Feature Channels: Geology

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Lower ball bounce, less friction make for fast paced play

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Pioneering research has revealed the erosion of ancient sediments found deep beneath Antarctic ice could be a vital and previously unknown source of nutrients and energy for abundant microbial life.

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Roads, bridges, pipelines and other types of infrastructure in Alaska and elsewhere in the Arctic will deteriorate faster than expected due to a failure by planners to account for the structures' impact on adjacent permafrost, according to research by a University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute permafrost expert and others.

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A team of researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, University of Minnesota, and U.S. Geological Survey have developed a new machine learning technique that could improve environmental predictions.

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A new analysis of Venus’ surface shows evidence of tectonic motion in the form of crustal blocks that have jostled against each other like broken chunks of pack ice.

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The history of pyroclastic surges is written in the landscapes they ravage. Volcanic dunes and other deposits hold debris from ancient eruptions, as do craters marking sites of ancient blasts. This study focuses on Ubehebe and El Elegante.

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Associate professor Laura Wasylenki co-authored a new paper in Nature Communications that presents the results of nickel isotope analyses on Late Permian sedimentary rocks. The results demonstrate the power of nickel isotope analyses, which are relatively new, to solve long-standing problems in the geosciences.

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In Japan, thousands of homes and businesses and hundreds of lives have been lost to typhoons. But now, researchers have revealed that a new flood forecasting system could provide earlier flood warnings, giving people more time to prepare or evacuate, and potentially saving lives.

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Geologic activity on Earth appears to follow a 27.5-million-year cycle, giving the planet a "pulse," according to a new study published in the journal Geoscience Frontiers.

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Footprints from at least six different species of dinosaur - the very last dinosaurs to walk on UK soil 110 million years ago - have been found in Kent, a new report has announced.

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The old cousins of the common woodlice were crawling on Irish land as long as 360 million years ago, according to new analysis of a fossil found in Kilkenny.

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Woods Hole, MA (June 16,2021) -- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) climate modeler Dr. Alan Condron and United States Geological Survey (USGS) research geologist Dr. Jenna Hill have found evidence that massive icebergs from roughly 31,000 years ago drifted more than 5000km (> 3,000 miles) along the eastern United States coast from Northeast Canada all the way to southern Florida. These findings were published today in Nature Communications.

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Binghamton University anthropologists Robert DiNapoli and Carl Lipo received a $60,280 grant from the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration to explore how ancient populations managed freshwater scarcity.

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Jut Wynne, director of NAU's Cave Ecology Lab, talks about cave health all the time. But during 2021, the International Year of Caves and Karst, he and other researchers are inviting the rest of us to consider all the ways these ecosystems contribute to society without us even knowing it.

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Sir David Attenborough has named it one of his favourite places on Earth, and the world will soon see why via an immersive virtual tour of the iconic Flinders Ranges.

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For the first time, a unique study conducted at Lund University in Sweden has tracked the meteorite flux to Earth over the past 500 million years.

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Converting Central American tropical forests into agricultural land is changing the colour and composition of natural material washing into nearby rivers, making it less likely to decompose before it reaches the ocean, a new Southampton-led study has shown.

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Slow-moving arctic soils form patterns that, from a distance, resemble those found in common fluids such as drips in paint and birthday cake icing.

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Just a few bacterial taxa found in ecosystems across the planet are responsible for more than half of carbon cycling in soils, according to new findingsfrom researchers at Northern Arizona University.

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A UMass Lowell geologist is among the researchers who have discovered a new type of manmade quasicrystal created by the first test blast of an atomic bomb.

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It may only be a matter of time until the growing problem of “deep fakes” converges with geographical information science (GIS). A research team including faculty at Binghamton University are doing what they can to get ahead of the problem.

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The cause of Earth's deepest earthquakes has been a mystery to science for more than a century, but a team of Carnegie scientists may have cracked the case.

