Hello Abraham. Thank you for speaking with us today! Could you tell our readers a bit about yourself and your research? Thanks, Simon! It’s a pleasure to be invited to share about my work. Well, where do I begin? For starters, I’m a Genus Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. I describe myself as an early-career African ecologist with a keen inte ...[Read More]
The picture shows the world’s rarest hexagonal rhyolitic volcanic rock columns on the northern island of the Ninepin Group in the easternmost waters of Hong Kong. These rocks columns are believed to form about 140 million years ago after a major volcanic eruption near Sai Kung. When the volcanic ash and lava slowly cooled down, joints and cracks started to develop on the surface and then extended ...[Read More]
The Rann of Kachchh is a saline marshland located in the western part of India. This climatically arid, salt-covered mudflat was once home to one of the largest settlements of the Indus Valley Civilization in India. The UNESCO world heritage archaeological site of Dholavira is now located in the heart of the salt desert. Photo by Fulmati Ram, as described on imaggeo.egu.eu. Imaggeo is the E ...[Read More]
Bouâmama Cauliflowers (Fredolia aretioides) in the stony plateaus of the Eastern High Atlas near Ayt Wazag (Morocco). The compact, cushion-like habit, the tiny coriaceous leaves and the deep-reaching roots of this shrub allow it to thrive under arid climatic conditions. Photo by Luca Barale, as described on imaggeo.egu.eu. Imaggeo is the EGU’s online open access geosciences image repository ...[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]
High altitude karstic environments often preserve permanent ice deposits within caves, representing a lesser-known portion of the cryosphere. Despite being not so widespread and easily reachable as mountain glaciers and ice caps, ice-caves preserve a great deal of information about past environmental changes and paleoclimatic evolution. Since one of their main characteristics is to have ground-ice ...[Read More]
At the transition from the Gobi Altay ranges to the Valley of the Lakes in South West Mongolia, the Ikh Bogd mountain towers almost 3000 m above the aridifying endorheic Orog Nuur Basin. The actively deforming mountain front shows traces of multiple earthquakes, which in turn affect the alluvial sediments deposited in the basin. Simultaneously, strong south-eastward winds create beautiful barchan ...[Read More]
Over the last few days the best athletes in the world have been descending on Japan for the long anticipated Tokyo Olympic Games, and it’s going to be a special and spectacular event. The Olympics have a long and rich history, and from their very inception have been influenced by geology, whether it’s earthquakes affecting venues or geological processes creating the very terrain athletes will be c ...[Read More]
The almost perfect rock pyramid in the foreground was formed by physical weathering and found in the Los Glaciares National Park in southern Argentina. The block was deposited on top of a rock surface polished by glacial erosion. The pyramidal peaks in the background are also the result of glacial erosion, albeit on a much larger scale. Description by Christoph Mayr, after the description o ...[Read More]
A double rainbow was captured when heading through the glaciated Benasque valley, located in the heart of the Pyrenees. The photo was taken just before the sunset, after heavy rainfall. A rainbow is caused by reflection and dispersion of light in water droplets. Second rainbow arc results from one reflection more than in the first one, thus the rainbow colours are “reverted”. The geome ...[Read More]