After the Nile, the Amazon River is the second longest river in the world and, by releasing up to 300,000 cubic metres per second into the Atlantic Ocean, accounts for approximately one-fifth of the planet’s total river flow. The river and its tributaries are characterised by extensive annual flooding of over 350,000 square kilometres of forested areas. Floodplain water levels may exceed 9m. Not a ...[Read More]
Biogeosciences
Imaggeo on Mondays: Irish coast
Among geoscientists, the beautiful island of Ireland is best known for its Giant’s Causeway, an area with some 40,000 polygonal columns of layered basalt that formed 60 million years ago as a result of a volcanic eruption. But another recognisable feature of the Emerald Isle, is its lush green vegetation, a product of the island’s mild climate and frequent rainfall. It was on a rare sunny day of a ...[Read More]
Geosciences Column: Human-induced changes in the ocean’s salinity and temperature fields
In this month’s Geosciences column, Mona Behl discusses a recent paper on the effects of anthropogenically-induced climate change on the planet’s oceans. A recent study led by scientists at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, suggests that observed changes in ocean salinity are inconsistent with natural climate variations and can be attributed to human ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Blue haze
In this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays, brought to you by the photographer himself, Lukas Hörtnagl (University of Innsbruck, Austria) tells us about the ‘blue haze’ or ‘tule fog’ of California’s Sequoia National Park. I was visiting the United States to attend the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December 2011 and decided to stay four more weeks to visit some of the National Parks in C ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Ephemeral winter wonderland
Today’s text is brought to you by the author of this impressive picture, Patrick Klenk (Heidelberg University, Germany). This photograph is part of a series of images which I took in Death Valley National Park on a brisk December morning in 2011. In this case, we were close to Aguereberry Point, a mountain viewpoint located at 1961m above sea level, overlooking the central part of this “vast ...[Read More]
GeoTalk: Dr Stephanie Henson
GeoTalk, featuring short interviews with geoscientists about their research, continues this month with a Q&A with Dr Stephanie Henson (University of Southampton) who tells us about her work on marine ecosystems, and gives great advice to young scientists. If you’d like to suggest a scientist for an interview, please contact Bárbara Ferreira. First, could you introduce yourself and let us ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Flowers in the Atacama
The Atacama desert in Chile is one of the driest regions in the world. Rain has never been recorded in parts of the desert and the average rainfall is typically one milimetre per year or less (for comparison, the average annual precipitation in Munich, where the EGU Executive Office is located, is over 960 millimetres). However, every five years or so, rare bouts of local rainfall are triggered by ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Trees of time
The Namib-Nauklufy National Park in Namibia is a stunning ecoregion that encompasses part of the Namib Desert and the Nauklufy mountain range. With an area of almost 50,000 square kilometres, the park covers a wide range of landscapes, including gravel plains, tall sand dunes, and an ephemeral river. The park also includes one of the main visitor attractions of Namibia, the Sossusvlei, a large dry ...[Read More]
EGU Twitter Journal Club: Article 3 – Tree-height data and carbon storage
It’s time for the third edition of the EGU’s Twitter Journal Club, our interactive online discussion about a timely scientific article. If you have not yet taken part in one of these discussions, read more about it in our introductory post and make sure to participate on this third edition! This time, we will be discussing an article recently published in the EGU’s Open Access j ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Turquoise paradise
Jacques Cousteau once said, “I have seen other places like Sipadan, 45 years ago, but now no more. Now we have found an untouched piece of art.” Indeed, the ‘wall of life’ shown in this picture suggests an untouched world, where schools of fish abound in a pure turquoise ocean. The waters around Pulau Sipadan (Sipadan Island) are globally recognised as some of the most diverse on the planet, playi ...[Read More]