A wide variety of webinar sessions were streamed during EGU 2020’s Sharing Geoscience Online, including all of the Great Debates and Union Symposia. The sessions were very well attended, with some sessions having over 700 participants. An extremely high level of engagement meant that in many cases not all of the participants’ questions could be …[Read More]
Biochar is a carbon rich product of biomass pyrolysis, a process where biological material is exposed to high temperatures, in the absence of oxygen, to cause the decomposition of that material into various chemical and physical components. By going through this process, biochar can be a valuable soil additive and a carbon sink with a …[Read More]
Each month we feature specific Divisions of EGU and during the monthly GeoRoundup we will be putting the journals that publish science from those Divisions at the top of the Highlights roundup. For July, the Divisions we are featuring are: Geodesy (G), Ocean Science (OS) and Tectonics and Structural Geology (TS). They are served by …[Read More]
We know the topography of the moon better than the Earth’s seafloor, so we need to keep studying the ocean, and, for me, going to sea is the best way. Only twenty percent of the seafloor is already mapped (see the Seabed 2030 Project), leaving eighty percent of our ocean unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored. …[Read More]
This month for GeoTalk, as we approach the centennial of Marie Tharp’s birth next week, we were lucky enough to speak with the author of her biography ‘Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor‘; Hali Felt. Hali has a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Iowa and …[Read More]
The photo was taken from the International Space Station (ISS), approx. 400 km above the Earth, in the educational project administered by NASA: Sally Ride EarthKAM, Mission 59, November 2017. The image was requested by a team of students from my college, coordinated by me. Even though we weren’t there, on ISS, to trigger the …[Read More]
650 metres below the chilly waves of the North Atlantic Arctic Ocean, equidistant between Norway, Iceland and Greenland, are the Jan Mayen Vent Fields. Home to a series of hydrothermal vents strung along a set of normal faults and fissures that run parallel to the seafloor ridge, this is a strange and fascinating place. Hydrothermal …[Read More]
This is an aerial image taken from a balloon at around 150m height, at the eastern shoreline of the Dead Sea. Such “selfies” are scientifically valuable, providing important data that help researchers to analyze the morphology of the retreating lake and investigate associated hazards like sinkholes, subsidence and landslides. The older shorelines, visible as lines …[Read More]
Since the explosive spread of COVID19, the way most academics work has changed and it can sometimes feel like we’re all living on conference calls, Skype and online events. While this may not suit everyone’s preferred working style, it’s difficult to deny that people are now more willing to engage online and it’s worth thinking …[Read More]
The badlands at the Zabriskie Point (Death Valley, California, USA) rest upon a mudstone foundation. In the prehistoric lakes of Death Valley, fine grained sediments were deposited to form soft rocks. The clay minerals in the mudstone are shaped like tiny plates, which helps create the layers. The combination of the almost impermeable mudstone and …[Read More]
