Conducting research inside a volcanic crater is a pretty amazing scientific opportunity, but calling that crater home for a week might just be a volcanologist’s dream come true, as Alexandra postdoctoral researcher at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Strasbourg, describes in this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays. This picture was taken from inside the crater of Mount St Helens, a stratovolcano ...[Read More]
Drawing inspiration from popular stories on our social media channels, as well as unique and quirky research news, this monthly column aims to bring you the best of the Earth and planetary sciences from around the web. Major story While the March headlines might not have been dominated by a particular story, the state of the Earth’s climate has definitely been the overarching theme of the month. ...[Read More]
On a rare sunny day, Mattia Pistone (a researcher at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC) was able to capture this spectacular shot of Kanaga, a stratovolcano in the remote Western Aleutians, which is usually veiled by thick cloud. The Western Aleutians form a chain of 14 large and 55 small volcanic islands, belonging to one of the most extended volcanic archipelagos on Earth (1900 km), s ...[Read More]
Iceland, the land of ice and fire, is well known for its volcanicity. Most famously, it is home to Eyjafjallajökull: the volcano which caused wide spread mayhem across European airspace when it erupted in 2010. But not all the local volcanic activity is unwelcome. High temperature geothermal areas are a byproduct of the volcanic setting and the energy released can be used to power homes and infras ...[Read More]
There are plenty of hostile habitats across the globe but some flora and fauna species are resourceful enough to adapt and make extreme environments their home. From heat-loving ants of the Sahara to microbes living in the light-deprived ocean depths, through to beatles who brave the bitterly cold Alaskan winter, there are numerous examples of plants, animals and bugs who strive in environments of ...[Read More]
Perhaps a bold claim, but at over 4,000 km away from Australia and 4,200 km from South Africa, Heard Island is unquestionably hard to reach. The faraway and little know place is part of a group of volcanic islands known as HIMI (comprised of the Heard Island and McDonald Islands), located in the southwest Indian Ocean. Shrouded in persistent bad weather and surrounded by the vast ocean, Heard Isla ...[Read More]
With rocks dating as far back as the Precambrian, mountain building events, violent volcanic eruptions and being covered, on and off, by shallow seas, Death Valley’s geological history is long and complex. Back in the Cenozoic (65 to 30 million years ago), following a turbulent period which saw the eruption of volcanoes (which in time would form the Sierra Nevada of California) and regional uplift ...[Read More]
Imaggeo, our open access image repository, is packed with beautiful images showcasing the best of the Earth, space and planetary sciences. Throughout the year we use the photographs submitted to the repository to illustrate our social media and blog posts. For the past few years we’ve celebrated the end of the year by rounding-up some of the best Imaggeo images. But it’s no easy task to pick which ...[Read More]
On May 18th 1980 Mount St Helens (an active stratovolcano of the Cascades located in the North West US), erupted explosively following a magnitude 5.1 earthquake. The quake triggered a devastating landslide which swept away the volcano’s northern flank – in what is the largest debris avalanche recorded on Earth to date. Removal of a section of the edifice depressurised the volcano’s magmatic ...[Read More]
With the rise of electronic games – those played on computers, consoles and even on mobile phones – you’d be forgiven for thinking the humble board game would be slowly making its way into the history books. Nothing could be further from the truth! Sales of board games are on the up, as are cafes where you can gather to play table-top games of your choice, and board game meet ups: regular gaming g ...[Read More]