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Tectonics and Structural Geology

Tectonics and Structural Geology

Features from the field: Ripple Marks

Features from the field: Ripple Marks

Earlier this year, Ian Kane, geologist at the University of Manchester, captured the iconic snapshot shown above. The picture reveals ripples, developed due to waves and currents in the sand of White Strand (near Killard, county Clare, Ireland) right next to Carboniferous sandstone that contains ‘petrified’ ripple marks! The image is powerful, because it shows the basic principle of geological act ...[Read More]

Beyond Tectonics: Can only tectonically active planets sustain life?

Beyond Tectonics: Can only tectonically active planets sustain life?

This edition of “Beyond Tectonics” is brought to you by David Waltham. David is a professor of Geophysics at Royal Holloway who studies Geology, Astronomy and Astrobiology. His current research focus is on whether the Earth is “special” because it is habitable, or if the Earth is one of a vast amount of life-bearing planets. “Is Earth Special? Do we live on a typical rocky ...[Read More]

Beyond Tectonics: How the tectonic events of 1783 were perceived by the population of Europe

Beyond Tectonics: How the tectonic events of 1783 were perceived by the population of Europe

This edition of “Beyond Tectonics” is brought to you by Katrin Kleemann. Katrin is a doctoral candidate at the Rachel Carson Center/LMU Munich in Germany, she studies environmental history and geology. Her doctoral project investigates the Icelandic Laki fissure eruption of 1783 and its impacts on the northern hemisphere. “A Violent Revolution of Planet Earth” – The C ...[Read More]

Features from the field: Foliation

Features from the field: Foliation

Have you ever walked on a mountain trail, passing past outcrops of rocks and noticed that many rocks appear to be split along a well-defined orientation? If you have, you might have seen one of the most important structures in metamorphic rocks – called foliation. The term ‘foliation’ derives from the Latin folium, meaning ‘leaf’. A rock with a foliation looks like a pile of R ...[Read More]

Minds over Methods: Dating deformation with U-Pb carbonate geochronology

Minds over Methods: Dating deformation with U-Pb carbonate geochronology

For this edition of Minds over Methods, we have invited Nick Roberts, a research scientist at the British Geological Survey, working within the Geochronology and Tracers Facility (GTF) running a LA-ICP-MS laboratory. Nick has a background in ‘hard-rock’ geology, incorporating geochemistry, geochronology, and magmatic and metamorphic petrology across a wide range of tectonic settings, and is now in ...[Read More]

Minds over Methods: Virtual Microscopy for Geosciences

Minds over Methods: Virtual Microscopy for Geosciences

The next “Minds over Methods” blogpost is a group effort of Liene Spruženiece (left) – postdoctoral researcher at RWTH Aachen and her colleagues Joyce Schmatz, Simon Virgo and Janos L. Urai. The Virtual Microscope is a collaborative project between RWTH Aachen University and Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (Schmatz et al., 2010; Virgo et al., 2016). In the ...[Read More]

From Mountains to Modernists: the geological foundations and inspirations of Barcelona

From Mountains to Modernists: the geological foundations and inspirations of Barcelona

Barcelona is a vibrant city on the Mediterranean coast, nested snugly between the sea and the Collserola Ridge of the Catalan Coastal ranges. The story of Barcelona starts around 2000 years ago as an Iberian settlement, owing to its strategic location on the coastal route connecting Iberia and Europe. The combination of easily defendable ground and the fertile soils of the Besos and Llobregat delt ...[Read More]

Beyond tectonics: The present-day tides are the biggest they have been since the formation of Pangea

Beyond tectonics: The present-day tides are the biggest they have been since the formation of Pangea

“Beyond tectonics” is a blog series which aims to highlight the connections between tectonics and other aspects of the Earth system. In this iteration of the “Beyond tectonics” series we talk about how plate tectonics have affected the tides on Earth over geological timescales. We will talk about tectonics on the Earth since the formation of Pangea to the present day, and i ...[Read More]

Meeting Plate Tectonics – Barbara Romanowicz

Meeting Plate Tectonics – Barbara Romanowicz

These blogposts present interviews with outstanding scientists that bloomed and shape the theory that revolutionised Earth Sciences — Plate Tectonics. Get to know them, learn from their experience, discover the pieces of advice they share and find out where the newest challenges lie! Meeting Barbara Romanowicz Barbara Romanowicz studied mathematics and applied physics and did two PhDs, one in astr ...[Read More]

The Netherlands: In search of the oldest rocks of a muddy country

The Netherlands: In search of the oldest rocks of a muddy country

Technically speaking, the Netherlands isn’t really a city, even though it is the most densely populated country in the European Union and one of the most densely populated countries in the world, with 488 people/km­2. It is a delta, and for many people geology is not the first thing that springs to mind when thinking about the flat countryside. Large parts of the country have been more often below ...[Read More]