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GeologicalSocietyofAfrica www.geologicalsocietyofafrica.org
NEWSLETTER-Nr. 3 of 2016 – Annum 61
Contents
GSAf MATTERS 2
ELECTIONS FOR THE GSAf COUNCIL 2
IMPORTANT MEETINGS IN 2016 3
26th Colloquium of African Geology – 23-27.November.2016 3
35th International Geological Congress, Cape Town, August 2016 6
NEWS 7
Africa in Focus 7
About Africa 8
About the World 12
About Space/Astronomy 20
GEOETHICS 24
HUMOR 26
LITERATURE 27
Africa 27
Links to Journals, Reviews & Newsletters 30
EVENTS 33
In Africa and about Africa 33
Rest of the World 34
INTERESTING PICTURES 37
Edited by
Lopo Vasconcelos Editor of the GSAf Newsletter [email protected]
1Newsletter of the Geological Society of Africa (GSAf) - Nr. 3; March, 2016 –Annum 6.
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GSAf MATTERS
ELECTIONS FOR THE GSAf COUNCIL
During the next CAG26 in Ibadan, Nigeria, in November 2016, elections for the positions within
the Council of GSAf will take place.
According to the decisions taken and approved during the last General Assembly in Dar es
Salaam, some restrictions have been introduced, as follows.
1. The position of President must be filled by one of the members in office;
2. The position of Treasurer, since the accounts are in Ethiopia, must be filled by a member
based in Ethiopia;
3. The position of Editor is nominated by the Council.
All other positions are open for election, as follows:
COUNCIL MEMBERS
President: Open to a current serving member
Secretary General: Open
Membership Secretary: Open
Honorary Treasurer: Open to Ethiopia based Members only
Vice Presidents
Vice – President (South): Open
Vice – President (Centre): Open
Vice – President (West): Open
Vice – President (North): Open
Vice – President (East): Open
Councilors
Councilor(South): Open
Councilor(Centre): Open
Councilor(West): Open
Councilor(North): Open
Councilor(East): Open
Past President: Prof. Aberra Mogessie
Editor Newsletter: Prof. Lopo Vasconcelos
Please be advised that current serving members who would like to continue should apply
through the Secretary General with a cc to the President ([email protected]) and
Newsletter Editor ([email protected]) for transparency.
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IMPORTANT MEETINGS IN 2016
26th Colloquium of African Geology – 23-27.November.2016
Second Circular
AND
16TH CONGRESS OF THE
GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AFRICA
Ibadan, Nigeria
23 - 27 November 2016
-
Unlocking Earth Science Potentials for Sustainable Development of Africa
PARTNERS
www.cag26.org.ng
Follow the link above for full details
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MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIRMAN OF THE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
With the release of this Second Circular, another milestone in the organization and development of 26th Colloquium of African Geology - CAG26 and the 16th Congress of the Geological Society of Africa (GSAf) is achieved. This Circular provides important information that will help delegates plan their participation in the upcoming event here in Ibadan, Nigeria. The full schedule of registration fees is released in this circular and delegates may now register using printable registration forms from the website: www.cag26.org.ng. Field trip information is also now available with dates to be confirmed soon.
Major progress has been made with the scientific program with the announcement of the sessions in this circular as well as information on professional development workshops, and short courses training.
The Organizing Committee is making every effort to organise a befitting Colloquium This may be once in a lifetime opportunity to come to the ancient city of Ibadan to participate in an exciting scientific program covering the breadth of the geosciences, to experience fascinating geological features in the field, to network with the cream of the international geoscience community, and to hold your business meetings. Whether you are from the industry, government or academia, you will find a full and interesting program within the 26th Colloquium of African Geology.
The appreciation of the LOC goes to the many members of the geoscientific communities around the world who have shown interest in the organization of these events. It is our hope that you will be able to join us for the 26th Colloquium of African Geology and we look forward to welcoming you in Ibadan this November 2016. We hope in no distant time to update you with the Third circular where fuller information of the Colloquium will be unveiled
Prof. Olugbenga Okunlola, FNMGS FGS FASI
INTRODUCTION
The Colloquium of African Geology (CAG) is a major biennial meeting organized under the auspices of the Geological Society of Africa (GSAf). Since the first colloquium in 1965, this Colloquium has been hosted by several European and African countries. The African countries that have organized this event include Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Morocco, Mozambique, Tunisia, South Africa, Ethiopia and Tanzania.
At the General Assembly of the Geological Society of Africa (GSAf) held during the 25th Colloquium on 14th August, 2014 at the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere International Convention Centre (JNICC) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the organization of the next Colloquium of African Geology (CAG26) as well as the 16th Congress of the Geological Society of Africa was assigned to Nigeria. The colloquium which will be organized by the Nigerian Mining and Geosciences Society will be conducted at the International Conference Center, University of Ibadan, Nigeria from the 23rd to 27th November 2016. This will be done in cooperation with governmental and non-governmental organizations under the auspices of the Geological Society of Africa (GSAf). The Theme of the Conference is “Unlocking Earth Science Potentials for Sustainable Development of Africa”.
Senior and early-career earth scientists from organizations, associations, mining companies, civil societies, politics, and media will be welcome from all over the world especially but not limited to career scientists from African and other developing countries. These representatives will be from different countries who are active at the national level of their respective countries. The participation of these individuals from different sectors and countries will enhance international collaborations and increase the involvement of the international community. The estimated number of participants will range from 300 to 600. The website for the events is www.cag26.org.ng.
This Second Circular shows some details of the Colloquium activities, call for abstracts, sessions and conveners, workshop and short courses proposals.
ORGANIZATION AND COMMITTEES
LOCAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE 1. Prof. O. A. Okunlola: (President Nigerian Mining and Geosciences Society, Department of Geology, University of Ibadan) General Co-
ordination/Chairman. 2. Dr Jude Ogala: (Delta state University) Coordination. 3. Mr. A. N. Nwegbu: (Nigeria Geological Survey Agency) Scientific Committee/Governmental Affairs. 4. Prof. A. I. Olayinka: (Department of Geology, University of Ibadan) Scientific Committee/ University Liaison. 5. Prof. M. N. Tijani: (Department of Geology, University of Ibadan) Scientific Committee 6. Prof. S. B. Olobaniyi: (Department of Geology, University of Lagos) Scientific Committee 7. Prof. M. A. Rahaman: (Department of Geology, Obafemi Awolowo University) Fund Raising/Scientific Committee. 8. Dr. M. D. Bako: (NAPIMS) Fund Raising/Professional Organization Liason 9. Prof. E. C. Ashano: (Department of Geology, University of Jos) Excursions 10. Prof. C. S. Nwajide: Scientific Committees /Excursions 11. Prof. N. Onuoha: (University of Nigeria, Nsukka) Scientific Committee/ Professional Bodies' Liaison 12. Dr. N. A. Adebisi: (Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye) Logistics and Accommodation 13. Dr. I. A. Oyediran: (Department of Geology, University of Ibadan) Logistics and Accommodation 14. Engr. S. O. Nkom: (Mining Cadastral Office) Finance 15. Mr. T. M. Arisekola: (Nigeria Geological Survey Agency) Finance 16. Prof. A. A. Elueze: (Department of Geology, University of Ibadan) Advisory 17. Prof. T. A. Badejoko: (Bayat Limited) Advisory 18. Mr. Lateef Amodu: (Chevron) Exhibition
19. Dr. A. S. Olatunji: (Department of Geology, University of Ibadan) LOC Secretary/Organization
INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE 1. Prof. Aberra Mogessie Ethiopia [email protected] 2. Ms. Kristine Asch Germany [email protected] 3. Dr. Bagai Z. Botswana [email protected] 4. Prof. Jesus Martinez Spain [email protected] 5. Prof. Lopo Vasconcelos Mozambique [email protected] 6. Dr. Carlos Console Argentina [email protected] 7. Dr. Hassan Helmy Egypt [email protected], [email protected] 8. Prof. Wlady Altermann South Africa [email protected]
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9. Prof. Ezzourra Erramie Morocco [email protected], [email protected] 10. Prof. Dirk Kuester Germany [email protected] 11. Prof. Damien Deluaux Belgium [email protected] 12. Prof. John Hess United States [email protected] 13. Prof. Alberto Riccardi Italy [email protected] 14. Prof. Hassina Mouri South Africa [email protected] 15. Prof. Asfawossen Asrat Ethiopia [email protected] 16. Prof. Chris King United Kingdom [email protected] 17. Dr. Daniel Franks UNDP/Belgium [email protected] 18. Ms. Elyvin Nkhonjera YES/Malawi [email protected] 19. Dr. Enas Ahmed Egypt [email protected] 20. Dr. Mohd Meite Egypt
21. Prof. Zakaria Hamimi Egypt [email protected]
DATES
Session Submission Deadline: 30th August 2015 Release of Third Circular: May, 2016 Abstract Submission deadline: 30th June, 2016 Release of Final Circular: 15th July, 2016 Notifications of Accepted Abstracts: 15th August, 2016 Early Bird Registration Deadline: 31st May, 2016. Online Registration and Payment Deadline: 30th August, 2016 Bank Transfer Fees Deadline: 15th September, 2016
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
Pre-Conference Workshops: Nov. 21-22, 2016 Registration and Reception: Nov. 23, 2016 Scientific Sessions: Nov. 24-26, 2016 Mid-Conference Field Trip/City Tour: Nov. 25, 2016 GSAf 16th Congress: Nov. 26, 2016 Post-Conference Field Trip/Excursion: Nov. 27-Dec. 1, 2016
REGISTRATION
Online Registration is open and will stay open till 30th August 2016. Please visit the events website at www.cag26.org.ng and complete the online registration form. Participants who prefer to register using printed form can access the printable registration form from the website. The completed form must be scanned and sent to the Conference Secretariat via [email protected] before 30th August, 2016
REGISTRATION FEES (in USD)
Category Early bird Late On site
GSAf Members and affiliates 250 300 300
Accompanying person 150 200 200
Student 100 150 150
Non members 300 350 350
Early Bird Registration ends 31st May 2016.
Events registration fees will cover reception, coffee/tea breaks and lunch during the scientific sessions, and events materials. Participants are required to pay registration fees through bank transfer before 30th August, 2016 (see the bank transfer address below) Kindly notify the secretariat on payment by attaching evidence of transactions. If there are any difficulties with the transfers, kindly notify the Colloquium correspondence address. Beyond this date, it will be possible to pay the registration fees at the Conference registration desk at rates indicated on the table above.
20% deduction will be charged for refunds and no refund will be made after 15th September, 2016.
Remitters of funds from abroad should inform their bankers as follows:
Please pay: UNITED BANK FOR AFRICA PLC, NIGERIA
SWIFT CODE: UNAFNGLA
Through: CITIBANK NEW YORK UNITED STATES SWIFT CODE: CITIUS33 ROUTING NO: 021000089 ACCOUNT NUMBER: 36320321
FOR FURTHER CREDIT: Beneficiary Account Number: 3002057016 Beneficiary Name: NIGERIAN MINING AND GEOSCIENCES SOCIETY Beneficiary Address: DEPT. OF GEOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN UBA Branch: Dugbe 1 *Please remark as “Registration Fee for CAG26'’
Remitters of funds from Nigeria should pay into: UBA Branch: Dugbe 1 Beneficiary Account Number: 1019369647 Beneficiary Name: NIGERIAN MINING AND GEOSCIENCES SOCIETY Beneficiary Address: DEPT. OF GEOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN
Please visit the event website at www.cag36.org.ng for complete details
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35th International Geological Congress, Cape Town, August 2016
Support to African IGC35 participants who have submitted abstracts to this session should send their applications to my email – till 30th April 2016 - which I will forward to Dr. Kauser de Souza of the African Minerals Development Center/UNECA, Addis Ababa.
The full support is only for 10 participants.
Title Description Convenors
Special Symposium: Geology and Mineral Information System (GMIS) strategy to domesticate the Africa Mining Vision at a country level
The Geological and Mineral Information System (GMIS) Strategy is being developed by the African Mineral Development Centre (AMDC) to facilitate the strengthening of the African production, management and dissemination of geological and mineral information (GMI) in connection with the implementation of the African Mining Vision (AMV) and the domestication of the Country Mining Vision (CMV).
The Strategy is expected to serve as a guide for the AMDC and its implementing partners consisting of the African Union Commission (AUC), African Development Bank (AfDB), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) to provide strategic operational support for AU Members States and their Geological Survey Organizations (GSOs) and centres of excellence to improve geology and mineral information system (GMIS), which will encourage investment across the whole Mineral Value Chain. The GMIS Strategy envisages geological and geospatial information as crucial for several important legal, economic, social and environmental applications in mining and broad development processes in Africa. The workshop organizers invite geologists engaged in GMI programs in Africa and elsewhere to contribute their share and exchange ideas. Ten African geologists who could make contributions to this workshop will be provided with full sponsorship of the Africa Mineral Development Center (AMDC) to attend the IGC35 Congress. The selection of the candidates will be made by the AMDC in cooperation with the Geological Society of Africa (GSAf).
