GeoLog

EGU Guest blogger

This guest post was contributed by a scientist, student or a professional in the Earth, planetary or space sciences. The EGU blogs welcome guest contributions, so if you've got a great idea for a post or fancy trying your hand at science communication, please contact the blog editor or the EGU Communications Officer to pitch your idea.

Imaggeo on Mondays: Dust devil sighting in the Atacama Desert

May 20, 2019
Imaggeo on Mondays: Dust devil sighting in the Atacama Desert
Dust devil in Atacama desert. Credit: Rita Nogherotto (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

Dust devils are like miniature tornadoes, they form when a pocket of hot air near the surface moves fast upward and meets cooler air above it. As the air rapidly rises, the column of hot air is stretched vertically, thereby moving mass closer to the axis of rotation, which causes intensification of the spinning effect by conservation of angular momentum. In the Atacama Desert [in Chile] they are r ...[Read More]

Back for the first time: measuring change at Narrabeen–Collaroy Beach

May 8, 2019
Back for the first time: measuring change at Narrabeen–Collaroy Beach
Narrabeen–Collaroy Beach in New South Wales, Australia, home to one of the longest-running shoreline-measurement programmes in the world! Credit: Eli Lazarus

Narrabeen–Collaroy Beach in New South Wales, Australia, just north of Sydney, is home to one of the longest-running shoreline-measurement programmes in the world. With colleagues at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, Eli Lazarus, an associate professor in geomorphology at the University of Southampton, UK, has been analysing over 40 years of data from Narrabeen–Collaroy to better und ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Penguins – a biogeochemical link between sea and land

May 6, 2019
Imaggeo on Mondays: Penguins – a biogeochemical link between sea and land
Linking Sea to Land. Credit: Daniel Wasner (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

A couple of Chinstrap penguins (Pygoscelis antarctica) at their nesting site on Deception Island, maritime Antarctica. Sea birds contribute importantly to biogeochemical cycles in coastal ecosystems and on islands. Feeding on the marine food chain and nesting on land, they carry large amounts of marine nutrients into terrestrial ecosystems. This might be of particular importance for the nitrogen ( ...[Read More]

Could beavers be responsible for long-debated deposits?

May 3, 2019
Could beavers be responsible for long-debated deposits?
The evidence: a beaver dam and surrounding swamp in Lithuania. Credit: Jūsų darbas via Wikimedia Commons

Following her presentation at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna, I caught up with geomorphologist and environmental detective Annegret Larsen from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, about beavers, baffling sediments and a case she’s been solving for the past seven years. Back in 2012 the German geomorphology community was seriously debating the source of buried black ...[Read More]