Six years after California voters approved a $9.9 billion bond act to help finance a high-speed rail line between that eventually will carry riders from San Francisco to Los Angeles. California Governor Jerry Brown and other officials led a ceremony in downtown Fresno on Tuesday to mark the start of construction for the project. Instead of picking up shovels and scooping a pile of dirt like many groundbreaking ceremonies, the Governor instead decided to sign a ceremonial steel rail. Although the ceremonial start to construction took place on Tuesday, major construction is still likely weeks away. According to High-Speed Rail Authority board chairman Dan Richard, “We are entering a period of sustained construction on the nation’s first high-speed rail system for the next five years in the Central Valley, and in the decade beyond that, we will be building across California.”  The first segment will cost $6 billion and be completed in 2018.  It will connect Merced to Bakersfield.

Passengers flying out of Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport have been accustomed to a unique additional step to reaching their gate when trying to catch a flight. Instead of being dropped off in front of the airport and walking inside to receive one’s boarding pass and go through security, travelers flying through Billy Bishop Airport must take a 90-second ferry ride across Lake Ontario to reach their gate. Billy Bishop Airport is located on an island in Lake Ontario, located two miles from the downtown area. While many passengers enjoy the ferry ride, others have complained that the quarter-hourly crossings cause a lot of stress for passengers trying to make their flight. 

At the beginning of the New Year, here are the top geological events for 2014, as reported by the Weather Channel! They include five major earthquakes, six volcano eruptions and three landslides, occurring all around the globe, permanently altering people's lives and landscapes. The geological events are listed below in chronological order!

Geoengineer.org is pleased to announce the December issue #118 of the monthly e-newsletter !

TheStructuralEngineer.info is pleased to announce the December issue #90 of the monthly e-newsletter !

Satellite data of the last to decades, helped in mapping the land creep along the Calaveras and the Hayward faults east of the San Fransisco Bay, enabling scientists to reconstruct the underground geometry of the fault complex and estimate the magnitude of future earthquakes.

A collection of photos showing the Niagara Falls drained from water are presented below. Water flow was diverted as part of a project to examine the geology of the falls back in 1969.