Tectonics and Structural Geology

Why do Earth’s hidden stress fields matter for our future? Let’s explore the latest insights from the World Stress Map database

Asmae Ourkiya July 17, 2026

Beneath the serene landscapes we inhabit, the Earth’s crust is a battleground of constant, immense, and invisible tectonic forces. While humanity typically only notices this deep-seated stress when it violently releases in the form of an earthquake and volcanoes, these forces have always been shaping the structural bedrock of our planet. Understanding this hidden architecture is one of the most vi ...[Read More]

A leap of faith: Should we trust AI with a million-year problem?

Asmae Ourkiya August 8, 2025

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been here a while, and it isn’t going anywhere, not any time soon. It has become an integral part of many lives and businesses. When I speak of AI, I am not referring to GenAI (generative AI) that writes your emails for you: Think about the algorithms that suggest what movie you should watch next, the voice assistant that adds milk to your shopping list, and ...[Read More]

Sixty years under the mountain: A geoscientific odyssey through the Mont Blanc tunnel

Asmae Ourkiya July 16, 2025

On July 16, 1965, the Mont Blanc Tunnel, 11.611 km of tunnel piercing the heart of the Alps, opened to traffic, marking a triumph of engineering, geology, and international cooperation. Sixty years later, this civilian artery connecting Chamonix (France) and Courmayeur (Italy) stands not just as a testament to human inventiveness but as an ongoing marvel if viewed through a geoscientific lens. On ...[Read More]

A Geoscientist’s Colorful Journey from Research to Children’s Books

Anna Katsigera and Lucia Perez-Diaz May 1, 2025

In today’s blog we’re having a chat with our very own Dr Lucia Perez-Diaz. As Lucia put it at the start of this year’s General Assembly, us scientists get to wear many “hats”, and she lives up to that statement. Besides a brilliant geoscientist, she is an incredible artist – also featured as last year’s artist in residence – and a budding press assistant! But more importantly, she is the author of ...[Read More]

Palaeoseismic crisis in the Galera Fault (southern Spain): consequences in Bronze Age settlements?

Asmae Ourkiya August 30, 2024

Alright, buckle up folks for this blog post, because we’re about to explore the wild ride of plate tectonics between the Iberian Peninsula (Eurasia plate) and North Africa (Nubia plate). These two plates are moving slowly at a moderate pace of 5-7 mm per year, which might not seem like much, but it’s enough to shake things up—literally! In a recent paper, published by our journal Solid Earth ...[Read More]

GeoTalk: meet Gino de Gelder, researcher of the link between tectonics, sea-level rise & coral reefs!

Simon Clark January 12, 2024

Hello Gino! Welcome to GeoTalk. Could you tell our readers a little bit about yourself and your background? Sure thing! My background is mostly in tectonics, geomorphology and the evolution of (active) fault systems, which I developed during my studies at Utrecht University and my PhD at the IPGP (Paris). Initially I focused on the way that coastlines record either uplift or subsidence in response ...[Read More]

GeoTalk: meet Megan Holdt, researcher of mantle dynamics & Geodynamics ECS Representative!

Simon Clark December 15, 2023

Hello Megan! Welcome to GeoTalk. Could you tell our readers a little bit about yourself and your background? Hi Simon, thank you for inviting me to GeoTalk! I am originally from Australia and studied geology and geophysics at the University of Sydney. After I finished my undergraduate degree, I worked as an earth scientist for almost seven years. I really enjoyed my time in industry, but I felt th ...[Read More]

Far over the Misty Mountains cold, to dungeons deep and caverns old: the geology of the Lord of the Rings.

Hazel Gibson September 29, 2023

“He loved mountains, or he had loved the thought of them marching on the edge of stories brought from far away; but now he was borne down by the insupportable weight of Middle-earth.” J.R.R. Tolkien (1955) Return of the King ‘The Lord of the Rings‘ by J.R.R. Tolkien is one of the most famous english-language fantasy book series’ ever written. It set the blueprint for ...[Read More]

Winners announced: Here are the best EGU Blog Posts of 2022!

Gillian D'Souza February 24, 2023

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]

GeoTalk: meet Morelia Urlaub, researcher of underwater landslides!

Simon Clark November 11, 2022

Hi Morelia. Thank you for joining us today! Could you tell our readers a bit about yourself and your research? Hi, I am Junior Professor for Marine Geomechanics at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and Kiel University in Germany. I graduated at the University of Bremen (Germany) and did my PhD in 2013 at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton in the UK. After a short postdoc th ...[Read More]