October 15, 2018
Going subterranean: Repurposed mines become innovative labs
At about 5 a.m. on a frigid, icy February day in northern Minnesota — the kind of day when it feels like your eyeballs might freeze — a group of …
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1236 articles · Page 4 of 52
October 12, 2018
Turning modern "eyes" on ancient sites
People have inhabited Jerash, Jordan, since the Neolithic. But much of its history has been buried by subsequent occupation, including over the …
October 12, 2018
Algae ate themselves to death and caused a global extinction
Errant asteroids and toxic emissions from volcanic eruptions are the usual suspects in mass extinctions. But during the Ordovician, it was a …
October 12, 2018
Saharan dust a storm killer
Each year between 900 million and 4 billion metric tons of dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa is swept into the atmosphere and blown around …
October 12, 2018
Globe-trotting kelp set new world record
When marine biologist Erasmo Macaya, from University of Concepción in Chile, found a piece of kelp washed up on a beach in Antarctica, he …
October 12, 2018
Underwater WiFi? Rising sea levels threaten physical internet
It seems like you can find wireless internet almost anywhere now, but the backbone of the internet is wired: Infrastructure such as fiber optic …
October 12, 2018
Benchmarks: November 16, 1990: Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary is established
Off the tip of the Florida Peninsula lies the world’s third-largest living coral reef, the Great Florida Reef. The only barrier reef system in …
October 12, 2018
Down to Earth With: Geologist Robert Brinkmann
As a child, Robert Brinkmann was always curious about rocks. He wondered how they got where they were and why they were different from each …
October 12, 2018
Comment: Making social media work for scientists
Whether true or not, scientists are famous for not being great public communicators, yet communication is a key aspect of our work. Traditional …
September 10, 2018
Mineral Resource of the Month: Phosphate
By Stephen M. Jasinski, USGS mineral commodity specialist PRODUCTION GEOLOGIC OCCURRENCE Phosphate rock refers to unprocessed ore and …
September 10, 2018
Ecuadorian volcano plays its pipe
An active volcano in central Ecuador may be the largest musical instrument on Earth: After eruptions in 2015, Cotopaxi’s newly configured crater …
September 10, 2018
Monsoon strength affects global ice volumes, not vice versa?
New analysis of Chinese loess suggests rethinking of Milankovitch model In the 1920s, Serbian scientist Milutin Milankovitch proposed that …
September 10, 2018
Surfactants slow oceanic carbon dioxide uptake
The oceans are the largest long-term carbon sink on Earth, absorbing about a quarter of all anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. The rate of …
September 10, 2018
Methane emissions offset some blue carbon burial benefits
Wetlands are prolific sinks for atmospheric carbon. They pull carbon dioxide out of the air and sequester the carbon in plants, soils and …
September 10, 2018
Sipping carbon-neutral fuel from the atmosphere
In the near future, vehicles may be powered by carbon that comes from the sky, rather than out of the ground. Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology …
September 7, 2018
Dry rivers secretly star in carbon cycle
In arid environments, some seasonal rivers and streams spend more time as dry riverbeds than they do as flowing waterways. A new study is giving …
September 7, 2018
Geologic Column: Bone up on your spooky geo-vocabulary this Halloween
I’m hardly fanatical about Halloween, but I am an impassioned lover of puns and word humor (the more Dad-like, the better). So when it occurred …
September 7, 2018
Benchmarks: October 11, 1899: Second Boer War begins, fueled by discovery of gold
The 1886 discovery of gold on a farm in the Witwatersrand region of southern Africa drove the growth of Johannesburg, and gold mining has aided …
September 6, 2018
Ocean tide size linked to supercontinent cycle
Daily tides are driven primarily by Earth’s rotation and the gravitational force of the moon on oceans. However, in a new study in Geophysical …
August 31, 2018
Down to Earth With: Volcanologist Thorvaldur Thordarson
Despite growing up in Iceland, with Earth’s most volcanically active landscape as his playground, Thorvaldur Thordarson had no idea he would grow …
August 31, 2018
Getting There And Getting Around Rocky Mountain National Park
Denver (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 …
August 31, 2018
Travels in Geology: Roof of the Rockies: Trail Ridge Road
In mid-April each year, two Colorado snow-clearing crews embark upon an assignment with a deceptively simple goal: to traverse the 77-kilometer …
August 31, 2018
Dutch Masters: The Netherlands exports flood-control expertise
In early 2017, scientists from NOAA and other U.S. research institutions announced that new data had led them to raise the upper estimate of …
August 31, 2018
Comment: Why is it so hard to teach climate change?
Climate change was in the national spotlight this past summer when The New York Times Magazine devoted its entire Aug. 5, 2018, issue — except …