Division blogs

Natural Hazards

“Twenty or more Leagues Under the Sea”: A journey to understand submarine canyons

Luigi Lombardo February 5, 2018

As NhET, we have the pleasure to have Mauro Agate as our guest and interviewee today. We discuss about submarine canyons and related geo-hazards. Further details will be available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967064513002488 for a scientific-oriented audience; or https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwWErQNoZYpJhhkxPa82x5g for a broader audience. Dr. Mauro Agate is a marine geologist and a stratigrapher working at Earth …[Read More]

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Cryospheric Sciences

Image of the week – How hard can it be to melt a pile of ice?!

Céline Heuzé February 2, 2018

Snow, sub-zero temperatures for several days, and then back to long grey days of near-constant rain. A normal winter week in Gothenburg, south-west Sweden. Yet as I walk home in the evening, I can’t help but notice that piles of ice have survived. Using the equations that I normally need to investigate the demise of …[Read More]

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Geomorphology

Do glaciers really do all the work? Perhaps not.

Guest author February 2, 2018

Kerry Leith from the Engineering Geology Department at the ETH Zürich set up a post on their latest publication and the backstory behind it. As they announced on their own website (www.stressdriven.com) review comments ranged from “mediocre or poor” to “[…] provocative, potentially revolutionary (if correct) analysis”. It surely contains interesting thoughts. – written by …[Read More]

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Tectonics and Structural Geology

Paris: From quarry to catacombs

Anouk Beniest February 2, 2018

Paris, 2000 ya. Claude is sweating all over. It’s mid-July and the sun is burning on his skin. With his hammer and shovel he is digging up grey and white stones. The faults and fractures in the rock help him to get the rocks out easily. But still, it’s hot and humid and his shift …[Read More]

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Geochemistry, Mineralogy, Petrology & Volcanology

Living with volcanic gases

Will Hutchison January 30, 2018

Professor Tamsin Mather, a volcanologist in Oxford’s Department of Earth Sciences reflects on her many fieldwork experiences at Masaya volcano in Nicaragua, and what she has learned about how they effect the lives of the people who live around them. Over the years, fieldwork at Masaya volcano in Nicaragua, has revealed many secrets about how …[Read More]

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Cryospheric Sciences

Image of the Week – Microbes have a crush on glacier erosion

Martyn Tranter January 26, 2018

Glacier erosion happens at the interface between ice and the ground beneath. Rocks are ground down to dust and landscapes shaped by the flowing ice. While these might be hotspots for erosion, the dark and nutrient-poor sites are unlikely environments for biological activity. However, experiments suggest there may be novel sources of energy powering subglacial …[Read More]

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Geodynamics

Work-life balance: insights from geodynamicists

Jessica Munch and edited by Iris van Zelst January 25, 2018

Maintaining a good work-life balance is essential for a steady career and happy life in academia. However, like with all good things, it is not easy. In this new Wit & Wisdom post, Jessica Munch, PhD student at ETH Zürich, explores how to achieve a good work-life balance. Research is a truly amazing occupation, especially …[Read More]

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Natural Hazards

Ethics and Geosciences: discovering the International Association for Promoting Geoethics

Jonathan Rizzi January 22, 2018

Geoscientists do not have to deal only with technical matters, but have to think also about the ethical implications related to their discipline. To increase the awareness of researchers on the ethical aspects of their activities, it has been created the International Association for Promoting Geoethics (IAPG). To better understand what geoethics and the IAPG …[Read More]

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Seismology

SeismoChat: How to disarm earthquakes

Laura Ermert January 19, 2018

Solmaz Mohajder is a researcher at the Earth System Dynamics Research group of University of Tübingen in Germany. She has published an online database and an interactive map for active faults in Central Asia (Mohajder et al., 2016). More recently, Solmaz and her colleagues have compiled fault slip rates to investigate whether deformation rates from GPS …[Read More]

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Cryospheric Sciences

Image of the Week – Ice caps on Mars?!

Violaine Coulon January 19, 2018

Much like our Planet Earth, Mars has polar ice caps too, one for each pole: the Martian North Polar Ice Cap (shown on our image of the week) and the Southern Polar Ice Cap. Yet, their composition and structure reveals these ice caps are quite different from those of Planet Earth… Mars refresher As …[Read More]