Kaiser de Souza and Aberra Mogessie
With best regards, Aberra
Prof. Aberra Mogessie FSEG, FGSA, FAAS, AFEAS, FASI President of the Geological Society of Africa (GSAf)
Board Member, Earth Science Matters Foundation (ESM)
Member International Committee of the Geological Society of America (GSA)
Senior Advisory Board Member of the Internatioal Association of Geoethics (IAGETH)
Institute of Earth Sciences, Karl-Franzens University of Graz A-8010, Graz, Austria, Tel: ++43316-3805523 email: [email protected] http://www.geologicalsocietyofafrica.org
http://www.icog.es/iageth/index.php/senior-advisory-board/
http://www.earthsciencematters.org
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NEWS
Africa in Focus
How Africa could leapfrog fossil fuels to clean energy
© wajan – 123RF.com
Revolutions are, as a rule, rare and momentous processes. But across the African continent the potential is ripe for a clean energy revolution that upsets and leapfrogs the old fossil-fuel order.
Globally, clean energy technology has developed at a rapid pace, and costs have plummeted – so much so that a predominately clean energy future that brings energy access to all is not only possible, but even profitable.
Africa has within its reach a future that creates a homegrown, robust, clean energy economy that keeps jobs and money on the continent. Not only will this help prevent the harms and pollution of a fossil-fuel-intensive economy, but it can also save significant amounts of money on energy costs.
Those ready to embrace a clean energy future will find resistance from the fossil-fuel industry. The industry will say that a clean energy future is not affordable or feasible – claims echoed by people like the controversial political scientist Bjorn Lomborg and even Bill Gates.
In step with the fossil-fuel industry, they argue that Africa can’t do without massive amounts of fossil fuels if it is to tackle poverty and develop. But a different future is possible.
Energy for all
Consider, for instance, the International Energy Agency’s Energy for All scenario for 2030.
The International Energy Agency projects that achieving universal electricity will increase the 2030 electricity demand by about 4% above the base case level. This is in a base case scenario where in 2030 close to one billion people still remain without access to electricity.
Only 35% will come from fossil fuels under the scenario because of grid extension costs associated with providing access to rural residents who make up 84% of those without access to energy. The rest will come from renewable generation sources such as hydro, wind and solar.
Bringing even more clean energy online is possible. As the Carbon Tracker Initiative highlights:
… the rapid emergence of renewable energy has made it likely to move Africa to a future dominated by cost-effective renewable, low-carbon electricity.
For instance, the International Energy Agency’s 2°C compatible Hi-Renewable Energy Scenarioshows that Africa can generate more than 80% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050. This requires significant upfront investment. This is where the support of rich historical polluter nations like the US is important. It is also what’s being demanded by climate justice.
But in the medium-to-long run, the costs are approximately offset by fuel cost savings, never mind all the other social and economic benefits that come with clean energy.
The International Energy Agency is also renowned for consistently underestimating both the speed with which clean energy can be scaled up and its cost-effectiveness.
In fact, a high renewable energy future could result in significant economic savings and growth for the African continent. The Solutions Project run by Stanford University’s Marc Jacobsen has developed a path to 100% renewable energy for South Africa by 2050. The project predicts that this would lead to annual energy savings of US$549 per person. Combined with the health and climate cost savings, it adds up to US$6682 saved per person.
Fossil fuels are falling away
Renewable energy is growing at a rapid pace, partly because clean energy costs continue to plummet. Onshore wind is already competitive or cheaper than other fossil fuels. Solar is set be cost-competitive with coal power in 80% of the world by 2017.
Energy expert Amory Lovins points out:
worldwide, renewables in fair competition (no subsidies and no corruption) generally cost less than any other new electricity source and many existing ones.
That includes South Africa’s nuclear plans.
The country’s Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research has shown that wind is already providing energy that is 40% cheaper than coal. Collectively the study shows that wind and solar saved South Africa R4 billion from January to June in 2015.
Energy poverty is primarily a problem for those living in rural areas who make up 84% of those without access. That makes coal even more expensive when adding the significant grid extension costs needed to access rural communities. Clean energy, on the other hand, is a more distributed form of energy which can avoid those significant costs. In Jigar Shah’s words, evidence from around the world suggests that:
… energy is starting to look a lot like mobile phones as distributed solutions leapfrog outdated and ineffective centralised networks.
There are multiple choices ahead for Africa thanks to the rapid rise of clean energy. Compared to the fossil-fuelled status quo, clean energy has the ability to distribute power more equitably, provide cheaper energy, more energy access, cleaner air and water, and create many more jobs. It is time to embrace the potential of a clean energy revolution. Posted on 2 Mar 2016 11:43
At http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/701/141621.html#more
8
About Africa
Eni gains Coral approval off Mozambique
Offshore Rovuma (ENI)
Fabio Scala February 24, Eni received approval from the government of Mozambique’s Council of Ministers for the plan of development for the Coral discovery, in Area 4 offshore Mozambique.
The approval relates to the first phase of development of 5 Tcf of gas in the Coral discovery, located in the Area 4 permit. The discovery is located in water more than 2000m deep and approximately 80km offshore of the Palma bay in the northern province of Cabo Delgado.
The giant discovery, made in May 2012 and outlined in 2013, proved the existence of a high quality field of Eocenic age with excellent productivity. It is estimated to contain around 16 Tcf of gas in place, wholly located in Area 4.
The plan of development, the very first one to be approved in the Rovuma Basin, foresees the drilling and completion of six subsea wells and the construction and installation of a technologically advanced state-of-the-art floating LNG facility, the capacity of which will be around 3.4 MTPA.
The project is also the first in the Rovuma Basin to be granted the environmental license, in September 2015, at the end of a thorough process involving local communities and national authorities. It was the result of an environmental and social impact assessment study, carried out according to the highest standards for the industry.
“Today’s approval of the Coral plan of development is a historical milestone for the development of our discovery of 85 TCF of gas in the Rovuma Basin. It is a fundamental step to progress toward the final investment decision of our project which envisages the installation of the first newly built floating LNG facility in Africa and one of the first in the world. We are proud of Eni’s partnership with Mozambique, a key country in the company’s strategies,” Eni CEO, Claudio Descalzi said.
In addition, Eni and its partners are diligently pursuing the development of important gas reserve base of the Mamba Discovery, which allowed in December 2015 the achievement of a unitization agreement with Area 1.
Eni is the operator of Area 4 with a 50% indirect interest, owned through Eni East Africa (EEA), which holds a 70% stake of Area 4. Partnres include Galp Energia, KOGAS and Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos (ENH) with a 10% stake each. CNPC owns a 20% indirect interest in Area 4 through Eni East Africa.
Source: Offshore Engineer
At http://furtherafrica.com/2016/02/24/eni-gains-coral-approval-off-mozambique/
Clarity urged on critical Congo mine reform
By Rachel Hamada on February 19, 2016 — Reform of Congo’s mining law could mean a huge boost for the country’s economy and the wellbeing of the population – but there are fears it has been shelved
The future of Democratic Republic of Congo’s mining law reform is unclear after the country has reportedly abandoned plans to make long-awaited changes.
According to Bloomberg, Congo’s Mines Minister Martin Kabwelulu last week told investors that the country has abandoned plans to update its mining law, saying that commodity prices and energy issues represented a crisis for the sector. Copper output recently dropped for the first time in six years, a blow for DRC, which is Africa’s biggest copper producer.
UK campaigning organisation Global Witness, which focuses on exposing the links between the demand for natural resources, corruption, conflict and environmental destruction, has expressed concern over the announcement.
“Congo’s government appears to have caved in to industry pressure to maintain the cosy fiscal terms and lax regulations governing Congo’s mining sector,” said Nathaniel Dyer, Congo team leader.
“Weak regulation of the mining sector means that Congo’s government does not have the revenues to pay for the schools, hospitals and roads that the population desperately needs. Scrapping the effort to reform this law is a huge missed opportunity in a country where, if managed well, revenues from mining could offer a critical route out of poverty and contribute to stability.”
However, there seem to some indications from the DRC government that the Bill, still in Parliament, could be revived when the economic climate is seen as less risky. Kabwelulu’s chief of staff Valery Mukasa sent Global Witness a message stating that Kabwelulu meant to say merely that the current code remains in effect until it is replaced.
“The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has not renounced revising the mining code. Quite the contrary,” he wrote.
“However, in the context of targeting potential investors interested in the mining sector, the Mines Minister sought to reassure that the legal framework that governs the sector is the mining code of 2002, still in effect.”
Global Witness maintains that Kabwelulu and Mukasa’s comments are incompatible.
“The messages from the Mines Minister and his chief of staff appear to contradict each other. We would of course welcome a decision to continue with revision to the mining law. Congo’s Mines Minister should now issue a clear statement about the timetable for the passage of the law and a commitment to transparency and anti-corruption rules,” said Dyer.
DRC’s existing mining law dates from 2002, when the country was just coming out of the Second Congo War. Changes to the law have been in negotiation since 2012.
According to Global Witness, strong growth in Congo’s mining sector has been offset by poor governance. Between 2010 and 2012, it states that five opaque mining deals with anonymous offshore companies linked to a friend of President Joseph Kabila cost the state at least US$1.36 billion – “twice the country’s annual health and education spending combined”.
“Congo cannot afford to stick with a system that allows multi-million pound deals to be struck in secret, rather than by open tender, and the real owners of mining rights to hide behind anonymous companies. The government must reverse this decision and resume consultations on a new law that will ensure that mining revenues benefit the Congolese people,” said Dyer.
A draft new law from March 2015 already included some detail on the publication of contracts, the development of a transparent tender process, and the disclosure of beneficial ownership information.
Competition over control of DRC’s mineral wealth has been a contributing factor to the decades of violence and conflict that have plagued the country, following on from a particularly destructive legacy of colonialism.
However the country sees elections approaching in nine months, which could finally lead to a peaceful transition of power.
At http://thisisafrica.me/16794-2/
9
The desert that revealed the ultimate Ice Age
The desolate Namib Desert conceals evidence that our entire planet was once encased in ice
By Vivien Cumming, 3 March 2016
Namibia in south-west Africa is world famous for its hot and sandy Namib Desert and its rugged Atlantic Skeleton Coast.
The last thing you might imagine is that the country also holds clues to the Earth's largest ice age. But it was here, 20 years ago, that geologists first recognised one of the most unusual events in our planet's history: the "Snowball Earth".
In July 2015, I was exploring Namibia with a group of geologists led by Paul Hoffman.
It was Paul and his colleagues who, in the 1990s, discovered the significance of the rocks lying in Namibia's hot, dry desert. He has been back almost every year since to uncover more of Earth's secrets. The Ugab River valley
dissects the incredible folded geology of
Namibia's mountainous scenery (Credit: Vivien Cumming)
The Snowball Earth theory is one scientists once dismissed as ridiculous. It proposes that, over 700 million years ago, the whole planet became so cold that ice spread from the poles all the way to the equator. The Earth was effectively one giant snowball, and remained so for tens of millions of years.
700 million year old rocks deposited in layers at the bottom of the ocean hold clues to Earth's icy past (Credit: Vivien Cumming)
Namibia is not exactly the place you would think to go looking for signs of this ancient snowball age, but it
was evidence found in Namibia that confirmed the supposedly impossible idea that the Earth once had ice at the Equator.
A truck drives across
Namibia’s rugged landscape (Credit: Vivien Cumming)
The rocks found in Namibia's mountainous deserts were once deposited at the bottom of the ocean. They contain
evidence of glacial activity – similar kinds of rocks are forming under the ice-covered Arctic Ocean today – but crucially, they were deposited in the tropics. This showed that ice covered the planet 700 million years ago.
Geologists hike up ancient sediments deposited at the bottom of the ocean. The layers show ancient sea-level cycles affected by tectonics
and climate (Credit: Vivien Cumming)
We were there to see these extraordinary
glacial deposits, but fieldwork in Namibia is no easy task.
The country is nearly four times the size of the UK and if you are going anywhere off the beaten track you will probably be driving for miles on bumpy dirt roads. Venturing away from any of the tourist areas means taking food, camping equipment, water and several spare tyres with you.
We were headed for a remote region between the Huab and Ugab rivers in north-western Namibia. It is a hot and dry desert landscape, fragmented by spectacular mountain ranges.
The scenery is dotted with dead, skeleton-like trees. Living trees are only found in dried-up river valleys where the roots can reach down to water lurking somewhere deep below. It is here that elephants roam, well aware of where they will find water.
The best way to get around is in a pickup truck, affectionately known as a "bakkie", adapted for camping with a tent on the roof. This means you can stop and camp anywhere you need to.
