KT Cooper is a PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. A carbonate geochemist by training, she is currently on a three-month secondment to Houston, Texas, USA working with Exxon Mobil. Recently, I was lucky enough to visit a fellow Bristol Earth Sciences PhD student in Vancouver, Washington for a weekend of volcano-spotting (and hiking) in the Cascades. As a non-v ...[Read More]
If you didn't find what you was looking for try searching again.
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]
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]
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]
Geology Jenga
Introducing The 10 minute Interview!
The Ten Minute Interview is a feature we will run regularly as part of our blog. Dan and I feel passionate about promoting the work of Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and also all the people behind the scenes who actually make research happen. The unsung heroes of our labs if you like; technicians and support staff. The key idea is that it shouldn’t take long to read these interviews, you sh ...[Read More]
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Kenya’s rumbling volcanoes
In the Kenyan Rift, where volcanoes are numerous, satellite observations have identified ground deformation at a number of volcanic centers. Radar images reveal that shallow magma systems may be active under at least four of the volcanoes in Kenya, but whether the signals are driven by an influx of new magma remains to be determined. Here I explain the background and basis of my PhD project, and ...[Read More]