Geobulletin alpha

Announcing the winners of the EGU Photo Contest 2016! 

The selection committee received over 200 photos for this year’s EGU Photo Contest, covering fields across the geosciences. Participants at the 2016 General Assembly have been voting for their favourites throughout the week  of the conference and there are three clear winners. Congratulations to 2016’s fantastic photographers! In addition, this year, to celebrate the theme of the EGU 2016 General Assembly, Active Planet, the photo that best captured the theme of the conference was selected [...]

Photo Contest finalists 2016 – who will you vote for? 

The selection committee received over 400 photos for this year’s EGU Photo Contest, covering fields across the geosciences. The fantastic finalist photos are below and they are being exhibited in Hall X2 (basement, Brown Level) of the Austria Center Vienna – see for yourself! Do you have a favourite? Vote for it! There is a voting terminal (also in Hall X2), just next to the exhibit. The results will be announced on Friday 22 April during the lunch break (at 12:15). In addition, this [...]

Hunt for helium ramps up in Arizona 

Three companies now have active exploration programs underway in Arizona to develop underground helium resources. Ranger Development, a Texas-based joint venture, made a presentation last Friday to the Arizona Oil & Gas Conservation Commission on their efforts to reopen the Pinta Dome and Twin Bridges helium fields in the Holbrook basin of eastern Arizona.   The fields are at the northern

Job Page – reloaded 

Since 3 years digital-geography.com provides a nice page for your job search in the fields of GIS and Geosciences. As most of our visitors are young professionals, which are not necessarily interested in a job near their home, we started this job page with a webmap from the very beginning. Now we made a big rework of the side. The Early Beginning Just have a look at this old side: The old pages where based on a single map for each week and was implemented using openlayers. This was every time [...]

Finding a Thesis: On the Southern Route to the Top of Mineral Ridge 

And so, we return once again to my seemingly never-ending thesis hunt. As you can see above, I've just arrived on eastern outskirts of Silver Peak, after crossing the Clayton Valley lithium brine fields. Portion of the Goldfield 2° sheet, about centered on Mineral Ridge and what was then called "Silverpeak." I took a close look at my maps, and noticed that not only did the Goldfield 2°

Arthur James Boucot Research Grants for 2016 

Arthur James Boucot Research Grants for 2016The Paleontological Society’s Arthur James Boucot Research Grants support early career paleontologists in the fields of morphology, taxonomy, and biostratigraphy, working on any taxa, preferably with some combination of these approaches and a significant fieldwork component. Arthur James Boucot Research Grants support original research by current postdoctoral students, assistant professors (pre-tenure), and other early [...]

The Paris Climate Summit: Resources for Journalists 

Many experts at Columbia University’s Earth Institute are attending or closely watching the Paris climate summit. These include world authorities on climate science, politics, law, natural resources, national security, health and other fields, who can offer expert  analysis to journalists. Also, this week we start our Paris Climate Summit blog, with news, views, and scientific... read

Tubewells to the Rescue 

The resistivity was hampered by bad roads and flooded fields. At one point we needed to do a makeshift repair with sandbags and bricks to get through. The augering was proving similarly difficult in the thick muds of the abandoned channel. We were using up our time and making limited progress. It was time to change to our alternative plan. We switched to drilling with tube wells, a local hand-drilling technique. In the time it took us to auger to less than 5 meters, we drilled two tube [...]

High water tables can be a boon to crop yields 

High water tables can be a bane to crop yields, compelling many farmers to drain their fields so their crops don’t drown when it rains. But a high water table may not always be a bad thing. A new study shows it is actually a boon for some fields and during certain times of the growing season, casting light on opportunities for improving yield efficiency to meet global food

Create Maps Online: A comparison of 6 webmap providers 

Working with a desktop GIS might be a good choice for geodata-experts, GIS-people in general and everyone who is inside the fields of geosciences. If you don’t want to struggle with a desktop mapping software or you “just want to create a map” for your publication, business data, website or professional service the following online mapping solutions might be the one-stop-shop for your needs. Shortlinks to results: ArcGIS online CartoDB MapBox SimpleMappr MangoMap Click2Map [...]

