Where would we be without healthy soil? A lot of our research live would be in turmoil I’m here today to spread some soil appreciation, Which may require some thought transformation.

Soil Is the base of our beautiful landscapes, Often where we go for some restorative escapes, Some key reasons to save soils from destruction They support 95% of global food production, And act as a filter for water purification, Don’t forget it’s major role in carbon sequestration 

So how do we generate the respect and love it deserves? By learning about the life-sources it serves! Think not of the chicken, the sheep or the cattle, When that’s really only half of the battle, Think of the livestock that lives under the surface, As they hold a much more meaningful purpose.

Earthworms are by far the most popular soil dwellers, Aerating the soil for the smallest of fellas Some organisms you would need a microscope to spot, But their presence can really tell us a lot, Enchytraieds and eathworms share a connection, But often they don’t get as much attention, Enchytraeids prefer acidic soils, high in peat, Fungi and bacteria is what they eat

Look for collembola as soil health indication, Due to their habitat specification Leaf litter and moss is their preferred habitation, Driving the engine of organic matter rotation, Both springtails and mites can help to distribute Many different microbes as they are so minute, Attached to their backs and through digestion, The many soil benefits not even in question

Last on our list are these nematode creatures, Which possess a whole litany of soil beneficial features. From nutrient cycling to plant protection, Parasitic species can kill pests through infection!

We simply need to get people excited, to get them involved, their passions ignited! Show them why soil biodiversity really matters, Providing the food they see on their platters, The monitoring law will help us by tracking, A suite of soil data that is currently lacking, Which soils need protection and perhaps some improvement Lets get people on board this healthy soil movement!

• Reflection geometry: Useful reflections are limited to specific satellite viewing angles and directions that depend on local topography. Some stations remain challenging regardless of how much data is available. For example, a station surrounded by buildings or steep terrain may block the low-angle signals that GNSS-IR relies on most.
• Surface characteristics: GNSS-IR performs best near wide, relatively flat, and stable reflecting surfaces. Over land, open and homogeneous areas are favourable, while coastal applications require an unobstructed view of the sea.
• Signal diversity: Not all satellite signals perform equally well for reflectometry. Different signal types show varying sensitivity to reflections, and increasing the number of satellites or frequencies generally improves robustness, but does not compensate for poor site geometry.
• Receiver and antenna setup: The hardware used at a station can strongly influence the quality of reflected signals. Recording data at higher rates can improve results, especially at sites with larger antenna heights. It is also essential that signal strength information is retained in the observation files, as this is the primary input for GNSS-IR analysis.
• Site documentation: Photographing the station environment is a simple but valuable step. It helps assess whether a site is suitable for GNSS-IR and guides the selection of appropriate analysis parameters.

Further reading
For those interested in learning more about GNSS-IR, the following resources provide a good starting point:
 
Larson, K.M., 2016. GPS interferometric reflectometry: applications to surface soil moisture, snow depth, and vegetation water content in the western United States. WIREs Water 3, 775–787. https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1167
 
Larson, K.M., Williams, S.D.P., 2023. Water level measurements using reflected GNSS signals. IHR 29, 66–76. https://doi.org/10.58440/ihr-29-2-a30
 
For an interactive introduction to the technique, visit gnss-reflections.org.

- Edited by: Leire Retegui-Schiettekatte

As an individuum I have to decide on which of the equally interesting and relevant sessions I gift my attendance, as a community we are diluting audience for arduously prepared contributions.

Yuting Cheng

VLBI single station experiment with ASO304 data in preparation for the Genesis mission.

Explainable AI and GNSS Reflectometry for global soil moisture retrieval.

 References

 Steinberg, J., and Patterson, S., 2024. The Silicon Valley Startup Using AI to Scour the Earth for Copper and Lithium. The Wall Street Journal, 28 July. Available at: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/kobold-metals-ai-copper-lithium-caad58da?msockid=05c8c5d6a23e6e380f4ad03aa3456fc0

Sea breezes in change

• A weakening in intensity: since the 1980s, sea breeze speeds (intensity) have decreased by up to 10% per decade, particularly during the spring and summer months.

• A likely change in their seasonality: Conversely, the occurrence of sea breezes has increased, most notably in the winter, rising by roughly 10% per decade.

Summer weakening

Seasonal change

Why this matters?