Evenings are usually spent around a campfire with a guitar, listening to stories about fascinating wildlife encounters or Namibia's extraordinary geology. Mornings are spent bleary-eyed lighting a fire to brew the coffee before an early hike into the hills.
Every night, perfectly clear skies reveal the Milky Way in all its splendour. You can lie out watching it for hours, with more stars than you have ever seen tracking overhead.
One afternoon, we were walking back over the hills after a long day in the field and felt the wind getting up. Down below us, in the valley where our camp was, there was a huge sandstorm building.
We watched as it moved closer and closer to our camp. Eventually it enveloped the camp and we fought our way back through the wind to find broken tents and sand in everything. Our food that evening was a little crunchy.
There are predators lurking around every corner. Unfortunately, outside national parks wildlife is sparse, but we saw many grazing animals and stumbled across many old ostrich nests.
Throughout the whole trip it seemed that the elephants were one step ahead of us, always leaving tracks and fresh dung to tease us but never showing their faces.
There are many weird and wonderful plants in Namibia adapted to the dry conditions, but one in particular deserves a mention: welwitschia. It is a truly unique plant consisting of just two leaves that continue to grow and grow for its whole life.
When I say its whole life, that can be an extraordinarily long time. These small plants live an average of 500 to 600 years, and some have been carbon-dated to over 1000 years old. A welwitschia plant has only two leaves that sometimes split, but that grow for its entire life (Credit: Vivien Cumming)
There is something special about being out in the wild, not just for the incredible scenery and wildlife, but also because human compassion really shows. In situations where tyres go flat or vehicles run out of fuel, the next person that comes by will always help and never expect anything in return.
We were rewarded by everyone we met, the wildlife around us – and most importantly by the geology, and the evidence it holds of the planet's incredible changing past.
Mora pics at http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160303-the-desert-that-revealed-the-ultimate-ice-age
10
Centre to certify gems & minerals from Niassa, Cabo Delgado, Zambezia, Nampula opens in Nacala-a-Velha
07 Mar 2016
A US$50 million certification centre for gems and precious stones will open this March in the coastal district of Nacala-a-Velha in northern Mozambique. Part of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education’s technology parks initiative, the centre will also assess the commercial quality of minerals whose production has increased substantially in recent times.
“The project is already being cited in the terms of agreements and contracts, and from this March, we can expect the gems certification centre to start operating,” Nampula government spokesman Agostinho Zacarias said after the local executive session.
Zacarias said that the centre would evaluate the quality of precious stones from Cabo Delgado, Niassa and Zambezia provinces and certify the minerals produced in each of these provinces as well as those from Nampula province.
Nampula governor Victor Borges considers the centre adds value at the provincial level not only in the development of activities within its own competence, but also in the improvement of mineral production to lower the extent to which they are exported unprocessed.
Source: AIM
At http://clubofmozambique.com/news/centre-to-certify-gems-minerals-from-niassa-cabo-delgado-zambezia-and-nampula-opens-in-nacala-a-velha/
Virtual time machine of Earth's geology now in the cloud This is a reconstruction of the supercontinent Pangea 180 million years ago. The colors correspond to fluctuations in the continental gravity field, which reflect the deep continental structure such as roots of ancient
mountain chains, basins and fold belts. These features are used to solve the puzzle of re-arranging all continents from today¹s positions to their ancient placement in Pangea. Credit: Professor Dietmar Müller
2016.03.10
How did Madagascar once slot next to India? Where was Australia a billion years ago?
Cloud-based virtual globes developed by a team led by University of Sydney geologists mean anyone with a smartphone, laptop or computer can now visualise, with unprecedented speed and ease of use, how the Earth evolved geologically.
Reported today in PLOS ONE, the globes have been gradually made available since September 2014. Some show Earth as it is today while others allow reconstructions through 'geological time', harking back to the planet's origins.
Uniquely, the portal allows an interactive exploration of supercontinents. It shows the breakup and dispersal of Pangea over the last 200 million years. It also offers a visualisation of the supercontinent Rodinia, which existed 1.1 billion years ago. Rodinia gradually fragmented, with some continents colliding again more than 500 million years later to form Gondwanaland. "Concepts like continental drift, first hypothesised by Alfred Wegener more than a century ago, are now easily accessible to students and researchers
around the world," said University of Sydney Professor of Geophysics Dietmar Müller.
"The portal is being used in high schools to visualise features of the Earth and explain how it has evolved through time."
he virtual globes includes visual depictions of a high-resolution global digital elevation model, the global gravity and magnetic field as well as seabed geology, making the amazing tapestry of deep ocean basins readily accessible.
The portal also portrays the dynamic nature of Earth's surface topography through time. It visualises the effect of surface tectonic plates acting like giant wobble boards as they interact with slow convection processes in the hot, toffee-like mantle beneath Earth's crust.
"When continents move over hot, buoyant swells of the mantle they bob up occasionally causing mountains," said Professor Müller. "Conversely the Earth's surface gets drawn down when approaching sinking huge masses of old, cold tectonic slabs sinking in the mantle, creating lowlands and depressions in the earth's crust."
Since its inception the portal has been visited more than 300,000 times from more than 200 countries and territories. Individual globes have featured in numerous media articles around the world. The seafloor geology globe is the most popular, viewed on average 500 times per day. The globe allows the viewer to explore how different types of deep-sea sediments vary between ocean basins, and at different latitudes and depths.
"These cloud-based globes offer many future opportunities for providing on-the-fly big data analytics, transforming the way big data can be visualised and analysed by end users," said Professor Müller.
The interactive globes can be viewed on any browser at: portal.gplates.org
Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Sydney.
At http://www.geologypage.com/2016/03/virtual-time-machine-of-earths-geology.html#ixzz42VrcEUik
Congo activists urge government to pass new mining code
2016.03.10. By: Reuters.
KINSHASA – Activist groups in Democratic Republic of Congo urged the government on Thursday to revive plans for a new mining code, saying the higher revenues it would generate were vital to supporting a young democracy. The government of Africa's leading copper producer started a review of the 2002 mining code in 2012, aiming to increase state revenues and tighten environmental and social regulations. However, an official at the prime minister's office told Reuters last month the government had decided to freeze consideration of a draft code submitted to parliament last March until metal markets had recovered from their recent weakness. Benchmark copper prices fell 25% last year and several mines in Congo's copper-producing southeast have cut their workforces. A group of 42 Congolese nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) that have participated in talks with the government and mining sector over the new code said on Thursday that difficult market conditions did not justify further delays. "Not doing it now is prolonging the bleeding of revenues in the sector which are needed to support
our young democracy," they said in a statement that urged the government to clarify its position. Congo held its first free election in 2006. It is set to hold another election in November when President Joseph Kabila is due to step down. The country has never had a peaceful transition of power. Mining companies, which have lobbied hard against the new code, say more onerous taxes and royalties would drive away investment. However, the NGOs called the recent decline in minerals prices "a temporary and random event" and noted the existing code was passed when the average price of copper was about $1 500/t in 2002. Benchmark copper on the London Metal Exchange was trading at $4 915/t at 1215 GMT. Congo produced 995,805 tonnes of copper in 2015, down slightly from 2014. It also mines significant quantities of gold, tin and cobalt.
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11
'First human' discovered in Ethiopia The fossil's teeth are smaller
than those of other human relatives
By Pallab GhoshScience correspondent, BBC News, 4 March 2015
Scientists have unearthed the jawbone of what they claim is one of the very first
humans.
The 2.8 million-year-old specimen is 400,000 years older than researchers thought that our kind first emerged.
The discovery in Ethiopia suggests climate change spurred the transition from tree dweller to upright walker.
The head of the research team told BBC News that the find gives the first insight into "the most important transitions in human evolution".
This is the most important transition in human evolution, Prof Brian Villmoare, University of Nevada
Prof Brian Villmoare of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas said the discovery makes a clear link between an iconic 3.2 million-year-old hominin (human-like primate) discovered in the same area in 1974, called "Lucy".
Could Lucy's kind - which belonged to the speciesAustralopithecus afarensis - have evolved into the very first primitive humans?
"That's what we are arguing," said Prof Villmoare.
But the fossil record between the time period when Lucy and her kin were alive
and the emergence of Homo erectus (with its relatively large brain and
humanlike body proportions) two million years ago is sparse.
The 2.8 million-year-old lower jawbone was found in the Ledi-Geraru research area, Afar Regional State, by Ethiopian student Chalachew Seyoum. He told BBC News that he was "stunned" when he saw the fossil.
"The moment I found it, I realised that it was important, as this is the time period represented by few (human) fossils in Eastern Africa."
The fossil is of the left side of the lower jaw, along with five teeth. The back molar teeth are smaller than those of other hominins living in the area and are one of the features that distinguish humans from more primitive ancestors, according to Professor William Kimbel, director of Arizona State University's Institute of Human Origins.
These new studies challenge us to consider the very definition of what it is to be human, Prof Chris Stringer, Natural History Museum, London
"Previously, the oldest fossil attributed to the genusHomo was an upper jaw
from Hadar, Ethiopia, dated to 2.35m years ago," he told BBC News.
"So this new discovery pushes the human line back by 400,000 years or so, very close to its likely (pre-human) ancestor. Its mix of primitive and advanced features makes the Ledi jaw a good transitional form between (Lucy) and later humans."
A computer reconstruction of a skull belonging to the species Homo habilis,
which has been published in Nature journal, indicates that it may well have been the evolutionary descendant of the species announced today.
The researcher involved, Prof Fred Spoor of University College London told BBC News that, taken together, the new findings had lifted a veil on a key period in the evolution of our species.
"By discovering a new fossil and re-analysing an old one we have truly contributed to our knowledge of our own evolutionary period, stretching over a million years that had been shrouded in mystery," he said.
More at http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31718336
Kenya: Artefacts - What Remains Is of Great Value
27 February 2016. By Peter Kimani I must confess I was drawn to the Nairobi National Museum by an ill-tempered review in The EastAfrican a fortnight ago, whose view, quite simply, was that the recent exhibition Remains, Waste and Metonymy was too "intelligent," and therefore nothing but "self-indulgent and pretentious rubbish."
Such an assessment is -- and I want to use this word seriously -- stupid, as one's limited or limiting view cannot become the prism through which we must see the world.
I was delighted to make out, not just the meaning of the exhibits assembled by a group of local and international scholars -- curated by Neo Musangi and Joost Fontein -- but also to establish how the artefacts were in conversation with each other, and issues in contemporary Kenya.
In broad strokes, the exhibition sought to illustrate the endless nature of things, and what remains when impacted upon by the elements; the stories that live on from every act, and the art that is produced in the process.
In her three exhibits, Constance Smith laid out clean, white sheets on the staircase for a day, and stored the footprints left by those who journeyed through the space.
One board had footprints that imitate tassels of human hair; another evokes a spider's web and yet another imitates the bark of a tree.
Archeologist Sam Derbyshire's exhibits are as striking as the anecdotes in his notes. He explains how in 1971 Norwegian aid agency Norad sought to
develop fish farming around Lake Turkana. They spent $3 million in Kalakol, where a cold storage was built and a further $20 million to build a road network to connect the facility and the fishing bays. However, by the mid-1980s, the project had collapsed.
Derbyshire's pictures of piles of tilapia and the Nile perch drying in the sun, beside the quiet hamlets where women and children sit in the shade, is a powerful commentary on the adaptability and the resilience of the locals, which contrasts with the rigidity of the donor project, now turned into a horrid waste.
But his images convey much more: The sun casts long shadows in the pictures and it is harsh enough to scorch and preserve the fish, yet gentle enough to sustain life. So how come this resource was not harnessed to dry the fish?
Annie Pfingst's Emergency Landscapes and Geographies of Resistance, is a visual display of the transformation of land over the past 50 years.
Equally moving is Mandela Samuel's film installation that re-imagines the various art forms that could emerge from a crocodile fossil.
This exhibition is truly a refreshing experience for those who want to challenge their presumptions on how they perceive art, and the life that produces it.
Dr Peter Kimani is a lecturer at the Aga Khan University's Graduate School of Media and Communications.
At http://allafrica.com/stories/201603011002.html
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12
About the World
A New Way to Understand the World's Rarest Minerals
Feb. 2016
Two geologists have developed a system for classifying some of the most elusive substances on the planet.
Of the more than 5,000 minerals recognized by geologists, fewer than 100 are thought to constitute 99 percent of the Earth’s crust. Much more than that—over half of all known minerals, in fact—are considered rare, meaning they appear in five or fewer locations on Earth.
And then there are the rarest of the rare: the minerals that have a total known volume of less than one cubic centimeter, or smaller than the size of a sugar cube. Those are the ones that Robert Hazen, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution, and Jesse Ausubel, an environmental scientist at Rockefeller University, like to study.
