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Keeping a lookout at the edge of the world

Jasper Bloemen June 10, 2016

One of the last sunsets over the Kytalyk research station in the Siberian Arctic before 24-hour daylight sets in, and the Spring thaw begins (photo credit: Joshua F. Dean).

Few places in the world conjure up images of remoteness and harshness like Far Eastern Siberia. Yet, it’s places like these where our science is needed most. Arctic soils hold vast amount of carbon, protected in thick layers of permafrost, but these stores are becoming more and more vulnerable as temperatures in the Arctic warm, and are set to warm faster than anywhere else on the planet. R ...[Read More]

Coffee break biogeosciences – New coral reef at Amazon river mouth discovered

Jasper Bloemen May 20, 2016

Scientists were surprised to discover the coral reef in the muddy waters at the mouth of the river Amazon (Photo credit: Nasa)

At the Amazon river mouth, a huge 9,300 sq km coral reef system has been found below the muddy waters off the mouth of the river Amazon. As corals mostly thrive in clear, sunlit, salt water, and the waters near the mouth of the Amazon are some of the muddiest in the world, the discovery of this almost 2000 km long reef leaves scientists puzzled about the potential extent of coral reefs worldwide. ...[Read More]

General assembly 2016: our session picks

Jasper Bloemen April 14, 2016

EGU GA 2016 is only three days away! Here you can find our session picks!

Whether you’re an experienced attendee of the EGU GA, or this is your first time there are always things to look out for, it is always worth attending your division’s division meeting, one of the great debates, and keep an eye out for short courses which may be of interest to you. Here are the recommendations from the Biogeosciences Blogging team: The BG division meeting is Thursday from 12:15-13: ...[Read More]

Digging up bones for science – looking into 48 million years old blood vessel-like structures

Jasper Bloemen March 24, 2016

Ever wondered how blood vessel-like structures of fossilized turtles, crocodiles, mammals, birds and lizards looked like (credit: Edward Cadena, Senckenberg museum) ?

The Messel Pit is a worldwide famous fossil site recognized by UNESCO as a World Natural Heritage Site because of the exceptional preservation, as well as the diversity of its fossils from the early-middle Eocene (~48 Ma). The Messel Pit, located in an old Quarry in Germany near Frankfurt am Main , includes fossils from vertebrates (turtles, crocodiles, mammals, birds, lizards, among others), inve ...[Read More]

Sky-scraping Biogeoscience at 325m above the Amazonian rainforest

Jasper Bloemen February 5, 2016

The 325m high Amazonian Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO) will give researchers an insight in greenhouse gases, reactive trace gases, aerosols and atmospheric transport processes at a height above the surface layer of the largest forest system of the world (credit: Susanne Benner/ Max Planck Institute for Chemistry).

“The outcome of this project will help us to understand the Amazonian forest system before we all destroy it completely” The Amazon Rainforest in South America represents the Earth´s largest rainforest, housing at least 10% of the world´s known biodiversity and consisting of more than 350 billion individual trees. Besides its large diversity in floral and faunal species, the Amazonian ...[Read More]

Insights into the ocean crust and deep biosphere – ECORD Summer School 2015

Rachael Moore December 22, 2015

Some of the archived core halves examined during the European Consortium for Ocean Drilling (ECORD) summer school. (credit: Volker Diekamp).

Summer time as an early career geochemist can mean many things, to some it is vacation time, to others it is field season, and yet for others it is time to enroll in a summer school. ECORD, the European Consortium for Ocean Drilling, offers at least one summer school a year. If you work with foraminifera you may be familiar with the Urbino Summer School in Paleoclimatology, sorry to disappoint, bu ...[Read More]

The Panamanian Isthmus is not entirely guilty after all!

Diana Ochoa December 8, 2015

Fieldwork in northwestern Colombia, in order to recognize the nature, structure and mineral composition of fluvial deposits accumulated during the middle Miocene. Within these sediments, detrital zircons of Panamanian affinity were commonly found and used to determine an earlier land connection between Central and South America (credit: Lina Pérez-Angel).

“According to new research, the land bridge connecting Central and South America rose more than 10 million years earlier than originally thought” Traditionally, closure of the Panama Isthmus has been deemed responsible for the co-occurrence of two major events: The large Pleistocene glaciations and the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI). Existing evidence indicating a ca ...[Read More]

Welcome to the multi-faceted world of biogeosciences

Jasper Bloemen November 25, 2015

In order to understand the effect of climate extreme events like droughts on the carbon balance of mountain alpine pastures, rain-out shelters are used to simulate drought events while carbon pools and fluxes are being measured (credit: Johannes Ingrisch).

“From marine micro-organisms to mountain ecosystems” Welcome to the official blog of the Biogeosciences (BG) Division of the European Geoscience Union! This blog is run by biogeoscience enthusiasts with very different backgrounds, ranging from plantecophysiology over geology to geomicrobiology. Therefore we think that the variety of posts, will make this blog interesting for all intere ...[Read More]