Feature Channels: Geology

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Some Himalayan glaciers are more resilient to global warming than previously predicted, new research suggests.

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Nearly three-quarters of Earth's land had been transformed by humans by 10,000BC, but new research shows it largely wasn't at the expense of the natural world.

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A person who owns a car or who has a college education may be less vulnerable to COVID-19, according to an analysis of cases in Tehran, Iran, one of the early epicenters of the pandemic.

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A team of researchers used geographic information systems — a collection of tools for geographic mapping and analysis of the Earth and society — and data from a government database on mafia ties during the 1960s, to examine how these networks were built, maintained and grown. The researchers said that this spatial social networks study offers a unique look at the mafia’s loosely affiliated criminal groups. Often called families, these groups were connected — internally and externally — to maintain a balance between security and effectiveness, referred to as the efficiency-security tradeoff.

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While attention has been focused on the Perseverance rover that landed on Mars last month, its predecessor Curiosity continues to explore the base of Mount Sharp on the red planet and is still making discoveries.

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Karen G. Havholm—former asst vice chancellor for research and sponsored programs, and former director of the Center of Excellence for Faculty and Undergraduate Student Research Collaboration at UW–Eau Claire—has been elected to a second term as treasurer of the Council on Undergraduate Research.

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Growing up in rural South Africa, Michelle Bester always aspired to pursue graduate school internationally. Today, she is living that dream as a geography student studying how remote sensing technology can help prevent and control wildfires.

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Tsunamis pose a real threat to the California coast, even if the triggering earthquakes occur elsewhere. CSU researchers are helping ensure coastal cities are ready.

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Matt Kaplinski, a senior research associate in Northern Arizona University’s School of Earth and Sustainability (SES), is the principal investigator on a project, “Long Term Monitoring of Sediment Resources and Channel Substrates of the Colorado River in Grand Canyon National Park,” designed to study how the sandbars in the river may be preserved through conservation management.

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Researchers looking at miniscule levels of plutonium pollution in our soils have made a breakthrough which could help inform future 'clean up' operations on land around nuclear power plants, saving time and money.

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Every year 600-900 million tons of carbon flow through rivers to the ocean either as particles or in dissolved form.

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The University of Delaware's Donald Sparks, a global leader in environmental soil chemistry for more than 30 years, has won the 2021 Philippe Duchaufour Medal given by the European Geosciences Union.

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What would a volcano – and its lava flows – look like on a planetary body made primarily of metal? A pilot study offers insights into ferrovolcanism that could help scientists interpret landscape features on other worlds.

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A team of researchers from Sandia National Laboratories and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory have developed a new system to model the likelihood of finding methane hydrate and methane gas that was tested in a region of seafloor off the coast of North Carolina. This test was published on March 14 in the scientific journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.

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Over the course of Earth’s history, several mass extinction events have destroyed ecosystems, including one that famously wiped out the dinosaurs. But none were as devastating as “The Great Dying,” which took place 252 million years ago during the end of the Permian period.

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Lightning strikes were just as important as meteorites in creating the perfect conditions for life to emerge on Earth, geologists say.

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U scientists were ready to jump at the opportunity to get an unprecedented look at the workings of Steamboat Geyser. Their findings provide a picture of the depth of the geyser as well as a redefinition of a long-assumed relationship between the geyser and a nearby spring.

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A new study by University of Chicago and Stanford University researchers suggests that hot, rocky exoplanets could not only develop atmospheres full of water vapor, but keep them for long stretches.

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: Most of the carbon contained in soil is in the form of organic matter. Scientists do not fully understand how variation in plant inputs, microbial communities, and soil physical and chemical attributes influence the makeup of this organic matter. A new study found that soil in switchgrass fields had more water-soluble carbon compounds than soil in corn fields, an important finding for biofuel crop selection.

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Several years after scientists discovered what was considered the oldest crater a meteorite made on the planet, another team found it's actually the result of normal geological processes.

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Manure improves soil and microbe community

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Geoscientists at Sandia National Laboratories used 3D-printed rocks and an advanced, large-scale computer model of past earthquakes to understand and prevent earthquakes triggered by energy exploration.

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For the first time, two researchers--one from the University of Copenhagen and the other from Columbia University--have accurately dated the arrival of the first herbivorous dinosaurs in East Greenland.

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The Landslide Atlas of Kerala sets a new standard for determining risk in a landslide-prone region and will help the residents and policymakers of the state make decisions to better mitigate life-threatening disasters.

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A new study that characterizes the climate of Mars over the planet’s lifetime reveals that in its earliest history it was periodically warmed, yet remained relatively cold in the intervening periods, thus providing opportunities and challenges for any microbial life form that may have been emerging.

