Over the last 40,000 years, ice sheets thousands of miles apart have been influencing each other through changes in sea level. An international team of researchers with the participation of the University of Bonn compared models of ice sheet changes during the latest ice age cycle with newly available geological records. The study, led by Natalya Gomez of McGill University in Montreal (Canada), shows for the first time that changes in the Antarctic ice sheet in the south during this…
A better understanding of iceberg melting and lake ice formation could provide new indicators of climate change. Eric Hester has spent the last three years chasing icebergs. A mathematics graduate student at the University of Sydney in Australia, Hester and researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts are studying how the shape of an iceberg shapes the way it melts. “Ice deforms as it melts,” said physical oceanographer Claudia Cenedese, who has worked with Hester on the project. “It…
Using NASA satellite imagery and software processing approaches, a group of geoscientists has discovered a landslide-generated tsunami threat in Barry Arm, Alaska, that will likely affect tourists and locals in the surrounding area in the next 20 years. The Barry Arm Glacier has diminished rapidly in the last decade due to climate change, causing the surrounding terrain to become unstable. The researchers found that the mountainside near the Barry Arm Glacier has moved 394 feet (120 meters) over the seven-year…
Tübingen University researchers uncover mechanism by which bacteria dissolve arsenic-bearing minerals – leading to groundwater contamination in Vietnam Arsenic is a toxin now widely present in rivers and groundwater in countries such as Bangladesh and Vietnam. It is released by the activity of microorganisms. Yet for a long time it was unclear what the microorganisms ate to release the arsenic. A team of geomicrobiologists led by Professor Andreas Kappler from the University of Tübingen has shown that the microbes break…
Researchers in Japan, the US and China say they have found more concrete evidence of the volcanic cause of the largest mass extinction of life. Their research looked at two discrete eruption events: one that was previously unknown to researchers, and the other that resulted in large swaths of terrestrial and marine life going extinct. There have been five mass extinctions since the divergent evolution of early animals 450 – 600 million years ago. The third was the largest one…
Among the most damaging natural hazards, earthquakes are still today one of the least understood phenomena in Earth Sciences. Earthquakes happen when rocks on either side of a tectonic fault slide. The sliding, however, does not occur along the whole fault at once but starts at one point, the hypocenter, and then spreads over the entire fault at a speed known as the “rupture speed” of the earthquake. Geophysicists are particularly interested in rupture speeds because the faster they are,…
A new method shows that it’s now possible to estimate the volume of magma stored below volcanoes providing essential information about the potential size of future eruptions. Most active volcanoes on Earth are dormant, meaning that they have not erupted for hundreds or even thousands of years, and are normally not considered hazardous by the local population. A team of volcanologists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), working in collaboration with the University of Heidelberg in Germany, has devised a…
A two-volume atlas presents and explains the impact sites of meteorites and asteroids worldwide Prof. Dr. Thomas Kenkmann, geologist from the University of Freiburg’s Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences, together with mineralogist Prof. Dr. Wolf Uwe Reimold from the University of Brasilia, Brazil, and Dr. Manfred Gottwald from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) published an atlas providing a comprehensive overview of all known impact craters on every continent. The authors present the more than 200 terrestrial impact sites in…
Heidelberg scientists study glacial lake outburst flood in the Himalaya Researchers from the South Asia Institute and the Heidelberg Center for the Environment of Ruperto Carola investigated the causes of a glacial lake outburst with subsequent flooding in the Ladakh region of India. In order to frame the case study in a larger picture, the research team led by geographer Prof. Dr Marcus Nüsser used satellite images to create a comprehensive survey of glacial lakes for the entire Trans-Himalyan region…
Research presented at the 2020 GSA Annual Meeting. If you’ve visited the beach recently, you might think sand is ubiquitous. But in construction uses, the perfect sand and gravel is not always an easy resource to come by. “Not all sand is equal in terms of what it can be used for,” notes Zack Sickman, coauthor of a new study to be presented on Thursday at the Geological Society of America annual meeting. He says concrete aggregate needs sand with…
EU project CONFER started – precipitation forecasts reduce the impacts of droughts and floods in East Africa. Developing more precise seasonal forecasts to improve food supply for a total of 365 million people in eleven countries in East Africa, this is the goal of the new CONFER project funded by the EU. In particular, more precise precipitation forecasts are deemed important to increase agricultural yields. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is one of nine partners of this international project that…
Presentation at the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America. Microplastics (plastics <5mm) and their negative health impacts have been studied in oceans, rivers, and even soils, and scientists are beginning to grapple with the myriad human health impacts their presence might have. One understudied, but critical, link in the cycle is groundwater, which is often a source of drinking water. While microplastics in groundwater likely affect human health, only a handful of studies have examined the abundance…
Research presented at the 2020 GSA Annual Meeting Floating gardens sound so idyllic. Now, a study proves that they are more than just a pretty place. The study, by researchers at Illinois State University, demonstrates that such constructed gardens can have a measurable, positive impact on water quality. Floating gardens are essentially rafts built on a frame of plastic caging, wrapped in coconut husks, and filled in with native plantings. As plants grow, they extend their roots into the water,…
New publication: a clearer picture of the sequence of glacial and interglacial periods During the last 2.6 million years of Earth’s climate has altered between glacial and interglacial states. As such, there have been times in which the transition between the two climate states appeared with either regular or irregular periodicity. AWI researcher Peter Köhler has now discovered that the irregular appearance of interglacials has been more frequent than previously thought. His study makes a significant contribution to our understanding…
TU Graz researchers discover new sediment archive for historical climate research. Geological investigations of low-temperature young deposits on the Styrian Erzberg provide paleoclimatology with new data on the earth’s history and its development. How has the climate changed in the course of the earth’s history? Which climatic processes have influenced the earth and its atmosphere? Paleoclimatology seeks answers to such questions in order to better understand climate changes and to derive forecasts for future climate scenarios. So-called sedimentary archives serve…
MIPT researchers Leopold Lobkovsky and Raissa Mazova, and their young colleagues from Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University have created a model of landslide-induced tsunamis that accounts for the initial location of the landslide body. Reported in Landslides, the model reveals that tsunami height is affected by the coastal slope and the position of the land mass before slipping. The highest and most devastating waves result from onshore landslide masses. This realization will make future predictions of tsunamis more accurate, as…
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