natural hazards

Geosciences Column: An international effort to understand the hazard risk posed by Nepal’s 2015 Gorkha earthquake

Laura Roberts-Artal February 12, 2016

The upper part of the Pokhara Valley and view towards the Annapurna Massif. Debris flows and floods triggered by three major medieval earthquakes delivered the vast, flat-lying and steeply dissected deposits of the Pokhara Formation. The photo was taken by Amelie Stolle. Distributed via NASA Goddard on Flickr.

Nine months ago the ground in Nepal shook, and it shook hard: on April 25th 2015 the M7.8 Gorkha earthquake struck and was followed by some 250 aftershocks, five of which were greater than M 6.0. The devastation left behind in the aftermath of such an event, and how to coordinate disaster-relief efforts in a vast, mountainous region, is difficult to imagine. Yet, this December at the 2015 AGU Fall ...[Read More]

Geoscience hot topics – The finale: Understanding planet Earth

Laura Roberts-Artal December 22, 2015

The Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park. Credit: David Mencin (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

What are the most interesting, cutting-edge and compelling research topics within the scientific areas represented in the EGU divisions? Ground-breaking and innovative research features yearly at our annual General Assembly, but what are the overarching ideas and big research questions that still remain unanswered? We spoke to some of our division presidents and canvased their thoughts on what the ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Flying Rocks

Laura Roberts-Artal December 14, 2015

Flying Rocks . Credit: Franziska Glueer (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

The picture was taken at a hillslope close to the glacier tongue of the Great Aletsch Glacier, the largest glacier in the Alps. With a length of 23 km it is located in the eastern Bernese Alps of Switzerland and composed of the three smaller glaciers Aletschfirn, Jungfraufirn and Eternal snow field converging at Concordia where the ice thickness was measured to be around 900m. The whole area was d ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Drilling a landslide

Laura Roberts-Artal November 16, 2015

Drill it, Baby! Credit: Ekrem Canli (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

That landslides are hazardous goes without saying; the risk posed by them will largely depend on where they occur and their exact characteristics, which makes understanding the mechanisms which trigger them, as well as predicting when they might happen, extremely difficult. Today’s Imaggeo on Mondays image, brought to you by Ekrem Canli, a PhD student at the University of Vienna, is an example of ...[Read More]