“I was told that there will be a piedmont glacier on the way from Station Nord, a Danish military base in northeast Greenland, to our destination in no-man’s-land next to the 79°N Glacier. On half the way, we passed the beautiful Elephant Foot Glacier, named after its symmetric shape originating from the viscous flow of the ice. The glacier is located on a peninsula and connected to a small ...[Read More]
The Zugspitze Geodynamic Observatory Germany (ZUGOG) has been setup on the summit of mountain Zugspitze at an altitude of almost 3000 m during 2018 with the main scientific objective being a better understanding of seasonal and long-term mass redistributions in the European Alps. This knowledge is very important (e.g. with regard to water storage and its high sensitivity to climate change), but is ...[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]
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]
Plymouth, the capital of Montserrat, was evacuated in 1995 after the nearby Soufrière Hills Volcano (background of the image) had reactivated. Later on the town was struck by pyroclastic flows, and its centre was almost completely buried by material relocated from the upper slopes through lahars. The suburb of Town Hill can still be seen in the right centre of the photo. It remains an exclusion zo ...[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]
A collection of washed-up shells on a beach on the south island of New Zealand. Shore transport processes have produced a well-sorted drift of similarly sized (approx. 1-2 cm) shells and shell fragments. The main species represented are the common turret shell (Maoricolpus roseus) and wheel shell (Zethalia zelandica), both sea snails endemic to New Zealand. Description by Pontus Lurcock, af ...[Read More]
In the shadow of the Santos oil and gas processing plant and export terminal lies the only place in the world where cuttlefish come together by the tens of thousands to mate every winter. The unique geology of the area, with a seafloor composed of bedrock and tabular quartzite blocks, makes for an ideal egg-laying habitat, and thus is an attractive breeding ground for the Australian Giant Cuttlefi ...[Read More]
Profile of a specimen of Arctica islandica, one of the longest lived marine bivalves known, undergoing a 3D scan. Their longevity is exploited for reconstruction of climate patterns in the North Atlantic. However, mathematical models of their morphodynamics are necessary to account for bias induced by their asymmetric growth (“morphodynamics” is the study of how an organisms’ gro ...[Read More]
A wave is caught on camera when it hits the rocks on Tung Ping Chau, an offshore island in the northeastern corner of Hong Kong. Tung Ping Chau is unique island in Hong Kong that is mainly made up of sedimentary rock. Weathering and erosion have great impacts on forming the current landscape and geologic features such as wave-cut platforms and sea cliffs on Tung Ping Chau. Description by An ...[Read More]