“Many of those minerals are known from a single microscopic find, sometimes only one crystal,” Hanzen wrote in an email. “And in some cases those crystals wash away when it rains. So those are really rare minerals!”
Minerals include gemstones, like diamonds (a form of carbon) and rubies (a form of corundum tainted with chromium), as well as more mundane things, like calcite (chalk) and halite (salt). Any naturally occurring substance of a defined chemical composition that can form into a crystal is considered a mineral. (Ordinary rocks are not minerals in and of themselves, but some are a mishmash of several different minerals.)
In a forthcoming paper in the journal American Minerologist, Hazen and Ausubel outlined a new mineral-classification system to help geologists better understand the designation of “rare.” They based their work on a similar system by the biologist Deborah Rabinowitz, who studied rare biological species. According to Rabinowitz, a species can be considered rare if it meets at least one of three criteria: a small geographic range, highly specific habitat requirements, or a small population size.
Hazen and Ausbuel similarly argue that in a rare mineral must meet at least one of four criteria. The first is a narrow range of stability, meaning that it’s found only in very specific conditions. The mineral hazenite, for instance, can only form on the decomposed remains of cyanobacteria in super-salty, highly
alkaline environments. Mono Lake, California, is currently the only known source of hazenite.
The second criterion is a composition that includes rare elements, or elements that rarely occur together in nature. Senaite, with the chemical formula Pb(Mn,Y, U)(Fe,Zn)2(Ti,Fe,Cr,V)18(O,OH)38, requires 11 different chemical elements—lead, manganese, yttrium, uranium, iron, zinc, titanium, chromium, vanadium, oxygen, and hydrogen—organized in a highly precise manner.
The third is a mineral’s transience in ambient conditions. Plenty of minerals are unable to withstand extreme environments, but some can be destroyed by pressures and temperatures that humans find tolerable. One such mineral is methane hydrate (a.k.a. methane clathrate), which can form in cold, high-pressure environments like the ocean floor. A potentially important source of energy or greenhouse gas, methane hydrate evaporates when it is brought to the surface. And researchers have identified a few vampire-like minerals, like the mercury-containing edoylerite, that are destroyed by sunlight.
The fourth and final criterion is sampling bias, meaning a mineral may be considered rare simply because scientists have a hard time finding it. Minerals that can only be seen with a microscope or are beyond geologists’ reach–such as those deep in Earth’s crust or mantle–will logically seem rare, even if they may actually be quite common.
Understanding rare minerals can also help scientists identify new ones. But more intriguingly, the study of rare minerals may shed some light on the origins of life. Hazen and Ausubel argue in their paper that Earth appears to be more mineralogically diverse than the other planets and moons in the solar system, meaning that rare minerals may have played a role in helping the earliest life forms to emerge. On the flip side, some rare minerals only form due to biological activity. Either way, the two scientists believe, the presence of rare minerals on other planets—ones we’ve seen here on Earth in tiny doses, or ones we’ve never even encountered—could possibly be a sign of extraterrestrial life.
At http://www.geologyin.com/2016/02/a-new-way-to-understand-worlds-rarest.html
Major Jurassic Fossil Site Found in Argentina
The fossils were preserved almost immediately, in less than a day in some cases. (Representational Image)
Feb., 2016.
Paleontologists in Argentina have announced the discovery of a major Jurassic-era fossil site four years after it was first discovered.
The site, which spans 23,000 square miles (60,000 square kilometers) in Patagonia, southern Argentina, came to light this week with the publication of a report in the journal Ameghiniana.
"No other place in the world contains the same amount and diversity of Jurassic fossils," said geologist Juan Garcia Massini of the Regional Center for Scientific Research and Technology Transfer (CRILAR).
The fossils—between 140 and 160 million years old—lie on the surface because they were recently exposed by erosion, said Garcia Massini, who leads the research team investigating the site.
"You can see the landscape as it appeared in the Jurassic—how thermal waters, lakes and streams as well as plants and other parts of the ecosystem were distributed," he said.
The fossils were preserved almost immediately, in less than a day in some cases.
"You can see how fungi, cyanobacteria and worms moved when they were alive," Garcia Massini said of the site that lies along the Deseado Massif mountain range.
Ignacio Escapa of the Egidio Feruglio Paleontology Museum said the researchers had found "a wide range of micro and macro-organisms."
The fossils are so well preserved, that researchers say each rock extracted from the site could possibly open the door to a new discovery.
AFP At http://www.geologyin.com/2016/02/major-jurassic-fossil-site-found-in.html
13
4.4 Billion-Year-Old Crystal Is Oldest Piece of the Earth’s Crust This electric-blue fragment of
zircon has confirmed scientists' understanding of how the planet cooled and became habitable. Photo Credit: John Valley
Posted by Allison Eck on Mon, 24 Feb 2014
Scientists have discovered the oldest fragment of Earth’s crust—and it’s blue.
This 4.4-billion-year-old zircon crystal was only 200 million years old when it
formed in the calamitous chemical environs of Earth’s infancy. The finding, reported in Nature Geoscience, confirms our understanding of how the planet cooled and became habitable. The BBC reports:
Its implication is that Earth had formed a solid crust much sooner after its formation 4.6 billion years ago than was previously thought, and very quickly following the great collision with a Mars-sized body that is thought to have produced the Moon just a few tens of millions of years after that. Before this time, Earth would have been a seething ball of molten magma.
But knowledge that its surface hardened so early raises the tantalising prospect that our world became ready to host life very early in its history.
This particular remnant of Earth’s past is a rarity—most of Earth’s surface rock is relatively modern (less than a few hundred million years old). But these West Australian zircons are tough pieces of rock that have been clumped together and solidified into new material, which means they still harbor clues about the conditions under which they were formed. So what is this little artifact telling us? It suggests that the Earth had cooled enough by its 100-millionth birthday that a rocky crust was able to form. And by extension, the temperature could have been low enough to sustain life.
More at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/earth/4-4-billion-year-old-crystal-is-the-oldest-piece-of-earths-crust/
520-million-year-old fossilized nervous system is most detailed example yet found
Complete specimen of Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis from the early Cambrian
Xiaoshiba biota of South China. Bottom: Magnification of ventral nerve cord of Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis. Credit: Top: Jie Yang, Bottom: Yu Liu
March 2016
Researchers have found one of the oldest and most detailed fossils of the central nervous system yet identified, from a crustacean-like animal that lived more than 500 million years ago. The fossil, from southern China, has been so well preserved that individual nerves are visible, the first time this level of detail has been observed in a fossil of this age.
The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are helping researchers understand how the nervous system of arthropods - creepy crawlies with jointed legs - evolved. Finding any fossilised soft tissue is rare, but this particular find, by researchers in the UK, China and Germany, represents the most detailed example of a preserved nervous system yet discovered.
The animal, called Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis, lived during the Cambrian ‘explosion’, a period of rapid evolutionary development about half a billion years ago when most major animal groups first appear in the fossil record. C. kunmingensis belongs to a group of animals called fuxianhuiids, and was an early ancestor of modern arthropods – the diverse group that includes insects, spiders and crustaceans.
“This is a unique glimpse into what the ancestral nervous system looked like,” said study co-author Dr Javier Ortega-Hernández, of the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology. “It’s the most complete example of a central nervous system from the Cambrian period.”
Over the past five years, researchers have identified partially-fossilised nervous systems in several different species from the period, but these have mostly been fossilised brains. And in most of those specimens, the fossils only preserved details of the profile of the brain, meaning the amount of information available has been limited.
C. kunmingensis looked like a sort of crustacean, with a broad, almost heart-shaped head shield, and a long body with pairs of legs of varying sizes. Through careful preparation of the fossils, which involved chipping away the surrounding rock with a fine needle, the researchers were able to view not only the hard parts of the body, but fossilised soft tissue as well.
The vast majority of fossils we have are mostly bone and other hard body parts such as teeth or exoskeletons. Since the nervous system and soft tissues are essentially made of fatty-like substances, finding them preserved as fossils is extremely rare. The researchers behind this study first identified a fossilised central nervous system in 2013, but the new material has allowed them to investigate the significance of these finding in much greater depth.
The central nervous system coordinates all neural and motor functions. In vertebrates, it consists of the brain and spinal cord, but in arthropods it consists of a condensed brain and a chain-like series of interconnected masses of nervous tissue called ganglia that resemble a string of beads.
Like modern arthropods, C. kunmingensis had a nerve cord – which is analogous to a spinal cord in vertebrates – running throughout its body, with each one of the bead-like ganglia controlling a single pair of walking legs.
Closer examination of the exceptionally preserved ganglia revealed dozens of spindly fibres, each measuring about five thousandths of a millimetre in length. “These delicate fibres displayed a highly regular distribution pattern, and so we wanted to figure out if they were made of the same material as the ganglia that form the nerve cord,” said Ortega-Hernández. “Using fluorescence microscopy, we confirmed that the fibres were in fact individual nerves, fossilised as carbon films, offering an unprecedented level of detail. These fossils greatly improve our understanding of how the nervous system evolved.”
For Ortega-Hernández and his colleagues, a key question is what this discovery tells us about the evolution of early animals, since the nervous system contains so much information. Further analysis revealed that some aspects of the nervous system in C. kunmingensis appear to be structured similar to that of modern priapulids (penis worms) and onychophorans (velvet worms), with regularly-spaced nerves coming out from the ventral nerve cord.
In contrast, these dozens of nerves have been lost independently in the tardigrades (water bears) and modern arthropods, suggesting that simplification played an important role in the evolution of the nervous system.
Possibly one of the most striking implications of the study is that the exceptionally preserved nerve cord of C. kunmingensis represents a unique structure that is otherwise unknown in living organisms. The specimen demonstrates the unique contribution of the fossil record towards understanding the early evolution of animals during the Cambrian period. “The more of these fossils we find, the more we will be able to understand how the nervous system – and how early animals – evolved,” said Ortega-Hernández.
Reference: Jie Yang et. al. The fuxianhuiid ventral nerve cord and early nervous system evolution in Panarthropoda. PNAS, 2016 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1522434113
Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of
Cambridge. The original story is licensed under a Creative Commons
License.
At http://www.geologypage.com/2016/03/520-million-year-old-fossilized-nervous.html#ixzz41fAUOskH
14
Pint-Sized Lizards Trapped in Amber Give Clues to Life 100 Million Years Ago These ancient
amber fossils from Burma in Southeast Asia help complete the patchy record of lizard evolution. (David Grimaldi)
The trove of Cretaceous
reptiles includes an early relative of the chameleon - the oldest yet discovered
By Maya Wei-
Haas. SMITHSONIAN.COM, MARCH 4, 2016
Nearly 100 million years ago, the tropical forests of the mid-Cretaceous period were hopping—winged beasts commanded the skies, large reptiles swaggered on land and insects buzzed around flowering plants that were just starting to flourish. Yet until now, little was known about small tropical lizards, whose fragile bones quickly disappeared when buried in the damp forest floors.
Now, scientists sifting through museum collections have described a dozen of these pint-sized reptiles all entombed in amber. The hapless lizards were caught in the sticky resin of ancient coniferous trees and remained suspended until the present day—several in exquisite condition with claws, bones, teeth, toe pads and even scales intact. These spectacular fossils give scientists a peek into life of the diminutive denizens of the mid-Cretaceous.
The fossils were actually discovered decades ago in a Burmese mine but remained in private collections until their recent donation to the American Museum of Natural History, which gave scientists access for study. Using CT scanners to image the fossils, the researchers could “digitally dissect” the lizards without harming the amber droplets, says postdoctoral student Edward Stanley, co-author of the new paper.
What did they find? “A nice smattering of diversity,” he says.
The set includes creatures similar to modern-day geckos and chameleons, as well as a range of species that sport a mash-up of features from both ancient and modern reptile relatives, according to the study published Friday in
Science Advances. These animals help fill in the patchy evolutionary history of pint-sized lizards.
“This diverse lizard assemblage shows that back in the day, the tropics were as lizard-friendly as they are today,” says Stanley.
Amber often has bizarre patterns of preservation, says de Queiroz. This lizard is just a shadow of the original creature with no skeleton or other innards remaining. (Photo courtesy of David Grimaldi)
Such wide variation is not necessarily unexpected, says Kevin de Queiroz, curator of the reptile and amphibian collection at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. “There’s a fair amount of diversity in the tropics now,” he says. “So it’s not too surprising that they’ve been diverse in the past.”
Even so, capturing this diversity in the fossil record is less common, says de Queiroz. The fossil record is strongly biased to large animals living in particular environments that can preserve creatures after their death, like deserts or riverbeds. The damp, hot climate in the tropics rarely preserves small and delicate fossils—unless the unfortunate creatures become trapped in tree resin. This ancient group therefore paints a much more complete picture of minute mid-Cretaceous reptiles than scientists have seen before.
One of the reptiles, a dime-sized baby relative of the chameleon, is the oldest discovered representative of that lineage, beating out the previous title-holder by nearly 80 million years.