1. Heat Extremes: As summer breezes weaken, their natural cooling effect diminishes exactly when it is needed most: during severe heatwaves. This threatens to exacerbate urban heat stress⁴ and increase public health risks. Not only are these winds becoming too weak to reach and cool inland areas, but they might be also becoming less frequent in summer, precisely when maximum temperatures are regularly exceeding 40ºC.

1. Air Quality: While stronger winds disperse atmospheric pollutants, weaker and more frequent sea breezes can trap and recirculate pollutants along coastal and inland areas for days, worsening exposure for densely populated cities.
2. Hydrological Cycles: Changes in these winds may impact moisture transport, potentially influencing deep summer convection (which causes severe storms). Furthermore, other studies⁵ suggest that anthropogenic (human-driven) land-use changes have left sea breezes with less available water to transport inland. Consequently, weaker breezes carrying less water vapour from evapotranspiration (water released into the atmosphere by soil and plants) may fail to trigger the summer storms necessary to sustain the hydrological cycle in already dry and arid regions.

Looking Ahead

“Sea breezes may be local winds, but their response to climate change tells a much larger story: one of complex interactions between warming, atmospheric dynamics, and the lived experience of climate along our coasts.”

This post has been edited by the editorial board

References:
1. Bedoya-Valestt, S., Azorin-Molina, C., Plaza-Martin, N.P. et al. Weaker and more frequent Mediterranean sea breezes in a warming climate. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-47025-4

2. Moon, W., Kim, B.-M., Yang, G.-H. & Wettlaufer, J. S. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 119, e2200890119 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2200890119

3. Cresswell-Clay, N. et al. Twentieth-century Azores High expansion unprecedented in the past 1,200 years. Nat. Geosci. 15, 548–553 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561- 022-00971-w

4. Di Napoli, C., Lavers, D.A., Bechtold, P. et al. Relief or Aggravation? A 31-Year study of sea-Land Breezes and Their Impacts on Coastal Heat Stress. Earth Syst Environ (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41748-025-00917-3

5. Pausas, J. G. & Millán, M. M. Greening and browning in a climate change hotspot: The Mediterranean Basin. BioScience 69, 143–151 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biy157

Antarctica’s ice shelf cavities – the hidden underside

Drilling into the unknown 

A glimpse beneath the ice

From snapshots to timeseries

From beneath the ice to the wider ocean

Further Reading

• Beneath Antarctica’s largest ice shelf, a hidden ocean is revealing its secrets
• A Long-Term Look Beneath an Antarctic Ice Shelf

Edited by Mirjam Paasch and Mack Baysinger

The Depiction of Water in Art

The Challenge of Water in Photography

Water and a Photographic Practice

Edited by B. Schaefli

Academia is often imagined as a space driven by merit, curiosity, and scientific collaboration. Still behind publications, conferences, and research achievements, many women in STEM continue to navigate environments shaped by subtle exclusion, normalized inequalities, and power imbalances that are not always openly discussed. In Earth Sciences, where collaboration and field-based research are fundamental, conversations about gender inequality are becoming increasingly visible. However, visibility does not necessarily mean resolution. Experiences such as being underestimated, interrupted, professionally devalued, or discouraged still affect many women throughout their academic careers, many often in ways that are difficult to quantify, but deeply impactful over time. To reflect on these issues, this blog post week, Katherine Villavicencio spoke with Dr. Karen Gariboldi, Senior Researcher from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Pisa, whose work focuses on marine micropaleontology and paleoenvironmental reconstruction. Drawing from her personal and professional experience, she shared thoughtful perspectives on impostor syndrome, academic power dynamics, mentorship networks, institutional responsibility, and the kind of cultural transformation that academia still urgently needs. Her reflections remind us that gender equality is not only about policies or representation in numbers. It is also about creating academic environments where people feel respected, heard, supported, and genuinely allowed to belong.

I graduated from the University of Milan Bicocca with a degree in Geological Sciences and Technologies, following the Marine Geology curriculum. My Master’s thesis focused on diatom assemblages (microalgae with a siliceous skeleton) characterizing the rocks of the Miocene Pisco Formation in Peru. I then completed a PhD in Earth Sciences at the University of Pisa, again working on diatom assemblages from the Pisco Formation. I investigated the information they provide from a biostratigraphic, paleoclimatic, and sedimentological/diagenetic perspective. I am currently a Senior Researcher at the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Pisa, where I continue my work as a marine micropaleontologist, also in Arctic regions, with a focus on the Holocene as well, not only the Miocene. Diatoms, however, remain my main area of expertise.

