Mt Ruapehu is the largest mountain on the North Island of New Zealand. As well as being a popular ski resort, Ruapehu is an active andesitic stratovolcano. Formed approximately 200,000 years ago, activity is currently confined to the Crater Lake vent; this deep depression fills with water from snow melt between eruptive episodes. Similarly to the recent eruption of Mount Ontake in Japan, Ruapehu h ...[Read More]
Science Snap (#33): Earth Science Week
James Hickey is a PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. A geophysicist and volcanologist by trade, his PhD project is focussed on attempting to place constraints on volcanic unrest using integrated geodetic modelling. Earth Science Week is an international initiative to promote the great work that goes on in the geoscience community. It encompasses a huge range ...[Read More]
Science snap (#32): Coral currents
KT Cooper is a PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. A carbonate geochemist by training, here she dives into the world of corals. Coral is misunderstood. It may look like a beautiful underwater plant, and for a long time it was thought to be one, but is in fact an invertebrate. The coral structures are colonies made up of individual small polyps. These produce a ...[Read More]
Phreatic eruptions – the silent assasins
The recent eruption of Mt Ontake, Japan tragically killed at least 50 hikers who were on the volcano at the time. Within hours of the eruption taking place, social media was flooded with first-hand video footage illustrating just how close many survivors came to perishing in an onrushing pyroclastic flow. Despite having a sophisticated seismic and geodetic monitoring system, many news reports stat ...[Read More]
Science snap (#31): Mammatus clouds
After all the thunderous weather this weekend and being British, I thought I’d do a weather themed science snap. Don’t bolt yet; it’s a volcanic-weather themed! This is a picture of mammatus clouds following the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. These clouds are pretty rare, unusual and distinctive. Formally, the Glossary of Meteorology defines mammatus clouds as “hanging protuberances, like p ...[Read More]
Science snap (#30): Aust Cliff, Gloucestershire
One of the most fascinating things about geology is its ability to reveal global events from evidence contained within a single outcrop. The cliff exposure at Aust in Gloucestershire, UK, is a spectacularly colourful example of this. Located beneath the original Severn Bridge, and running alongside the Severn Estuary, the 40m tall rock face records the drowning of an ancient desert by rising sea l ...[Read More]
Science Snap (#29): African Fairy Circles
If you’re wandering among the arid desert that stretches from Angola to South Africa, you may notice the ground pot-marked by millions of circular barren patches. These striking features are known as “Fairy circles”, and can grow up to 15 meters in diameter. Tall grasses often surround these circles, further accentuating these miniature crop circles. How these Fairy Circles form is hotly de ...[Read More]
Science Snap (#28): The Eye of the Sahara
Surrounded by thousands of square miles of ubiquitous desert, the “Eye of the Sahara” peers out from the Earth’s surface and at nearly 50 km wide, its easily visible from space too. The “Eye of the Sahara” is known as a Richat Structure, a geological feature consisting of a series of alternating circular layers of sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rock, exposed by erosion. The “Eye of the Sahar ...[Read More]
Science Snap (#28): Brandberg Massif, Namibia
Brandberg Massif is Namibia’s highest mountain, but if you look from above, you’ll notice it’s no ordinary one. Brandberg is a single mass of granite that pierced its way through the Earth’s crust into the Namib Desert. Looking at the Landsat 7 image, Brandberg is a circular dark and steep-sided mountain, imposing itself over the desert below. It reaches height of 2.5 km and stretches across 31 km ...[Read More]
Science Snap (#26): Angel Falls, Venezuela
Sorcha McMahon is a third year PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. Sorcha is investigating how strange igneous rocks called carbonatites may have formed, using both natural samples and high-pressure experiments. Angel Falls is the world’s highest uninterrupted waterfall in the Canaima National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Gran Sabana region of Bol ...[Read More]