Ruby skies and calm waters are the backdrop for this week’s Imaggeo image – one of the ten finalist images in this year’s EGU Photo contest. “I took the picture while on a scientific cruise in West Greenland in 2013,” explains Christof Pearce, a postdoctoral researcher at Stockholm University. “We spent most of the time inside the fjord systems around the Greenland capital, Nuuk, but this specific ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: A voyage through scales – The Badlands National Park, South Dakota.
Layer upon layer of sand, clay and silt, cemented together over time to form the sedimentary units of the Badlands National Park in South Dakota, USA. The sediments, delivered by rivers and streams that criss-crossed the landscape, accumulated over a period of millions of years, ranging from the late Cretaceous Period (67 to 75 million years ago) throughout to the Oligocene Epoch (26 to 34 million ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Just Passing
If lucky enough to visit Ilulissat Icefjord, you’d find yourself in a truly ancient landscape. From the up to 3.9 billion year old Precambrian rocks, to ice dating back to the Quaternary Ice Age (2.6 thousand years old) and archaeological remains which evidence the past settlement of this remote Greenlandic outpost, it’s no surprise this stunning location has been declared a UNESCO world heritage ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Seeing the world through a pothole
A beautiful image of a forest reflected in a pool of water within a pothole in southern Finland is this Monday’s Imaggeo image and it brought to you by Mira Tammelin, a Finish researcher. The photo illustrates a pothole in the Askola pothole area in southern Finland. The pothole area is situated on the steep slopes next to river Porvoonjoki, approximately 70 kilometers to the northeast from ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Scales of fluvial dissection
High peaks, winding river channels and a barren landscape all feature in today’s Imaggeo on Mondays image, brought to you by Katja Laute, a geomorphologist from Norway. This photo was taken from an airplane flying over the Zagros Mountains in Iran. The Zagros Mountain range stretches south and west from the borders of Turkey and Russia to the Persian Gulf, and is Iran’s largest mountain ran ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: A fold belt within a grain
Tiny crinkly folds form the main basis of today’s Imaggeo on Mondays. Folding can occur on a number of scales; studying folds at all scales can reveal critical information about how rocks behave when they are squeeze and pinched, as described by Sina Marti, from the University of Basel. Although many geoscientists have seen such fold structures many times before, if you noticed the scale bar in th ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: A thermal inversion
This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays image is brought to you by Cyril Mayaud, from the University of Graz (Austria), who writes about an impressive hike and layers of cold and warm air. Thermal inversion is a meteorological phenomenon which occurs when a layer of cold air is trapped near the Earth’s surface by an overlying layer of warmer air. This can happen frequently at the boundary between mountaino ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Foehn clouds
This week’s post is brought to you by Stefan Winkler, a Senior Lecturer in Quaternary Geology & Palaeoclimatology, who explains how the mountain tops of the Southern Alps become decorated by beautiful blanket-like cloud formations. The Sothern Alps of New Zealand are a geoscientifically dynamic environment in all aspects. They are arguably one of the youngest high mountain ranges in the ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Colourful hydrovolcanism
Like in a beautiful painting, layers of colour adorn the flanks of this volcano. In this week’s Imaggeo on Monday’s post, Stephanie Flude describes how these colourful layers came to be and gives an insight into why she became a geologist. What inspired you? Share your reasons for becoming a geoscientist with us in the comment section or via twitter using the hashtag #WhyGeo! “Why do you want to s ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Finger Rock
Standing proud amongst the calm waters of Golovnina Bay is ‘The Devil’s Finger’, a sea stack composed of volcanic sediments. Located on the Pacific coast of Kunashir Island -which is controlled by Russia but claimed by Japan – the stack is testament to the volcanic nature of the region. The island itself is formed of four active volcanoes which are joined together by low-lying geothermally active ...[Read More]