Kilauea eruption fosters algae bloom in North Pacific Ocean
University of Southern California (USC)Volcanoes are often feared for their destructive power, but a new study reminds us that they can foster new growth.
Volcanoes are often feared for their destructive power, but a new study reminds us that they can foster new growth.
An international team of subsurface explorers from the University of Adelaide in Australia and the University of Aberdeen in Scotland have uncovered a previously undescribed ‘Jurassic World’ of around 100 ancient volcanoes buried deep within the Cooper-Eromanga Basins of central Australia.
While it's important to evaluate geoengineering proposals from an informed position, the best way to reduce climate risk is to reduce emissions
A volcano will not send out an official invitation when it’s ready to erupt, but a team of researchers suggest that scientists who listen and watch carefully may be able to pick up signs that an eruption is about to happen. In a study of Hawaii's Kīlauea volcano, the researchers reported that pressure changes in the volcano’s summit reservoirs helped explain the number of earthquakes — or seismicity — in the upper East Rift Zone. This zone is a highly active region where several eruptions have occurred over the last few decades, including a spectacular one in 2018.
Floating air particles following disasters and other geological events can have a lasting impact on life on Earth, and a new model drawing on chaos theory looks to help predict how these particles move, with an eye toward applications for geoengineering. Using available wind data, Tímea Haszpra developed a model for following particles as they travel around the globe. Using it, she has generated maps that can be used to predict how particles will be dispersed above the world.
Volatile elements in magma, primarily water, drive explosive volcanic eruptions. The tricky part is determining just how much volatile content was present before the eruption took place. This is especially difficult when the only evidence scientists have to go on is the end product after all the volatiles have been lost.
Growing up riding four-wheelers and collecting rocks near her grandparents’ cabin in the valleys wedged between the Rocky Mountains, Shelby Isom’s childhood was an adventure.
A swarm of more than 3,000 small earthquakes in the Maple Creek area (in Yellowstone National Park but outside of the Yellowstone volcano caldera) between June 2017 and March 2018 are, at least in part, aftershocks of the 1959 quake.
Ashfall from ancient volcanic explosions is the likely source of a strange mineral deposit near the landing site for NASA's next Mars rover
In 2020, NASA and European-Russian missions will look for evidence of past life on Mars.
Far below Bermuda’s pink sand beaches and turquoise tides, geoscientists have discovered the first direct evidence that material from deep within Earth’s mantle transition zone – a layer rich in water, crystals and melted rock – can percolate to the surface to form volcanoes.
Aaron Marshall studies mafic magma on Llaima Volcano in Chile
Researchers from the University of Oxford have traced the origin of a pre-historic eruption that blanketed the Mediterranean region in ash 29,000 years ago
By acting as gatekeepers, microbes can affect geological processes that move carbon from the earth's surface into its deep interior
Up to about 19 percent more carbon dioxide than previously believed is removed naturally and stored underground between coastal trenches and inland chains of volcanoes, keeping the greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere, according to a study in the journal Nature. Surprisingly, subsurface microbes play a role in storing vast amounts of carbon by incorporating it in their biomass and possibly by helping to form calcite, a mineral made of calcium carbonate, Rutgers and other scientists found.
Researchers say mercury buried in ancient rock provides the strongest evidence yet that volcanoes caused the biggest mass extinction in the history of the Earth.
Cornell University postdoctoral researcher Kevin Reath has merged 17 years of satellite data on volcanoes with ground-based detail to form a model for state-of-the-art volcanic eruption prediction.
Not by meteorite alone did the dinosaurs die off. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory research scientist Kyle Samperton and colleagues present the most compelling evidence yet that massive volcanic eruptions in the Deccan Traps region of India contributed to the fall of the dinosaurs – also known as the end-Cretaceous mass extinction – approximately 66 million years ago.
A team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, has used satellite technology provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) to uncover why the Agung volcano in Bali erupted in November 2017 after 50 years of dormancy.
For all their destructive power, most volcanic eruptions are local events. Lava flows tend to reach only a few miles at most, while airborne ash and soot travel a little farther. But occasionally
Around 56 million years ago, global temperatures spiked. Researchers at Uppsala University and in the UK now show that a major explosive eruption from the Red Hills on the Isle of Skye may have been a contributing factor to the massive climate disturbance. Their findings have been published in the journal Scientific Reports.
