Geobulletin alpha

Imaggeo on Mondays: Life between the arid mountains of Gansu, China 

Even within Earth’s more arid environments, you can find life! This featured photo was taken near the Lanzhou Zhongchuan Airport, about 50 km away from Lanzhou city, the capital of Gansu province in Western China. The area lies in a region between the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the Loess Plateau, with an elevation ranging from 1,500 m to 2,200 m. The landscape is dominated by a network of ridges and valleys; the Loess Plateau in particular is known for its highly erodible soil. The region is a [...]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Glacier-fed rivers 

A view of the southern edge of the Ladebakte mountain in the Sarek national park in north Sweden. At this place the rivers Rahpajaka and Sarvesjaka meet to form the biggest river of the Sarek national park, the Rahpaädno. The rivers are fed by glaciers and carry a lot of rock material which lead to a distinct sedimentation and a fascinating river delta for which the Sarek park laying west of the Kungsleden hiking trail is famous. As the borders of this picture are not straight (due to [...]

Imaggeo on Mondays: A total eclipse of the Moon 

Today, all eyes are turned to the sky; at least in North America, where the region will be treated to an eclipse of the sun. The online hype is hard to miss and its hardly surprising, opportunities to see the moon completely cover the Sun, where you are, are rare*. According to NASA, the same spot on Earth only gets to see a solar eclipse for a few minutes about every 375 years! If like us, you can’t be in North America to see the phenomenon, don’t worry, you can follow all the action on [...]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Ice drilling 

This week’s Imaggeo on Monday’s post, captured by Maksim Cherviakov, shows students from Saratov National Research University practicing a method to measure lake ice thickness. The students are using an ice auger to manually burrow through the ice. Afterwards, the ice depth is recorded using a tape measure. “We measure ice thickness every year on the lakes located in the floodplain of the Volga river near Saratov. There are many number of ways to measure the thickness of ice but we use [...]

Imaggeo on Monday: a big thank you from the EGU 

Outside EGU General Assembly 2016. Credit: Kai Boggild/EGU (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu) The past week in Vienna was a busy one! Hordes of Earth, ocean and planetary scientists came together to present, share and discuss their most recent scientific findings at the 2016 General Assembly. The conference was a great success, with over 4800 oral and 10300 poster presentations, as well as close to a 1000 PICO presentations too! Participants at the conference could pick talks and posters from a [...]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Snow and ash in Iceland 

Featuring today on the blog is the land of ice and fire: Iceland. That title was never better suited to (and exemplified), than it is in this photograph taken by Daniel Garcia Castellanos in June 2013. Snow capped peaks are also sprinkled by a light dusting of volcanic ash. Dive into this post to find out the source of the ash and more detail about the striking peak. The picture is dominated by a snowed mountain in Southern Iceland, captured in June 2013, three years after the Eyjafjallajökull [...]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Fire Watch Constellation 

Wild fires: raging walls of flames, capable of burning down swathes of pristine, sometimes protected and ancient, landscapes have been causing havoc around the globe. Managing and controlling them is no easy task; they can unexpectedly change their course with the wind and jump across rivers, roads and man-made fire breaks. The significant threat they pose, and damage they can cause, to valuable ecosystems worldwide has been recently evidenced by the destruction of 180 million year old forests [...]

Last chance to enter the EGU Photo Contest 2016! 

If you are pre-registered for the 2016 General Assembly (Vienna, 17 -22 April), you can take part in our annual photo competition! Winners receive a free registration to next year’s General Assembly! But hurry, there are only a few days left to enter! Every year we hold a photo competition and exhibit in association with our open access image repository, Imaggeo and our annual General Assembly. There is also a moving image competition, which features a short clip of continuous geoscience [...]

EGU Photo Contest 2016 

If you are pre-registered for the 2016 General Assembly (Vienna, 17 – 22 April), you can take part in our annual photo competition! Winners receive a free registration to next year’s General Assembly! The seventh annual EGU photo competition opens on 1 February. Up until 1 March, every participant pre-registered for the General Assembly can submit up three original photos and one moving image on any broad theme related to the Earth, planetary, and space sciences. Shortlisted photos will [...]