I think there is now much greater awareness of gender-based inequalities; however, this doesn’t mean that these issues have been fully overcome. There is still a lot of work to be done, but the fact that these topics are discussed so widely is, in my opinion, a big step forward. Many studies clearly show that in academia—especially in STEM fields—the gap between women and men tends to widen as you move toward higher or more “powerful” positions.

More information from the registration page:

Conveners

Speaker

Need help?

This post has been edited by the editorial board

References:
Gagliardi, A., Rimbu, N., Lohmann, G., and Ionita, M.: Northern Greenland transect stacked ice cores as a proxy for winter extreme events in Europe, Clim. Past, 22, 935–955, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-22-935-2026, 2026.

IPCC: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, vol. In Press, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157896, 2021.

Hörhold, M., Münch, T., Weißbach, S., Kipfstuhl, S., Freitag, J., Sasgen, I., Lohmann, G., Vinther, B., and Laepple, T.: Modern temperatures in central–north Greenland warmest in past millennium, Nature, 613, 503–507, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05517-z, 2023.

Research project

Research team

Listening to glaciers

Facing uncertainties and anxiety

Sharing beyond academia

Acknowledgements

Further reading

• Listening to the glacier: www.kraks.fr (website in french, but the whispers of glaciers are universal)
• The roots of listening in ecology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_the_Humpback_Whale_(album) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring 
• About the poetics and the improvisation approaches: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/518792/522412 
• Two authors that inspired this project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartmut_Rosa 
• How climate change affect glaciers stability in the Arctic: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-66349-9

  ---

  Edited by Emma Pearce and Mack Baysinger

To kick off, can you quickly tell us about your current research focus?

What pollutants of concern do you find in the aquifers of the Gangetic Plain?

Why is arsenic contamination such a concern?

Do you see any promising arsenic remediation technologies?

Do you anticipate that increasing floods and droughts due to climate change can have a cascade effect on arsenic pollution?

How are you using AI and citizen science to tackle water quality issues?

What is the aim of AQUAROAD?

What are the biggest breakthroughs in the past 10 years and what are the biggest trends in upcoming years?

Finally, what is the career advice that you've received and want to share with early-career scientists?

Several proposed models

1. Cratonization and Decratonization

2. De-rooting of the NCC (~445–315 Ma)

3. Marginal reactivation and subsequent orogeny (~320–200 Ma)

4. Tectonic transformation and complete reactivation (170–155 Ma)

5. Removal of the lithospheric root: the North China cratonic margin (130–110 Ma)

6. Partial removal of continental lithospheric mantle (75–65 Ma)

7. Deformation and differential mountain uplift (25–20 Ma)

The Challenges Persist

References:
  Wang Yu, Zhou Liyun and Li Jinyi, 2011, Intracontinental superimposed tectonics — A case study in the Western Hills of Beijing, eastern China. Geological Society of America Bulletin, 123, 1033-1055. 
  Wang Yu, Zhou Liyun, Zhao Lijun, 2013, Cratonic reactivation and orogeny: An example from the northern margin of the North China Craton. Gondwana Research, 24，1203-1222.
  Wang, Y., Zhou, L. Y., Luo, Z. H., 2017, Kinematics and timing of continental block deformation from margins to interiors. Terra Nova, 29, 253-263.
  Wang, Y., 2025, Intracontinental tectonics and orogeny. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 435

Key failure 1: limited awareness

Key failure 2: capacity deficits

Key failure 3: lack of incentives

Key failure 4: inadequate governance

Reference (s)

Session Code

Time & Place

Session Title

Convenor & Co-Convenors

Session Overview

GMPV4.3

Oral: 08:30–12:30

Room: K1

The Session will particularly focus on-

(i) deep volatile cycles of H₂O, CO₂, halogens and sulphur;

(ii) volatile mobilisation and transfer during subduction in COHNS fluids and silicate melts;

(iii) roles of volatiles in metamorphic and metasomatic processes;

(iv) physical and chemical properties of volatiles in melts and fluids;

(v) volatile storage in the lithospheric mantle;

(vi) emissions and reservoirs in volcanic systems.