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a nearly half-million-dollar research grant to Cornell College Professor of Geology Rhawn Denniston and a team of researchers to study climate variability.

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About 14 billion years ago, our universe changed from being a lot hotter and denser to expanding radically - a process that scientists have named 'The Big Bang'.

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In April 2017, a landslide in Mocoa, Colombia, ripped through a local town, killing more than 300 people.

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Melting glaciers and polar ice sheets are among the dominant sources of sea-level rise, yet until now, the water beneath them has remained hidden from airborne ice-penetrating radar.

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Fossils of land animals from South America have been found in the Antilles, but how did these animals get there? According to scientists from the CNRS, l'Université des Antilles, l'Université de Montpellier and d'Université Côte d'Azur, land emerged in this region and then disappeared beneath the waves for millions of years, explaining how some species were able to migrate to the Antilles.

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Researchers measured rock glacier beds to create high-resolution digital models they used to study how glaciers move along their bedrock bases. The resulting glacier "slip law" can be used by other researchers to better estimate how quickly ice sheets flow into oceans, drop their ice and raise sea levels.

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Researchers report the discovery of several sets of fossilized tracks, likely from the brown bear-sized Coryphodon, that represent the earliest known evidence of mammals gathering near an ocean.

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Geoscientists at the University of Toronto (U of T) and Istanbul Technical University have discovered a new process in plate tectonics which shows that tremendous damage occurs to areas of Earth's crust long before it should be geologically altered by known plate-boundary processes, highlighting the need to amend current understandings of the planet's tectonic cycle.

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The U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Washington-based Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, and state emergency managers on Tuesday, May 4, will activate the system that sends earthquake early warnings throughout Washington state. This completes the rollout of ShakeAlert, an automated system that gives people living in Washington, Oregon and California advance warning of incoming earthquakes.

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Diamonds are sometimes described as messengers from the deep earth; scientists study them closely for insights into the otherwise inaccessible depths from which they come.

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The Geosciences Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research announced the 2021 awardees for excellence in student research: Zoe Lacey (Trinity University) and Hanna Szydlowski (Grand Valley State University)

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Data collected by University of Rhode Island Professor Stéphan Grilli and his colleagues will appear in Nature Communications, which is considered one of the world’s leading multidisciplinary science journals.

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The Fermilab-hosted international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment will shoot the world’s most powerful beam of neutrinos from the Department of Energy’s Fermilab in Illinois to detectors 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) away at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota. Data collected from this ambitious experiment will help scientists answer such lofty questions as how black holes form and why the universe itself exists.

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New Johns Hopkins University simulations offer an intriguing look into Saturn’s interior, suggesting that a thick layer of helium rain influences the planet’s magnetic field.

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Spreading of the seafloor in the Red Sea basin is found to have begun along its entire length around 13 million years ago, making its underlying oceanic crust twice as old as previously believed.

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A University of California San Diego engineering professor has solved one of the biggest mysteries in geophysics: What causes deep-focus earthquakes? These mysterious earthquakes originate between 400 and 700 kilometers below the surface of the Earth and have been recorded with magnitudes up to 8.3 on the Richter scale.

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An international team of scientists has analyzed chemicals in an ice core from West Antarctica to compile the most accurate chronology of volcanic eruptions during the last 11,000 years produced thus far.

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Research partly conducted at the Advanced Photon Source helped scientists discover the composition of Earth’s first atmosphere. What they found raises questions about the origin of life on Earth.

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The first emergence and persistence of continental crust on Earth during the Archaean (4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago) has important implications for plate tectonics, ocean chemistry, and biological evolution, and it happened about half a billion years earlier than previously thought, according to new research being presented at the EGU General Assembly 2021.

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It is 2,250 kilometers long, but only 355 kilometers wide at its widest point - on a world map, the Red Sea hardly resembles an ocean. But this is deceptive.

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When hydraulic fracturing operations ground to a halt last spring in the Kiskatinaw area of British Columbia, researchers expected seismic quiescence in the region.

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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.