After a few years spent at an Earth Science department researching social inequalities and hydrological extremes — i.e. floods and droughts — I have often been asked these rhetorical questions: “Isn’t it obvious that the weakest individuals or social groups suffer the most in case of extreme hydrological events? So, why should we study these inequalities?” Driven by these questions, and the years ...[Read More]
Geodynamics does not stop at the core-mantle boundary – the Earth’s outer core is a truly dynamic geosystem. This week Stefano Maffei (Research fellow) and Chris Davies (Associate Professor) from the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds tell us more about the possible interplay between mantle and core and some of the remaining mysteries of the Earth’s magnetic field generatio ...[Read More]
Loess is an aeolian (wind-driven) silty sediment covering over 10% of the Earth’s land surface; it occurs predominantly in the mid-latitudes. On a global scale, loess is among the most widespread unconsolidated sediments, and of crucial importance for agricultural regions where loess deposits are known to form fertile soils because of its ability to store water and retain nutrients. Loess is compr ...[Read More]
Each month we feature specific Divisions of EGU and during the monthly GeoRoundup we will be putting the journals that publish science from those Divisions at the top of the Highlights roundup. For September, the Divisions we are featuring are: Energy, Resources and Environment (ERE) and Geochemistry, Mineralogy, Petrology and Volcanology (GMPV). They are served by the journals: Geoscientific Mode ...[Read More]
Blue Olivine set in a matrix of pyroxene, magnetite and plagioclase in a basalt collected by the photographer, Bernardo Cesare, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Israel. Polarized light photomicrograph. Crossed polarizers and red tint plate. Width c. 2.7 mm. Who may have been throwing this stone a couple millennia ago? Description by Bernardo Cesare, after the description on imaggeo.egu.e ...[Read More]
We often talk about forests for their importance in climate as a carbon sink and oxygen source. For their great role in the preservation of biodiversity, both for vegetation and as habitat for many animal species, for their potential in recreational activities. However, we do not talk a lot about forests in relation to natural hazards. Indeed, forests can be severely affected by natural hazards. T ...[Read More]
One of the most famous identification methods in the study of mineralogy is the Mohs Scale of Hardness. A comparative scale, based on the hardness of each mineral, it is a way geoscientists can compare minerals to each other and organise them based upon an easily testable physical characteristic. Each level of hardness has a value, from 1 (the softest) to 10 (the hardest) and each number is associ ...[Read More]
In July 2017, the world’s largest iceberg known as A68 calved from the Larsen C Ice Shelf, located in the western Weddell Sea, Antarctica. Since then, A68 has lost two chunks of ice, A68-B and A68-C, but still remains a giant after more than 3 years. How did it feel to be the greatest, A68? Being the greatest With a length of 175 km and being about 50 km wide, this giant iceberg also appropriately ...[Read More]
The July 2020 NPG Paper of the Month award goes to Kolja Kypke, William Langford and Allan Willms, for their paper “Anthropocene climate bifurcation” (https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-27-391-2020). All three authors work at the University of Guelph, in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. William Langford did his PhD at the California Institute of Technology in 1971 under the supervision of Herbert Kel ...[Read More]
Ana Neiva was born on May 7 1941 in Cedofeita, Porto, northwest Portugal – a city carved in granite. Her childhood and youth were spent in Coimbra, where her father worked. João Cotelo Neiva was an eminent geologist and professor at the University of Coimbra, one of Europe’s oldest universities. His influence was decisive for her interest in geology and her scientific career. ...[Read More]
