GeoLog

Andes

Imaggeo on Mondays: Sneaking up from above

Imaggeo on Mondays: Sneaking up from above

Take some ice, mix in some rock, snow and maybe a little mud and the result is a rock glacier. Unlike ice glaciers (the ones we are most familiar with), rock glaciers have very little ice at the surface. Looking at today’s featured image, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Morenas Coloradas rock glacier wasn’t a glacier at all. But appearances can be misleading; as Jan Blöthe (a researcher at the ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Late Holocene Fever

Imaggeo on Mondays: Late Holocene Fever

A huge ice fall off the Perito Moreno glacier in the Los Glaciares National Park, southwest Santa Cruz Province, Argentina, was voted one of the three best pictures entered into the EGU’s annual photo contest, by the conference participants at the 2015 General Assembly. Perito Moreno glacier is one of 48 glaciers feeding into the Southern Patagonia ice field, which combined with the Northern Patag ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: A Patagonia landscape dominated by volcanoes

Imagine a torrent of hot and cold water, laden with rock fragments, ash and other debris hurtling down a river valley: this is a lahar. A by-product of eruptions of tall, steep-sided stratovolcanoes, lahars, are often triggered by the quick melting of snow caps and glaciers atop high volcanic peaks. The history of the Ibañes River and its valley, in southern Chile, are dominated by their proximity ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Paramo Soil

What lies between 3000m and 4800m above sea level in the mountains of the Andes? A very special place dominated by an exceptional ecosystem: The Páramo. Picture lush grasslands with a unique population of flora and fauna, some of which is found nowhere else on Earth. Páramos stretch from Ecuador to Venezuela, across the Northern Andes and also occur at high elevation in Costa Rica. The climate her ...[Read More]