Feature Channels: Geology

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While some dream of the day that aerial drones deliver their online purchases, scientists are using the technology today to deliver data that was never available before. About 5,000 meters high in the Peruvian Andes, the scientists are mapping glaciers and wetlands in the Cordillera Blanca mountain range with 10-centimeter precision to gauge how climate change will affect the half-million local residents who rely in part on those glaciers for their water supply.

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The historic find -– made in South China -- by Virginia Tech researchers fills a huge gap in the known fossil record of kinorhynchs, small invertebrate animals that are related to arthropods.

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New fossil evidence shows that Australia’s fire-prone shrubland open vegetation originated at least 70 million years ago – 40-50 million years earlier than previously thought.

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The faulted alluvial fans near Badwater in Death Valley are amongst the most visited and classic landforms in the U.S. New mapping and dating of these landforms, presented in this open-access study by Kurt Frankel and colleagues, help to determine the timing of past earthquakes and how tectonic deformation is distributed across the western U.S.

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Husband-and-wife team, inspired by beauty of Lake Superior area, find ancient 2,000-mile-long underground crack formed in multiple stages.

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Study suggests that the common belief that the Earth’s rigid tectonic plates stay strong when they slide under another plate, known as subduction, may not be universal.

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From restoring the soil in their urban yard to grappling with a cancer diagnosis, geologist David Montgomery's new book explores the unfolding revolution in microbial science in health and agriculture.

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Ancient climates on Earth may have been more sensitive to carbon dioxide than was previously thought, according to new research from Binghamton University. A team of Binghamton University researchers including geology PhD student Elliot A. Jagniecki and professors Tim Lowenstein, David Jenkins and Robert Demicco examined nahcolite crystals found in Colorado’s Green River Formation, formed 50 million years old during a hothouse climate. They found that CO2 levels during this time may have been as low as 680 parts per million (ppm), nearly half the 1,125 ppm predicted by previous experiments. The new data suggests that past predictions significantly underestimate the impact of greenhouse warming and that Earth’s climate may be more sensitive to increased carbon dioxide than was once thought, said Lowenstein.

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In a study published in Science, researchers present new evidence that Earth has had its water since the very beginning, and did not arrive via asteroid as previously thought.

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The anticipated melting of the massive West Antarctic Ice Sheet could be slowed by two big factors that are largely overlooked in current computer models, according to a new study.

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New evidence gathered from the Karoo Basin in South Africa sheds light on a catastrophic extinction event that occurred more than 250 million years ago and wiped out more than 90 percent of life in Earth’s oceans and about 70 percent of animal species on land.

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Diamonds may not be as rare as once believed, but this finding in a new Johns Hopkins University research report won’t mean deep discounts at local jewelry stores.

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The likelihood of an area experiencing a potentially devastating landslide could be influenced by its previous exposure to earthquakes many decades earlier.

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Possibly due to excessive wet weather, a fissure in Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains has grown to the size of nearly seven acres. Estimate to its size runs approximately 750 metres long and 50 metres wide.

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After scientists led by NASA publish a study in the journal Earth and Space Science, the U.S. Geological Survey issues statement that raises doubts on the studies earthquake forecasts for the greater Los Angeles area.

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Mass extinctions occurring over the past 260 million years were likely caused by comet and asteroid showers, scientists conclude in a new study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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A new "geospeedometer" that can measure the amount of time between the formation of an explosive magma melt and an eruption confirms that the process took less than 500 years in several ancient super-eruptions.

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How nacre, or mother-of-pearl, is first deposited by the animals that make it has eluded discovery despite decades of scientific inquiry. Now, a team of Wisconsin scientists reports the first direct experimental observations of nacre formation at its earliest stages in a mollusk.

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A study of zircons from a gigantic meteorite impact in South Africa, now online in the journal Geology, casts doubt on the methods used to date lunar impacts.

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An international team of scientists have identified potential ‘tipping points’ where abrupt regional climate shifts could occur due to global warming.