Chameleons’ closest relative is the agamidae—a group that includes the bearded dragon lizards. Based on genetic evidence, chameleons were thought to have split from these relatives around the mid-Cretaceous period, but fossil evidence from this time had been lacking until now.
The fossils also help sort out when many of the modern reptile traits appeared. The tiny chameleon-like fossil shows early development of the lizards’ ballistic tongues—evidenced by the presence of a large bone that supports the modern chameleon’s sticky weapon, says Stanley. But the fossil did not have the specialized claw-like fused toes modern chameleons use to hang onto branches. Similarly, one of the gecko relatives has preserved toe pads with the modern designs already present.
“We actually have a really good representation of what we have today,” says Stanley, “[just] 100 million years ago.”
At http://www.smithsonianmag.com/articles/pint-sized-lizards-trapped-amber-give-clues-life-100-million-years-ago-180958284/?utm_source=facebook.com&no-ist
Scientists Will Finally Drill Into the Dinosaur-Killing Impact Crater in Mexico Gravity anomaly map of the
Chixculub crater impact area. Image Credit:Wikimedia
Maddie Stone, 2016.03.07
Sixty-six million years ago, planet Earth had a shit day when a six-mile-wide asteroid smashed into the Yucatán Peninsula, triggering a
series of events that killed off the dinosaurs. Later this month, a scientific expedition will drill into the heart of Chicxulub crater for the very first time, seeking to learn more about the nature of that disaster.
The buried remains of the asteroid that released a billion Hiroshima bombs’ worth of energy and precipitated a mass extinction event have eluded scientific analysis for decades—in part because the region has long been locked down by the oil industry. But last year, a University of Texas at Austin-based team was awarded $10 million for an offshore drilling plan that will drive a diamond-tipped drill bit nearly 5,000 feet beneath the seafloor, cutting clean through Chicxulub crater to retrieve samples. Later this month, the expedition will finally set sail.
As Science News explains, the team is planning to drill Chixculub’s “peak ring,” a region of elevated rocks encircling the center of all large impact craters. Scientists still aren’t sure why peak rings form or what they’re made of—questions the upcoming drilling expedition hopes to answer.
More exciting still are the open questions about what happened to life on Earth when a giant space rock smacked into our planet’s surface. To this day, scientists aren’t sure whether the Chixculub impact per se, or other geologic forces, sounded the dinosaurs’ death knell. One recent scientific paper argues that energy delivered to Earth’s crust during the impact ignited volcanoes worldwide, turning our atmosphere into a noxious mess for half a million years. Others cite debris from post-impact earthquakes and tsunamis as the immediate cause of death.
Geologic samples recovered during drilling could help us piece together this violent chapter in Earth’s history. They’ll also offer insights into how life rebounded after the apocalypse. The team plans to study living microorganisms found in rock fractures inside the peak ring that are descendants of the tiny critters that colonized ground zero after the impact. It’s possible that this death shrine gave rise to incredible new forms of life.
We’ll have some answers soon—the drilling operation is scheduled to start by April 1st.
More at http://gizmodo.com/scientists-will-finally-drill-into-the-dinosaur-killing-1763284921?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook&utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
15
Faults control the amount of water flowing into the Earth during continental breakup
March 7, 2016. University of Southampton
New light has been shed on the processes by which ocean water enters the solid Earth during continental breakup.
Research led by geoscientists at the University of Southampton, and published in Nature Geoscience this week, is the first to show a direct link on geological timescales between fault activity and the amount of water entering the Earth's mantle along faults.
When water and carbon is transferred from the ocean to the mantle it reacts with a dry rock called peridotite, which makes up most of the mantle beneath the crust, to form serpentinite.
Dr Gaye Bayrakci, Research Fellow in Geophysics, and Professor Tim Minshull, from Ocean and Earth Science, with colleagues at the University of Southampton and six other institutions, measured the amount of water that had entered the Earth by using sound waves to map the distribution of serpentinite.
The sound waves travel through the crust and mantle and can be detected by sensitive instruments placed on the ocean floor. The time taken for the signals to travel from an acoustic seismic source to the seafloor instruments reveals how fast sound travels in the rocks, and the amount of serpentinite present can be determined from this speed.
The four-month experiment, which involved two research ships (the R/V Marcus Langseth and the F/S Poseidon), mapped an 80 by 20 km area of seafloor west of Spain called the Deep Galicia Margin where the fault structures were formed when North America broke away from Europe about 120 million years ago.
The results showed that the amount of serpentinite formed at the bottom of each fault was directly proportional to the displacement on that fault, which in turn is closely related to the duration of fault activity.
Dr Bayracki said: "One of the aims of our survey was to explore the relationship between the faults, which we knew already were there, and the presence of serpentinite, which we also knew was there but knew little about its distribution. The link between fault activity and formation of serpentinite was something we might have hoped for but did not really expect to see so clearly.
"This implies that seawater reaches the mantle only when the faults are active and that brittle processes in the crust may ultimately control the global amount of seawater entering the solid Earth."
In other tectonic settings where serpentinite is present such as mid ocean ridges and subduction zones, the focused flow of seawater along faults provides a setting for diverse hydrothermal ecosystems where life-forms live off the chemicals stripped out of the rocks by the water as it flows into and then out of the Earth's mantle.
The researchers were able to estimate the average rate at which seawater entered the mantle through the faults at the Deep Galicia Margin and discovered that rate was comparable to those estimated for water circulation in hot rock at mid-ocean ridges, where such life-forms are more common. These results suggest that in continental rifting environment there may have been hydrothermal systems, which are known to support diverse ecosystems.
Co-Author and Professor of Geology at the University of Birmingham Tim Reston commented: "Understanding the transport of water during deformation has broad implications, ranging from hydrothermal systems to earthquake mechanics. The new results suggest a more direct link between faulting and water movements than we previously suspected."
Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Southampton. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
At https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160307113303.htm
How rivers of hot ash and gas move when a supervolcano erupts
Study suggests that pyroclastic flows traveled in dense, slow-moving currents during one ancient supereruption
March 7, 2016. University at Buffalo Photographs scanned from
Kodachrome slides show dark rocks embedded in layers of ash. The rocks were picked up and moved across the landscape by pyroclastic flows when the Silver Creek caldera, a supervolcano, erupted 18.8 million years ago. Credit: Greg A. Valentine
Supervolcanoes capable of unleashing hundreds of times the amount of magma that was expelled during the Mount St.
Helens eruption of 1980 are found in populated areas around the world, including the western United States.
A new study is providing insight into what may happen when one of these colossal entities explodes.
The research focuses on the Silver Creek caldera, which sits at the intersection of California, Nevada and Arizona. When this supervolcano erupted 18.8 million years ago, it flooded parts of all three states with river-like currents of hot ash and gas called pyroclastic flows. These tides of volcanic material traveled for huge distances -- more than 100 miles.
The new study suggests that pyroclastic flows from the ancient eruption took the form of slow, dense currents -- and not fast-moving jets as some experts previously thought.
The research combines recent laboratory experiments with field data from the 1980s -- some of it captured in colorful Kodachrome slides -- to show that the rivers of ash and gas emanating from the Silver Creek caldera likely traveled at modest speeds of about 10 to 45 miles per hour.
"Intuitively, most of us would think that for the pyroclastic flow to go such an extreme distance, it would have to start off with a very high speed," says study co-author Olivier Roche. "But this isn't consistent with what we found."
The research was conducted by Roche at Blaise Pascal University in France, David C. Buesch at the United States Geological Survey and Greg A.
Valentine at the University at Buffalo. It will be published on Monday, March 7 in Nature Communications.
Research on pyroclastic flows is important because it can help inform disaster preparedness efforts, says Valentine, a UB professor of geology and director of the Center for GeoHazards Studies in the UB College of Arts and Sciences.
"We want to understand these pyroclastic flows so we can do a good job of forecasting the behavior of these flows when a volcano erupts," he says. "The character and speed of the flows will affect how much time you might have to get out of the way, although the only truly safe thing to do is to evacuate before a flow starts."
New and vintage data come together to tell the story of a supervolcano
The new study favors one of two competing theories about how pyroclastic flows are able to cover long distances. One school of thought says the flows should resemble turbulent, hot, fast-moving sandstorms, made up mostly of gas, with few particles. The other theory states that the flows should be dense and fluid-like, with pressurized gas between ash particles. The new research supports this latter model, which requires sustained emissions from volcanoes, for many pyroclastic flows.
The findings were based on two sets of data: results from recent experiments that Roche ran to simulate the behavior of pyroclastic flows, and information that Buesch and Valentine gathered at the Silver Creek Caldera eruption site in the 1980s when they were PhD students at the University of California, Santa Barbara, supplemented by some more recent fieldwork.
"I always tell students that they should take good notes while they're working in the field, because you never know when it could be useful," says Valentine, who has a fat binder full of Kodachrome slides showing images he snapped around the Silver Creek caldera.
The data that he and Buesch collected included photographs and notes documenting the size, type and location of rocks that were lifted off the ground and moved short distances by pyroclastic flows during the ancient eruption.
Many of the rocks the pair observed were relatively large -- too large to have been shifted by sandstorm-like pyroclastic flows, which do not pick up heavy objects easily. Denser flows, which can move sizable rocks more readily, likely accounted for the rock patterns Buesch and Valentine observed.
More at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160307092311.htm
16
Scientists uncover history of ancient viruses as far back as 30 million years ago Representative image:
Two rotaviruses: the one on the right is coated with antibodies that stop its attaching to cells and infecting them. Credit: GrahamColm / Wikipedia
2016.03.08
Researchers from Boston College, US,
have revealed the global spread of an ancient group of retroviruses that affected about 28 of 50 modern mammals' ancestors some 15 to 30 million years ago.
Retroviruses are abundant in nature and include human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV-1 and -2) and human T-cell leukemia viruses. The scientists' findings on a specific group of these viruses called ERV-Fc, to be published in the journal eLife, show that they affected a wide range of hosts, including species as diverse as carnivores, rodents, and primates.
The distribution of ERV-Fc among these ancient mammals suggests the viruses spread to every continent except Antarctica and Australia, and that they jumped from one species to another more than 20 times.
The study also places the origins of ERV-Fc at least as far back as the beginning of the Oligocene epoch, a period of dramatic global change marked partly by climatic cooling that led to the Ice Ages. Vast expanses of grasslands emerged around this time, along with large mammals as the world's predominate fauna.
"Viruses have been with us for billions of years, and exist everywhere that life is found. They therefore have a significant impact on the ecology and evolution of all organisms, from bacteria to humans," says co-author Welkin Johnson, Professor of Biology at Boston College where his team carried out the research.
"Unfortunately, viruses do not leave fossils behind, meaning we know very little about how they originate and evolve. Over the course of millions of years, however, viral genetic sequences accumulate in the DNA genomes of living organisms, including humans, and can serve as molecular 'fossils' for exploring the natural history of viruses and their hosts."
Using such "fossil" remnants, the team sought to uncover the natural history of ERV-Fc. They were especially curious to know where and when these pathogens were found in the ancient world, which species they infected, and how they adapted to their mammalian hosts.
To do this, they first performed an exhaustive search of mammalian genome sequence databases for ERV-Fc loci and then compared the recovered sequences. For each genome with sufficient ERV-Fc sequence, they reconstructed the sequences of proteins representing the virus that colonized the ancestors of that particular species. These sequences were then used to infer the natural history and evolutionary relationships of ERV-Fc-related viruses.
The studies also allowed the team to pinpoint patterns of evolutionary change in the genes of these viruses, reflecting their adaptation to different kinds of mammalian hosts.
Perhaps most interestingly, the researchers found that these viruses often exchanged genes with each other and with other viruses, suggesting that genetic recombination played a significant role in their evolutionary success.
"Mammalian genomes contain hundreds of thousands of ancient viral fossils similar to ERV-Fc," says lead author William E. Diehl from the University of Massachusetts, who conducted the study while a post-doctoral researcher at Boston College.
"The challenge will now be to use ancient viral sequences for looking back in time, which may prove insightful for predicting the long-term consequences of newly emerging viral infections. For example, we could potentially assess the impact of HIV on human health 30 million years from now. The method will allow us to better understand when and why new viruses emerge and how long-term contact with them impacts the evolution of host organisms."
Reference: William E Diehl, Nirali Patel, Kate Halm, Welkin E Johnson. Tracking interspecies transmission and long-term evolution of an ancient retrovirus using the genomes of modern mammals. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.12704
Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by eLife .
At http://www.geologypage.com/2016/03/scientists-uncover-history-of-ancient.html#ixzz42KhUKyOb
Tiny fossils tell a long(ish) story
Figure 1 from Birch et al.: Changing ecology schematic of selected foraminiferal. species for isotopic analysis across the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary.
