GeoLog

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Imaggeo on Mondays: The Crossroads of Flood and Drought

Imaggeo on Mondays: The Crossroads of Flood and Drought

This picture was taken on the way back from collecting field measurements at the Lordsburg Playa in southwestern New Mexico, USA. The setting sun highlights the contrast between the dry, cracked soil and the standing water from antecedent rainfall. A playa is a flat topographic depression in arid or semi-arid regions that contains a large …[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Chilean relics of Earth’s past

Imaggeo on Mondays: Chilean relics of Earth’s past

As Earth’s environment changes, it leaves behind clues used by scientists to paint portraits of the past: scorched timber, water-weathered shores, hardened lava flows. Chile’s Conguillío National Park is teeming with these kind of geologic artifacts; some are only a few years old while others have existed for more than 30 million years. The photographer …[Read More]

Geosciences Column: The science behind snow farming

Geosciences Column: The science behind snow farming

For roughly the last decade, some ski resorts and other winter sport facilities have been using a pretty unusual method to ensure white slopes in winter. It’s called snow farming. The practice involves collecting natural or artificially made snow towards the end of winter, then storing the frozen mass in bulk over the summer under …[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Nummulites, the living lentils

Imaggeo on Mondays: Nummulites, the living lentils

This photograph depicts a close-up of Eocene limestones from the Sardinero Formation in Cantabria (Northern Spain). The limestone is rich with foraminifera shells, most of them from the Nummulitidae family. These organisms once lived in a very shallow sea that separated Europe from Iberia in the late Mesozoic and early Cenozoic era. Later the sea …[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Winter threatens to freeze over fieldwork

Imaggeo on Mondays: Winter threatens to freeze over fieldwork

This photo was taken during a fieldwork campaign following the mainshock of the deadly seismic sequence that struck central Italy starting from 24 August 2016. The magnitude 6.2 earthquake severely damaged nearby towns, claimed more than 290 lives and injured nearly 400 people in its wake. As a geologist from the National Institute of Geophysics …[Read More]