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Soil fertility remains low due to removal of radioactive soils

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When a block of ice the size of Houston, Texas, broke off from East Antarctica's Amery Ice Shelf in 2019, scientists had anticipated the calving event, but not exactly where it would happen.

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The study gives the first detailed description of a volcanic eruption from Sierra Negra found on Isla Isabela - the largest of the Galápagos Islands and home to nearly 2,000 people.

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One year after COVID-19 rapidly transformed university learning, professors reflect on tools for resiliency.

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Earthquakes in the Black Rock Desert are rare and capturing the seismic recordings from these earthquakes provides a glimpse into the volcanic system of the Black Rock Desert that, while not showing any signs of erupting, is still active.

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NUS historian of science Dr John van Wyhe has co-published a groundbreaking new book on Charles Darwin which shows for the first time the extent of his cultural impact over the past 160 years. A decade in the making, this volume demonstrates that Darwin is the most influential scientist who has ever lived, having the most species named after him and he is also the most translated scientist in history.

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A dozen Sandia National Laboratories employees volunteer to go off the beaten trail and give back to their community by participating in wilderness searches and rescues. As members of the Albuquerque Mountain Rescue Council, they use their technical expertise to solve the complex challenges involved in finding lost hikers and hoisting injured rock climbers to safety.

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Radioactive Cesium expected to be contained in the forest

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Scientists have long used information from sediments at the bottom of the ocean to reconstruct the conditions in oceans of the past. But a study in Science Advances raises concerns about the common use of pyrite sulfur isotopes to reconstruct Earth's evolving oxidation state. These signals aren't the global fingerprint of oxygen in the atmosphere, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

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A new study using leading edge technology has shed surprising light on the ancient habitat where some of the first dinosaurs roamed in the UK around 200 million years ago.

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Spring snowmelt in the Alps is occurring earlier in the year due to climate change and as a result triggering abrupt deviations in mountain ecosystems. These changes could negatively affect the functioning of these valuable ecosystems.

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The new era of space exploration features two Stony Brook University faculty members as part of the development of NASA’s Mars2020 Perseverance rover that recently landed. Distinguished Professor Scott McLennan and Associate Professor Joel Hurowitz both worked on the PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry) that is attached to the arm of the rover. The PIXL is a micro-focus X-ray fluorescence instrument that rapidly measures elemental chemistry by focusing an X-ray beam to a tiny spot on the target rock or soil, analyzing the induced X-ray fluorescence. Both professors have been working on Mars missions with NASA since 2004.

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There are millions of unplugged oil wells in the United States, which pose a serious threat to the environment. Using drones, researchers from Binghamton University, State University of New York have developed a new method to locate these hard-to-locate and dangerous wells.

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The last complete reversal of the Earth's magnetic field, the so-called Laschamps event, took place 42,000 years ago.

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A research team including the geobiologist Dr. Helge Missbach from the University of Cologne has detected organic molecules and gases trapped in 3.5 billion-year-old rocks.

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Experimental microbially assisted chemolithotrophy provides an opportunity to trace the putative bioalteration processes of the Martian crust. A study on the Noachian Martian breccia Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034 composed of ancient (ca. 4.5 Gyr old) crustal materials from Mars, led by ERC grantee Tetyana Milojevic from the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Vienna, now delivered a unique prototype of microbial life experimentally designed on a real Martian material. As the researchers show in the current issue of "Nature Communications Earth and Environment", this life of a pure Martian design is a rich source of Martian-relevant biosignatures.

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PNNL researchers discover a new route to forming complex crystals

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Drilling a 270,000-year old core from a Tasmanian lake has provided the first Australian record of a major global event where the Earth's magnetic field 'switched '- and the opportunity to establish a precedent for developing new paleomagnetic dating tools for Australian archaeology and paleosciences.

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Advances in astronomical observations have resulted in the discovery of an extraordinary number of extrasolar planets, some of which are believed to have a rocky composition similar to Earth. Learning more about their interior structure could provide important clues about their potential habitability. Led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), a team of researchers aims to unlock some of these secrets by understanding the properties of iron oxide – one of the constituents of Earth’s mantle – at the extreme pressures and temperatures that are likely found in the interiors of these large rocky extrasolar planets.

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Rivers and lakes at high latitudes are considered to be major sources for greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, but these losses are poorly constrained.

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How did rocks rust on Earth and turn red? A Rutgers-led study has shed new light on the important phenomenon and will help address questions about the Late Triassic climate more than 200 million years ago, when greenhouse gas levels were high enough to be a model for what our planet may be like in the future.

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Researchers from the University of Delaware are part of a team studying the impact climate change and resulting sea level rise is having on the soil underneath coastal military bases. The study is funded by a $3.79 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense.

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Volcanologists from the University of Georgia and two Swiss universities found a link between carbon dioxide and the volume of gas trapped in magma, which could help predict the intensity and magnitude of a volcanic eruption.