Poster-only Sessions:

PICO Sessions:

• GMPV4.1 – Decoding Earth's Crustal Engine: Integrated Petrochronology and Structural Constraints on 4-D Tectono-Metamorphic Evolution (co-org TS) — contributions linking microscale rock records to planetary-scale geodynamics through petrochronology, structural geology, and metamorphic petrology.
• GMPV4.3 – What Makes Earth So Special: Global Cycles of Volatiles — how volatiles and incompatible elements are transferred between Earth's surface and deep interior through subduction, melts, and fluids. Orals are tomorrow, but the posters are today.
• GMPV8.2 – From Earth to Exoplanets: Deep Planetary Interiors through advances in modelling and experiments (co-org GD/PS) — experimental and modelling work on mineral physics under extreme pressure-temperature conditions, bridging Earth science and planetary exploration. Orals tomorrow, posters today.
• GMPV10.8 – Volcano–Glacier Interactions on Earth and Beyond: polar perspectives from land to seafloor (co-org GM/NH) — from subglacial eruptions to tephra deposition and ice mass balance, covering some of the most remote and dynamic volcanic environments on the planet.

• GMPV7.4 – Structure, origin, and evolution of anomalous magmatism: models for intraplate and unusual plate boundary volcanism (co-org GD/NH) — Room K1, 14:00–15:45. This session tackles intraplate volcanism and unusual plate boundary magmatism: hotspots, mantle plumes, LIPs, and everything that doesn't fit neatly into standard plate tectonics. Convened by Gillian Foulger, a prominent name in this debate.
• ERE4.4/GMPV6 – Geophysical Imaging of the Lithosphere for Critical Minerals, Natural H2 and Geothermal Resources (co-org GD) — Room -2.43, 16:15–18:00. This session connects lithospheric structure to the resources that matter most for the energy transition.

• GMPV1.1 – Looking into the unreachable: Inclusions as snapshots into Earth processes, from the Crust to the deep Mantle and beyond — fluid, melt and mineral inclusions from magmatic and metamorphic settings to deep mantle dynamics, with cutting-edge micro- to nano-scale analytics on display.
• GMPV2.1 – Solving Geoscience Problems Using Mineralogy and Mineral Inclusions — a broad session on the diversity of mineralogical methods, from spectroscopy to inclusions. Orals are tomorrow.
• GMPV2.2 posters (Geochronology & Thermochronology — companion to the morning orals)
• GMPV7.4 posters (companion to the afternoon orals on anomalous magmatism).

I grew up in a blue-collar family in Holbrook, NY—then a one–traffic-light town on eastern Long Island surrounded by woodlands. I spent my time playing basketball, diving, drumming, and exploring the coast. Long Island offered a remarkable range of shorelines, the Long Island Sound estuary, Peconic Bay, the Great South Bay barrier-island lagoon, the Atlantic Ocean, and extensive marshes, which fueled my fascination with coastal environments. From an early age I collected shoreline organisms, watched Cousteau specials, and read science books. I became captivated by marshes and invertebrates after spending countless hours diving and exploring diverse coastal habitats.

I actually came into biogeochemistry through oceanography. Back then, biogeochemistry wasn't a recognized field, at least not in the U.S. While Vernadsky understood the concept, it wasn't on our radar yet, and I was too junior to even use the terminology. As a high school senior, a friend and I even built a small artificial reef in about 15 m of water in Long Island Sound and documented its colonization; we briefly tried (unsuccessfully) to publish the results. An inspiring oceanography teacher, Dennis Hirsch, further encouraged my interests. As an undergraduate, I joined several local research projects with faculty and was selected for a 10-day natural history field trip to Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands. This was my first trip abroad, and it had a huge impact on me. Another big influence for me as a potential scientist was the fact that I lived close to many research institutes that held open science events. I had the opportunity to attend seminars and tours at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the American Museum of Natural History, and Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Core Repository. All these experiences broadened my interests beyond oceanography into chemistry and genetics, and further confirmed my desire to become a scientist.

My research career began, and largely continues, in muddy environments. Aside from a brief period studying sand flats in Delaware Bay during my Ph.D., my work started with mud in my M.S. research and has stayed there ever since. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that I am now writing a book about Earth’s mud. A reason for my interest in muddy environments is that over 90% of all the organic carbon in the ocean gets buried in the coastal margins. So, these small fringes have a huge importance in the ocean carbon cycling. Like many academics, my work has evolved in stages. In graduate school at Stony Brook University with Jeff Levinton, and later at the University of Maryland with Don Rice, I focused on animal–sediment interactions—specifically the nutritional ecology of mud-dwelling macroinvertebrates and their influence on sediment geochemistry. These processes are important to both paleontologists and marine ecologists. A postdoc fellowship at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies allowed me to extend this work in mud habitats at the Hudson River estuarine boundary.

