This photo captures a rockfall at the summit of Tour de Ronde, 3792 m above sea level in the Mont Blanc Massif. On 27 August 2015, around 15000 m3 of rock fell from the steep walls of the mountain. Why do mountains crumble ? Rockfalls such as the one on the photo have been linked to thawing permafrost. The exact mechanism that leads to these events is not fully understood, however, it is thought ...[Read More]
This year it is, once again, possible to upload your oral presentations, PICO presentations and posters from EGU 2016 for online publication alongside your abstract, giving all participants a chance to revisit your contribution – hurrah for open science! Files can be in either PowerPoint or PDF format. Note that presentations will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence. ...[Read More]
Yosemite’s Half Dome stands, majestic, over a granite dominated terrain in the Yosemite Valley area; one of the most beautiful landscapes in northern America, and arguably, the world – it is also an Earth scientist’ playground. Stamped into the west slope of the Sierra Nevada range, the Yosemite Valley is a collection of lush forests, deep valleys, meandering rivers and streams, all punctua ...[Read More]
A couple of weeks ago, we promised a more detailed review of our experience at the General Assembly 2016. Here is something we deemed worthy to spread word about. EGU is dedicated to geoscience, so the first thing we are all looking for in the general assembly and EGU’s journals is…interesting science! Duh. But science doesn’t live in an isolated space of labs and computing centers. There is ample ...[Read More]
Presenting at an international conference is daunting, even for the most seasoned of scientists; not so for Thomas Maier (a second year university student) who took his research (co-authored by Lukas Kamm, a high-school student) to the EGU 2016 General Assembly! Not only was their work on developing a moisture sensor impressive, so was Thomas’ enthusiasm and confidence when presenting his r ...[Read More]
Caroline Spann University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna As of increasing demands for 4F (food, feed, fiber and fuel production) from agricultural sites there are many researches being done on soil amendments to increase yields, to remediate degraded or even contaminated soils to make them more profitable again. Tuesday morning a session was dedicated to “new and traditional soil a ...[Read More]
In 1896 British lawyer, mountaineer and author Douglas Freshfield climbed an obscure mountain in the Caucasus called Kasbek and in his book detailing his adventures he described the mountain: “From this point the view of Kasbek is superb: its whole north-eastern face is a sheet of snow and ice, broken by the steepness of the slope into magnificent towers, and seamed by enormous blue chasms.” D Fre ...[Read More]
Caroline Spann University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna During the EGU2016 Assembly, the chair of the statistics advisory panel of European Journal of Soil Science offered a short course on common statistical problems in soil science papers called “Secrets from the statistics panel: common statistical problems in soil science papers”. Motivation to start such a short course was to ...[Read More]
Hello again, I’m Kathi Unglert, and you’re about to read my third and final post as a student reporter at EGU 2016. Today I am writing about my experience in the cryosphere sessions from my volcanology perspective. In preparation for the conference I kept thinking about what sort of research I would see in the cryosphere sessions. I had never really attended any specific conferences or meetings on ...[Read More]
Take a stroll along the norther beaches of the French Channel Coast, some kilometers east from the entrance of the Channel Tunnel, and you’ll encounter an imposing cliff of soft, sandy composition which dominates the landscape. On close inspection, the sediments which make up the Quaternary aged deposits of the Sangatte Cliff, are beautiful, revealing intricate patterns which hold the key to the g ...[Read More]
