Post by Anne Van Loon, Lecturer in Physical Geography (Water sciences) at the University of Birmingham, in the United Kingdom. __________________________________________________ In recent years the human dimension of hydrology has become increasingly important. Major flood and drought events have shown how strongly water and society are intertwined (see here and here). The hydro(geo)logical resear ...[Read More]
Over the past seven months I’ve had the opportunity to visit four growing cities in eastern Africa: Kampala (Uganda), Nairobi (Kenya), Lusaka (Zambia) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania). The importance of geoscience in delivering SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) was evident. “More than half of the world’s population now live in urban areas. By 2050, that figure will have risen to 6.5 bi ...[Read More]
Volcanic Ash as an Active Agent in the Earth System (VA3): Combining Models and Experiments; Hamburg, Germany, 12–13 September 2016 Volcanic ash is a spectacular companion of volcanic activity that carries valuable information about the subsurface processes. It also poses a range of severe hazards to public health, infrastructure, aviation, and agriculture, and it plays a significant role in bioge ...[Read More]
Off the coast of Germany, a male northern gannet (for ease, we’ll call him Pete) soars above the cold waters of the North Sea. He’s on the hunt for a shoal of fish. Some 40km due south east, Pete’s mate and chick await, patiently, for him to return to the nest with a belly full of food. Glints of silver just below the waves; the fish have arrived. Pete readies himself. Body rigid, wings tucked in ...[Read More]
Geotalk is a regular feature highlighting early career researchers and their work. In this interview we speak to Jay Shah, a PhD student at Imperial College London, who is investigating the South Atlantic Anomaly, a patch over the South Atlantic where the Earth’s magnetic field is weaker than elsewhere on the globe. He presented some of his recent findings at the 2017 General Assembly. First, coul ...[Read More]
On Friday 8 September 2017 at 04:49 am UTC, a magnitude 8.1 earthquake hit off the coast of Mexico, 87 km SW of Pijijiapan. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the epicentre was at 15.07 N, 93.72 W at a depth of about 69.7 km. Yesterday, another strong (magnitude 7.1) earthquake hit central Mexico, 55 km SSW of the city of Puebla and 120 km south of Mexico City. Despite the lower magnitude, y ...[Read More]
When the minerals run out, or it is no longer profitable to extract the resources, mines shut down. Prior to issuing a permit for the exploitation of a resource, most regulators require assurance that once the mine closes it, or the activities carried out at the site, will not present a risk to human health or the environment. Ongoing monitoring of a mine once it is decommissioned is required to e ...[Read More]
In this month’s (first ever for our blog) Life of a Scientist interview, we are very happy to talk to Dr Miho Janvier, a Researcher at the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale in Orsay (France), whose work has shed some light on the understanding of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (or solar storms) from their birth in the Sun’s corona to their evolution in interplanetary space ...[Read More]
This guest post is by Dr Grace Shephard, a postdoctoral researcher in tectonics and geodynamics at the Centre of Earth Evolution and Dynamics (CEED) at the University of Oslo, Norway. This blog entry describes the latest findings of a study that maps deep remnants of past oceans. Her open access study, in collaboration with colleagues at CEED and the University of Oxford, was published this week i ...[Read More]
The General Assembly is not only for researchers but for teachers and educators with an interest in the geosciences also. Every year the Geosciences Information For Teachers (GIFT) is organised by the EGU Committee on Education to bring first class science closer to primary and high school teachers. The topic of the 2018 edition of GIFT is ‘Major events that shaped the Earth’. This year’s workshop ...[Read More]
