GeoLog

Imaggeo on Mondays: Viñales Valley

Imaggeo on Mondays: Viñales Valley

From last week’s unusual desert landscape to this week’s lush valley in Cuba…

The picture shows the Vinales Valley, a karstic depression with mogotes in western Cuba. Karst is the general term for landscapes formed when limestone is disolved by carbonic acid, in rain water. This leads, in particular, to the formation of an underground network of caves and rivers.

In the tropics, due to the heavy rains, the dissolution is fast. The ground collapses above the caves and the karst landscape may evolve to mogotes, which are isolated and steep-sided limestone hills; visible in this week’s featured image. Mogotes can also be found in Eastern Asia, for instance in Halong Bay (Vietnam) or Bohol Island (‘Chocolate Hills’) in the Philipines.

By Alexis Merlaud, Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy

Imaggeo is the EGU’s online open access geosciences image repository. All geoscientists (and others) can submit their photographs and videos to this repository and, since it is open access, these images can be used for free by scientists for their presentations or publications, by educators and the general public, and some images can even be used freely for commercial purposes. Photographers also retain full rights of use, as Imaggeo images are licensed and distributed by the EGU under a Creative Commons licence. Submit your photos at http://imaggeo.egu.eu/upload/.

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Laura Roberts Artal is the Outreach and Dissemination Manager at The Water Innovation Hub (University of Sheffield). Laura also volunteers as the Associate Director of Communications for Geology for Global Development. She has also held a role in industry as Marketing Manager for PDS Ava (part of PDS Group). Laura was the Communications Officer at the European Geosciences Union from the summer of 2014 to the end of 2017. Laura is a geologist by training and holds a PhD in palaeomagnetism from the University of Liverpool. She tweets at @LauRob85.


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