To better understand which types of organic matter are processed in mud, I needed tools to trace the many organic sources in coastal sediments to the organisms that use them. This is where Rodger Dawson, a member of my Ph.D. committee and fellow band member, influenced my work through his expertise in chemical biomarkers. That collaboration led me to plant pigments and other molecular tracers, which I have used throughout my career to distinguish algae, terrestrial plants, and soil-derived organic matter in sediments. With these tools, I expanded my research to broader questions about how terrestrial organic matter connects with the coastal ocean, eventually focusing on the biogeochemical dynamics of mud in coastal marshes and estuaries. In terms of contributions, some of our key findings have helped clarify how organic carbon is processed and transported along the land–ocean continuum. I say “our” deliberately, in gratitude to the graduate students, postdocs, and visiting scholars who conducted much of the field and laboratory work; without them, there would be little for me to discuss.

When we started analyzing river inputs in the Gulf of Mexico around 1997, we were surprised find less terrestrial organic matter from land plants than what was expected from known river inputs. It turns out that this comes back to suspensions of mud where river waters mix with Gulf waters. Mud is composed of very fine particles of silt and clay, which bind the terrestrial organic matter allowing it to stay resuspended for long periods which enhanced export to other regions. More specifically, using chemical biomarkers, we showed that some of the “missing” terrestrial organic carbon in shelf sediments was exported offshore as particulate organic carbon (POC) in the benthic boundary layer, or bottom waters. This further supported recent work, by Miguel Goni and Tim Eglinton, on the distribution of terrestrial organic matter in surface sediments of the Gulf. This work illustrated the importance in distinguishing marine vs. terrestrial buried carbon for understanding coastal carbon sequestration amid rising atmospheric CO₂ (364 ppm in 1997 to ca. 429 ppm in 2026).

Upon moving to Sweden on a Fulbright scholarship, I found the local community deeply concerned with the problematic cyanobacterial blooms in the Baltic Sea. Although research focused heavily on identifying the region's main nutrient sources, it was unclear whether such massive algal blooms existed before human-induced impacts. Diatoms were known to exhibit significant population shifts over thousands of years, which were well-documented through their preserved silica frustules, or exoskeletons. In contrast, cyanobacteria lack such structures, decompose rapidly, and leave no microfossil record. We demonstrated that cyanobacterial blooms comparable to modern events occurred over 7,000 years ago in the Baltic Sea, driven by eustatic and isostatic changes, linking modern ecosystem dynamics with long-term environmental history. While this does not rule out the role of recent anthropogenic nutrient inputs in driving blooms, it indicated that such blooms had occurred much earlier, driven by large nutrient pulses from the ocean during distinct geological phases of the Baltic's formation.

Another important contribution was to extend the concept of the microbial “priming effect,” previously known from soils to aquatic environments, as previously noted by Bertrand Guenet and others, showing how labile carbon inputs can stimulate degradation of refractory carbon across diverse ecosystem gradients. Given my past experience working on coastal river deltas and estuaries, it was a logical path to explore priming across the land-ocean margin. For example, we analyzed river confluences in tributaries of the Amazon, where the green and brown waters, comprised of phytoplankton and mud, mix. Together with Nick Ward, a postdoc in my group, and Jeff Richey, we used labeled isotopes to detect the priming effect at these interfaces. There are many fascinating topics in this domain and I have dedicated significant effort to synthesizing research in this field in 10 books I authored or co-authored, most notably through Biogeochemistry of Estuaries (2007) and Chemical Biomarkers in Aquatic Ecosystems (2011)."

What key knowledge gaps still need to be addressed in this area? As we continue to explore how carbon is sequestered on the planet, we need to return to two topics that had received considerable 30 to 50 years ago, the role of sulfur cycling and the importance of petrogenic organic carbon burial. While there have been some new and exciting studies on these topics over the past decade or so, there remain significant gaps in their roles in organic carbon burial. A better understanding of these pathway will continue to prove useful in exploring the mechanisms of the short and long-term carbon cycle. There also remain many gaps in our understanding of priming, particularly in aquatic systems. New isotopic probing and omics techniques continue to provide innovative ways to trace the mechanisms involved priming, particularly as new aquatic critical zones are created from global change.

