EGU Blogs

Highlights

TS
Tectonics and Structural Geology

Marguerite Thomas Williams: The US’ first black person to obtain a doctorate in Geology

August 26, 2020
Marguerite Thomas Williams: The US’ first black person to obtain a doctorate in Geology

    On the day of Christmas Eve, five years before the turn of the century, Marguerite Thomas Williams (December 1895 – August 1991) was born. She was the youngest of her five siblings born to her parents Henry and Clara Thomas. We don’t know much about her early life. Perhaps her older brothers and sisters would take her by the hand when walking to school, maybe the family would g ...[Read More]

SM
Seismology

Git or Perish

August 25, 2020
Git or Perish

Tell me if this sounds familiar to you: Act I After a fruitful discussion with a colleague, you exchange codes and algorithms. You are happy because you are convinced you will save some time through this collaboration and you don’t need to develop the same codes yourself. Act II The drama unfolds slowly. Firstly, you search without success for a README file or instructions on how to execute ...[Read More]

Geochemistry, Mineralogy, Petrology & Volcanology

Ask us (almost) anything: how is tuff formed?

, and August 25, 2020
Ask us (almost) anything: how is tuff formed?

Tarun Goswami, an archaeologist from India, asks: How is a tuff formed? and more specifically… Why do some deposits have more ash than others? We are paraphrasing – the questions are specifically about the tuffs formed in the Toba supereruption. So… you asked, we answer! First of all, modern definitions generally describe a tuff as a volcaniclastic rock composed of solid volcanic ...[Read More]

GeoLog

Imaggeo On Monday: The veins of the living planet

August 24, 2020
Imaggeo On Monday: The veins of the living planet

Today’s imaggeo on Monday provides us with a space to reflect on the interconnected nature of our planet’s systems. The photographer, Antonello Provenzale, wrote of this image: Earth is a living planet, where the water cycle plays an essential role. A waterfall in the mountains of Valle Pesio, Italy, in a landscape of vegetation and mosses, reminds us of the fluxes and cycles of water ...[Read More]

GeoLog

Geotalk: Olga Vindušková, the Soil System Sciences Division’s co-blog and social media co-ordinator!

August 21, 2020
Geotalk: Olga Vindušková, the Soil System Sciences Division’s co-blog and social media co-ordinator!

Hello Olga, thanks for speaking with us today, can you tell us a little about your background and how you got to where you are now? Thank you for inviting me for what might be my first interview! My background is in environmental science and I chose to study soils because of how useful they are (in supporting ecosystems and our well-being) and how interdisciplinary their study is, spanning biology ...[Read More]

GD
Geodynamics

The Sassy Scientist – A Last Minute Lark

August 21, 2020
The Sassy Scientist – A Last Minute Lark

Tatiana feels the pressure. A never-ending workload, a busy home life and unparalleled expectations of her own devising leave her with this: Why does everything have to be last minute in academia? Dear Tatiana, Last minute? Don’t know what you’re talking about. Nothing is last minute in case you’ve mapped out your activities properly beforehand. Do you find it difficult planning your to-do list an ...[Read More]

CL
Climate: Past, Present & Future

Learning lessons from the past to inform the future

August 21, 2020
Learning lessons from the past to inform the future

  A fairly recent blog post here reiterated the compelling comparison between the current COVID-19 crisis and the ongoing climate emergency, focusing on extreme events such as hurricanes, heatwaves and severe rainfall-related flooding, all of which are likely to get worse as the climate warms (Langendijk & Osman 2020).  This comparison has been made by us Climate Scientists since the COVI ...[Read More]

SM
Seismology

What’s it like to be black in academia?

August 19, 2020
What’s it like to be black in academia?

Maria, a member of our ECS team, recently interviewed Professor Christopher Jackson from Imperial College, London, UK. The idea of this interview arose after protests swept across the US, triggered by the murder of George Floyd. Resurfacing the recurring and unsolved issue of racial biases, these protests highlighted that fact that racial inequality is not only present in everyday life, but that i ...[Read More]

GD
Geodynamics

Baking geological cakes!

August 19, 2020
Baking geological cakes!

Who doesn’t love baking? Seriously, baked goods are the best: with or without gluten, with or without chocolate. But you know what makes every bake out there even better? A geological theme. You heard it here first! This week, Ruth Amey, postdoctoral researcher and programme manager of the Earth Observation Center for Doctoral Training at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, discusses th ...[Read More]

GeoLog

Imaggeo On Monday: Burnt roots

August 17, 2020
Imaggeo On Monday: Burnt roots

Fires are a common and often natural worldwide phenomena, that are often integral to the lifecycle of certain land-based ecosystems. Despite this, frequent or unusually intense fires can have significant effects on plant productivity, plant community composition and root properties. Although many trees have evolved to grow in fire prone areas, they usually have certain adaptations to help them sur ...[Read More]