January 16, 2019
Mighty Mekong cut by monsoon, not tectonics
The rivers draining the Tibetan Plateau are some of the largest, longest and most deeply incised waterways in the world. For decades, most …
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Geology
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1236 articles · Page 2 of 52
January 15, 2019
Mediterranean heritage sites threatened by rising seas
The Mediterranean region has been a cultural center for centuries, giving rise to numerous locales designated as UNESCO World Heritage sites. A …
January 15, 2019
Mineral Resource of the Month: Garnet
PRODUCTION Geologic Occurrence Garnet is the general name given to a group of complex silicate minerals, all with isometric crystal structure and …
January 15, 2019
Geologic Column: Is this land really your land?
In 1940, after traveling across America from Oklahoma to New York City, Woody Guthrie wrote the iconic folk song “This Land Is Your Land.” He had …
January 11, 2019
Travels in Geology: Mid-ocean volcanic excursion: The calderas and caldeiras of the Azores
In the middle of the Atlantic, 1,600 kilometers off the coast of Portugal, lie the Azores, an archipelago comprising nine remote islands, each …
January 11, 2019
Getting there and getting around Azores
The Azores are unique, highly accessible and packed with activities. There are direct flights to Ponta Delgada (PDL) from Boston and New York, as …
January 11, 2019
Sounding Out Earth's Hum
Earth has a song, a symphony composed of ubiquitous, continuous subtle seismic signals that thrum beneath the hustle and bustle of modern …
January 11, 2019
Redefining Dinosaurs: Paleontologists are Shaking the Dinosaur Family Tree to its Roots
What traits distinguish one dinosaur from another? For many, that question probably conjures characteristics like the massive jaws of …
December 21, 2018
Melting glaciers shift Earth's axis
A perfectly round desk globe spins evenly on a fixed axis, but that’s not the case with Earth, which wobbles as the position of its spin axis — …
December 21, 2018
Ocean circulation change suffocating Gulf of St. Lawrence
Estuaries are among the most nutrient-rich and biologically productive areas of the ocean, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where freshwater from …
December 21, 2018
Rising carbon dioxide may raise risk of nutrient deficiencies in humans
Plants absorb carbon dioxide to fuel their growth. As humans increase the amount of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, more will be available …
December 21, 2018
Columbia River basalts erupted faster than thought
Editor’s note: This story appeared in print in the January issue of the magazine. The version below has been updated to note that the areal …
December 21, 2018
Arctic warming causes Siberian cooling
The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, and fall sea-ice extents have been trending downward for decades. But while the region …
December 21, 2018
Ancient collision left a bit of Europe behind in Britain
Great Britain is famously considered the birthplace of modern geology, and the many layers and terranes of rocks that make up England, Wales and …
December 21, 2018
The geology of kidney stones revealed
Kidney stones are an excruciatingly painful problem for 10 percent of the world’s population. In a new study applying geobiological methods to …
December 21, 2018
Oman ophiolite suggests subduction started with a shove
Plate tectonics is a fundamental control on how Earth operates and is important for the planet’s habitability, but how this crustal recycling …
December 21, 2018
Down to Earth With: Clay mineralogist Warren Huff
Two distinct images come to mind when I think of Warren Huff, my former doctoral adviser: one in which he is enthusiastically teaching and …
December 21, 2018
Geologic Column: Muinntir a' ghlinne so
“The Gaelic word “pibroch” isn’t one you come across every day. It signifies a Scottish piper’s variations on a musical theme. Although the theme …
December 20, 2018
Comment: How to tell a good science story
Everyone has a story to tell. Scientists are no exception, especially given that scientific studies can take researchers to far-flung places …
December 20, 2018
Our top tips for adding storytelling to your repertoire
(from Green et al., Facets, February 2018) Identify your take-home message first. Start with the end in mind. Remember the shape of your story. …
December 18, 2018
Eyes in the sea: Swarms of floating robots observe the oceans
In 1999, Peter Franks, a biological oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, published a hypothesis that, to his …
December 18, 2018
Travels in Geology: Lhasa, Tibet: Journey to the roof of the world
Few destinations are as alluring as the wild and windswept Tibetan Plateau. With an average elevation of 4,500 meters, it is Earth’s highest …
December 18, 2018
Getting there and getting around Tibet
“Tibet is a long way from most everywhere. There are no direct flights from North America, so it’s usually cheapest and most convenient to fly …
November 30, 2018
Sulfides in thawing permafrost responsible for carbon dioxide release
After warming the bench since the Pleistocene, a key player in the Arctic carbon cycle is getting back in the game thanks to thawing permafrost. …