Nothing better characterises the wild US West than endless landscapes of red hoodoos, spires of rock protruding from the bottom of an arid drainage basin or badland. Found mainly in desert and dry, hot areas, hoodoos are distinctive from similarly-shaped formations, such as spires or pinnacles, because their profiles vary in thickness throughout their length. …[Read More]
Geomorphology
Imaggeo on Mondays: Ellesmere Island
Located within the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Ellesmere Island is the world’s tenth largest island and features Canada’s most northerly point but little else apart from vast landscapes of pristine natural habitat. It is separated from Greenland only by the Nares Strait, a major pathway for sea ice flushing out of the High Arctic. Belonging to …[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Trees of time
The Namib-Nauklufy National Park in Namibia is a stunning ecoregion that encompasses part of the Namib Desert and the Nauklufy mountain range. With an area of almost 50,000 square kilometres, the park covers a wide range of landscapes, including gravel plains, tall sand dunes, and an ephemeral river. The park also includes one of the …[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Keanae coast
Geologically speaking, Hawaii is a very dynamic archipelago. Each of its islands is an exposed peak of a large undersea mountain range formed by volcanic activity starting about 28 million years ago as the Pacific plate moved slowly in northwest direction over a geological hotspot in the Earth’s mantle. Big Island and Maui, the southeastern most …[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 …[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 …[Read More]
Transformation of the Energy Economy: The US experience – Part II, Red Rocks
EGU’s Science Communications Fellow, Edvard Glücksman, is blogging live from the United States as he takes part in a week-long study tour with other members of the Emerging Leaders in Environmental and Energy Policy Network (ELEEP), a joint project of the Atlantic Council of the United States and the Ecologic Institute. Check out below for his first post …[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Cueva de los Verdes
The volcanic Lanzarote is the easternmost of the Canary Islands, located in the Atlantic Ocean approximately 125 km off the coast of Africa. One of its most famous attractions is the system of caves known as La Cueva de los Verdes (Greens’ Cave), created around 3,000-4,500 years ago by lava from the now extinct Monte …[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 …[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: The broken heart
We humans have a tendency to see familiar shapes in things such as animals in clouds, faces on Mars, and even food in rocks. The photographer, Natalia Rudaya saw a broken heart in a curious Taiwanese rock, the centrepiece of the beautiful photograph we are featuring this week. Aside from its interesting shape, the Broken …[Read More]