A substantial portion of my PhD involves contributing to the Pal[a]eobiology database, the largest current online database of global fossil occurrences, literature references, and taxonomic data. It’s a public resource, so anyone can access the information contained within the database (yay for open data!). The project is very much on-going, but currently over a million taxonomic occurrences ...[Read More]
GeoLog
GeoTalk: Dr Stephanie Henson
GeoTalk, featuring short interviews with geoscientists about their research, continues this month with a Q&A with Dr Stephanie Henson (University of Southampton) who tells us about her work on marine ecosystems, and gives great advice to young scientists. If you’d like to suggest a scientist for an interview, please contact Bárbara Ferreira. First, could you introduce yourself and let us ...[Read More]
Geology for Global Development
In the News – November 2012
GfGD’s Director, Joel Gill, shares some of the things that have caught his eye in the news recently: Natural Disaters: The past couple of weeks have seen a significant number of natural disasters, from earthquakes in Guatemala and Myanmar (Burma) to hurricanes in the Atlantic – impacting developing nations such as Haiti, and a landslide dam break in Indonesia. The earthquake in Guatemala tri ...[Read More]
Green Tea and Velociraptors
SpotOn London – a global conference
SpotOn London was held this weekend at the Wellcome Trust, shockingly, in London. The name stands for Science Policy, Outreach and Tools Online, with each of these representing three individual but strongly interwoven strands during the two days. As far as conferences go, it was pretty interactive. Each session was live-streamed, and through that and the power of Twitter –many people in each sessi ...[Read More]
GeoSphere
Geology Photo of the Week # 11 – Nov 11- 17
The Photo of the Week #11 is of a superb cave decoration from Kelly Hill caves located on Kangaroo Island, South Australia. I was there in 2009. Most cave decorations are draped against the wall of the cave. More rarely stalactites, stalagmites and other free hanging features form. These are usually perpendicular to the cave floor or ceiling much like icicles. However, even more rarely, odd shape ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Imaggeo on Mondays: Lake Louise, Alberta
The Canadian province of Alberta is known for its seemingly endless and pristine natural landscapes and the area surrounding Lake Louise, in Banff National Park, is no exception. Located at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, Lake Louise boasts a unique emerald colour as a result of rock flour – fine-grained, silt-sized particles of rock – carried into the lake by meltwater from nearby mountain glaci ...[Read More]
Geology for Global Development
Water Series (3): Arsenic Contamination in Drinking Water
Following our post about fluoride contamination last week, our water series is now focused on the equally serious problem of arsenic contamination. Some arsenic is present in all groundwater sources (see table 1). Of course this is only a problem if the arsenic has the chance to leak into groundwater as it filters through the rock. Arsenic leaching is more likely to occur in groundwater that is ho ...[Read More]
GeoSphere
A GeoPoetry Anthology – Accretionary Wedge #51 Compilation
Firstly, I would like to thank everyone that participated in this edition of the Accretionary Wedge. There were a few comments that the topic was somewhat out of people’s comfort zone so I am glad that there was still fantastic participation and people willing to try poetry writing out even if it was a different sort of medium. As you know poems come in all shapes, sizes and subjects and a k ...[Read More]
Geology for Global Development
Friday Photo (56): Photos from Industry – Copper Deposits in Fault Zones
The deposits on the surface of this sandstone are a distinctive shade of green – indicative of copper. Copper is mobilised and concentrated along fault zones. If you have any photos from time spent working in industry, that do not breach company copyright regulations, then please get in touch and we will publish them on our blog! (c) Geology for Global Development 2012
GeoLog
EGU Twitter Journal Club 5 — Policy briefing: Water resource resilience
It’s time for the fifth edition of the EGU’s Twitter Journal Club, our interactive online discussion about a timely scientific article. If you have not yet taken part in one of these discussions, read more about it in our introductory post and make sure to participate when we meet online next week! This time, we will be discussing the recent peer-reviewed policy briefing Water Resourc ...[Read More]