Taxonomy term

Features

Digitizing Earth: Developing a cyberinfrastructure for the geosciences

That geoscientists are notorious hoarders should come as no surprise. After all, geoscientists collect and study nothing less than Earth itself. Over the last four decades, massive amounts of digital data have begun streaming in from a growing number of satellites and sensors unceasingly monitoring the earth, atmosphere and oceans. Geoscientists are awash in data and, at the same time, have access to ever-increasing computing power. Together, these advances have precipitated fundamental changes in the way earth science is done, leading to the proliferation of computer-based data visualization and modeling — especially 3-D and 4-D modeling.

18 Aug 2013

Rescuing data from the dark

Along with the proliferation of techniques and technologies to deal with Big Data — the large volumes of data coming in from global sensors and satellites that can require supercomputers to crunch — geoscientists are also addressing the collection and integration of what could be termed small (or mainstream) data.

14 Aug 2013

Travels in Geology: Journeying through Cuba's geology and culture

It’s not every day that you get the chance to go to Cuba, so when I found out that the Association for Women Geoscientists (AWG) was offering an organized trip there in March 2013, I jumped at the opportunity. The excursion — nearly two weeks of exploration of our southern neighbor’s geology and culture — did not disappoint.

28 Jul 2013

Getting there and getting around in Cuba

Because of the U.S. embargo against Cuba, U.S. citizens must go through a travel agency licensed by the U.S. Treasury Department that provides “people-to-people” travel to Cuba for U.S. citizens. Because booking with this type of travel agency is required, the U.S. State Department’s website on visiting Cuba is a great place to start: http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1097.html.

28 Jul 2013

Getting There and Getting Around Spain

Two airports serve Tenerife, which is a 2.5-hour plane ride away from Spain’s capital, Madrid. Most inter-island flights, plus those from mainland Spain, arrive at Tenerife Norte (Los Rodeos), 11 kilometers from Santa Cruz, the island’s largest city. Nearly all international flights (even those on Ryanair) arrive at the larger Tenerife Sur airport (Reina Sofía), located about 60 kilometers south of Santa Cruz.  Although there are established bus routes across the island, the most convenient way to explore it is by car. A number of local and international agencies have depots at both airports.

24 Jul 2013

Mass wasting

Like all volcanic islands, Tenerife represents a balance between constructional and erosional forces. Over millions of years, repeated eruptions of magma pile up, slowly building the shield volcanoes. Occasionally, however, this long-term construction is punctuated by destruction in the form of massive, lightning-fast landslides.

 
24 Jul 2013

Travels in Geology: The Canary Islands: Touring the "Hawaii of Europe"

I was standing on top of the world. No matter which direction I looked, steep cinder slopes dropped away sharply, merging with the thick white billows of sea fog below. A chilly wind swirled around me. In the distance, the dark peaks of other great mountains poked above the clouds, and I glimpsed shining patches of deep blue sea.

24 Jul 2013

Mapping field camp's past and present: Exploring a mainstay of geoscience education

Every spring, troops of geoscience students set out to observe firsthand the minerals, rocks, folds, faults, unconformities, ore bodies and other features that populate the geological landscape. And by this time each summer, they (and the instructors brave enough to have accompanied them) have mostly returned home, sporting unkempt hair and sun-tanned limbs. These students — after putting knowledge and skills learned over several years to the test — are the latest group to have survived the rigors of geology’s enduring rite of passage: field camp.

22 Jul 2013

Home sweet home for field campers

With a few exceptions — including available meal choices and entertainment options for when students have limited free time — accommodations at today’s field camps haven’t changed all that much, at least in the last few decades. Depending on the camp, however, lodging ranges from log cabins to college dorms to motels to the occasional traveling camps that still live and work out of “tent cities.”

22 Jul 2013

Location, Location, Location

Although field camps based east of the Mississippi River do exist, and a handful of American schools run camps abroad in places like Ireland, Italy and parts of Africa, the vast majority of camps in the U.S. are still  conducted out West. From the Black Hills and the Great Plains, across the Rockies and other mountain ranges, to the Desert Southwest, the western U.S. offers much in the way of beautifully exposed outcrops, distinctive landscapes and transects through long stretches of geologic time.

22 Jul 2013

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