Feature Channels: Geology

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Irvine, Calif., June 3, 2019 – After conducting a comprehensive, seven-year survey of Patagonia, glaciologists from the University of California, Irvine and partner institutions in Argentina and Chile have concluded that the ice sheets in this vast region of South America are considerably more massive than expected. Through a combination of ground observations and airborne gravity and radar sounding methods, the scientists created the most complete ice density map of the area to date and found that some glaciers are as much as a mile (1,600 meters) thick.

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Coal ash solids found in sediments collected from Sutton Lake in 2015 and 2018 suggest the eastern North Carolina lake has been contaminated by multiple coal ash spills, most of them apparently unmonitored and unreported until now.

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One researcher at the University of Tokyo is in hot pursuit of dinosaurs, tracking extinct species around ancient Earth.

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Irvine, Calif., June 3, 2019 – Nearly one-fifth of the world’s population lives in a stressed water basin where the next climate change-driven incident could threaten access to an essential resource for agriculture, industry and life itself, according to a paper by University of California, Irvine researchers and others, published today in Nature Sustainability.

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Researchers at The Ohio State University have created high-resolution maps of points around the globe where groundwater meets the oceans—the first such analysis of its kind, giving important data points to communities and conservationists to help protect both drinking water and the seas.

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An international study has revealed new evidence to help understand the consequences of habitat loss on natural communities.

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Parts of Alaska's mountainous Brooks Range were likely transported from Greenland and a stretch of the Canadian Arctic much farther to the east

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Tapping into offshore groundwater resources--for drinking water, for agricultural uses or to support offshore oil drilling--could lead to adverse onshore impacts.

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The ROSETTA-Ice project, a three-year, multi-institutional data collection survey of Antarctic ice, has assembled an unprecedented view of the Ross Ice Shelf

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Concentrations of antibiotics found in some of the world's rivers exceed 'safe' levels by up to 300 times, the first ever global study has discovered.

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Wind has shaped the face of Mars for millennia, but its exact role in piling up sand dunes, carving out rocky escarpments or filling impact craters has eluded scientists until now.

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A swarm of more than 3,000 small earthquakes in the Maple Creek area (in Yellowstone National Park but outside of the Yellowstone volcano caldera) between June 2017 and March 2018 are, at least in part, aftershocks of the 1959 quake.

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Ashfall from ancient volcanic explosions is the likely source of a strange mineral deposit near the landing site for NASA's next Mars rover

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It's old--200,000 years old. But why does the age of Egyptian water matter? Because it indicates the source and as officials look to expand the use of groundwater to to mitigate growing water stress and allow for agricultural projects, having this information will aid effective planning.

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To geologists, the mantle is so much more than that. It’s a region that lives somewhere between the cold of the crust and the bright heat of the core. It’s where the ocean floor is born and where tectonic plates die. A new paper published today in Nature Geoscience paints an even more intricate picture of the mantle as a geochemically diverse mosaic, far different than the relatively uniform lavas that eventually reach the surface.

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In 2020, NASA and European-Russian missions will look for evidence of past life on Mars.

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LMKR, an international petroleum technology company, has partnered with West Virginia University to expand student and faculty access to industry-leading software.

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Rainfall from the Asian summer monsoon has been decreasing over the past 80 years, a decline unprecedented in the last 448 years, according to a new study.

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Far below Bermuda’s pink sand beaches and turquoise tides, geoscientists have discovered the first direct evidence that material from deep within Earth’s mantle transition zone – a layer rich in water, crystals and melted rock – can percolate to the surface to form volcanoes.

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A years-long study that involved scientists and experiments at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley concluded that an odd assortment of particles found in beach sands in Japan are most likely fallout debris from the 1945 Hiroshima A-bomb blast.

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Aaron Marshall studies mafic magma on Llaima Volcano in Chile

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Forest fires are causing snow to melt earlier in the season, a trend occurring across the western U.S. that may affect water supplies and trigger even more fires, according to a new study by a team of researchers at Portland State University (PSU)

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Scientists at The Ohio State University have discovered a new species that lived more than 500 million years ago—a form of ancient echinoderm that was ancestral to modern-day groups such as sea cucumbers, sea urchins, sea stars, brittle stars and crinoids. The fossil shows a crucial evolutionary step by echinoderms that parallels the most important ecological change to have taken place in marine sediments. The discovery, nearly 30 years in the making, was published recently in the Bulletin of Geosciences.

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Researchers discovered that the practice of subsurface fluid injection often used in oil and gas exploration could cause significant, rapidly spreading earthquake activity beyond the fluid diffusion zone. The results account for the observation that human-induced earthquake activity often surpasses natural earthquake hotspots.