Winners of the First Annual Golder Foundation Awards 

The Golder Foundation presented the first annual awards to six students in the fields of Ground Engineering and Contaminant Site Assessment and Cleanup. The cash awards, totaling $40,000 USD, are meant to encourage and recognize technical excellence in some of the areas that Golder practices in.   The Golder Foundation was created in 2013 and aims to further knowledge and learning by opening the technical archives of our founders and some senior staff; through sharing Golder's distinct [...]

Latest papers on paleoseismology, active tectonics, archaeoseismology, and tsunamis 

In case you need a good read for your summer holidays, here are the latest papers on paleoseismology and related fields. Today including a IAEA TecDoc about paleoseismology, an early paper on the Gorkha quake, coral paleoseismology, some tectonic geomorphology in Spain, clastic dykes, and tectonic uplift of an island in Chile. Enjoy! Brandes, C., Steffen, H., Steffen, R., & Wu, P. (2015). Intraplate seismicity in northern Central Europe is induced by the last glaciation. Geology, G36710-1. [...]

Announcing the winners of the EGU Photo Contest 2015! 

The selection committee received over 200 photos for this year’s EGU Photo Contest, covering fields across the geosciences. Participants have been voting for their favourites throughout the week  and there are three clear winners. Congratulations to  – 2015’s fantastic photographers!   On the occasion of the International Year of Soils, the judges also awarded an honourable mention to the best image in the Soil System Sciences category submitted to the EGU Photo Contest. The chosen [...]

Introducing the new EGU young scientist representatives at Union level 

While each of the division young scientist representatives gather feedback from young scientists in their fields, the Union-level representative gathers information from each of the division reps and takes it to the EGU’s Programme Committee – the group responsible for organising the EGU’s annual General Assembly – and, from this year onwards, to the EGU Council as well. Following a two-year term, Sam Illingworth steps down as Programme Committee Representative at this year’s [...]

Photo Contest finalists 2015 – who will you vote for? 

The selection committee received over 200 photos for this year’s EGU Photo Contest, covering fields across the geosciences. The fantastic finalist photos are below and they are being exhibited in Hall X (basement, Blue Level) of the Austria Center Vienna – see for yourself! Do you have a favourite? Vote for it! There is a voting terminal in Hall X, just next to the exhibit. The results will be announced on Friday 17 April during the lunch break (at 12:15). On the occasion of the [...]

The Biggest Scientific Myth in America, and Why It’s No Accident 

I chatted with Dr. Naomi Oreskes about her book Merchants of Doubt last December at the AGU in San Francisco. She told me about the movie, and I hope to see it soon. Dr. Oreskes published a stunning paper in Science in 1994 looked at the level of scientific consensus on climate change. What she found was stunning to many scientists in other fields, and since then other studies have also shown just how

“A Focus on Crystallography” – a new publication by FIZ Karlsruhe 

     What part does knowledge about crystalline compounds play in research? How are crystallography databases designed, and what are their fields of application? Which relationships exist between crystallographic information and mathematics? Experts answer these and many more interesting questions in the new scientific publication “A Focus on Crystallography”. Karlsruhe, February

New paleoseismology papers 

Several recently published studies deal with paleoseismology and related fields, especially tsunamis and archaeoseismology. Do you feel some important papers are missing? Contact us and tell us! Livio, F. A., Berlusconi, A., Zerboni, A., Trombino, L., Sileo, G., Michetti, A. M., Rosnight, H. & Spötl, C. (2014). Progressive offset and surface deformation along a seismogenic blind thrust in the Po Plain foredeep (Southern Alps, Northern Italy). Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth. [...]

Non-standard use of Web GIS on the example of OpenWebGIS functionality 

In this article we consider the use OpenWebGIS, as one of the free Web GISs for analyzing of buildings drawings, as well as mapping and measurement of small-scale objects that are demanded in archeology, architecture, biology, medicine and other fields of human activity. Tell me, how many online Web GISs can use the maximum zooming ratio of more than 19? Those Web GISs which use OpenStreetMap as a base map, generally have a maximum zoom to 19. Those Web GISs which use Google Maps as a base map, [...]

Things to Make and Do, Part 14: sheep skull 

Just a quick photo-post today. A couple of months ago, walking around the fields near our house, I found a broad shallow pit with a lot of a sheep skeletal elements in it. I took my youngest son out on an expedition, and we rescued the good material. I’ve cleaned up the first two (of three)