Field Work

Imaggeo on Mondays: The ephemeral salt crystals

Dan V. Palcu August 12, 2019

The ephemeral crystals. Credit: Dan Valentin Palcu (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

Rock salt stalactites (Speleothems) are the indicators of entrance in a salt cave. These crystal stalactites precipitate from brine only at the entrance in the salt caves, as that is the only place where the physical and chemical properties of the air and the brine dripping from the ceiling allow these crystals to grow and be preserved. And they are extremely fragile – if there is just a sma ...[Read More]

GeoPolicy: Preventing mercury leakage from a WWII submarine

Chloe Hill July 5, 2019

U-864 Submarine Wreckage. Credit: NGI - Norges Geotekniske Institutt (distributed via Youtube).

I recently had the opportunity to interview Matthias Kaiser, a professor at Bergen University and, at the time of the interview, Director of the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities. He is part of an expert team that has given scientific advice to Norwegian policymakers, highlighting the issues that should be considered when dealing with the U-864 submarine wreckage and its carg ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Robotics at the service of the polar science

Angelo Odetti July 1, 2019

Robotics at the service of the polar science. Credit: Angelo Odetti (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

This picture was taken in the Arctic in May 2018. It shows the unmanned marine vehicle Proteus in front of the tidewater glacier Conwaybreen in the Kongsfjorden in Spitsbergen in the Svalbard Archipelago. The front of tidewater glaciers is an almost vertical wall of ice standing over the sea where direct measurements are very critical due to the possibility of sudden fall of enormous blocks of ice ...[Read More]

Weathering the storm from a research vessel

Raffaele Bonadio June 19, 2019

In this blog post, Raffaele Bonadio, a PhD student in seismology at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in Ireland, shares a particularly formidable experience in the field while deploying instruments aboard a research vessel in the North Atlantic Ocean. Credit: Raffaele Bonadio

Fieldwork can take geoscientists to some of the most remote corners of the Earth in some of the harshest conditions imaginable, but stories from the field hardly make it into a published paper. In this blog post, Raffaele Bonadio, a PhD student in seismology at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in Ireland, shares a particularly formidable experience in the field while aboard a research ves ...[Read More]