Human activity causes 10 times more erosion of continental surfaces than all natural processes combined, an analysis by a University of Michigan geologist shows.
People have been the main cause of worldwide erosion since early in the first millennium, said Bruce Wilkinson, a U-M professor of geological sciences. Wilkinson will present his findings Nov. 8 at a meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver, Colo.
Many researchers have tried to assess the im
In August and September of this year, three powerful icebreakers transited to the North Pole in search of a climate record stored in sediments below the Arctic Ocean floor. During the spectacular Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX), conducted by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), 340 meters of sediment core were retrieved from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean — a true “first.” With these sediments in hand, earth scientists for the first time can move away from pure speculation about the
The biggest mass extinction of all time happened 251 million years ago, at the Permian-Triassic boundary. Virtually all of life was wiped out, but the pattern of how life was killed off on land has been mysterious until now. A team from Bristol University and Saratov University, Russia, have now laid the evidence bare.
The Bristol and Russian researchers have documented the event in Russia after looking at 675 specimens of amphibians and reptiles from 289 areas spanning 13 success
The contract for a fourth Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) spacecraft was signed today, ensuring continuity of European meteorological satellite services with the delivery of data for weather forecasting, climate and the environment for many years into the future.
The contract and cooperation agreement for construction of the MSG-4 satellite were signed at ESA Headquarters in Paris by Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA Director General, Lars Prahm, EUMETSAT Director General, and Pascale
In 1998, Shuhai Xiao and colleagues reported finding thousands of 600 million year old embryo microfossils in the Neoproterozoic Doushantuo Formation, a fossil site near Weng’an, South China, (Xiao, S., Zhang, Y., and Knoll, A.H., 1998, “Three-dimensional preservation of algae and animal embryos in a Neoproterozoic phosphorite,” Nature, v. 391). Within the egg cases they examined at that time, they discovered animals in the first stages of development – from a single cell to only a few dozen cel
A Virginia Tech graduate student put a car battery and Hurricane Ivan to good use in his studies of sinkholes.
Benjamin Schwartz, a Ph.D. student in geosciences in the College of Science, who is from Doe Hill, Va., in Highland County, is using an innovative technique to characterize ground water movement in sinkholes. His goal is to recommend management strategies to reduce contamination of aquifers in regions that are rife with sinkholes. Hurricane Ivan’s downpour in South
Virginia Tech researchers from geosciences and biology are looking at where arsenic occurs in water, how it is getting there, and how to prevent it. They will present their findings at the 116th national meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver Nov. 7-10.
Since health data have demonstrated that arsenic is a carcinogen, the U.S. standard for arsenic in drinking water has been lowered from 50 to 10 parts per billion, which is the same as the European Union stand
Yesterday, an important milestone was reached in the development of ESA’s GOCE (Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer) mission, when a contract, worth €7.8 million, was signed between ESA and the Institute for Astronomical and Physical Geodesy (IAPG) from the Technical University of Munich.
The contract means that the scientific data resulting from the GOCE mission will be analysed by a consortium of 10 European universities and research institutes led by
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and NASA scientists studying Mount St. Helens are using high-tech Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technology to analyze changes in the surface elevation of the crater, which began deforming in late September 2004.
With data derived from airborne LIDAR, scientists can accurately map, often in exquisite detail, the dimensions of the uplift and create better models to forecast volcanic hazards. LIDAR shows, in the two weeks before Oct. 4, the new upl
Scientists in the department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University have devised a method to precisely date the timing and temperature of a meteorite impact on Mars that led to ejection of a piece of the planet into space and its eventual impact on Earth.
Meteorites are the main source of mass exchange between planets and carry with them characteristic clues about the nature and history of the planets or planetesimals where they originated, the impacts that dislodged them, a
Remains of a dinosaur new to Russia have been found in the town of Blagoveshchensk and described by a Russian paleontologist. Previously, remains of the nearest relations of this pangolin – Kerberosaur – were found only in North America.
An unusual scull of a large dinosaur that lived in the Late Cretaceous (approximately 70 million years ago) was found in the territory of Blagoveshchensk by paleontologist Yuri Bolotsky, specialist of the Amir Comprehensive Scientific Research Ins
A team led by Jacques Laskar from the Institut de Mécanique Céleste et de Calcul des Ephémérides (IMCCE) and the Paris Observatory has released new computational results for the long-term evolution of the orbital and rotational motion of the Earth. Following Milankovitch’s theory of the paleoclimate that describes how major climatic changes on Earth are affected by astronomical events, these results have been employed to provide a new calibration of the sedimentary records over the 0 – 23.03
Glacier regression in the tropical Andes has accelerated considerably over the past 30 years. This change is cause for great concern, insofar as many regions of the Andes depend on the Cordillera’s glaciers for their water supply (2).
In 1991 scientists from the IRD research unit Great Ice (UR032) set up an observation network, jointly with their Bolivian, Peruvian and Ecuadorian partners. This system takes in a dozen glaciers along the Andes between the Equator and longitude 16
The mechanisms behind rock-weathering processes can provide vital clues for understanding and reconstructing the history of ancient environments and visualizing the physical conditions in which they were formed, especially climatic situations. Thick ancient coverings of weathered material such as laterites are still the most intensively studied to date. However, little is known about the initial stages of weathering, owing to the rare occurrence of well-preserved examples.
As a c
Earthquakes can be triggered by the Earth’s tides, UCLA scientists confirmed Oct. 21 in Science Express, the online journal of Science. Earth tides are produced by the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun on the Earth, causing the ocean’s waters to slosh, which in turn raise and lower stress on faults roughly twice a day. Scientists have wondered about the effects of Earth tides for more than 100 years. (The research will be published in the print version of Science in November.
Today sees ESA’s first ever microsatellite complete three years of successful operations. The size of a large television set, Proba was launched to demonstrate new technologies for future European spacecraft, but continues to provide fantastic images of Earth.
“It is amazing what we have got out of Proba, our first micro-satellite,” says Frederic Teston, ESA’s Proba Project Manager. “The mission has successfully demonstrated a number of sophisticated technologies in addi
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