Philippe Leloup brings us this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays, with tales from a mountain trail that show a geologist can never resist a good rock! This image is that of a polished slab of a rock composed of interlayered marbles and amphibolites. The sample was once part of a small dry-stone wall bordering an outdoor kitchen along a trail along the Ailao Mountain Range in China (or Ailao Shan in Chines ...[Read More]
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Geology for Global Development
Help us Teach Hazards in the Himalayas
Geology for Global Development are involved in an international project on Sustainable Resource Development of the Himalaya (see www.gfgd.org/projects/himalayas2014), which will cumulate in the delivery of a students’ programme in Ladakh, India, in June 2014. The programme will include lessons on resources, climate, earthquakes and landslides. GfGD have particular responsibility for delivering the ...[Read More]
Soil System Sciences
Monday paper: Interplay of riparian forest and groundwater in the hillslope hydrology of Sudanian West Africa (northern Benin)
Richard, A., Galle, S., Descloitres, M., Cohard, J.-M., Vandervaere, J.-P., Séguis, L., and Peugeot, C. 2013. Interplay of riparian forest and groundwater in the hillslope hydrology of Sudanian West Africa (northern Benin), Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 17, 5079-5096. DOI: 10.5194/hess-17-5079-2013. Abstract Forests are thought to play an important role in the regional dynamics of the West A ...[Read More]
Soil System Sciences
Soil color never lies
Often, soil color is described using general terms such as “brown”, “red”, “dark”, etc. When I talk about this issue for the first time with my students of Soil Science, I use to ask them how to describe the color of a soil sample. Normally, in a few seconds, I get a list of color names ranging from dark brown to bright red, including “chocolate”, “coffee” and “ ...[Read More]
Soil System Sciences
The Fire Research Institute, more than three decades of Fire Science
Jason Greenlee jasongreenlee@hotmail.com The Fire Research Institute (FRI) was founded in 1983 as a non-profit organization with the lofty goal of promoting world peace through fire science. The concept was stolen from Richard Nixon, who, you will remember, opened up relations between the US and China by sending a ping-pong team to visit China. I thought that more scientific interaction between na ...[Read More]
GeoSphere
Opening of #AESRC2014
Today marks the opening of the 13th annual AESRC conference at uOttawa. The AESRC (Advances in Earth Science Research) is the geology conference in Canada that is organized by and for graduate students only. This year uOttawa is the host and March has been a ridiculously busy month preparing to host AESRC for over 120 delegates including faculty from uOttawa and other Canadian geology departments ...[Read More]
Green Tea and Velociraptors
The future of scientific publishing
Last night, the Society of Spanish Researchers in the UK, SRUK, hosted an event discussing the past, present and future of scientific publishing (event details). One thing that was nice about this discussion, compared to previous ones I’ve attended in London, was the number of practising academics in the room. Often, academics are excluded from the discussions about scholarly publishing, whi ...[Read More]
Geology for Global Development
Friday Photo (121) – Landscapes of Ladakh
Next week we’ll be announcing two new ways you can get involved with our hazards education programme in Ladakh (taking place in June 2014). Here is another of Rosalie Tostevin’s fantastic images from the region. Credit: Rosalie Tostevin
GeoLog
Sniffing out signs of an earthquake
Last year Kate Ravilious was awarded an EGU Science Journalism Fellowship to follow scientists studying continental faults. Now she’s out in Nepal alongside researchers who are working out when the county’s next big quake will be… Sometimes the best rocks are found in the worst locations. Yesterday I was reminded of this as I watched Paul Tapponnier, from the Earth Observatory of Singapore, ...[Read More]
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Science Snap (#22) Landslide in Washinton state
This week, the world has been shocked by images of devastation after a huge landslide buried the town of Oso, north of Seattle, in Washington state, USA. At 11:00 PDT on Saturday 22nd March 2014, a 500m-wide section of mud and rock became detached from a hillside above the 180 population town, and hurtled down the slope at high speed. Deposits from the landslip are up to 6m deep and cover over a s ...[Read More]