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Researchers at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) have produced a new volume entitled “Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Handbook: Comprehensive Methodologies for Forest Monitoring and Biomass Estimation.”

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Small earthquakes in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Texas can be linked to hydraulic fracturing wells

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Researchers from the University of Oxford have traced the origin of a pre-historic eruption that blanketed the Mediterranean region in ash 29,000 years ago

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By acting as gatekeepers, microbes can affect geological processes that move carbon from the earth's surface into its deep interior

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Texas A&M researchers use shake-table testing to understand how urban wood-based structures sustain damage from earthquakes, and how to repair them more efficiently.

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Up to about 19 percent more carbon dioxide than previously believed is removed naturally and stored underground between coastal trenches and inland chains of volcanoes, keeping the greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere, according to a study in the journal Nature. Surprisingly, subsurface microbes play a role in storing vast amounts of carbon by incorporating it in their biomass and possibly by helping to form calcite, a mineral made of calcium carbonate, Rutgers and other scientists found.

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A powerful computational study of southern California seismic records has revealed detailed information about a plethora of previously undetected small earthquakes, giving a more precise picture about stress in the earth’s crust.

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Hurricane Maria dropped more rain on Puerto Rico than any storm to hit the island since 1956, a feat due mostly to the effects of human-caused climate warming

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Northern Arizona University geology professor Michael Smith will map the layers of rock in the Green River Formation in Wyoming to learn about the climate and flooding events during a period 50 to 53 million years ago when the climate was much hotter and carbon dioxide levels spiked.

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Studies of a river used in 20th-century logging shows that the bedrock has eroded to create a new channel. Such human-driven geology may be common worldwide.

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Researchers say mercury buried in ancient rock provides the strongest evidence yet that volcanoes caused the biggest mass extinction in the history of the Earth.

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Primitive ponds may have provided a suitable environment for brewing up Earth's first life forms, more so than oceans, a new MIT study finds.

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A West Virginia University heirloom seed expert is working to increase access to Appalachia’s heirloom seeds through a new seed preservation library.

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Researchers offer insights into how a key piece of photosynthetic machinery changed over 3 billion years.

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On a bright and chilly spring morning, the Boise State Geophysics Club was engaged in a rather somber task. They were using ground-penetrating radar, magnetometers and GPS to begin locating the graves of inmates buried in the cemetery at the former Idaho State Prison, now the historic site known as the Old Idaho Penitentiary located off of Warm Springs Avenue.

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From computer hard discs and smart phones to earbuds and electric motors, magnets are at the forefront of today’s technology. Magnets containing rare-earth elements are among the most powerful available, allowing many everyday objects to be ever smaller.

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Little is known about the inner structure of the moon, but a major step forward was made by a University of Rhode Island scientist who conducted experiments that enabled her to determine the temperature at the boundary of the moon’s core and mantle.

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Cornell University postdoctoral researcher Kevin Reath has merged 17 years of satellite data on volcanoes with ground-based detail to form a model for state-of-the-art volcanic eruption prediction.

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Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest could accelerate as a result of the US-China trade war, researchers have warned.

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The largest delta plain in Earth's history formed along the northern coast of the supercontinent Pangea in the late Triassic. Its size out-scales modern counterparts by an order of magnitude, and approximates 1% of the total land area of the modern world.

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In a first-ever study of two of the largest deep earthquakes ever recorded in human history, FSU researchers reveal new and surprising information about our planet’s mysterious, ever-changing interior.

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The first survey of methane vent sites off Washington’s coast finds 1,778 bubble columns, with most located along a north-south band that is in line with a geologic fault.

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University of Sydney scientists have modelled how carbonate accumulation from 'marine snow' in oceans has absorbed carbon dioxide over millennia and been a key driver in keeping the planet cool for millions of years.

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Scientists are rethinking a major milestone in animal evolution, after gaining fresh insights into how life on Earth diversified millions of years ago.

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Every day, people share a huge amount of info in online neighborhood reviews. They talk about whether neighbors are friendly, how well buses run, and much more. A new study shows how we can sort through this vast trove of digital data to improve cities and people’s quality of life.

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Rainy weather is becoming increasingly common over parts of the Greenland ice sheet, triggering sudden melting events that are eating at the ice and priming the surface for more widespread future melting, says a new study. Some parts of the ice sheet are even receiving rain in winter--a phenomenon that will spread as climate continues to warm, say the researchers. The study appears this week in the European scientific journal The Cryosphere.