natural hazards

GeoTalk: Severe soil erosion events and how to predict them

Olivia Trani July 20, 2018

Urban gully in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, May 2018. Credit: Matthias Vanmaercke.

Geotalk is a regular feature highlighting early career researchers and their work. In this interview we speak to Matthias Vanmaercke, an associate professor at the University of Liège in Belgium who studies soil erosion and land degradation across Europe and Africa. At the EGU General Assembly he received the 2018 Soil System Sciences Division Outstanding Early Career Scientists Award. Thanks for ...[Read More]

GeoPolicy: How science supported the EU’s new land use and forestry regulation

Chloe Hill July 3, 2018

Beech forest on slope subject to rock fall. Credit: Ettore Bianchi (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

What is the land use and forestry regulation? In October 2014, the EU agreed that all sectors, including land and forestry, should contribute to the EU’s 2030 climate & energy framework target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. Almost 4 years later, in May 2018, the EU Commission’s proposal for the 2021-2030 land use and forestry regulatio ...[Read More]

Geosciences Column: Landslide risk in a changing climate, and what that means for Europe’s roads

Olivia Trani June 13, 2018

A massive slide crumbled this section of a US highway in Oregon. How will climate change affect future landslides? Credit: Oregon Department of Transportation

If your morning commute is already frustrating, get ready to buckle up. Our climate is changing, and that may increasingly affect some of central Europe’s major roads and railways, according to new research published in the EGU’s open access journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences. The study found that, in the face of climate change, landslide-inducing rainfall events will increase in fr ...[Read More]

Top ten tourist beaches threatened by tsunamis

Olivia Trani May 23, 2018

A street in Phuket, Thailand after the 2004 tsunami. Six months after the tsunami, a quarter of the islands's hotels closed. (Image Credit: Alonso de Mendoza / Wikimedia Commons)

December 2004 saw one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history. 228,000 people were killed when an earthquake off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra triggered tsunami waves up to 30 m high. The destruction was extreme as the waves hit 14 different countries around the Indian Ocean. Economic losses totalled over 10 billion US dollars. The tourism industry in particular suff ...[Read More]