Early on, my biggest challenge was simply paying for college. My family could offer little financial support, so I worked about 40 hours a week unloading trucks while completing my undergraduate degree. Balancing work with coursework, like tending Drosophila crosses in genetics lab at odd hours in the evening, was demanding. I had to get special keys to go in the middle of the night and do these things. My books were thrown in the back seat, and I largely worked independently. So I never really experienced the idea of a “study group.” I never knew what a study group was. I have no idea how I did it, but I managed to get through it.

Later, like many early-career academics, I faced the usual challenges of balancing teaching and research while building a lab with limited funding and no technician. Then an extraordinary challenge arose: Hurricane Katrina. At the time I was a professor at Tulane University in New Orleans. I had been working on the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico, and had so many ideas for future research. Everything just vanished. My family—my wife Jo Ann and son Christopher—and I lost our home and everything in it. Professionally, the colleagues I was collaborating with dispersed across the country with no certainty of returning. Ultimately, we did not go back, and I moved to Texas A&M University. Losing years of research at Tulane was devastating, but my family's safety and support gave me the strength to rebuild. Some of my most rewarding opportunities came through two Fulbright Program scholarships, the first in Sweden and later in Cyprus. These experiences opened doors to collaborations with regional research groups, leading to long-term partnerships and rich cultural exchanges. Later in my career, visiting research appointments during sabbaticals also proved highly productive.

Universities have embraced a business model far more aggressively than in the past, placing intense pressure on young faculty to secure funding and publish more papers. University rankings now play a central role, further shifting the burden onto faculty. At the same time, classrooms have increasingly become “safe spaces”. A lot of the bullies are gone and that's great, but students are often less challenged, something that, in my view, has also weakened academia.

Meanwhile, the number of journals has grown at an astonishing rate, making it easier to place publications, while publishing costs have soared with little solution in sight. Yet the real elephant in the room is AI. Yuval Noah Harari has written eloquently, and pessimistically, about its trajectory. AI has already proven to be a remarkable tool for scientists, helping recent Nobel laureates make major advances. But like any powerful invention, it brings risks and complex implications that we still need to confront.

These are challenging times, particularly in the United States. Attacks on academia have led to severe funding cuts, denial of climate change, threats to scholars’ privacy, and restrictions on international collaboration. Our government’s irresponsibility has also contributed to global instability. My advice is to stay focused on your work, this period will pass, perhaps sooner than expected.

Reflecting back on Vladimir Vernadsky, it is well-known that he worked under intense political pressure during the Russian Revolution and the Stalinist era. Rather than disengaging, he navigated these constraints by focusing deeply on his science. For young scientists, it’s important to contribute to large interdisciplinary projects while still seeking opportunities to publish first-authored papers, even when projects are led by graduate students, postdocs, or collaborators. This helps maintain your original passion and creativity. Finally, stay open to shifting research directions as funding or new opportunities arise, inside and outside of academia, and surround yourself with good people.

Induced vs natural seismicity; what’s the difference and should we even care?

Induced seismicity, often referred to as induced microseisms, is a phenomenon where microearthquakes (i.e., seismic events of low magnitude) are triggered due to man-related activities that affect the natural stress – strain fields of the Earth, in comparison, natural earthquakes can be caused by geological processes, such as tectonic plate movements. Originally, the scientific community was interested in induced seismicity due to mining activities (e.g., rock blasting etc.); however, in the past few decades, this interest was rekindled through the scope of fluid injection-induced seismicity, given the abrupt rise of (a) enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), (b) injection of CO₂ for permanent carbon capture and storage, (c) HF for oil and gas recovery, (d) injection of either water or CO₂ into depleted reservoirs for enhanced oil recovery, and (e) disposal of waste water into deep formations, due to the global sustainability goals for renewable geothermal energy, environmental protection, economic optimization, amongst others.