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A new study shows that iron-bearing rocks that formed at the ocean floor 3.2 billion years ago carry unmistakable evidence of oxygen. The only logical source for that oxygen is the earliest known example of photosynthesis by living organisms, say University of Wisconsin-Madison geoscientists.

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The first simulation of the individual crystals in volcanic mush, a mix of liquid magma and solid crystals, shows the mixing to help understand pressure buildup deep inside a volcano.

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Scientists used high-power laser beams at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to simulate the shock effects of a meteorite impact in silica, one of the most abundant materials in the Earth’s crust. They observed, for the first time, its shockingly fast transformation into the mineral stishovite – a rare, extremely hard and dense form of silica.

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Evidence from the tropical lowlands of Central America reveals how Maya activity more than 2,000 years ago not only contributed to the decline of their environment but continues to influence today’s environmental conditions, according to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.

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To combat complacency and improve disaster preparedness, a University at Buffalo researcher is heading a new project focusing on two locations: Kīlauea in the Hawaiian Islands, and the Long Valley caldera and volcanic field in eastern central California.

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Scientists have solved a decades-old geological mystery into what caused the death of a Florida cave diver.

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Stacked in gravity-defying arrangements in the western San Bernardino Mountains, near the San Andreas Fault, granite boulders that should have been toppled by earthquakes long ago resolutely remain. In exploring why these rocks still stand, researchers have uncovered connections between Southern California’s San Jacinto and San Andreas faults that could change how the region plans for future earthquakes.

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Luke Bowman, who received his PhD from Michigan Tech this summer, gets to the heart of geohazards on the San Vicente Volcano in El Salvador.

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New research confirms that the land under the Chesapeake Bay is sinking rapidly and projects that Washington, D.C., could drop by six or more inches in the next century--adding to the problems of sea-level rise.

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Measurements of iron speciation in ancient rocks were used to construct the chemistry of ancient oceans. Analysis suggests that it took less oxygen than previously thought to trigger the appearance of complicated life forms.

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Gravity data captured by satellite has allowed researchers to take a closer look at the geology deep beneath the Tibetan Plateau.

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More than a quarter of the rain and snow that falls on continents reaches the oceans as runoff. Now a new study helps show where the rest goes.

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New research led by the University of Adelaide hopes to close the debate on whether a major mud volcano disaster in Indonesia was triggered by an earthquake or had man-made origins.

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The relentless flow of a glacier may seem unstoppable, but a team of researchers from the United Kingdom and the U.S. has shown that during some calving events—when an iceberg breaks off into the ocean—the glacier moves rapidly backward and downward, causing the characteristic glacial earthquakes which until now have been poorly understood.

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Along the way, the investigation sheds light on the long-held urban myth of the fluidity of stained glass.

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Old rocks hold on to their secrets. Now, a geophysicist at Michigan Technological University has unlocked clues trapped in the magnetic signatures of mineral grains in those rocks. These clues will help clear up the murky history of the Earth’s early core.

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Jessica Oster and her colleagues have shown that the analysis of a stalagmite from a cave in north east India can detect the link between El Nino conditions in the Pacific Ocean and the Indian monsoon.

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Emplacement of carbon dioxide at the Bravo Dome gas field in New Mexico began more than 900,000 years earlier than previously estimated, according to scientists at DOE’s Center for Frontiers of Subsurface Energy Security. The study documents the first field evidence for the safe long-term storage of large amounts of carbon dioxide in saline aquifers.

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Dr. J. David Rogers, the Karl F. Hasselmann Chair of Geological Engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology, is available to speak to journalists about the Nepal earthquakes.

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Climate helps drive the erosion process that exposes economically valuable copper deposits and shapes the pattern of their global distribution, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Idaho and the University of Michigan.

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The threat of landslides and mudslides remains high across much of Nepal's high country, and the risk is likely to increase when the monsoon rains arrive this summer, according to a University of Michigan researcher.

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Cardiff University experts are aiding the immediate rescue efforts in Nepal by providing a real-time assessment of further landslide risks following Saturday’s devastating earthquake.

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