Feature Channels: Geology

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Every 405,000 years, gravitational tugs from Jupiter and Venus slightly elongate Earth’s orbit, an amazingly consistent pattern that has influenced our planet’s climate for at least 215 million years and allows scientists to more precisely date geological events like the spread of dinosaurs, according to a Rutgers-led study. The findings are published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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A new National Science Foundation grant awarded to Professor of Statistics Steve Wang will help him, his students, and a recent alumna decode why the Earth may be entering a modern extinction.

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When lava flows down the slope of a volcano, it can leave behind an extreme environment ideal for unusual microbial life and potential clues to answering the life on Mars question. Kansas State University geology professor Saugata Datta is one of the primary investigators of a new NASA study that will use a robotic vehicle to explore and collect data inside caves at Lava Beds National Monument in Northern California.

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Crescent dunes and meandering rivers can “forget” their initial shapes as they are carved and reshaped by wind and water while other landforms keep a memory of their past shape, suggests a new laboratory analysis by a team of mathematicians.

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The “Campus as a Living Lab” program uses the CSU itself to teach students real-world skills that are good for the planet and the future of California.

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A new earth modeling system unveiled today will have weather-scale resolution and use advanced computers to simulate aspects of Earth’s variability and anticipate decadal changes that will critically impact the U.S. energy sector in coming years.

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The latest research and experts on Wildfires in the Wildlife News Source

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A new recycling process developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Institute (CMI) turns discarded hard disk drive (HDD) magnets into new magnet material in a few steps, and tackles both the economic and environmental issues typically associated with mining e-waste for valuable materials.

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An unconventional mélange of algae, eucalyptus and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage appears to be a quirky ecological recipe. But, scientists from Cornell University, Duke University, and the University of Hawaii at Hilo have an idea that could use that recipe to help power and provide food protein to large regions of the world – and simultaneously remove carbon dioxide from Earth’s atmosphere.

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Although river diversions that bring land building sediment to shrinking coastlands are the best solution to sustaining portions of the Mississippi Delta, a new study says the rate of land building will likely be dwarfed by the rate of wetland loss.

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The CSU’s new Sustainability Report shows the progress we're making toward our ambitious goals for greener, more efficient campuses. Here are some of the ways we’re doing it.

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Internal climate migrants are rapidly becoming the human face of climate change, according to a new report from World Bank. Brent McCusker, a professor of geography at West Virginia University, has contributed to a study of migration projections in the developing world, including Ethiopia, Mexico and Bangladesh, to help inform government leaders of what to expect from future migration patterns as a result of climate change.

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How do plants “know” it is time to flower? A new study uncovers exactly where a key protein forms before it triggers the flowering process in plants.

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In a new study published in Nature Geoscience, researchers analyzed remote-sensing data from two lunar missions and concluded that water appears to be evenly spread across the surface of the moon, not confined to a particular region or type of terrain as previously thought. The study was led by Northern Arizona University planetary scientist Christopher Edwards.

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Earth has had moderate temperatures throughout its early history, and neutral seawater acidity. This means other rocky planets could likely also maintain this equilibrium and allow life to evolve.

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Scientists have directly measured the increasing greenhouse effect of methane at the Earth’s surface for the first time. A research team from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) tracked a rise in the warming effect of methane – one of the most important greenhouse gases for the Earth’s atmosphere – over a 10-year period at a DOE field observation site in northern Oklahoma.

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Deep underground, changes to rock layers are impacting the Earth’s surface. The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) April 1 Soils Matter blog explains how these deep layers inform our knowledge of surface soils.

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Sentinel 2 satellites have a higher spatial resolution and more spectral bands than Landsat 8, but Geospatial Sciences Center of Excellence researchers are combining their data to track changes in land cover and land use in the Upper Midwest.

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A study published in Science last week relies on extremely bright X-ray beams from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory to confirm the presence of naturally occurring water at least 410 kilometers below the Earth’s surface. This exciting discovery could change our understanding of how water circulates deep in the Earth’s mantle and how heat escapes from the lower regions of our planet.

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She may be the first researcher to simulate how the syrup responds to the complete range of plate motions observed at mid-ocean ridges. Up until now, computer simulations have struggled with representing the wandering of the ridges.

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Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast have discovered that the first people to inhabit Malta arrived 700 years earlier than history books indicate.

