Rock Fall. Image by Fausto Guzzetti, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence. The photograph shows a rock fall occurred near Valtopina, Umbria, Central Italy, at an unknown date. Rockfalls are a mass movement hazard. They mostly occur on steep rock faces, with the blocks that fall detaching along an existing weakness. The scale of a rock fall can range from a few blocks of rock to rock ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Mount Yasur
Strombolian activity on Mount Yasur, Vanuatu. Image by Derya Gürer, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence. Imaggeo is the online open access geosciences image repository of the European Geosciences Union. Every geoscientist who is an amateur photographer (but also other people) can submit their images to this repository. Being open access, it can be used by scientists for their prese ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Lava flow into sea
Lava from the East Rift Zone entering the sea near Kalapana (Hawaii Big Island). Image by Martin Mergili, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons License. The image shows a flow of basaltic lava out of a lava tunnel into the sea. The location of the scene is the shoreline of Hawaii Big Island near the village of Kalapana. Flow direction of the lava is from the bottom to the top of the image, v ...[Read More]
Geosciences Column: Iceland spar, or how Vikings used sunstones to navigate
Nowadays, we can rely on GPS receivers or magnetic compasses to tell us how to reach our destination. Some 1000 years ago, Vikings had none of these advanced navigation tools. Yet, they successfully sailed from Scandinavia to America in near-polar regions where it can be hard to use the Sun and the stars as a compass. Clouds or fog and the long twilights characteristic of polar summers complicate ...[Read More]