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Dutch Masters: The Netherlands exports flood-control expertise

Since the 13th century, the low-lying Netherlands has been developing innovative water management techniques and technologies, including recent projects like the Delta Works, the Zandmotor and Room for the River. Now, facing global sea-level rise, flood-prone coastal cities in the U.S., like New Orleans and New York, and elsewhere around the world, are calling on the Dutch to teach them how to hold back the sea. 
15 Oct 2018

Travels in Geology: Roof of the Rockies: Trail Ridge Road

Often dubbed the Highway to the Sky, 3,713-meter-high Trail Ridge Road is the signature scenic drive and sole route across Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. The winding ribbon of hairpin bends offers numerous vistas of soaring, snow-capped peaks, alpine tundra, abundant wildlife, and the colorful carpets of tiny wildflowers it hosts for a few weeks each summer after its dramatic opening.
04 Oct 2018

Getting There And Getting Around Rocky Mountain National Park

Denver International Airport (DEN) is the best arrival point for exploring Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP), and a car is the most convenient way to see Trail Ridge Road and the park’s many other attractions. If you fly in, you can rent a vehicle at the airport and drive to Estes Park, the eastern gateway town, which is roughly 1.5 hours from the airport, or to Grand Lake at the west end of Trail Ridge, about a three-hour drive.

04 Oct 2018

Science as a family affair

All five children in the Weiss family of Huntington Beach, Calif., have presented their research at American Geophysical Union (AGU) meetings. AGU’s Bright Students Training as Research Scientists (Bright STaRS) program — as well as the mentorship of their science teacher and the support of their parents — made it possible.
11 Sep 2018

Rivers in the sky: Improving predictions of atmospheric rivers to reduce risk

Researchers are working to improve forecasts of atmospheric rivers — long, narrow systems of moist, tropical air that can deposit enormous amounts of water, bringing both relief from drought and catastrophic flooding.
23 Aug 2018

Getting There and Getting Around Cairo

Egypt’s main gateway is Cairo International Airport (CAI), which has nonstop flights to most major Middle Eastern and European cities. EgyptAir offers direct flights to Cairo from New York City and Toronto. From other North American locations, it’s usually most convenient to fly through Dubai, Abu Dhabi or a European hub. British Airways, Emirates, Etihad, Lufthansa and Turkish Airlines are among the carriers offering connecting service.

16 Aug 2018

Travels in Geology: The pyramids of Giza: Wonders of an ancient world

At the edge of Cairo, three massive pyramids rise from the Giza Plateau’s Mokattam Formation, which comprises of layers of middle Eocene limestones and dolomites. These rocks, which display fossil evidence of their origins at the bottom of the Tethys Sea some 50 million years ago, provided the millions of multiton blocks used to construct the pyramids.
16 Aug 2018

Place-based education: Teaching geoscience in the context of location and culture

Place-based geoscience education integrates scientific and cultural knowledge of local landscapes, environments and communities with an awareness of the different meanings that place can hold for people of various cultural backgrounds. It’s a “new old” method of teaching that is experiencing a resurgence.
06 Aug 2018

Diamonds and the Eocene climate of the Bell River Basin

Diamonds mined from the kimberlite pipes of the Lac de Gras diamond field in Northwest Territories, Canada, are among the world’s youngest known diamonds, dating from 75 million to 45 million years ago. In some cases, when the magmas that carried these diamonds to Earth’s surface encountered water-saturated rock at shallow depths, violent steam explosions called phreatomagmatic eruptions resulted. Such explosions can form volcanic craters known as maars, which often fill with water and accumulate lake sediment, along with soil and vegetation that collapse into them from their margins. In the case of the Panda kimberlite pipe at the Ekati Mine in the Lac de Gras area, maar sediments accumulated far below the surrounding terrain, such that they were later buried under glacial deposits rather than being eroded away by ice sheets during the past million years. Wood and other organic materials were entombed and preserved in their natural state, thereby preserving shreds of the Paleo-Bell River Basin.

25 Jul 2018

Saglek Basin sediments suggest a Grand Canyon connection

Pollen makes an ideal fossil. Pollen grains — each only a few tens of microns in diameter — are produced in astronomical quantities by plants and record information about the ecosystem from which they came, thus providing a way to reconstruct past environments. Additionally, pollen is composed of a highly stable organic substance, sporopollenin, which resists decay as well as the high heat and pressure associated with deep burial, lithification and tectonism. It is so resistant, in fact, that it can be eroded from rock and recycled into younger sediments, a process recognized in the 1980s by V. Eileen Williams of the University of British Columbia in her studies of Paleo-Bell River sediments deposited in the Labrador Sea.

25 Jul 2018

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