2016.03.09
The impact of an asteroid at the end of the Cretaceous caused mass extinctions in the oceans, as well as killing the dinosaurs on land. The carbon
isotope difference between surface and seabed organisms (foraminifera) also collapsed due to these extinctions, suggesting that organic matter from surface waters did not reach the seafloor for up to 3 million years. However, seafloor organisms, which are dependent on food from surface waters, did not die off, suggesting some food must have reached the seabed. In their open-access paper for Geology, Heather S. Birch and colleagues investigate this paradox by looking at carefully selected foraminiferal isotopes from a well-dated deep-sea core in the South Atlantic.
By taking into account the likely ecology of the foraminifera studied and whether any water mass changes were occurring at the time, they can better assess the carbon isotope record and transfer of organic matter to the seafloor. Birch and colleagues find that the flux of organic matter was reduced for a much shorter time (1.7 million instead of 3 million years). The authors note that ecology and water mass changes likely did have a small effect on the carbon isotope record, but they cannot explain the full reduction in carbon isotopes on their own.
Reference: Partial collapse of the marine carbon pump after the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, Geology, DOI: 10.1130/G37581.1
Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Geological
Society of America.
At http://www.geologypage.com/2016/03/tiny-fossils-tell-longish-story.html#ixzz42Pz6AV1A
17
Fossil reptile discovery 'something extraordinary'
By Helen Briggs, BBC News, 11 March 2016. From the section Science & Environment
A newly discovered 250-million-year-old fossil reptile from Brazil gives an "extraordinary" insight into life just before the dinosaurs
appeared.
At the time, the world was recovering from a massive extinction that wiped out most living species.
The reptile, named Teyujagua or "fierce lizard", is the close relative of a group that gave rise to dinosaurs, crocodiles and birds.
The fossil is "beautiful" and fills an evolutionary gap, say scientists.
Dr Richard Butler from the University of Birmingham said the animal is a new species that has not been previously known.
"It's very close to the ancestry of a very important group of reptiles called archosauriforms," the co-researcher on the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, told BBC News.
"It helps us understand how that group evolved."
'Beautiful skull'
Teyujagua paradoxa was a small crocodile-like animal that probably lived at the side of lakes, feeding on fish.
The ancient reptile lived just after a mass extinction event 252 million years ago that was thought to have been triggered by a string of volcanic eruptions.
About 90% of living species were lost, creating a niche for other animals, such as Teyujagua, to flourish.
The reptile - and its close relatives the archosauriforms - became the dominant animals on land and eventually gave rise to the dinosaurs. Image copyrightScientific ReportsImage captionThe skull of the reptile is exceptionally well preserved
Dr Felipe Pinheiro, from Universidade Federal do Pampa, São Gabriel, Rio Grande do Sul, is among the scientists from three Brazilian universities who discovered the well-preserved fossil skull near the southern city of São Francisco de Assis.
"The discovery of Teyujagua was really exciting," he said.
"Ever since we saw that beautiful skull for the first time in the field, still mostly covered by rock, we knew we had something extraordinary in our hands.
"Back in the lab, after slowly exposing the bones, the fossil exceeded our expectations.
"It had a combination of features never seen before, indicating the unique position of Teyujagua in the evolutionary tree of an important group of vertebrates."
Teyujagua is different from other fossils from the same era.
Its anatomy is somewhere between that of more primitive reptiles and the archosauriforms, which include all dinosaurs and pterosaurs (flying reptiles), along with modern day birds and crocodiles.
More at http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35783598
Geologists discover how Australia's highest mountain was created
Topography of Eastern Australia is shown. Credit: Professor Dietmar Müller
2016.03.16
Geologists from the University of Sydney and the California Institute of Technology have solved the mystery of how Australia's highest mountain - Mount Kosciuszko - and surrounding Alps came to exist.
Most of the world's mountain belts are the result of two continents colliding (e.g. the Himalayas) or volcanism. The mountains of Australia's Eastern highlands - stretching from north-eastern Queensland to western Victoria - are an exception. Until now no one knew how they formed.
A research team spearheaded by Professor Dietmar Müller from the University's School of Geosciences used high performance computing code to investigate the cause of the uplift which created the mountain range. The team found the answer in the mountains' unusually strong gravity field.
"The gravity field led us to suspect the region might be pushed up from below so we started looking at the underlying mantle: the layer of rock between the Earth's core and its crust," said Professor Müller.
The team found the mantle under Australia's east coast has been uplifted twice. The first occurred during the Early Cretaceous Period, when Australia was part of Gondwanaland.
Over Earth's lifespan or 'geological time' the largely solid mantle has continuously been stirred by old, cold tectonic plate sections sinking into the deep mantle, under another plate. This process, called subduction, was occurring during the Early Cretaceous Period.
"Eastern Australia was drifting over a subducted plate graveyard, giving it a sinking feeling," said co-author Dr Kara Matthews, a former PhD candidate at the University now at the University of Oxford. "But around 100 million years ago subduction came to a halt, resulting in the entire region being uplifted, forming the Eastern Highlands."
The next 50 million years was a time of relative inactivity.
"Then, about 50 million years ago Australia's separation from Antarctica accelerated and it started moving north-northeast, gradually taking it closer to a vast mantle upwelling called the South Pacific Superswell," said co-author Dr Nicolas Flament. "This provided a second upward push to the Eastern Highlands as they gradually rode over the edge of the superswell."
Professor Müller said the two-phase uplift suggested by supercomputer models is supported by geological features from rivers in the Snow Mountains, where river incision occurred in two distinct phases.
"The model we built explains why the iconic Australian Alps exist and is also a new mechanism for figuring out how some other mountainous regions elsewhere in the world were formed."
The team's findings have been published in Earth and Planetary Sciences.
Reference: R. Dietmar Müller, Nicolas Flament, Kara J. Matthews, Simon E. Williams, Michael Gurnis. Formation of Australian continental margin highlands driven by plate–mantle interaction. DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2016.02.025
Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of
Sydney.
At http://www.geologypage.com/2016/03/geologists-discover-how-australias.html#ixzz434zNtSOR
18
New Form of Carbon Is Harder than Diamonds Diamond is the ultimate gemstone
March 2016.
For those looking for cheap diamonds, they might want to cozy up to researchers at North Carolina State University.
Jay Narayan and his colleagues have discovered a new form of solid carbon, called Q-carbon, which allows them to produce diamond-related structures at room temperature and at ambient atmospheric pressure in air.
Graphite and diamonds are two solid forms or phases of carbon and this would be a new form that researchers believe is harder than diamonds.
“We’ve now created a third solid phase of carbon,” Narayan, who authored three papers including one in the Journal of Applied Physics on the work with doctoral student Anagh Bhaumik, said in a statement. “The only place it may be found in the natural world would be possibly in the core of some planets.”
Along with being harder that diamonds, Q-carbon has been shown to be ferromagnetic -- meaning it’s easily magnetized -- and glows when exposed to low levels of energy.
“Q-carbon’s strength and low work-function – its willingness to release electrons – make it very promising for developing new electronic display technologies,” Narayan said, adding that Q-carbon could also be used to create a variety of single-crystal diamond objects.
Diamond Nanothreads Could Support Space Elevator
"This discovery opens a new chapter in synthesis and processing of nanodiamond and microdiamond for a variety of applications ranging from abrasive powders, novel catalytic properties, smart displays, myriads of
biomedical and microelectronic, and nanoelectronic applications," the researchers wrote in another study on the disocovery in the journal APL Materials.
To come up with Q-carbon, the researchers start with a substrate, such as sapphire, glass or a plastic polymer. The substrate is then coated with amorphous carbon and hit with single laser pulse lasting approximately 200 nanoseconds. The pulse causes the temperature of the carbon to reach 4,000 Kelvin (or around 6,740 degrees Fahrenheit) and then rapidly cool down.
The result of the process is a film of Q-carbon between 20 nanometers and 500 nanometers thick.
The rate of cooling can be manipulated by using different substrates and changing the duration of the laser pulse. And by changing the rate of cooling, they are able to create diamond structures within Q-carbon.
“These diamond objects have a single-crystalline structure, making them stronger than polycrystalline materials," Narayan said. "And it is all done at room temperature and at ambient atmosphere,” he continued. “So, not only does this allow us to develop new applications, but the process itself is relatively inexpensive.”
But the researchers acknowledged there remain plenty of questions regarding Q-carbon, adding that they were “still in the early stages of understanding how to manipulate it.”
“We know a lot about diamond, so we can make diamond nanodots,” Narayan said. “We don’t yet know how to make Q-carbon nanodots or microneedles. That’s something we’re working on.”
North Carolina State has filed two provisional patents on the Q-carbon and diamond creation techniques.
This article originally appeared on FoxNews.com
At http://www.geologyin.com/2016/03/new-form-of-carbon-is-harder-than.html
Uncovering bacterial role in platinum formation Panning for platinum grains in Brazil: Frank
Reith, University of Adelaide, and Barbara Etschmann, Monash University. Credit: University of Adelaide
March 21, 2016, University of Adelaide
Australian scientists have uncovered the important role of specialist bacteria in the formation and movement of platinum and related metals in surface environments.
Published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the research has important implications for the future exploration of platinum group metals.
"These platinum group elements are strategically important metals, but finding new deposits is becoming increasingly
difficult due to our limited understanding of the processes that affect the way they are cycled through surface environments," says project leader Dr Frank Reith, Senior Lecturer in the University of Adelaide's School of Biological Sciences and Visiting Researcher at CSIRO Land and Water.
"This research reveals the key role of bacteria in these processes. This improved bio geochemical understanding is not only important from a scientific perspective but we hope will also lead to new and better ways of exploring for these metals."
Platinum group metals, especially platinum and palladium, are highly prized 'noble' metals used in a wide range of industrial processes. Ensuring adequate supplies is challenging and enhanced exploration is considered a global priority.
This project is a collaboration with Monash University (Professor Joël Brugger and Dr Barbara Etschmann) and Mineral Resources Tasmania (Ralph Bottrill). Other partners include the University of Queensland, University of Western
Australia, RMIT and the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, Germany.
"Traditionally it was thought that these platinum group metals only formed under high pressure and temperature systems deep underground, and that when they were brought to the surface through weathering and uplift, they just sat there and nothing further happened to them," says Dr Reith.
"We've shown that that is far from the case. We've linked specialised bacterial communities, found in biofilms on the grains of platinum group minerals at three separate locations around the world, with the dispersion and re-concentration of these elements in surface environments.
"We've shown that nuggets of platinum and related metals can be reformed at the surface through bacterial processes."
The study has investigated platinum group elements from Brazil, Colombia and the Australian state of Tasmania.
Monash University Professor Joël Brugger says: "We needed to find fresh grains of platinum group minerals and extract them from soils and sediments in a manner that preserves fragile biofilms and tell-tale DNA. These grains are incredibly rare, and the chase took us all over the world, from Tasmania to Brazil."
The researchers found live bacterial biofilms on mineral grains from all three sites using scanning electron microscopy. They had been suggested previously but never before shown to exist. They also showed that the mineral grains found at the Brazil site were bio-organic in origin, further supporting the role of the bacteria in the secondary formation of platinum grains.
"We've shown the biofilms occur across a range of platinum-group-metal grains and in different locations," says Dr Reith. "And we've shown, that at the Brazil site at least, the entire process of formation of platinum and palladium was mediated by microbes."
The work builds on more than 10 years of research in gold, which has uncovered the role of micro-organisms in driving Earth's gold cycle.
More at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160321123700.htm
19
Nature fights back with plastic-eating bacteria
Scientists have discovered a microbe that has evolved to break down PET. Bill Condie reports.
Plastic waste is everywhere, littering the countryside and clogging our waterways. Riding the ocean currents, it reaches every corner of the planet, never really going away, but simply breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces with a devastating effect on wildlife and the environment.
But now there are signs that nature is fighting back, with a microbe evolving that can eat the stuff.
One of the most common varieties of plastic is polyethylene terephthalate – or PET – a favourite for bottles of all kinds including virtually all soft drinks and water. Around 60 million tonnes of it is produced every year.
Until now, because of PET’s resistance to degradation, there have been no real strategies available to scientists to develop a viable remediation or recycling strategy.
But scientists have identified a bacterium that can use PET as its major source of energy.
“Until recently, no organisms were known to be able to decompose it,” writes Uwe Bornscheuer of Germany's University of Greifswald, noting that the bonds of PET molecules are notoriously strong.
The microbe, Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6, when grown on PET, produces two enzymes that convert PET into its two environmentally harmless monomers – terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol.
The team of researchers who discovered the bacterium are still baffled as to where it came from.
“Remarkably, these enzymes seem to be highly unique in their function, compared to the closest related known enzymes of other bacteria, raising questions of how these plastic-eating bacteria evolved,” they write in the journal, Science.
