The Canadian province of Alberta is known for its seemingly endless and pristine natural landscapes and the area surrounding Lake Louise, in Banff National Park, is no exception. Located at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, Lake Louise boasts a unique emerald colour as a result of rock flour – fine-grained, silt-sized particles of rock – carried into the lake by meltwater from nearby mountain glaci ...[Read More]
Hydrological Sciences
EGU Twitter Journal Club 5 — Policy briefing: Water resource resilience
It’s time for the fifth 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 when we meet online next week! This time, we will be discussing the recent peer-reviewed policy briefing Water Resourc ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Crater lake
At the border between the Pacific and Australian plates, crossed by the Pacific Ring of Fire, New Zealand is one of the most geologically active countries in the world. Volcanoes abound in this island-country, which contains the “world’s strongest concentration of youthful rhyolotic volcanoes“, and earthquakes are a frequent presence. Mount Ruapehu, a stratovolcano located in the ...[Read More]
Geosciences Column: Predicting glacial lake outburst floods
In this month’s Geosciences Column, Amanda Gläser-Bligh writes about SAR (synthetic aperture radar) satellites and how they can be used to map glacier lakes and mitigate related flood hazards. Glaciers are a natural storage system and provide a perennial source of fresh water to the surrounding low-lying areas, which can be used for drinking water, irrigation, or even hydroelectricity. But when gl ...[Read More]
GeoTalk: Dr Giuliano Di Baldassarre
GeoTalk, featuring short interviews with geoscientists about their research, continues this month with a Q&A with Dr Giuliano Di Baldassarre (UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education) regarding his work on floods, population changes, and risk prevention. 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: Patagonian blues
If you are feeling the Monday blues, this peaceful photograph of a Patagonian lake might be just what you need to light up your day. Patagonia is known for its rich volcanic history and dramatic landscapes, and this scene is no exception. It shows a lake in the Pali-Aike volcanic field on the Argentina-Chile border, located north of the Strait of Magellan: the beautiful Laguna Potrok Aike. Agathe ...[Read More]
Geosciences Column: A teaching game for water managers
In this month’s Geosciences Column, Wayne Deeker tells us about a new game – first presented in EGU’s Hydrology and Earth System Sciences – that aims to teach how to best share water resources. With shrinking glaciers, depleted groundwater stores, and rising populations, water resources have never been under such pressure, and worse is yet to come. The resulting conflicts can get ugly and bring hi ...[Read More]
Book review: Continuum Mechanics in the Earth Sciences
This week’s guest post introduces a book recently published by Cambridge University Press. Written by William I. Newman, a Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, Continuum Mechanics in the Earth Sciences provides an introduction to continuum mechanics and essential mathematical and physical approaches in the Earth sciences. It also contains problem sets and worked examples, ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: The beauty of energy
Electric cars require roughly 1,000 times more lithium than a standard laptop. It is therefore understandable that Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni, a unique environment shown here under deep-blue skies, is widely regarded as the ‘Saudi Arabia of lithium’, because it contains over 40% of the planet’s lithium chloride (LiCl) reserves, or more than 5.4 million tons. The Salar is part of the Altiplano platea ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Sunset on the Black Sea coast
In the context of human history, few bodies of water are as storied as the Black Sea, located at the juncture of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Countless cargo ships and frigates have sailed its waters, over 1,100 km in length from east to west, daunting enough that the Ancient Greeks believed its eastern shores (now Georgia) marked the edge of the known world. However, perhaps the Black Sea’s ...[Read More]