“If you just take a look at it, the rocks fall down the hill to the quarry,” Reidel said. “It is as far as it is going.”

State and county officials, as well as scientists, have been monitoring the slide since October 2017, when a crack was first spotted in the ridge near Union Gap.

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Yakima Herald

Marc Kramer, an associate professor of environmental chemistry at Washington State University Vancouver, has discovered that one-fourth of carbon within the Earth’s soil is bound to minerals about six feet below the surface. This revelation could lead to new ways to deal with the influx of carbon due to global warming.

Kramer estimates that 600 billion metric tons (known as gigatons) of carbon is currently underneath the Earth’s surface — that amount is more than twice the carbon added into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. Most of this carbon is underneath the world’s wettest forests, which unfortunately, won’t absorb as much carbon as atmospheric temperatures continue to rise.

This “major breakthrough” discovery, as Kramer called it, is a starting point for the process of moving atmospheric carbon underground as climate change and global warming progresses. However, there is still major work to be done.

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earth.com