Publications

Geosciences Column: Extreme snowfall potentially worsened Nepal’s 2015 earthquake-triggered avalanche

Olivia Trani May 11, 2018

A view of Langtang Nepal in 2012. The village was struck by an earthquake-induced avalanche and landslides in 2015, burying the town in debris. (Credit: Sander van Dijk via Flickr)

Three years ago, an earthquake-induced avalanche and rockfalls buried an entire Nepalese village in ice, stone, and snow. Researchers now think the region’s heavy snowfall from the preceding winter may have intensified the avalanche’s disastrous effect. The Langtang village, just 70 kilometres from Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, is nestled within a valley under the shadow of the Himalayas. The town wa ...[Read More]

Geosciences Column: The science behind snow farming

Olivia Trani March 9, 2018

A layer of sawdust and wood chips hides a massive pile of snow in South Tyrol. The thick cover protects the snow from the summer heat. Winter sport destinations have been 'farming' snow as a way to guarantee white winters. Credit: Grünewald et al.

For roughly the last decade, some ski resorts and other winter sport facilities have been using a pretty unusual method to ensure white slopes in winter. It’s called snow farming. The practice involves collecting natural or artificially made snow towards the end of winter, then storing the frozen mass in bulk over the summer under a thick layer of sawdust, woodchips, mulch, or other insulating mat ...[Read More]

GeoSciences Column: When could humans last walk, on land, between Asia & America?

Laura Roberts-Artal August 25, 2017

Map showing the Chukchi Sea, north of the Bering Strait and Sea, between Russia and the United States. Credit: NormanEinstein, distributed via Wikimedia Commons.

Though now submerged under 53 m of ocean waters, there once was a land bridge which connected North America with Asia, allowing the passage of species, including early humans, between the two continents. A new study, published in the EGU’s open access journal Climate of the Past, explores when the land bridge was last inundated, cutting off the link between the two landmasses. The Bering Strait, a ...[Read More]

Enmeshed in the gears of publishing – lessons from working as a young editor

Robert Emberson June 14, 2017

Robert shares details about what he learned while working as associate editor at Nature Geoscience . Credit: Lum3n.com (distributed via pexels).

Editors of scientific journals play an important role in the process research publication. They act as the midpoint between authors and reviewers, and set the direction of a given journal. However, for an early career scientist like me (I only defended my PhD in early December 2016) the intricacies of editorial work remained somewhat mysterious. Many academic journals tend to appoint established, ...[Read More]