When runoff from farmland and urban areas enters our streams and rivers, it carries a heavy load of fertilizers and nutrients. These substances accumulate and flow into our coastal oceans, triggering a series of reactions that can create hypoxic ‘dead zones’. Dead zones are low-oxygen, or hypoxic, areas in the world’s oceans and lakes. Because most organisms need oxygen to live, very f ...[Read More]
On the desolate Antarctic peninsula, a colony of penguins creates a hub of biodiversity. One may ask, how exactly do those aquatic birds help maintain and enrich the variety of different kinds of organisms from plants and animals, to a wide range of insects and micro-organisms that live on our planet? The answer is quite intriguing. Scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China ...[Read More]
Picture this: bacteria that can slime their way around the soil, finding their prey, circling it, closing in on it and lysing it (or making their cell pop), just to feed on their prey. It sounds like a far stretch from a wolf to a bacteria, but even other soil predators, the comparably huge nematode worms ( up to 100 times bigger!), are afraid of these bacterial “wolves”. I went to the Soil System ...[Read More]
In this month’s GeoPolicy blog post, Dr Grace Skirrow outlines how researchers can share their expertise with environmental regulators to have policy impact and the role that fluvial geomorphology can play in policy decisions. Fluvial Geomorphology and why it is relevant for policymakers Fluvial Geomorphology (“fluvial”, derived from the Latin “fluvialis”, meaning “of the river”) is the study of l ...[Read More]
Today, 3 November, is globally recognized as the International Day for Biosphere Reserves. The first edition of this observance day was marked last year, with UNESCO urging our relationship with nature needed “a radical rethink.” As Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO explains, “The logic is simple: to improve our relationship with nature, we must first improve our understanding of how we a ...[Read More]
As future-focused as we like to be at EGU, we sometimes pause to look back at the year gone by – just a brief glimpse to appreciate all the good work of 2022! As always, we had so many inspiring and thought-provoking blog posts published this year across the EGU’s official blog GeoLog and division blogs. Thank you to each of you for your writing contribution! To continue our annual appreciation fo ...[Read More]
In 1821, peat cutters discovered a body similar to a mummy, pinned down by two wooden stakes deep in the mud. The body’s face still held red hair and a beard, their teeth were well preserved, and a hoop of willow was wrapped around their throat. But this wasn’t the dry, hot climate of Egypt but a cold and rain-sodden bog of Ireland. Later assessment suggested that these were the remain ...[Read More]
At EGU, we like to believe that a new year is more meaningful when we pause to look back at the year gone by – just a brief glimpse to appreciate all our good work and progress! 2021 was certainly an excellent year for our blogging network at EGU. Across the EGU’s official blog, GeoLog and division blogs we had so many inspiring, thought-provoking and even entertaining posts this year. Thank you t ...[Read More]
Biodiversity is an essential component of life on Earth and of human society, and is now a primary focus area of the European Union with the EU’s Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 launched in 2020 as part of the European Green Deal. The Biodiversity Strategy has some extremely ambitious targets that will require new legislation and processes in a multitude of different areas that are related to the g ...[Read More]
This 10 centimetre giant is a pioneer of marine conquest. All summer, glassworts (Salicornia europaea) will be rhythmically swept by the tide, gradually trapping seaborne sediment on the shores of Aberlady Bay in Scotland. The resulting elevation of the mudflat marks the start of a race of growth against waves, currents and sea level rise, eventually leading to the development of a salt marsh. How ...[Read More]