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The largest and most-devastating earthquakes and volcano eruptions occur where one tectonic plate is shifted underneath another one. A New Mexico State University researcher authored a paper published recently in “Nature Communications” that looks at the so-called subduction zones where the plates become “slabs” and sink into the Earth's mantle.

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By applying a new spectroscopy technique to garnet containing fragments of quartz, metamorphic petrologist Frank Spear of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute thinks he’s found the source of water that fuels earthquakes in volcanoes in subduction zones.

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A new study, which included experiments at Berkeley Lab, suggests that water may be more common than expected at extreme depths approaching 400 miles and possibly beyond – within Earth’s lower mantle. The study explored microscopic pockets of a trapped form of crystallized water molecules in a sampling of diamonds.

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Ancient trees in Mongolia dating back more than 2,000 years are helping place current and future climate change in context, according to a new West Virginia University-led study.

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A NASA-funded cube satellite built and operated by CU Boulder researchers will study the inner radiation belt of Earth’s magnetosphere, providing new insight into the energetic particles that can disrupt satellites and threaten spacewalking astronauts.

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Humans not only survived a massive volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago, they flourished during the resulting climate change that occurred, a new study by UNLV geoscientist Eugene Smith and colleagues found.

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There’s a lot more snow piling up in the mountains of North America than anyone knew, according to a first-of-its-kind study.

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A UNLV scientist has discovered the first direct evidence that fluid water pockets may exist as far as 500 miles deep into the Earth’s mantle.

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The century-old convention of daylight saving time takes effect this weekend but can be hard for our bodies to handle. Circadian rhythm expert Erik Herzog, of Washington University, offers some tips to help us adjust.

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Argonne researchers have found that in the next 100 years, already existing reforestation in the country could help topsoil absorb an additional 2 billion tons of carbon. Their work is detailed in a recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Researchers at the University of Notre Dame found that the complexity of a uranium-based mineral, dubbed ewingite, is nearly twice as high as the previous most complex mineral.

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High in Mongolia's Gobi Desert, the climate is so dry and cold that glaciers shrank during the last ice age. Dating of rock deposits shows how glaciers in this less-studied region can behave very differently as the climate shifts.

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Global models may be underestimating net wetland methane emissions.

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Historically mapping the amount of water content in soil is essential to determine whether crops will flourish, wildfires will ignite or floods will destroy the land. Employing deep learning technology to existing soil moisture data can help accurately predict these moisture changes over time, according to a team of Penn State researchers.

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A new study led by Boise State associate professor of geophysics Jeffrey Johnson has proven the potential for using volcanic infrasound – inaudible sounds produced by active volcanoes – to help forecast future catastrophic eruptions.

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Study shows how aerosols interacting with clouds can be accurately captured by sparse set of representative particles.

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UNLV research could help assess excavation sites for rover mission that hopes to secure evidence of past life on the red planet.

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Ugeographers sought to understand the factors fueling hate across space. Their findings paint a rather grim reality of America; hate is a national phenomenon, and more complicated than they imagined. The researchers mapped the patterns of active hate groups in every U.S. county in the year 2014, and analyzed their potential socioeconomic and ideological drivers.

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In the next 30 years, there is a one-in-three chance that the Hayward fault will rupture with a 6.7 magnitude or higher earthquake, according to the United States Geologic Survey (USGS). Such an earthquake will cause widespread damage to structures, transportation and utilities, as well as economic and social disruption in the East Bay.

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A research team at Case Western Reserve is asking an important question about the self-evident paradox standing in the way of our generally accepted theory of how the Earth's inner core formed. The "inner core nucleation paradox" suggests that there is now satisfactory solution to account for the existence of a solid inner core. So, now what?

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A study led by University of Colorado Boulder researchers provides new insight into the Moon's excessive equatorial bulge, a feature that solidified in place over four billion years ago as the Moon gradually distanced itself from the Earth.

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A huge increase in the number of man-made earthquakes in Oklahoma, USA, is strongly linked to the depth at which wastewater from the oil and gas industry is injected into the ground, according to a new study involving the University of Southampton.

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Plants and animals are generally thought to colonize from continents to islands, over time leading to the evolution of separate island species. But a new study published in the Journal of Biogeography suggests a re-thinking of colonizing patterns.