About/Contact
I’m Andrew Alden. As a writer, I’ve covered the Earth sciences for the whole planet and its neighbors. But my city of Oakland is full of interest too, and since I tramp around it a lot I reserved this spot in 2007 to think locally. In 2010 the East Bay Express named this the Best Blog About East Bay Rocks. As of 2018 I post every other Monday.
I lead geology walks several times a year; you can follow me by name on Eventbrite. Groups can charter a walk; my popular ones go around Lake Merritt and through Oakland’s downtown, but I’ll consider custom walks. I present talks to interested groups, too, in person or via Zoom. My Substack newsletter “Deeper Oakland” is where to hear about upcoming walks and talks, as well as other thoughts and news.
I joined Twitter as “@aboutgeology” in February 2009; as of 2025 I’m still hanging in there but focused more on Bluesky, where as an early user I snagged “@geology.” I have an intermittent presence on Instagram as “oaklandgeology.”
You can write to me at geology@andrew-alden.com. To make donations in support of my work here, see the Donations page.
Site news and random discussions can be found on the Announcements/Q&A page.
My book, Deep Oakland: How Geology Shaped a City, came out in hardback in May 2023 and in paperback in May 2025; more detail here. Purchase it from the publisher here or wherever you buy books. I sell signed copies too; see the Donations page for that.
I’ve been doing this for a long time. Starting in 1997 I wrote about everything in geology for About.com, until they cut my contract in 2014. Now they’re ThoughtCo.com, and those words are out of my control and subject to degradation. The Internet Archive has a fairly good record of the time I can vouch for. From 2011 to mid-2016 I wrote regularly for KQED, first in Quest Science blogs, writing about geology of the greater Bay area, then as a KQED Science Contributor.
I care a lot about the photos on this site. Clicking on them will show them at their best. Starting around 2021 I’ve been posting images at 1000 or 1200 pixels. I’m slowly upgrading the images in older posts, most of which are 450 or 800 pixels.
I rely a lot on a geologic map freely downloadable from the US Geological Survey (MF-2342). You would enjoy having a copy on your own computer. That map is the basis of nearly all my map visuals.
Oakland Geology 