The process used the bacteria gives hope that we may one day come up with an industrial application that could recycle PET safely. But that won’t be easy.
Bottles are made with highly crystallised PET, a tough substance that took a long time for the bacteria to eat away.
“It’s difficult to break down highly crystallised PET,” said Kenji Miyamoto from Keio University, one of the authors of the study.
“Our research results are just the initiation for the application. We have to work on so many issues needed for various applications. It takes a long time.”
Industry also poured cold water on the idea, saying current industrial processes are unlikely to be usurped by the bacteria’s approach.
"PET is 100% recyclable," Mike Neal, the chairman of the Committee of PET Manufacturers in Europe, told the Guardian.
"I expect that a biodegradation system would require a similar engineering process to chemical depolymerisation and as such is unlikely to be economically viable."
At https://cosmosmagazine.com/life-sciences/nature-fights-back-plastic-eating-bacteria
Many species now going extinct may vanish without a fossil trace This image shows the number of threatened species and their
representation in the fossil record by continent and 'insular' (islands). Credit: Roy E. Plotnick 2016.03.22
Scientists struggle to compare the magnitude of Earth's ongoing sixth mass-extinction event with the five great die-offs of prehistory. A new study by three paleontologists shows that the species now perishing may vanish
without a permanent trace -- and earlier extinctions may b underestimated as well.
"Comparing the current biodiversity crisis, often called the 'sixth extinction,' with those of the geological past requires equivalent data," says Roy Plotnick, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
He and two colleagues compared the "Red List" of endangered species with several ecological databases of living species and three paleontological databases of catalogued fossils. They ran a statistical analysis to indicate which threatened species were most likely to disappear with no mark of their existence. The researchers were shocked to find that more than 85 percent of the mammal species at high risk of extinction lack a fossil record. Those at highest risk have about half the probability of being incorporated into the fossil record compared to those at lower risk.
Animals least likely to be found as fossils are "the small, cute and fuzzy ones, like rodents and bats," Plotnick said. "Body size is an obvious factor -- bigger things tend to leave a fossil record, as do things with larger geographical ranges."
Viewed from the perspective of the fossil record alone, the magnitude of the current mammal die-off thus appears markedly reduced. The picture may be even more distorted for other land-dwelling vertebrates: only 3 percent of today's threatened bird species and 1.6 percent of threatened reptile species have a known fossil record.
More at http://www.geologypage.com/2016/03/many-species-now-going-extinct-may.html#ixzz43eYhzDu3
Other Stories
Improved measurements of Earth orientation, shape. March 10, 2016. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160310164854.htm
Major source of methanol in the ocean identified. March 10, 2016. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160310143906.htm
Scientists reconstruct supervolcanic eruption. 2016.03.10. http://earthsky.org/earth/scientists-reconstruct-supervolcanic-eruption?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=5099c31f50-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-5099c31f50-393647361
Ancient Amber with baby snake fossil inside!. At Amazing Geologist Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/AmazingGeologist/photos/a.398226493604029.92268.398222836937728/976819352411404/?type=3&theater
20
About Space/Astronomy
When will the universe end? Not for at least 2.8 billion years If it’s about as far off as
imminent can be. Mina De La O/Getty
Daily News, 25 February 2016
We’re safe for now. The way the universe is expanding, it won’t be tearing itself apart for at least a few billion years.
For those of you only now discovering that such an end was a possibility, here’s a
little background. Observations of stars and galaxies indicate that the universe is expanding, and at an increasing rate. Assuming that acceleration stays constant, eventually the stars will die out, everything will drift apart, and the universe will cool into an eternal “heat death”.
But that’s not the only possibility. The acceleration is thought to be due to dark energy, mysterious stuff that permeates the entire. If the total amount of dark energy is increasing, the acceleration will also increase, eventually to the point where the very fabric of space-time tears itself apart and the cosmos pops out of existence.
One prediction puts this hypothetical “big rip” scenario 22 billion years in the future. But could it happen sooner? To find out, Diego Sáez-Gómez at the
University of Lisbon, Portugal, and his colleagues modelled a variety of scenarios and used the latest expansion data to calculate a likely timeline. The data involved nearby galaxies, supernovae and ripples in the density of matter known as baryon acoustic oscillations, all of which are used to measure dark energy.
The team found that the earliest a big rip can occur is at 1.2 times the current age of the universe, which works out to be around 2.8 billion years from now. “We’re safe,” says Sáez-Gómez.
Time equals infinity
And when is the latest it could happen? “The upper bound goes to infinity,” he says. That would mean the rip never comes and we end up with the heat death scenario instead.
Given that the sun isn’t expected to burn out for at least another 5 billion years, it would be surprising if the universe ended so early. But pondering our doom could be a worthwhile exercise anyway, Sáez-Gómez says. Scenarios like the big rip result from a lack of understanding of physics in particular our inability to marry quantum mechanics and general relativity, the theory of gravity. Exploring the possibilities could show us a way forward.
“You learn more about a physical theory by looking at the exotic and extreme cases,” says Robert Caldwell of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, who helped come up with the big rip idea. He thinks Sáez-Gómez’s lower bound is very conservative, however – the universe is likely to last much longer. Even if it doesn’t, at least we’ve got a good run ahead of us. he says.
Reference: arxiv.org/abs/1602.06211v1
At https://www.newscientist.com/article/2078851-when-will-the-universe-end-not-for-at-least-2-8-billion-years/
Cosmochemists find evidence of rare element in early solar system This close-up picture shows a
ceramic-like refractory inclusion (pink inclusion) still embedded into the meteorite in which it was found. Refractory inclusions are the oldest-known rocks in the solar system (4.5 billion years old). Analysis of the uranium isotope ratios of such inclusions
demonstrates that a long-lived isotope of the radioactive element curium was present in the solar system when this inclusion was formed. Credit: Origins Lab at the University of Chicago
2016.03.05
University of Chicago scientists have discovered evidence in a meteorite that a rare element, curium, was present during the formation of the solar system. This finding ends a 35-year-old debate on the possible presence of curium in the early solar system, and plays a crucial role in reassessing models of stellar evolution and synthesis of elements in stars. Details of the discovery appear in the March 4 edition of Science Advances.
“Curium is an elusive element. It is one of the heaviest-known elements, yet it does not occur naturally because all of its isotopes are radioactive and decay rapidly on a geological time scale,” said the study’s lead author, François Tissot, UChicago PhD’15, now a W.O. Crosby Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
And yet Tissot and his co-authors, UChicago’s Nicolas Dauphas and Lawrence Grossman, have found evidence of curium in an unusual ceramic inclusion they called “Curious Marie,” taken from a carbonaceous meteorite. Curium became incorporated into the inclusion when it condensed from the gaseous cloud that formed the sun early in the history of the solar system.
Curious Marie and curium are both named after Marie Curie, whose pioneering work laid the foundation of the theory of radioactivity. Curium was only discovered in 1944, by Glenn Seaborg and his collaborators at the University of California, Berkeley, who, by bombarding atoms of plutonium with alpha particles (atoms of helium) synthesized a new, very radioactive element.
To chemically, and unambiguously, identify this new element, Seaborg and his collaborators studied the energy of the particles emitted during its decay at the Metallurgical Laboratory at UChicago (which later became Argonne
National Laboratory). The isotope they had synthesized was the very unstable curium-242, which decays in a half-life of 162 days.
On Earth today, curium exists only when manufactured in laboratories or as a byproduct of nuclear explosions. Curium could have been present, however, early in the history of the solar system, as a product of massive star explosions that happened before the solar system was born.
“The possible presence of curium in the early solar system has long been exciting to cosmochemists, because they can often use radioactive elements as chronometers to date the relative ages of meteorites and planets,” said study co-author Nicolas Dauphas, UChicago’s Louis Block Professor in Geophysical Sciences.
Indeed, the longest-lived isotope of curium (247Cm) decays over time into an isotope of uranium (235U). Therefore, a mineral or a rock formed early in the solar system, when 247Cm existed, would have incorporated more 247Cm than a similar mineral or rock that formed later, after 247Cm had decayed. If scientists were to analyze these two hypothetical minerals today, they would find that the older mineral contains more 235U (the decay product of 247Cm) than the younger mineral.
“The idea is simple enough, yet, for nearly 35 years, scientists have argued about the presence of 247Cm in the early solar system,” Tissot said.
Long wait to detect curium
Early studies in the 1980s found large excesses of 235U in any meteoritic inclusions they analyzed, and concluded that curium was very abundant when the solar system formed. More refined experiments conducted by James Chen and UChicago alumnus Gerald Wasserburg, SB’51, SM’52, PhD’54, at the California Institute of Technology showed that these early results were spurious, and that if curium was present in the early solar system, its abundance was so low that state-of-the-art instrumentation would be unable to detect it.
Scientists had to wait until a new, higher-performance mass spectrometer was developed to successfully identify, in 2010, tiny excesses of 235U that could be the smoking gun for the presence of 247Cm in the early solar system.
“That was an important step forward but the problem is, those excesses were so small that other processes could have produced them,” Tissot noted.
More at http://www.geologypage.com/2016/03/cosmochemists-find-evidence-of-rare.html?m=0#ixzz422OSTZ00
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Billion-light-year galactic wall may be largest object in cosmos The universe is a web of
giant clusters of matter surrounding empty voids. Volker Springel/Max Planck Institute For Astrophysics/SPL
DAILY NEWS, 8 March 2016
Astronomers peering into the distant universe have discovered the BOSS Great Wall, a vast
superstructure of 830 galaxies that is a billion light years across
Here’s the latest reminder that space is really, really big. At a cool billion light years across, a distant complex of galaxy superclusters may be the largest structure yet found in the cosmos.
Individual galaxies like our own Milky Way are bound together by gravity into clusters, and these clusters clump into superclusters. These can in turn link together into long lines of galaxies called walls. On the grandest scales, the universe resembles a cosmic web of matter surrounding empty voids – and these walls are the thickest threads.
In the nearby universe, we know of the Sloan Great Wall, and in 2014, the Milky Way was found to be part of a supercluster system called Laniakea. Both are enormous. But the newly spotted BOSS Great Wall, with a total mass perhaps 10,000 times as great as the Milky Way, is two-thirds bigger again than either of them.
Heidi Lietzen of the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics and her team found it by looking for clumped-together galaxies in a vast area between 4.5 and 6.4 billion light years away. In all that space, one dense, giant system stood out.
“It was so much bigger than anything else in this volume,” Lietzen says. The BOSS Great Wall contains 830 galaxies we can see and probably many more that are too far away and faint to be observed by survey telescopes.
Like other galaxy walls, this one’s size is a little subjective.
“I don’t entirely understand why they are connecting all of these features together to call them a single structure,” says Allison Coil of the University of California in San Diego. “There are clearly kinks and bends in this structure that don’t exist, for example, in the Sloan Great Wall.”
Brent Tully of the University of Hawaii, who discovered the Laniakea cluster, says that deciding what constitutes a single structure depends on your definition.
A denser region of galaxies is traditional, he says, and indeed the new wall contains five times as many galaxies as an average patch of sky. But tracking whether the galaxies are moving together – impossible, given how far away they are – might give a different answer.
Galaxy superclusters also have competition for the “biggest known object” crown. Some distant light sources like quasars or gamma ray bursts seem to be clustered together in certain regions of the sky. If they are truly connected, they belong to structures so large that current cosmological theories can’t explain them.
But many astronomers aren’t sure that these objects really belong together, as they lack a physical mechanism to link them. Instead, they prefer to look for huge linkages of galaxies that sit on the cosmic web. In that arena, the new-found BOSS Great Wall is king.
Journal reference: arxiv.org/abs/1602.08498, to appear in Astronomy & Astrophysics
At https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16903-new-cosmic-map-reveals-colossal-structures/
The Reason for Mars’ Tumultuous Past
UA planetary scientist Isamu Matsuyama has helped unravel dramatic events in the early history of Mars, casting a new light on the early life of our red planet neighbor.
Daniel Stolte, University Relations – Communications. March 4, 2016
About 4 billion years ago, Mars emerged from a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment with its northern hemisphere substantially lower in elevation compared with its southern hemisphere (a). Consequently, river valley networks formed that drained into the lower-lying lands north of the equator (b). At the same
time, the Tharsis volcanic region created a massive bulge in Mars' surface, causing the planet to tip over by about 20 degrees (c). (Sylvain Bouley/Nature)
Deep below the surface of the withered, dead and barren world that today is Mars lies evidence of a much more tumultuous upbringing of the red planet than scientists had expected. New research by an international team of planetary scientists including Isamu Matsuyama of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, published in Nature, solves some of the biggest puzzles surrounding Mars’ mysterious infancy.
In the new study, Matsuyama and his collaborators present a fresh look at the red planet, providing an elegant and simple explanation of the geological features that had scientists vexed for a long time.
