Humankind’s next giant step may be onto Mars. But before those missions can begin, scientists need to make scores of breakthrough advances, including learning how to grow crops on the red planet.
In a recent paper published in Nature Communications, Mousavi and co-authors describe a new method for using artificial intelligence to bring into focus millions of these subtle shifts of the Earth. "By improving our ability to detect and locate these very small earthquakes, we can get a clearer view of how earthquakes interact or spread out along the fault, how they get started, even how they stop," said Stanford geophysicist Gregory Beroza, one of the paper's authors.
Simple actions can dramatically improve a person’s chances of surviving a landslide, show records from 38 landslides in the U.S. and around the world. People who survived landslides tended to have moved upstairs or to higher ground, among other key actions.
The existence of a tectonic plate called Resurrection has long been a topic of debate among geologists, with some arguing it was never real. Others say it subducted - moved sideways and downward - into the earth's mantle somewhere in the Pacific Margin between 40 and 60 million years ago.
Cold temperatures keep the microorganisms in permafrost dormant. Thawing could cause these microorganisms to degrade organic material, releasing carbon dioxide and methane. Scientists have now studied the diversity and metabolic capacity of microbial communities in a unique permafrost environment.
Penn State researchers have used artificial intelligence (AI) to clear up that noise, drastically facilitating and improving near real-time observation of volcanic movements and the detection of volcanic activity and unrest.
For the first time, a research team has obtained high resolution sedimentary core samples from Lake Tanganyika. The samples show that high frequency variability in climate can lead to major disruptions in how the lake's food web functions. The changes could put millions of people at risk who rely on the lake for food security. The team says the findings are a critical building block toward research-informed policymaking in the Lake Tanganyika region.
Rising nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions are jeopardizing the climate goals of the Paris Agreement, according to a major new study by an international team of scientists.
In a commentary published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, researchers discuss how Twitter’s decision to remove users’ ability to tag precise locations of Tweets might affect research in disaster response, public health and other areas.
Jennifer Collins, professor in the School of Geosciences at the University of South Florida, has been selected as the 2020 CUR Geosciences Undergraduate Research Mentor Awardee.
Scientists from the University of Portsmouth and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, have come up with a formula to help plant breeders and farmers around the world grow crops in a more sustainable way.
The planting of woodlands in upland areas could play a significant role in preventing the flash flooding which has increasingly affected communities across the world in recent years.
Were you aware that earthquakes are sometimes associated with luminescence, called earthquake lightning? This phenomenon had been documented throughout history, such as between 1965 and 1967, the Matsushiro earthquake swarm caused the surrounding mountain to flicker with light multiple times.
A new way of analyzing the chemical composition of soil organic matter will help scientists predict how soils store carbon — and how soil carbon may affect climate in the future, says a Baylor University researcher.
In recent years -- and 2020 is no exception -- parts of the Pacific Northwest that are typically too wet to burn are experiencing more frequent, severe and larger wildfires due to changes in climate.
Scientists recently got a unique glimpse into the “Green Banana” Blue Hole thanks to gutsy divers and a 500-pound autonomous, benthic lander. Together with hand-picked, elite scuba divers, the research team is unraveling the structure and behavior of these marine environments by examining geochemistry, hydrodynamics, and biology. Findings from this exploration also may have important implications for phytoplankton in the Gulf of Mexico, including blooms of the Florida Red-tide species Karenia brevis.
Situated between Africa and Eurasia, the Arabian Peninsula is an important yet understudied region for understanding human evolution across the continents.
An international team of researchers has found that some of the oldest terrain on Venus, known as tesserae, have layering that seems consistent with volcanic activity. The finding could provide insights into the enigmatic planet’s geological history.
When early humans began to travel out of Africa and spread into Eurasia over a hundred thousand years ago, a fertile region around the eastern Mediterranean Sea called the Levant served as a critical gateway between northern Africa and Eurasia.
Some of the oldest remains of early human ancestors have been unearthed in Olduvai Gorge, a rift valley setting in northern Tanzania where anthropologists have discovered fossils of hominids that existed 1.8 million years ago.
