Athena is torn between desire and duty, and asks: What is your opinion on workplace romances? Dear Athena, Following the overwhelming success of the last two posts on workplace romance, this Valentine’s Day has prompted a return to the magic of poetry to answer this question. In the form of the villanelle this time. No, not the beloved character from the tv show or the novella series, but th ...[Read More]
In a study recently published in Nature Communications [1], an international team led by researchers from the Institut de physique du globe de Paris (IPGP) has sought to better understand how the 2011 Tohoku-Oki mega-earthquake in Japan disrupted volcanic regions, by monitoring the seismic anisotropy in these regions before and after the earthquake. What is seismic anisotropy? A seismic wav ...[Read More]
In October 2019, an open letter was published, addressing both EGU and AGU regarding their policy to reduce the carbon footprint of their annual conferences. Almost 2000 scientists already signed this letter, asking for more ambitious measures to decline carbon emissions, in line with the goals of 50% reduction by 2030 and near-zero emissions by 2050 (IPCC SR15, 2018). Some of the proposed improve ...[Read More]
Last year I had the opportunity to attend my first General Assembly to speak at several sessions about my experience working as a science journalist and reporting in the field during an EGU Science Journalism Fellowship. With my tickets booked and accommodations reserved, I was ready to go — until I tore a ligament in my knee while skiing in my native state: Colorado in the U.S. The timing ...[Read More]
Soil is a fragile and finite natural resource that must be carefully managed and protected to ensure future food and fiber provision as well as delivery of many other ecosystem services such as water purification or flood regulation [1]. Soil health and preservation at global scales has been receiving increasing attention, for example, in discussions at the 2019 UN climate conference, COP25 in Mad ...[Read More]
Each month, Jesse Zondervan picks his favourite posts from geoscience and development blogs/news which cover the geology for global development interest. Here’s a round-up of Jesse’s favourite selections for the last three months of 2019: As the world is gripped by the 2019 Novel Coronavirus, research published in Nature Communications finds respiratory infection outbreaks could become less severe ...[Read More]
The Italian Catalogue of Earthquake-Induced Ground Failures (CEDIT) is a database available online since January 2013 that stores data about ground failures induced by strong earthquakes, which occurred on the Italian territory since 1000 AD up to now. CEDIT is freely available on a web-GIS portal (currently the access is granted using Firefox as a web browser, the upgrade to other browsers ...[Read More]
This picture shows a 30 micrometer thick rock section of a gabbro from the Rum Layered Intrusion (Scotland). Large clinopyroxene crystals are enclosed in a foliated fine grained groundmass of plagioclase and olivine. The clinopyroxene core crystallized at an early stage, at 1160°C. They were partly molten at 1200°C during successive hot magma injections and subsequently recrystallized, enclosing h ...[Read More]
During the month of February, we are focusing on ‘Accessibility and Inclusivity’ here at the EGU. Although these topics are clearly relevant to the General Assembly, some people may wonder whether they also relate to scientific research. Clearly all geoscientists are people, so accessibility and inclusivity matter regardless of what scientific discipline they are in. But there can also be tangible ...[Read More]
We know that climate change is being felt worldwide, but it is especially prominent in the Arctic, where temperatures are warming twice as fast as anywhere else on the planet. This especially sensitive environment, whose icy, snow-covered land and sea is so important in the global climate system, is really starting to feel the heat. But where is this heat coming from? In this blog post, we will ex ...[Read More]