Zang et al. (2014) classified injection operations into two separate categories, based on their time-scale and total injected volumes, i.e., long-term injection operations (b) and (e) (where the injected volumes > 100,000 m³), and short-term injection operations (a), (c), and (d) (where the injected volumes < 100,000 m³); today we will mainly discuss the latter class of injection operations, and particularly, the process of HF. In contrast to popular belief, hydrofracking, or the ‘’hydrafrac job/process’’ as it was referred in the original publication of Clark (1949), is an old school method for increasing the productivity of oil and gas wells in ultra tight rock formations, such as schists, that dates back to the late 40s. The HF method requires the drilling of a well in an oil-bearing formation of low permeability, and the subsequent pressurization of a sealed-off section of the borehole until the rock formation fails and ruptures abruptly.

During the pressurization process, which causes the progressive failure of the surrounding rock, microcracks (which eventually lead to macrocracks) form that generate elastic acoustic waves, that can have a varying degree of energy, these elastic waves, that propagate through the rock medium, are often denoted as acoustic emission (AE) events; they essentially represent induced microseismic events, that can be effectively captured via the usage of specialized high frequency AE sensors with typical frequency bandwidths ranging from 100 kHz to 1 MHz.

Overall, the induced seismicity from hydrofracking operations lies in the micro scale, i.e., it has very low recorded moment magnitudes (as low as -8 – -6 up to -3 – -1); it has been shown, however, that the scale of the induced seismicity can drastically increase across multiple orders of magnitude provided that active, or even passive, faults exist in the near vicinity of the HF. For instance, Bao and Eaton (2016) observed that a fault was reactivated during a shale gas stimulation due to the conduction of HFs. Generally, apart from the implications of microseismicity regarding the potential to create large-scale hazardous earthquakes, microseismic data can provide a great variety of insightful information relating to the fracturing process of the pressurized rock, as well as the SRV.

Crack source mechanisms; how does the pressurized rock fail?

Crack source mechanism analysis (or focal mechanism analysis) of microseismic data can provide a clear picture of the dominant fracture type of the rock, meaning tensile, shear, compressive, and/or mix-mode. This information can have great implications towards mitigating microseismicity, since tensile microcracks (type I) radiate elastic waves with substantially less energy relative to shearing microcracks (type II); very often researchers aim to generate an abundance of type I microcracks and as few type II microcracks as possible. For the most part, it appears that the dominant cracking mode is heavily dependent on the method used for the determination of the crack source mechanisms (e.g., moment tensor analysis, polarity, tensile angle etc.), the examined rock type (e.g., shale – metamorphic, granite – crystalline igneous, sandstone – sedimentary), and the density of pre-existing micro- or macrocracks in the rock volume, amongst other factors.

For instance, Butt et al. (2024) performed true-triaxial HF tests on cubical granite rock specimens, they generally observed tensile dominated events using both a low and a high viscosity fracturing fluid. Moreover, Naoi et al. (2020) conducted simple uniaxial HF tests on Eagle Ford shale specimens, they noticed an extreme domination of tensile events. These conclusions, come into contrast with the more commonly encountered shear dominated events observed in actual production fields (e.g., Maxwell and Cipolla 2011) and large-scale in situ experiments (e.g., Ishida et al. 2019). Overall, by uncovering the influence of each parameter on the derived focal mechanisms a deeper understanding can be gained towards the necessary steps to decrease the larger magnitude shear events.

Wet and dry microseismic events; towards an accurate estimation of the SRV

Microseismicity induced by HF stimulations can be mainly attributed to either pressure or mechanical changes/perturbations; given this simple distinction, the seismic events can be divided into: ‘’wet’’ microseismic events, which are caused due to fluid-flow related pressure changes (they are directly connected with the main HF), and remote ‘’dry’’ microseismic events, which are a product of stress changes at considerable distances away from the borehole (they are usually not connected with the main HF). Provided that for many years, it is a common practice to estimate the SRV by inferring to the AE cloud, the inclusion of isolated and distant ‘’dry’’ events, which are not actually connected with the main HF and hence do not really contribute to the SRV, into the AE seismic cloud can result in significant overestimations of the SRV.

References
Bao X, Eaton DW (2016) Fault activation by hydraulic fracturing in western Canada. Science 354(6318): 1406 – 1409. 

Butt A, Hedayat A, Moradian O (2024) Microseismic Monitoring of Laboratory Hydraulic Fracturing Experiments in Granitic Rocks for Different Fracture Propagation Regimes. Rock Mech Rock Eng 57: 2035 – 2059. 

Clark JB (1949) A Hydraulic Process for Increasing the Productivity of Wells. J Pet Technol 1(1): 1 – 8. 

