People in earthquake-prone California often talk about the “Big One,” a devastating quake that many experts say will surely strike the region sometime in the future.

A research team is now working to predict when the big one – and even little ones – might occur. Termed SAFOD (San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth), the project involves more than 20 researchers from several major universities, labs and government agencies, including the husband-wife team of Fred and Judi Chester

Animals are in constant competition over procreative resources. The interests of the individual and the population are not necessarily one and the same; aggressive insects may fare well in the mating competition, but eventually the proliferation of aggressive genes will weaken the procreative efficiency of the species.

Species differ, however, in how co-operative or selfish they are. Hanna Kokko, Professor of Animal Ecology, at the University of Helsinki, says that, for example,

Using advanced remote-sensing techniques from a U-2 surveillance plane and field studies, scientists from the Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology have for the first time determined large-scale interactions between ecosystems and the climate during the process of desertification. The study, to be published in the January 2005 issue of Global Change Biology, is a milestone both for the new methods employed and for understanding what is happening as agricultural and grazing lands chang

A study conducted by an expert at the University of Sheffield and officials at NASA has found that while Greenland’s ice is certainly thinning, snowfall in some areas is increasing, with levels in south-east Greenland in the past year being three times higher than is usual. This opens debate as to how global warming will affect Greenland’s ice sheet and could mean that it remains stable, as thinning ice is offset by increased snowfall, which will replace the melted ice.

Edward Han

Europe’s coastlines are exposed to risk of pollution. I-MARQ’s prototype Geographical Information System (GIS) delivers detailed information on coastal water quality, helping decision makers shore up defences by taking appropriate action against contamination.

A recent Communication from the European Commission highlights some of the issues the IST-funded i-MARQ project aims to solve: “Our coastal zones are facing serious problems of habitat destruction, water contamination, coast

Imagine a lake three times the size of the present-day Lake Ontario breaking through a dam and flooding down the Hudson River Valley past New York City and into the North Atlantic. The results would be catastrophic if it happened today, but it did happen some 13,400 years ago during the retreat of glaciers over North America and may have triggered a brief cooling known as the Intra-Allerod Cold Period.

Assistant Scientist Jeffrey Donnelly of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Botrytis cinerea (grey mould) has a large arsenal of molecular pumps at its disposal to protect it against toxic substances such as antibiotics, plant defence compounds and fungicides. Dutch researcher Henk-jan Schoonbeek saw how the fungus started to pump out certain toxic substances within just 15 minutes.

Botrytis cinerea causes rot in fruit and vegetables and is therefore a major problem for growers in horticulture and viniculture. Unfortunately, it is scarcely affected by natur

A unique monitoring system in place on the island of Montserrat can record the everyday changes beneath the Soufriere Hills volcano and throughout the island, according to an international team of volcanologists.

The CALIPSO project (Caribbean Andesite Lava Island Precision Seismo-geodetic Observatory) is the first volcano monitoring system of its type installed at an andesitic volcano. Andesite volcanoes are the most important volcano type making up the Earth’s Ring of Fire, and h

Earthquakes are not unusual in the San Francisco Bay Area, but a team of Penn State geoscientists believes that the hazard may be greater than previously thought because of a hidden fault under Marin County.

“We think we have evidence that there is an additional earthquake hazard in the San Francisco area due to a blind thrust fault,” says Dr. Kevin P. Furlong, professor of geosciences. “Blind thrust faults are notorious because they are hard to find until an earthquake occurs on t

A vision for the future of Southampton Oceanography Centre (SOC) is revealed today by the Director designate, Professor Edward Hill.

Professor Hill’s vision is for the Centre to be recognised internationally as the focus for oceanography in the UK. It will be renamed the ‘National Oceanography Centre, Southampton’ from 1 May 2005, when Professor Hill takes up his appointment, heralding the start of a new era for oceanographic and earth science research and education in this country

Small relative of rabbits vanished from over a third of US sites studied in WWF-funded research

WWF-funded research by Dr. Erik Beever of the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed that American pika populations in the Great Basin region are continuing to disappear as the Earth’s climate warms. “Population by population, we’re witnessing some of the first contemporary examples of global warming apparently contributing to the local extinction of an American mammal at sites across an entire

Dirty cigarette butts on pavements could be a thing of the past if an idea from two Northumbria University students takes off.

Lisa Hanking and Lucy Denham came up with the concept of a biodegradable cigarette – and took joint first prize in a sustainability project organised by Northumbria’s School of Design and Chester-le-Street District Council.

The “environmentally-friendly’’ cigarette uses expandable vegetable starch for the filter which would simply be washed away by

Scientists working at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission have developed a new way to interpret data from satellites observing the earth. The satellites monitor the nature, state and evolution of the earth’s vegetation. This enhanced monitoring capacity will make it more possible to determine the impact of major climatic events, such as the severe drought and heatwave in Western Europe in 2003. The new method involves the use of practical algorithms to interpret remote sensing data

Two months from now comes a landmark day in planetary history: the Kyoto Protocol finally comes into legal force on 16 February 2005. However Kyoto was intended only as an initial step in mitigating climate change: a 6000-strong Buenos Aires gathering due to conclude today has spent a fortnight discussing follow-up strategies, with ESA among them.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change aims to lessen the effects of climate change by se

It won’t quite be a white Christmas for Professor Nick Petford, but the Kingston University geologist will see in the New Year in sub-zero temperatures. Professor Petford, from the Centre for Earth and Environmental Science Research, flies out to Antarctica on December 27 to investigate the ancient interiors of volcanoes. He has been selected as one of only 25 participants from around the world to take part in a month-long expedition to the remote McMurdo Dry Valleys region.

Although vo

This ultra high-resolution sea surface temperature map of the Mediterranean could only have been made with satellites. Any equivalent ground-based map would need almost a million and a half thermometers placed into the water simultaneously, one for every two square kilometres of sea.

This most detailed ever heat map of all 2 965 500 square kilometres of the Mediterranean, the world’s largest inland sea is being updated on a daily basis as part of ESA’s Medspiration proje