The proximity of hot springs to early settlements have led researchers to wonder if early humans used hot springs as a cooking resource long before fire. Credit: Tom Björklund Scientists have found evidence of hot springs near sites where ancient hominids settled, long before the control of fire. Some of […]
Primary forests are crucial for biodiversity conservation and store high quantities of carbon in biomass, therefore helping to mitigate climate change. Credit: Tzvetan Zlatanov Europe’s primary forests: What to protect? What to restore? Primary forests are forests without any signs of past human use and where ecological processes are not […]
Cross-section view of Austrocedrus chilensis wood in the Andes of northern Patagonia, Argentina. This species is abundant in the xeric forest-steppe ecotone, where periodic massive mortality events have been documented in relation to extreme droughts in Patagonia during the 20th century. Credit: Ricardo Villalba, Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y […]
May 6, 2020. (Click HERE for full view.) In 2001, Dubai started construction on three large artificial islands in the Persian Gulf shaped like palm trees. A few years later, Doha began dredging for an island that resembled a string of pearls, and the United Arab Emirates went to work […]
Comparison of Lyell Glacier in 1866 (A) and in 2018 (B). Image A: View from Meins Knob by Julius Haast. 1867. Full citation: (published 1867, painted in 1866): ‘Report on the headwaters of the River Rakaia, with twenty illustrations, a map, and three appendixes. Christchurch, 1867 Haast, Johann Franz Julius […]
July 2, 2020. (Click HERE for full detailed view.) Arctic sea ice is subject to some serious travel restrictions. Penned in by major land masses, most ice that forms in the Arctic Ocean stays there for the duration of its existence—typically one to four years before melting. Some ice, however, […]
ANIMATION An international team discovered a previously unrecognized ocean current that transports water to one of the world’s largest “waterfalls” in the North Atlantic Ocean: the Faroe Bank Channel Overflow into the deep North Atlantic. While investigating the pathways that water takes to feed this major waterfall, the research team […]
Coastal elevation in California. Coastal zones, which are defined to be those with elevations less than 10 m, are shown in red. Segments of the coast with elevations higher than 10 m are colored by a yellow gradient. Credit: USGS NED A majority of the world population lives on low […]
A new study shows that giant ore deposits are tightly distributed above where rigid rocks that comprise the nuclei of ancient continents begin to thin, far below the surface (white areas). Redder areas indicate the thinnest rocks beyond the boundary; bluer ones, the thickest. Circles, triangles and squares show known […]
This image combines three radar acquisitions from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission taken about two months apart to show change in crop and land conditions over time. The first image from May 8, 2018 is associated with red, the second from July 7 depicts changes in green, and the third from […]