Nore Praet, a PhD student from Ghent University in Belgium, brings us this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays. She sets the scene for an investigation into past earthquakes and explains how peering through a lake’s icy surface and its murky waters, and into the sediment below can help scientists find out more about the impact of earthquakes in the future… Early this year, I set off with a group of scientis ...[Read More]
Geosciences Column: Did Mediterranean salt change the global climate?
The latest Geosciences Column is brought to you by Annabel Slater, who describes a time of dramatic change in the Mediterranean. Slater shares the results of a recently published Climate of the Past study and sheds light on how – in the context of global climate – a little salt can go a long way… Many of us worry about the effects of too much salt on our health, not its effects on global climate. ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Plate it up – a recipe for sea ice errors
Last week, a team of cryospheric scientists published a paper in The Cryosphere that showed how tiny plates of ice can lead to spurious estimates of sea ice thickness. This week, we’re featuring their findings, as well as some spectacular sea ice images in the latest in our Imaggeo on Mondays series… Viewing the poles from above is a stunning sight – a seemingly endless expanse of bril ...[Read More]
Geosciences Column: Meshing models with the small-scale ocean
The latest Geosciences Column is brought to you by Nikita Marwaha, who explains how a new generation of marine models is letting scientists open up the oceans. The new technique, described in Ocean Science, reveals what’s happening to ocean chemistry and biology at scales that are often hard to model… Diving into the depths of the ocean without getting your feet wet is possible through biogeochemi ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Soil and water conservation in the Dogon Plateau, Mali
Velio Coviello, a scientist from the Research Institute for Hydrogeological Protection, Italy, and one of the winners of the EGU 2014 Photo Contest, brings us this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays. He sheds light on his winning image and the problems associated with conserving soils and water in Western Africa… This picture was taken on Mali’s Dogon plateau during the dry season, in the course of a late ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Long-lived lakes have a lot to tell
The world’s oldest, deepest freshwater lake lies in southeast Siberia: Lake Baikal. Stretching some 600 kilometres across the Russian landscape, Baikal marks what the very early stages of a new ocean – an ancient rift that cleaved the centre of Asia apart throughout the Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic. Today, there are still signs of tectonic activity and the rift continues to diverge 4 mm furth ...[Read More]
Geosciences Column: Could plants be a cheap solution to soil contamination in developing countries?
There are many ways to remove contaminants from the land, but it is a constant battle for scientists to find better and cheaper ways to the job. Recent research published in Soild Earth suggests plants may present a solution – one that’s particularly promising for poor areas. Jane Robb describes the findings… Bolivia has a long and complicated mining history, going back to the 1500s. Untreated tai ...[Read More]
Climate-proofing the Netherlands
Emerging Leaders in Environmental and Energy Policy (ELEEP) fosters transatlantic relations, forges dialogue, and promotes leadership across energy and environmental policy landscapes. Former EGU Science Communications Fellow and ELEEP member Edvard Glücksman reports back from the Netherlands, where citizens manage the continuous threat of climate-related devastation through a combination of creat ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Quartz lawns and crystal flowers
Petrologists spend a large part of their time peering down microscopes at wafer thin slices of rock to work out what they’re made of and how they were formed. What lies on the other side of the lens can be an incredibly beautiful pattern, a kaleidoscope of colour, or stark bands of black and white, all of which provide clues to the rock’s history, and the history of the landscape it came from. Ber ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Light fantastic – flashing phenomena in Norway’s night sky
In this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays, Bjørn Gitle Hauge – from Østfold University College – opens our eyes to the astounding aurora borealis, and the unusual phenomena seen in Norway’s night sky… Hessdalen is a former mining district in the middle of Norway with huge ores of copper and mineshafts up to a kilometre deep. The climate here is sub-Arctic, with temperatures reaching as low as -50 de ...[Read More]