People started warning me about the mosquitoes back in April. It sounded grim. But when I arrived in Finnish Lapland in August, the mozzies had peaked earlier in the season when temperatures were unusually high, and were all dead. This was a fortunate escape: Miska Luoto of the University of Helsinki and his team of researchers, who I was following as part of an EGU Science Journalism Fellowship, ...[Read More]
Resource site for young scientists launched!
Early career researchers make up a large proportion of the EGU membership and students (both graduate and undergraduate) regularly make up about a third of General Assembly participants. With so many young scientists involved in the EGU, it’s time we had something that caters for them – the young scientists’ website! The new website is a hub of information on jobs, events and resources that ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Curl up under a peat blanket
Rannoch Moor is the largest area of unbroken (no houses, no roads) blanket bog in the United Kingdom. Blanket bogs – as their name suggests – blanket the ground in an extensive layer of peat. They form in regions where there is high rainfall and comparatively little evapotranspiration. These waterlogged conditions are found throughout much of the northern hemisphere, and allow blanket bogs to form ...[Read More]
Geosciences Column: Dating a bivalve
Just as the rings on a tree can be used to determine its age, the bands on a bivalve’s shell can tell us the how long it’s been around for. Warm, food-filled waters lead to greater growth in the summer and low plankton abundance (the principle food source for filter-feeding molluscs) leads to limited growth during the winter months – hence the banding. But pinning down the age of a bivalve m ...[Read More]