The recent eruption of Anak Krakatau – which means “son of Krakatau” – is providing URI researchers Stephan Grilli and Steven Carey with a new opportunity to gain additional insights and create models that they hope will help the United States better prepare for future tsunamis.
What happens when lava and water meet? Explosive experiments with manmade lava are exploring this question. This long-term, ongoing study published its first results on Dec. 10, and aims to shed light on the basic physics of lava-water interactions, which are common in nature but poorly understood.
The temperatures associated with the earth’s subduction zones have been historically miscalculated, which has major implications for our understanding of how the planet’s deadliest earthquakes and volcanic arcs are generated.
Eruption patterns in a New Zealand volcanic system reveal how the movement of magma rising through the crust leads to smaller, more frequent eruptions.
Evidence left by a volcano under the ice sheet suggests that the observed bulging of ice in West Antarctica is a short-term feature that may not affect the glacier’s motion over the long term.
Among the lions and zebras in Tanzania in the summer heat, a West Virginia University environmental geoscience student explored the geography of the land. Weirton, West Virginia, native Francesca Basil (BA Environmental Geoscience, 2018) traveled to the East African country in summer 2018.
Volcanic craters, fumeroles and hot springs mark the rugged landscape of São Miguel island, in the remote Portuguese Azores, where undergraduate students from Washington University in St. Louis traveled to study field geology techniques.
Chanel Vidal, an Iowa State University sophomore in geology, returns to campus after a whirlwind summer working aboard a research vessel in the Atlantic Ocean, studying the Deccan Traps in India and collecting gas samples from an active volcano in the Canary Islands.
Study constrains the history of volatile transport from the atmosphere into the deep Earth
What inspired the iconic red-and-yellow sky in The Scream, the painting by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch that sold for a record $119.9 million in 2012? Some say it was a volcanic sunset after the 1883 Krakatau eruption. Others think the wavy sky shows a scream from nature. But scientists at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, University of Oxford and University of London suggest that nacreous, or “mother of pearl,” clouds which can be seen in the southern Norway inspired the dramatic scene in the painting. Their study is published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. “What’s screaming is the sky and the person in the painting is putting his or her hands over their ears so they can’t hear the scream,” said Alan Robock, study co-author and distinguished professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers–New Brunswick. “If you read what Munch wrote, the sky was screaming blood and fire.” There are four known versions of The Scream: an 1893 tempera o
Evidence from rocks in Yosemite National Park suggests that granite stored in the Earth’s crust is partially molten at 500 degrees Celsius, nearly 200 degrees lower than had previously been believed.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison study examines the geologic changes of the Maule volcanoes, located in a region in Chile that has seen enormous eruptions during the last million years
The discovery and other findings, which are critical to understanding the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, of which the Pine Island Glacier is a part, are published in the paper, “Evidence of an active volcanic heat source beneath the Pine Island Glacier,” in the latest edition of Nature Communications.
A team of University of Chicago scientists ran quantum simulations to develop a new model of the behavior of water at extremely high temperatures and pressures. The computational measurements, published June 18 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, should help scientists understand water’s role in the makeup of the mantle and potentially in other planets.
Millions of years ago, powerful volcanoes pumped Earth's atmosphere full of carbon dioxide, draining the oceans of oxygen and driving widespread extinction of marine organisms. Could something similar be happening today?
New cracks and lava leaks on Hawai’i near two established volcano vents pose significant hazards for the area’s residents, and not only from the currents of lava flow creeping toward the Pacific Ocean. According to Graham Andrews, West Virginia University volcanologist, large earthquakes and repeated small, explosions at the volcanos, plus toxic gases and vapors released from the lava and where the it enters the ocean are likely to make breathing difficult, a combination that is making life on Hawai’i perilous.
The findings, published today in Cell by scientists at Van Andel Research Institute (VARI), University of Georgia (UGA) and Washington State University, detail the structure of MBH, a molecular complex involved in microbial respiration. The near-atomic resolution images are the first ever of MBH and show that its structure is remarkably similar to its counterpart in humans, Complex I.