President’s Perspective: APGO Going Forward
	APGO Council & You: What A Councilor Does and Why You Should Be One
	Give Geoscientists The Right to Vote!!!
	QP Status of APGO Limited Licence Holders
	Book Review: The World Without Us

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1. April 9, 2008 National Geographic News Hope Hamashige Grand Canyon Gorge Is 9 Times Older Than Thought
New research on the Grand Canyon challenges the long-held belief that the canyon was carved by the mighty Colorado River about six million years ago. Parts of the canyon were formed more than 50 million years earlier than previously thought, according to the new study.

2. April 8, 2008 Iceland Review Online Giant Underwater Volcano Discovered in Iceland - Volcanologist Ármann Höskuldsson from the University of Iceland and a team of scientists recently discovered a more than 50-square-kilometer volcano off Reykjanes peninsula, southwest Iceland

3. March 31, 2008 National Geographic News Anil Ananthaswamy "Oddball" Scottish Rocks Formed By Meteorite Geologists have uncovered evidence of the biggest meteorite crater ever found in Britain and Ireland. The study findings solve a long-standing puzzle about a layer of rock that stretches for about 31 miles (50 kilometers) in northwest Scotland. The layer, 65 feet (20 meters) thick in places, is sandwiched between gigantic layers of red sandstone and siltstone, which form the so-called Torridonian sedimentary rocks.

4. March 18, 2008 Blake Nicholson in Bismarck Associated Press
Workers Uncovering Mummified Dinosaur. Using tiny brushes and chisels, workers picking at a big greenish-black rock in the basement of North Dakota's state museum are meticulously uncovering something amazing: a nearly complete dinosaur, skin and all. (See video of the dinosaur.)

Unlike almost every other dinosaur fossil ever found, the Edmontosaurus named Dakota—a duckbilled dinosaur found in southwestern North Dakota in 1999 and announced to the public last December (see story)—is covered by fossilized skin that is hard as iron. It's among just a few mummified dinosaurs in the world, say the researchers who are slowly freeing it from a 65-million-year-old rock tomb

5. March 13, 2008 Ethiopia's national bank has been told to inspect all the gold in its vaults to determine its authenticity. It follows the discovery that some of the "gold" it had bought for millions of dollars was gold-plated steel. The first hint that something was wrong reportedly came when the Ethiopian central bank exported a consignment of gold bars to South Africa. The South Africans sent them back, complaining that they had been sold gilded steel.

6. Feb. 26, 2008 Doomsday' vault opens its doors The site, 1,000km (621 miles) north of mainland Norway, was chosen because it was geologically stable, remote, and the surrounding permafrost would act as natural refrigeration to keep the facility at the temperature needed to preserve the seeds.

7. March 25, 2008 Scientific American By Mara Hvistendahl China's Three Gorges Dam: An Environmental Catastrophe? Even the Chinese government suspects the massive dam may cause significant environmental damage SHANGHAI—For over three decades the Chinese government dismissed warnings from scientists and environmentalists that its Three Gorges Dam—the world's largest—had the potential of becoming one of China's biggest environmental nightmares.

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By Andrea Waldie, P. Geo.
APGO Executive Director & Registrar

Wait a minute…they already have the vote! GET GEOSCIENTISTS TO USE THE VOTE!

As a registered professional geoscientist in Ontario you have the right to vote in the Association of Professional Geoscientists of Ontario elections. Your vote helps select the individuals who will represent you on your APGO Council. When you vote, you chose the individual who will give voice to your opinions and ideals at Council; the individual, on your behalf, will help guide the APGO. Your vote does matter.

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By Andrea Waldie, P. Geo.
APGO Executive Director & Registrar

APGO is pleased to announce that as of April 1, 2008, due to revisions by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment (MOE) of Ontario Regulation 153/04, APGO limited licence members will be included on the roster of persons qualified to file Records of Site Condition (RSCs) as part of Brownfields remediation work. APGO has long worked toward having limited license holders recognized by the MOE as Qualified Persons (QPs) that are able to take responsibility for Brownfields-related work.

A limited licence certificate is granted to those APGO members with experience and competence in a specific area of professional geoscience. The area of practice is restricted to that which is specified on the certificate. Limited licence holders are held to the same accountability measures as all Ontario professional geoscientists, including continuing professional development standards, and the complaints and discipline process as described in the Professional Geoscientists Act, 2000.

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Reviewed by Claudia Cochrane, M.Sc., P.Geo.

What if our species were to disappear - every one of us - overnight? How would the planet fare? What would happen to our cities? Our grand engineering feats? Our artistic expressions? Will any sign of us remain on the blue planet to tell future conscious beings that we were here?

Several years ago, journalist Alan Weisman wrote an article about the speed with which nature re-occupied the environs of Chernobyl, continued radioactivity emissions notwithstanding. The broader issue about the fate of other doomed or threatened tracts on our planet when we are gone, stimulated his imagination, as it will the reader's. He has surveyed the literature, interviewed experts, and toured the planet to view sites, both pristine and damaged, for himself. The World Without Us is a compilation of his discoveries and musings.

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