Much of the Mendenhall River Basin is glaciated; indeed, the river flows out from under a glacier in the northern part of the valley and into a lake. This glacier, rather aptly, is known as Mendenhall Glacier, a 19 km long lake-calving monster in Alaska, USA. Meltwater from this glacier makes up the primary source …[Read More]
Regular Features
Imaggeo on Mondays: Beautiful Badlands
This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays is brought to you by Gert Verstraeten, who takes us through the formation of some of the striking landscapes in the Mediterranean – the badlands. For more than 7 years I have been performing research on reconstructing historic erosion rates in the Taurus Mountains in Southwest Turkey. Badlands are heavily …[Read More]
GeoTalk: Simon Mudd
Today in GeoTalk, we’re talking to Simon Mudd, an exceptional and forward-thinking geomorphologist. First, could you introduce yourself and let us know a bit about what you are currently working on? I am lecturer in Landscape Dynamics at the University of Edinburgh, where I have been since 2007. Before that I was a post-doc at …[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Aerosols over Hurricane Irene
This image – rather than our usual Imaggeo photo – is a simulation representation of Hurricane Irene, as it moved up the coast of the United States. The red-yellow areas in the image represent regions with high aerosol concentration that have been swept upwards in convective clouds and the blue areas are clean regions. The aerosols …[Read More]
Geosciences Column: Tracing Toba
Large volcanic eruptions have a significant impact on the Earth’s climate as aerosols (including sulphur dioxide and water vapour), together with ash are released into the atmosphere and increase the amount of sunlight reflected back into space (the albedo). This increase in reflectance (or decrease in energy absorption) can cause widespread climatic cooling, known as …[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Vanishing Lakes and Dry Arctic Landscapes
The Koukdjuak Plains (south-west Baffin Island, Canada) form a vast postglacial marine plain that borders the Foxe Basin, an area that has been progressively uplifted due to glacio-isostatic rebound following the end of the last glaciation about 6600 years ago. The weight of glaciers on the Earth’s crust causes the ground to be depressed, which, …[Read More]
GeoTalk: Xavier Fettweis
Today in GeoTalk, we’re talking to Xavier Fettweis, an award-winning climate scientist from the University of Liège. He tells us about his work on the Greenland ice sheet. First, could you introduce yourself and let us know a bit about your current projects at the University of Liège? As a child, I was already interested …[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: An Icy Illusion
This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays is brought to you by Robert Wills, a Caltech Ph.D. student studying how mountain ranges help set the global pattern of rainfall and how these rainfall patterns affect the erosional evolution of mountain ranges. Robert is also an avid photographer who particularly enjoys nature photography in the American Southwest. This …[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Volcanic Zones and Colourful Stones
This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays is Written by Yiming Wang, a paleoceanographer and paleolimnologist and keen photographer from the University of Kiel, Germany… Námafjall is a high temperature geothermal area by Lake Myvatn in northeastern Iceland, which known for its sulphurous mud springs. My fascination of Iceland began during a fieldwork expedition in March 2004 …[Read More]
Geosciences Column: Rainfall and Climate – a Dynamic Problem
“Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.” – John Updike Rain quenches the thirst of soils and vegetation, fuelling ecosystems and much of the world’s agriculture. Whether it ruins a day on the beach or destroys a season’s harvest, it makes humans deeply aware of …[Read More]