Sorry for the brief hiatus from blogging. This past week I was in Kenora and Dryden, Ontario getting into some great science outreach with an organization from uOttawa called Science Travels. Science Travels is a science outreach organization that sends science graduate students from the University of Ottawa and Carleton to northern communities to give …[Read More]
Latest posts
Big River Rising: a Tale of Seasonal Flooding in Manila
To highlight the importance of Christian Aid’s disaster risk reduction (DRR) work, partly funded by the UK government, the charity produced an interactive web documentary called Big River Rising, which demonstrates the importance of science in helping Filipino slum dwellers cope with the seasonal flooding that regularly destroys their shantytown homes. The web documentary was …[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: The Chalk Cliffs of Étretat
Étretat is a coastal region in northern France, well known for its stunning geological landscape. Particularly the headland you see here. Headland erosion is perhaps one of the best known processes in coastal erosion, where a crack in the headland is opened and enlarged by hydraulic abrasion. Continued wave action causes the widened crack or …[Read More]
Friday Photo (76): Geologists in the Field – Antarctic Research
Geologists hiding in their tents during a blizzard in Antarctica, as part of research carried our by the British Antarctic Survey. Credit: Rowan Whittle (c) Geology for Global Development 2013
Geosciences Column: Perfecting Palaeogeographic Reconstructions
We model the changes in the geographic location of continents via paleogeographic reconstructions. However, the current methodology for generating these reconstructions is not without problems! Publication of palaeogeographic reconstructions is scarce, probably resulting from the difficulties associated with generating them. Conventional reconstructions are presented as static maps which have poor spatial and temporal resolution. In …[Read More]
#GfGDcomp: Communicating Research Through Twitter and Blogs
GfGD encourages geoscientists to communicate science to the wider community, and we hope to help young geoscientists develop the necessary communication skills to do this. The use of social media, such as twitter, facebook and blogs, makes it a lot easier to reach out to a diverse range of people living in many different countries. …[Read More]
Communicating Climate Change
The UK House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee has recently launched an inquiry entitled “Climate Change: public understanding and its policy implications”, which is due to address the issue of communicating climate change research. This inquiry was raised following a recent surge in climate change scepticism and a diminishing public concern regarding its effects, with …[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Explosions in the Sky
Suwanosejima, which lies within the Ryukyu Islands, is one of Japan’s most active volcanoes, erupting almost continuously between the 1950s and mid 1990s. It has two active craters, the central Otake crater and the Bunka crater, to the southwest. While the frequency of these eruptions has declined, the volcano remains active, with strombolian and vulcanian …[Read More]
The early evolution of dinosaurs
Dinosaurs. What springs to mind when they’re mentioned? Colossal, towering sauropods? Packs of feisty feathered fiends? Or huge herds of hadrosaurs, chomping their way across the plains of long-lost worlds? Most, including myself, will automatically default to any one of these images when dinosaurs come up in conversation (what, you mean it’s not that frequent …[Read More]
Some Comments on Recent Earthquakes in Iran
In this article, Joel Gill and Faith Taylor write about the importance of reducing individual and community vulnerability in Iran. This post is written in response to the recent earthquakes in April 2013, and an article posted in the Guardian in 2010. In addition to their GfGD responsibilities, Joel and Faith are undertaking PhD research at King’s College …[Read More]