Ishida T, Fujito W, Yamashita H, Naoi M, Fuji H, Suzuki K, Matsui H (2019) Crack expansion and fracturing mode of hydraulic refracturing from acoustic emission monitoring in a small-scale field experiment. Rock Mech Rock Eng 52: 543 – 553. 

Maxwell SC, Cipolla C (2011) What does microseismicity tell us about hydraulic fracturing? In: SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, Denver, Colorado, SPE146932. 

Maxwell SC, Mack M, Zhang F, Chorney D, Goodfellow SD, Grob M (2015a) Differentiating Wet and Dry Microseismic Events Induced During Hydraulic Fracturing. In: SPE/AAPG/SEG Unconventional Resources Technology Conference, San Antonio, Texas, USA. 

Maxwell SC, Chorney D, Goodfellow SD (2015b) Microseismic geomechanics of hydraulic-fracture networks: Insights into mechanisms of microseismic sources. The Leading Edge 34(8): 904 – 910. 

Naoi M, Chen Y, Yamamoto K, Morishige Y, Imakita K, Tsutumi N, Kawakata H, Ishida T, Tanaka H, Arima Y, Kitamura S, Hyodo D (2020) Tensile-dominant fractures observed in hydraulic fracturing laboratory experiment using eagle ford shale. Geophys J Inter 222: 769 – 780. 

Zang A, Oye V, Jousset P, Deichmann N, Gritto R, McGarr A, Majer E, Bruhn D (2014) Analysis of induced seismicity in geothermal reservoirs – an overview. Anal Induc Seism Geotherm Oper 52: 6 – 21.

• In Room 0.16: The session 'Looking into the unreachable: Inclusions as snapshots' (GMPV1.1) begins. At 15:00, Alexander Pengg discusses methane and hydrogen in fluid inclusions (EGU26-6278), followed at 15:10 by Guangming Su, who presents a reconstruction of paleo-atmospheric nitrogen pressure using quartz-hosted inclusions (EGU26-5575).
• In Room G2: If you are interested in how grains influence plates, don’t miss 'Fluid Flow and Rock Interaction Across Scales' (TS1.6). Catch Oliver Plümper (solicited) at 14:05 showcasing AI-driven permeability reconstruction (EGU26-3949), and Alessandro Petroccia at 14:15 on tracking dehydration in exhuming shear zones (EGU26-331).

From 16:15, the poster halls become the focal point of the division. In Hall X1, you can dive deeper into the magmatic and volcanic flagship sessions: Monitoring active volcanoes (GMPV11.7), Magmatic textures: petrological insights into igneous processes (GMPV10.2), and Understanding magmatic processes: from magma storage to eruptive behaviour, and implications for volcanic hazard (GMPV10.3).

You should also check out the latest work on Advances in understanding fluid migration systems and their surface manifestations: integrated, multidisciplinary data acquisition and interpretation (GMPV10.5), Volcanic degassing (GMPV10.6), and Volcanoes and their geothermal systems: Properties, risks and resources (GMPV10.7).

If you can tear yourself away from the poster boards in Hall X1 for a quick deviation, head back to Room G2 for the Brittle and ductile deformation of Earth’s lithosphere: Mechanisms governing deformation style session (TS1.1) at 17:40 to catch Alessia Tagliaferri discuss the "memory of crystals" and microstructures in UHP garnets from Dora Maira (EGU26-9776).

🌊 Can you share your career journey with us? Did you always dream of becoming an oceanographer, and what inspired you to pursue this path?

🌊 Could you describe the research that led to you receiving this award?

🌊 What does this recognition mean to you, both personally and professionally?

🌊 What have been some of the biggest challenges in your career, and were there key moments that shaped your path?

🌊 Looking ahead, what are the most important questions about the Atlantic overturning circulation that you are excited to tackle?

🌊 What advice would you give to young scientists who want to make a difference in ocean circulation and the wider ocean sciences?

Thank you, Tillys, for the interview and for sharing your career insights and advice!

Read more:

• ''Best Practices for Early Career Researcher (ECR) Engagement and Empowerment'' is ideal for PhDs or first-time PostDocs
• ''European Research Council (ERC) Funding Opportunities'' is ideal for more seasoned researchers
• ''The LGBT Pride group at EGU: How to find and build your community'' for the LGBT community and allies alike