video Vault
Lectures, interviews and broadcast appearances spanning three decades.
The full-length talks below are recorded in their entirety, followed by footage Dr. Merguerian shot at the World Trade Center excavation in 2008 and three short interviews recorded at Hofstra University in 2005. At the foot of the page are excerpts from the documentary and news broadcasts he has contributed to since 1994, credited to the networks that produced them.
Lectures
Exploration and Geology of the Earth's Moon Dr. Charles Merguerian · Mid-Hudson Astronomical Association, September 2025 · 76 minutes
The geology of the Moon set against the history of space exploration — from the science fiction that anticipated it, through Apollo 11 to 17, to the Artemis programme. Lunar crustal rocks and regolith preserve a record of the first billion years of the solar system, a period from which almost no terrestrial rock survives.
The photomicrographs discussed in this lecture are on the Lunar Thin Sections page.
Field Footage
A Geological Find in the Queens Tunnel — Dr. Merguerian on a discovery made during mapping of the Queens Tunnel.
NYC Earthquakes: Fact or Fiction? Dr. Charles Merguerian · Asian American / Asian Research Institute, CUNY, 2 March 2007 · 56 minutes
The bedrock beneath New York City is cut by two contrasting sets of brittle faults, NE and NW, dividing the city into fault-bounded blocks. Whether those faults still move has been a long argument between geologists and seismologists. Evidence from the Queens Tunnel and the Bronx provides the first demonstration of surface deformation from faulting in postglacial time — which matters, because large earthquakes struck the city in 1737, 1783 and 1884.
Recorded and published by the Asian American / Asian Research Institute at CUNY. The lecture abstract is on their site
Geology of the New York Botanical Garden, Bronx NY Dr. Charles Merguerian · New York Mineralogical Club, December 2024 · 49 minutes
The bedrock beneath the Botanical Garden — Precambrian and Paleozoic rock of the Manhattan Prong — and the glacial history that shaped the modern Bronx landscape. Based on field mapping conducted with J. Mickey Merguerian.
Companion guidebooks are in Publications.
Geological Controls on Differing Site Conditions J. Mickey Merguerian · Long Island Geologists, Stony Brook University, April 2022 · 17 minutes
How rock mass properties, fracture systems and structural geology determine what a contractor actually encounters underground — and how that evidence is assembled for a differing site condition claim. Presented at the 29th Annual Conference on Geology of Long Island and Metropolitan New York
Pleistocene Plunge Pools Beneath the World Trade Center Site Dr. Charles Merguerian · 29 August 2008 · 31 seconds
Recorded during excavation at the World Trade Center site. The exposure shows till-filled plunge pools and potholes cut into the Manhattan bedrock — features carved by meltwater beneath the Laurentide ice sheet roughly fifty thousand years ago, buried, and preserved. They were visible only in the window between excavation and construction.
The research this footage accompanies was presented to the Geological Society of America and to the Long Island Geologists conference in 2009. Both abstracts are in Publications.
Interviews
Recorded at Hofstra University, November 2005. These are standard-definition recordings from the period and the picture quality reflects that.
Rare Rhyodacite Dikes in the Queens Tunnel — On the rhyodacite dikes encountered underground.
Will an Earthquake Happen in New York City? — On seismic risk beneath the city.
Specimens and thin sections from the Queens Tunnel are in Queens Tunnel Minerals and Queens Tunnel Petrography. Dr. Merguerian's lecture abstract NYC Earthquakes: Fact or Fiction?, delivered at the Asian American / Asian Research Institute, CUNY, on 2 March 2007, is available here.
Broadcast Appearances
Earthquakes: The Terrifying Truth
ABC World of Discovery · Broadcast May 1994 · Hosted by Martin Sheen. © ABC.
Dr. Merguerian on his early work on the fault history of New York City's water tunnels, the field evidence recovered from them, and what it implies for seismic risk beneath the city.
Out of print. Released on VHS only.
Goshen Stone
ABC News · Broadcast 1 March 2007 · © ABC News.
Dr. Merguerian on the economics of quarrying decorative and building stone, and how such operations pay for themselves.
Naked Science: Birth of America
National Geographic · Broadcast 6 March 2008 · © National Geographic.
Three segments on the glacial history of the New York region — the striae scoured into Central Park bedrock, the coastline the ice left behind, and the meltback that formed the Great Lakes.
DVD available from National Geographic.
Super City: New York
History Channel · Broadcast 22 September 2008 · © A&E Television Networks.
Excavation at the World Trade Center site exposed rock that helped geologists reconstruct the formation of the Appalachian chain — and, further back, the breakup of Pangaea.
Award-winning. DVD available from the History Channel.
How the Earth Was Made: New York
History Channel · Broadcast 10 March 2009 · © A&E Television Networks.
Six segments tracing the bedrock and glacial history of the New York region, from the schist exposed at Inwood Hill Park to the ice that shaped Bear Mountain.
Award-winning. DVD available from the History Channel.
The Dylan Ratigan Show
MSNBC · Broadcast 11 March 2011
Interviewed on the magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake in Japan, and what a comparable event would mean for the north-east United States.
The original broadcast page is no longer online.
Tsunami Risk to Long Island
WCBS-TV New York · Broadcast 11 March 2011
Interviewed by Jennifer McLogan in the days after the Tohoku earthquake, on the seismic history of the region and why evacuating Long Island ahead of a tsunami would be close to impossible.