Around 4 billion years ago, the solar system was far less hospitable than we find it now. Many of the large bodies we know and love were present, but probably looked considerably different, especially the Earth.
A new study found patterns in how soil organic matter forms across a wide range of climate types. Understanding how soils break down or preserve organic matter is important because organic matter plays a central role in the kind of services soils can provide, such as whether they make good agricultural soils or if they can sequester carbon to slow climate change.
According to a new study, environmental hazards affect populations worldwide and can drive migration under specific conditions, especially in middle-income and agricultural countries.
A team of Israeli and American researchers has uncovered new evidence that an earthquake may have caused the destruction and abandonment of a flourishing Canaanite palatial site about 3,700 years ago.
Several minerals suffer radioactive self-irradiation and hence experience long-term changes of their properties. The mineral monazite virtually behaves "just alike Camembert cheese in which holes are drilled": Existing radiation damage heals itself. An international research team led by Lutz Nasdala, Institute of Mineralogy and Crystallography, University of Vienna, conducted an ion-irradiation study that has unravelled the causes of the self-healing of monazite.
A Dartmouth-led study using multisensor drones has revealed a large circular earthwork at what may be Etzanoa, an archaeological site near Wichita, Kansas.
The scaffolds that help hold together the world’s tropical reefs are at risk from acidification due to increased carbon dioxide in the world’s oceans, according to geoscientists at the University of Sydney.
New research from an international team of evolutionary geneticists, bioinformaticians and paleontologists suggests that dramatic environmental changes accompanying the shift or melting of continental glaciers played a key role as American mastodons moved north from their southern ranges.
Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Ohio State University discovered a new microbial pathway that produces ethylene, providing a potential avenue for biomanufacturing a common component of plastics, adhesives, coolants and other everyday products.
Microbial communities in Arctic permafrost changed drastically at the end of the ice age—and this shift could happen again due to modern climate change, according to a new study by University of Alberta scientists.
Victoria Orphan is the James Irvine Professor of Environmental Science and Geobiology in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has renewed funding for OpenTopography, a science gateway that provides online access to Earth science oriented high-resolution topography data and processing tools to a broad user community advancing research and education in areas ranging from earthquake geology to ecology and hydrology.
Watch live and recorded press conferences at https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/news-room/press-conferences.html. Press conferences will be held Monday, Aug. 17 through Thursday, Aug. 20, 2020
Researchers studied different microbiomes to determine if the constituent species were equally good at breaking down leaf litter. The research helped to identify the microbial traits that might lead to related carbon storage or loss and found that the makeup of a soil microbiome is critical to the fate of carbon in soil.
In their first follow-up to a high-profile 2017 study which showed microbes in Antarctica have a unique ability to essentially live on air, researchers from UNSW Sydney have now discovered this process occurs in soils across the world's three poles.
Combing through historical seismic data, researchers using a machine learning model have unearthed distinct statistical features marking the formative stage of slow-slip ruptures in the earth’s crust months before tremor or GPS data detected a slip in the tectonic plates. Given the similarity between slow-slip events and classic earthquakes, these distinct signatures may help geophysicists understand the timing of the devastating faster quakes as well.
It’s one of the best-known geological heritage sites around the world, filled with fossils and glacial secrets. Now, thanks to virtual reality technology, the ice-age past of Hallett Cove Conservation Park is revealed in a new, gamified VR experience – Beyond the Ice – and is launched this week as part of National Science Week.
Billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide risk being lost into the atmosphere due to tropical forest soils being significantly more sensitive to climate change than previously thought.
Deep beneath the surface of the Salton Sea, a shallow lake in California’s Imperial County, sits an immense reserve of critical metals that, if unlocked, could power the state’s green economy for years to come. These naturally occurring metals are dissolved in geothermal brine, a byproduct of geothermal energy production. Now the race is on to develop technology to efficiently extract one of the most valuable metals from the brine produced by the geothermal plants near the Salton Sea: lithium.
Geologists from Florida State University’s Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science have discovered how carbon-rich molten rock in the Earth’s upper mantle might affect the movement of seismic waves.
A global meta-analysis led by UNSW scientists shows tiny organisms that cover desert soils - so-called biocrusts - are critically important for supporting the world's shrinking water supplies.