Palaeoclimatologist Annett Junginger takes us to one of the hottest and driest places on Earth in this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays… The picture was taken in 2010 during the third in six expeditions to the remote Suguta Valley in the northern Kenya Rift. This unbelievably beautiful place is located just south of Lake Turkana and is one of the hottest and driest places in equatorial Africa. Temperatur ...[Read More]
Biogeosciences
Geosciences Column: Climate-impact studies and their importance in a world of climatic uncertainty
A new hydrological climate-impact study by Nina Köplin and colleagues, in the European Geosciences Union journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, investigates the impacts of climate change on forest expansion and glacier retreat in Switzerland. This study raises important questions as to whether or not land cover changes should be considered as climate change impacts on hydrological systems, N ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Travertine takeover
This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays is brought to you by Olivier Galland, who took this photo during an incredible outreach adventure in the Andes… The image displays the spectacular Puente del Inca (The Inca Bridge) hot springs, in the Argentinian Andes of the Mendoza province, along the Vacas River, close to the foot of Cerro Aconcagua. When the mineral-rich, sulphurous waters reach the surface, the ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Eddy covariance
This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays is brought to you by Jean-Daniel Paris, a meteorologist from the Climate and Environmental Sciences Laboratory (LSCE), France. He describes how new techniques like eddy covariance tell us about the flux of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere… This picture was taken during a visit to the Hyytiälä research station in Finland in June 2010. This station runs flux ...[Read More]
Letting the methane genie out of the bottle
Greenhouse gas levels and globally averaged surface temperatures are both on the rise. Whilst slow increases in temperatures are not easily perceived as threatening, and might even be welcomed by some, climate change can also include fast and sudden changes. These sudden changes could have disastrous effect on not only us humans, but also life on this planet more generally. When it comes to places ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: The perfect partnership
Pogonophores are deep sea worms that thrive in dark, deep sea conditions thanks to the presence of symbiotic bacteria. The bacteria are chemoautotrophic, that is, they fix carbon through oxidation processes, rather than using light to fix it, as is the case for photosynthesis. By utilising oxygen in the water, the bacteria can oxidise compounds such as hydrogen sulphide in order to fix carbon. The ...[Read More]
Vegetation research in Finnish Lapland: mountains, sunshine and reindeer
People started warning me about the mosquitoes back in April. It sounded grim. But when I arrived in Finnish Lapland in August, the mozzies had peaked earlier in the season when temperatures were unusually high, and were all dead. This was a fortunate escape: Miska Luoto of the University of Helsinki and his team of researchers, who I was following as part of an EGU Science Journalism Fellowship, ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Curl up under a peat blanket
Rannoch Moor is the largest area of unbroken (no houses, no roads) blanket bog in the United Kingdom. Blanket bogs – as their name suggests – blanket the ground in an extensive layer of peat. They form in regions where there is high rainfall and comparatively little evapotranspiration. These waterlogged conditions are found throughout much of the northern hemisphere, and allow blanket bogs to form ...[Read More]
Geosciences Column: Dating a bivalve
Just as the rings on a tree can be used to determine its age, the bands on a bivalve’s shell can tell us the how long it’s been around for. Warm, food-filled waters lead to greater growth in the summer and low plankton abundance (the principle food source for filter-feeding molluscs) leads to limited growth during the winter months – hence the banding. But pinning down the age of a bivalve m ...[Read More]
GeoTalk: Veerle Vanacker on land use, degredation and the potential of revegitation
Today in GeoTalk, we’re talking to Veerle Vanacker, and eminent geomorphologist and winner of the EGU Division Outstanding Young Scientist Award last year. She tells us about her breakthroughs in modelling land use change and erosional processes… First, could you introduce yourself and tell us a little about what you are currently working on? I currently work as a lecturer in geomorphology at the ...[Read More]