This summer Geology for Global Development ran a blog competition – inviting you to submit articles on one of two topics or share some of your favourite images. Thank you for all of your thoughtful and interesting entries, we very much enjoyed reading your posts and seeing your photos. All entries have been considered by a panel of five independent judges, and after careful deliberation, we ...[Read More]
Geology Jenga
10 Minute Interview – Jennifer Clear
Our latest 10 Minute Interview is with Jennifer Clear, a fellow PhD student here in the School of Environmental Sciences, University of Liverpool. She is approaching her submission deadline and will soon be leaving to take up a PostDoc position in Prague, Czech Republic. We will be sad to see her go! Jen has kindly helped on a number of my fieldwork expeditions as well as teaching me how to spot ( ...[Read More]
Green Tea and Velociraptors
Plotting for the Earth. Sciences.
This was originally posted at: http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/earthbound/plotting_for_the_earth_sciences So a cool paper came out a while back about using plots when attempting to construct stories as a mode of communicating in Earth Science. I cannot, as always, emphasise my frustration when someone writes an article that’s supposed to be broadly educational, and sticks it behind a paywall. ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Letting the methane genie out of the bottle
Greenhouse gas levels and globally averaged surface temperatures are both on the rise. Whilst slow increases in temperatures are not easily perceived as threatening, and might even be welcomed by some, climate change can also include fast and sudden changes. These sudden changes could have disastrous effect on not only us humans, but also life on this planet more generally. When it comes to places ...[Read More]
Geology for Global Development
Friday Photo (95) – Environmental Campaign in Jammu, India
“Keep Jammu Clean and Green” Signs like this are visible around Jammu & Kashmir State as part of a widespread environmental awareness campaign. Other slogans include ‘somebody is sitting in the shade today, because somebody planted a tree a long time ago’ and ‘My Earth, my duty’. (c) Geology for Global Development 2013
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Science snaps (2): Soufrière Saint Vincent
Soufrière Saint Vincent is youngest volcanic centre on the Caribbean island of St Vincent. A stratovolcano some 1,230m in height, La Soufrière has erupted five times in the last three hundred years, most notably in 1902 when 1,680 people were killed. The explosive volcanism here is the surface manifestation of the slow, westwards subduction of the American plate beneath the Caribbean plate, and is ...[Read More]
GeoLog
GeoTalk: Catharina Landström on the safe storage of nuclear waste
Following Science in Public 2013 I had the pleasure of talking to Catharina Landström about the social and technical challenges to the geological disposal of high-level radioactive waste… Could you introduce yourself and let us know what propelled you into a project looking at the issues surrounding geological disposal of radioactive waste? Specialising in Science and Technology Studies (STS ...[Read More]
Geology for Global Development
Building Scientific Technical Capacity in Developing Countries
The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology POSTnote Number 216 discusses the importance of building ‘Scientific Capacity in Developing Countries’. In short, this highlights how science and technology can play an important role in fighting poverty, disease and environmental degradation, and yet the numbers of researchers in the developing world falls well below other areas of t ...[Read More]
An Atom's-Eye View of the Planet
Eyeing up the weather on distant super-Earths
At the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan’s (NAOJ) Subaru Telescope has been turning its attention to distant worlds. Latest reports of blue-light observations from the telescope indicate that a super-Earth called Gilese 1214b (GJ 1214 b) appears to have a water-rich atmosphere. GJ 1214 b sits forty light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, nor ...[Read More]
Green Tea and Velociraptors
No Daily Mail, a 230 million year old amphibian is not a dinosaur..
The Daily Fail have struck again, this time the poor victim being the rather cool fossil, Metoposaurus diagnosticus. Metoposaurus is an amphibious, er, amphibian from Germany, Italy, Poland and Portugal, and a member of a group called temnospondyls. However, three times in an article published yesterday, the innocent amphibian is labeled as a ‘dinosaur’ – what did it ever to to d ...[Read More]