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, once the glacier melts, bounces back (at a geologica ...[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 by the meteorology thanks to a small weather station installed at my parents’ ...[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 is one of his finest snapshots from the area… W ...[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 as I began to collect data for my ...[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 their vulnerability to the vagaries of the atmosphere. It’s important to understand ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Great Glacial Folds
Whether you’re climbing, hiking or caving, it’s hard to ignore the geology around you. For keen climber and environmental geoscientist Ivan Bour, a trip to the French Alps is no exception… I’ve practiced mountain climbing for a dozen years. During my ascents, I seek geomorphological and geological peculiarities. Very often, I associate my profession as a geologist with my activities in the high mo ...[Read More]
GeoTalk: Encarnación Ruiz-Agudo
GeoTalk is a regular feature highlighting early career researchers and their work. Today we’re talking to Encarnación Ruiz-Agudo whose specialty lies in crystal growth and dissolution – the key to how rocks tell their stories! First, could you introduce yourself and let us know a bit about your current research? Also, what sparked your interest in crystallography and mineralogy? My name is Encarna ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Stars in the Sand
This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays is brought to you by the photographer herself, Jana Eichel, who tells us about her expedition to the Mingsha Mountains and the stunning aeolian landforms that characterise the landscape. This photo was taken during a journey through Asia in spring 2012, which took me across Bangladesh, India and Nepal through to Western China and into the Gobi Desert. This journey al ...[Read More]
Geosciences Column: Larvae, Climate and Calcification
The absorption of atmospheric CO2 by the oceans results in a decline in ocean pH, hence ‘ocean acidification’, and reduces the availability of carbonate. This presents a problem to calcifying organisms (those that deposit calcium as either calcite or aragonite as hard parts) because they cannot produce their shells, valves (in the case of bivalves), or tests (in the case of diatoms) as readily. To ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Spying on the Arctic
This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays is brought to you by the photographer himself, Fabien Darrouzet who captured the beautiful glacial landscape during a summer expedition to the Arctic. This picture was taken in Svalbard (78° lat.) in June 2012. I was there for one week in order to observe the transit of the planet Venus in front of the Sun. I came here because at this time of the year, the Sun is sh ...[Read More]