Geography

According to a study conducted by Colorado State University, the explanations for how and why mountains arise are more deeply hidden than previously believed. “Mountain building is a fundamental process of how Earth behaves,” said Sean Gallen, lead author and CSU assistant professor of geosciences, “and this study suggests that we may not understand that as well as we thought we did.” In order to use landscapes to recreate lengthy histories of mountain construction in southern Italy, Gallen and his team developed new data sets and methodologies. Their novel approach yielded some “confounding” results, according to Gallen. One tectonic plate

According to recent research led by Oregon State University, the Ontong Java Plateau, an underwater volcanic plateau in the Pacific Ocean north of the Solomon Islands, is younger and its eruption lasted longer than previously believed. The results, which were just published in Science, also call into question long-held beliefs that the formation of the plateau, which is roughly the size of Alaska, was the reason for an oceanic black shale deposit around the world. “This type of shale is formed when there is very limited oxygen in the ocean. This layer was formed about 120 million years ago and

An equatorial plasma bubble (EPB), which might be caused by volcanic eruptions, could seriously interfere with satellite-based communications, according to research conducted by an international team using satellite and ground-based ionospheric measurements. Their findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports. The area of the Earth's upper atmosphere known as the ionosphere is where solar energy ionizes molecules and atoms, producing positively charged ions. The F-region, located 150 to 800 km above the Earth's surface, is the region with the largest concentration of ionized particles. Because it reflects and refracts radio waves used by satellite and GPS tracking systems back

According to recent research led by the University of Colorado Boulder, streamflow in Alaskan rivers is increasing throughout both the spring and fall seasons, owing mostly to rising air temperatures over the last 60 years. This increased volume of free-flowing water during the shoulder seasons is exacerbated by earlier snowmelt and thawing permafrost, both of which are being influenced by rising temperatures; all of which are influencing the formation and safety of Alaska river ice in winter, as well as the timing of when rivers “break up” in response to seasonal warming each spring. The findings are the result of

Throughout the Arctic, rivers transport fallen trees from forests to the ocean. As the river twists and turns, the logs can stack up, resulting in long-term carbon storage. A new study has mapped the largest known woody deposit, covering 51 square kilometers (20 square miles) of the Mackenzie River Delta in Nunavut, Canada, and calculated that the logs store about 3.4 million tons (about 3.1 million metric tons) of carbon. “To put that in perspective, that's about two and a half million car emissions for a year,” said Alicia Sendrowski, a research engineer who led the study while at Colorado