Imaggeo on Mondays: The Grand Canyon and celebrating Earth Science Week 

Today marks the start of Earth Science Week – a yearly international event which aims to help the public gain a better understanding and appreciation for the Earth Sciences. The event is promoted by the American Geosciences Institute and the Geological Society of London, amongst others, so be sure to head to their websites to find out more. Our Imaggeo on Monday’s image celebrates Earth Science Week too, as well as the General Assembly 2015 conference theme, A Voyage Through Scales! This [...]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Velociraptor in the Zagros Mountains 

How many times have you turned your head up to the sky and spotted familiar shapes in the clouds? Viewing structures from afar can reveal interesting, common and, sometimes, funny patterns. Satellite images are often used to map geological terrains. They offer a bird’s eye view of the planet and the opportunity to see broad scale structures, the scale of which would be impossible to grasp from the ground. They can, from time to time, much like when you cloud spot, reveal interesting and [...]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Finger Rock 

Standing proud amongst the calm waters of Golovnina Bay is ‘The Devil’s Finger’, a sea stack composed of volcanic sediments. Located on the Pacific coast of Kunashir Island -which is controlled by Russia but claimed by Japan – the stack is testament to the volcanic nature of the region. The island itself is formed of four active volcanoes which are joined together by low-lying geothermally active regions. Sea stacks, tall columns of rocks which jut out of the sea close to the shore, are [...]

Soils at Imaggeo: Badlands in central Spain 

Saskia Keesstra, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands Description This composite shows a constellation of combined visual and infrared imaging of a smouldering combustion front spreading radially over a thin sample of dry peat. The central watch is created by a series of twelve wedges. Each wedge is extracted from a photo taken every 5 min from an elevated view looking down into the sample during the one-hour lab experiment. The circular peat sample (D=22 cm) was ignited on the [...]

Soils at Imaggeo: Fly ash dyke or landfill or pond 

Kripal Singh, CSIR-Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, Lucknow, India Description Fly ash, generated during coal combustion for thermal power generation, is dumped in man made ponds is a big problem to manage in several countries. In this picture, natural grasses are growing on a fly ash pond on National Thermal Power Plant, Unchahar, Uttar Pradesh, India. About Imaggeo Imaggeo is the EGU’s online open access geosciences image repository. All geoscientists (and others) can [...]

Soils at Imaggeo: Gypsum concretions in a soil horizon 

Antonio Jordán, University of Seville, Sevilla, Spain Most Gypsisols are formed when gypsum (calcium sulfate) from gypsiferous parent materials is dissolved and moves through soil water, precipitating in an accumulation soil horizons. Triassic rock outcrops in almost all Andalusia consist mainly of red and variegated clays and in some cases by clays of different colors are known as the iridescent clays of the Triassic, or as variegated clays. Gypsum appears as chemical precipitation rocks [...]

EGU Photo Contest 2015 

If you are pre-registered for the 2015 General Assembly (Vienna, 12 – 17 April), you can take part in our annual photo competition! Winners receive a free registration to next year’s General Assembly! The sixth annual EGU photo competition opens on 1 February. Up until 1 March, every participant pre-registered for the General Assembly can submit up three original photos and one moving image on any broad theme related to the Earth, planetary, and space sciences. Shortlisted photos [...]

Imaggeo on Mondays: A solitary floating island 

With 2014 officially named the hottest year on record, there is evidence of the effects of rising global temperatures across the globe. The solitary, shimmering iceberg in today’s Imaggeo on Mondays photograph is a reminder that one of the best places to look for evidence of change is in glaciers. Daniela Domeisen tells the story of this lonely frozen block of ancient ice. The picture shows an iceberg on Tasman glacier lake in the Southern Alps of New Zealand, in the centre of Aoraki / Mount [...]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Artists’ Paint pots 

Many artists draw inspiration from nature and it’s not surprising when faced with landscapes which are as beautiful as the one featured in this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays post. Josep Miquel Ubalde Bauló writes about the origin of the colourful mud pots and bobby-socks trees! This picture corresponds to The Artist Paint Pots, found in in Yellowstone, the first National Park of the world. Yellowstone is one of the most geologically dynamic areas on Earth. A huge underlying magma body releases [...]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Iceberg at midnight 

Standing on the vast expanse of gleaming white sea ice of the Atka Bay, Michael Bock took this stunning picture of an Antarctic iceberg. The days, during the Antarctic summer, are never ending. Despite capturing the image at midnight, Michael was treated to hazy sunlight. “Clearly visible [in the iceberg] are the annual snow accumulation layers which illustrate how the ice archive works.; as you look down the icy face, the ice gets older,” explains Michael. As more snow accumulates on the [...]

The best of Imaggeo in 2014: in pictures. 

From the rifting of the African continent, to mighty waterfalls in Slovenia, through to a bird’s eye view of the Glarus Thurst in the Alps, images from Imaggeo, the EGU’s open access geosciences image repository, they have given us some stunning views of the geoscience of Planet Earth and beyond. In this post we have curated some of our favourites, including header images from across our social media channels and Immageo on Mondays blog posts of 2014. Of course, these are only a few of the [...]