Between 3 billion and 3.5 billion years ago, when life made its first appearance on Earth in the form of single-celled bacteria, dramatic changes happened on our neighboring planet. One of them caused the entire planet to tip over, bringing regions that once were closer to the poles toward the equator.
Its cause? Giant eruptions that threw up the largest volcanoes in the solar system and formed a bulge known as the Tharsis region, home of Olympus Mons. Towering 16 miles above the Martian surface, Olympus Mons is tall enough to eclipse three Mount Everests stacked on top of one another.
When such a massive volcanic bulge forms in one area, it throws the entire planet out of kilter, according to Matsuyama, an assistant professor in the UA’s Department of Planetary Sciences who first presented evidence for the "great Martian tilt" in 2010 using gravity observations.
"Any major shift of planetary mass —on the surface or within the mantle — could cause a shift with respect to the spin axis, because a spinning body is most stable with its mass farthest from its spin axis," Matsuyama explains.
As more and more material accumulated in the bulge that became the Tharsis region, it caused Mars’ spin axis to tilt by about 20 degrees. If the same happened to Earth, Tucson would come to lie at the position of present-day Calgary, Alberta. In the case of Mars, the volcanic bulge ended up at the equator, where it still remains today, long after its volcanoes have fallen dormant.
"The great tilt upsets our picture of the surface of Mars as it must have been 4 billion years ago," according to the authors, "and profoundly modifies the timing of events that gave Mars the face we know today."
For one, the team, led by Sylvain Bouley of the Université Paris-Sud in France, shows that zones of valley networks — carved into the Martian surface during a time when water flowed vigorously and plentiful — are consistent with the reorientation of Mars due to the formation of the Tharsis volcanic region.
"The present distribution of valley network contains large variations in longitude that are difficult to explain without the tilting scenario," Matsuyama says, "because with the current orientation of Mars relative to its spin axis, you see evidence of precipitation where you should not see it. The extensive networks of valleys and channels change latitude as you move in longitude."
Using data from detailed gravity and topography measurements taken by spacecraft orbiting Mars, the team reconstructed what a young Mars would have looked like, before its face changed and aged so dramatically.
"In our models we got rid of the Tharsis regions, and we reoriented the planet to its original geometry before the tilt," Matsuyama says. And when the researchers then ran climate simulations, they saw the precipitation that carved the valley networks occur in the locations where they should be — in a more or less symmetrical ring just south of Mars’ equator before the tilt.
More at https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/the-reason-for-mars-tumultuous-past
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Close comet flyby plunged Mars’ magnetic field into chaos
MAR 14, 2016 Comet Siding Spring’s close flyby of Mars in October 2014 blew away part of the planet’s upper atmosphere, suggest MAVEN spacecraft observations.
The close encounter between comet Siding Spring and Mars flooded the planet
with an invisible tide of charged particles from the comet’s coma. The dense inner coma reached the surface of the planet, or nearly so. The comet’s powerful magnetic field temporarily merged with, and overwhelmed, the planet’s weak field, as shown in this artist’s depiction. Image credit: NASA/Goddard
Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) wreaked havoc on the Martian magnetosphere when it passed close by the planet in October 2014, according to data gathered by NASA’s Mars-orbiting spacecraft MAVEN. The research
was published February 1, 2016 in Geophysical Research Letters.
Just weeks before the comet’s historic encounter with Mars, the MAVEN spacecraft entered Mars’ orbit. To protect sensitive equipment aboard MAVEN from possible harm, some instruments were turned off during the flyby. But a few instruments, including MAVEN’s magnetometer, remained on, conducting observations from a front-row seat during the comet’s remarkably close flyby.
The one-of-a-kind opportunity gave scientists an intimate view of the havoc that the comet’s passing wreaked on the magnetic environment, or magnetosphere around Mars. NASA scientistssaid the effect was temporary but profound. Jared Espley is a MAVEN science team member at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Espley said:
Comet Siding Spring plunged the magnetic field around Mars into chaos. We think the encounter blew away part of Mars’ upper atmosphere, much like a strong solar storm would.
Unlike Earth, Mars isn’t shielded by a strong magnetosphere generated within the planet. The atmosphere of Mars offers some protection, however, by
redirecting the solar wind around the planet, like a rock diverting the flow of water in a creek. This happens because at very high altitudes Mars’ atmosphere is made up of plasma – a layer of electrically charged particles and gas molecules. Charged particles in the solar wind interact with this plasma, and the mingling and moving around of all these charges produces currents. Just like currents in simple electrical circuits, these moving charges induce a magnetic field, which, in Mars’ case, is quite weak.
Comet Siding Spring is also surrounded by a magnetic field. This results from the solar wind interacting with the plasma generated in the coma – the envelope of gas flowing from a comet’s nucleus as it is heated by the sun. Comet Siding Spring’s nucleus – a nugget of ice and rock measuring no more than half a kilometer (about 1/3 mile) – is small, but the coma is expansive, stretching out a million kilometers (more than 600,000 miles) in every direction. The densest part of the coma – the inner region near the nucleus – is the part of a comet that’s visible to telescopes and cameras as a big fuzzy ball.
When comet Siding Spring passed Mars, the two bodies came within about 140,000 kilometers (roughly 87,000 miles) of each other. The comet’s coma washed over the planet for several hours, with the dense inner coma reaching, or nearly reaching, the surface. Mars was flooded with an invisible tide of charged particles from the coma, and the powerful magnetic field around the comet temporarily merged with – and overwhelmed – the planet’s own weak one.
At first, the scientists said, the changes were subtle. As Mars’ magnetosphere, which is normally draped neatly over the planet, started to react to the comet’s approach, some regions began to realign to point in different directions. With the comet’s advance, these effects built in intensity, almost making the planet’s magnetic field flap like a curtain in the wind. By the time of closest approach – when the plasma from the comet was densest – Mars’ magnetic field was in complete chaos. Even hours after the comet’s departure, some disruption continued to be measured.
Espley and colleagues think the effects of the plasma tide were similar to those of a strong but short-lived solar storm. And like a solar storm, the comet’s close passage likely fueled a temporary surge in the amount of gas escaping from Mars’ upper atmosphere. Over time, those storms took their toll on the atmosphere.
At http://earthsky.org/space/close-comet-flyby-plunged-mars-magnetic-field-into-chaos?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=d83dfaafbd-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-d83dfaafbd-393647361
Mystery of Ceres's bright spots deepens as new data is analysed
Gleaming patches captured by Nasa’s Dawn space probe appeared to have beenexplained in December, but a new study suggests there is more to decipher
An artist’s impression of Ceres’s bright spots based on a detailed map of the surface
compiled from images taken from Nasa’s Dawn
spacecraft. Photograph: L. Calcada/AFP/Getty
Images
Nicola Davis, Wednesday 16 March 2016.
The mystery of Ceres’s bright spots has deepened, scientists reveal.
A dwarf planet measuring 950 km in diameter, Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt - a disc of rocky objects that sits between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Its gleaming patches were captured by Nasa’s Dawn space probe as it hurtled towards the dwarf planet last year, leading to a scramble within scientific circles to explain the phenomenon.
But the mystery appeared to have been solved when, in December last year, a team of researchers reported that they had found evidence that the bright
patches on the dwarf planet are formed from hydrated magnesium sulphate. Further, a haze observed within the 90km-wide Occator crater was thought to be down to dust, ice particles and water vapour produced when the sun’s rays hit the surface of Ceres, warming a layer of ice beneath. This haze was been found to be present at the dwarf planet’s noon but not at its dusk - an effect that ties in with exposure to solar radiation.
But new research suggests there might be more to the mystery. Using data from the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (Harps) spectrograph at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, a team of scientists have followed Ceres as it spins on its axis, monitoring the spectrum of the light reflected by the dwarf planet on the 31st July 2015 and again on the 26-27 August.
In a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the team reveal that while they saw evidence that crater brightened and dimmed on 31st July - an effect thought to be down to reflections from changing levels of haze - they saw no change during their August observations.
According to Dr Paolo Molaro of the Trieste Astronomical Observatory, an author of the new study, the fact that reflections from the Occator crater were much reduced in August could suggest that the layer beneath the crater’s surface is not replenished in a continuous process. But Molaro is quick to point out that further studies will be needed to confirm his suspicions. “These are all speculations for the moment,” he warns.
At https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/16/mystery-of-ceres-bright-spots-deepens-new-data-analysed-nasa-dawn?CMP=fb_a-science_b-gdnscience
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Surprising Picture Shows Planet Forming 450 Light-Years Away Planets are in the very early stages of
forming in the inner regions of the dusty disk surrounding this young star.
Photograph By Carrasco-Gonzalez, Et Al.; Bill Saxton, Nrao/Aui/Nsf
By Nadia Drake, March 18, 2016 New images of a star show what a planet looks like as it’s being born.
Near the center of a large, faraway disk resembling a celestial mandala, a young planet is in the process of being born. Or rather, growing up.
At this early point in its life, the cosmic infant isn’t much more than a clump of dust. Containing between three and eight times more mass than Earth, the proto-planet is orbiting a young star called HL Tau, about 450 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. It’s tucked near the star, where scientists suspect rocky planets are likely to live—and where it’s often exceedingly difficult to see anything other than dusty starlight.
In 2014, astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Sub-millimeter Array spotted the psychedelic disk. It contains gaps that could be telltale signs of forming planets, which surprised astronomers because the star is only around one million years old, or very young to have planets large enough to carve gaps in the disk.
So, several times in 2014 and 2015, teams re-observed the precocious assemblage with the Very Large Array of radio telescopes, which can peer into that dusty, near-star neighborhood in ways that ALMA can’t. That’s when scientists spied the little planet.
It’s the first good look scientists have gotten of a forming planet, but it’s not the first time they’ve caught one in the act of growing. Another notable observation, described last year in Nature, revealed a planet called LkCa 15 b forming around another distant star.
These young planets may still be dusty embryos, but in several million years they will be all grown up.
At http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/160318-picture-planet-star-forming-space/
New gravity map gives best view yet inside Mars This is a map of Martian gravity looking down on the North Pole (center). White and red are areas of higher gravity; blue indicates areas of
lower gravity. Credit: MIT/UMBC-CRESST/GSFC
2016.03.22
A new map of Mars' gravity made with three NASA spacecraft is the most detailed to date, providing a revealing glimpse into the hidden interior of the Red Planet.
"Gravity maps allow us to see inside a planet, just as a doctor uses an X-ray to see inside a patient," said Antonio Genova of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts. "The new gravity map will be helpful for future Mars exploration, because better knowledge of the planet's gravity anomalies helps mission controllers insert spacecraft more precisely into orbit about Mars. Furthermore, the improved resolution of our gravity map will help us understand the still-mysterious formation of specific regions of the planet." Genova, who is affiliated with MIT but is located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is the lead author of a paper on this research published online March 5 in the journal Icarus.
The improved resolution of the new gravity map suggests a new explanation for how some features formed across the boundary that divides the relatively smooth northern lowlands from heavily cratered southern highlands. Also, the team confirmed that Mars has a liquid outer core of molten rock by analyzing tides in the Martian crust and mantle caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and the two moons of Mars. Finally, by observing how Mars' gravity changed over 11 years -- the period of an entire cycle of solar activity -- the team inferred the massive amount of carbon dioxide that freezes out of the
atmosphere onto a Martian polar ice cap when it experiences winter. They also observed how that mass moves between the south pole and the north pole with the change of season in each hemisphere. The map was derived using Doppler and range tracking data collected by NASA's Deep Space Network from three NASA spacecraft in orbit around Mars: Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), Mars Odyssey (ODY), and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Like all planets, Mars is lumpy, which causes the gravitational pull felt by spacecraft in orbit around it to change. For example, the pull will be a bit stronger over a mountain, and slightly weaker over a canyon.
Slight differences in Mars' gravity changed the trajectory of the NASA spacecraft orbiting the planet, which altered the signal being sent from the spacecraft to the Deep Space Network. These small fluctuations in the orbital data were used to build a map of the Martian gravity field.
The gravity field was recovered using about 16 years of data that were continuously collected in orbit around Mars. However, orbital changes from uneven gravity are tiny, and other forces that can perturb the motion of the spacecraft had to be carefully accounted for, such as the force of sunlight on the spacecraft's solar panels and drag from the Red Planet's thin upper atmosphere. It took two years of analysis and computer modeling to remove the motion not caused by gravity.
"With this new map, we've been able to see gravity anomalies as small as about 100 kilometers (about 62 miles) across, and we've determined the crustal thickness of Mars with a resolution of around 120 kilometers (almost 75 miles)," said Genova. "The better resolution of the new map helps interpret how the crust of the planet changed over Mars' history in many regions."
More at http://www.geologypage.com/2016/03/new-gravity-map-gives-best-view-yet.html#ixzz43ed0zvwp
Other stories
Astronomers have observed a black hole flashing red with the energy of 1,000 Suns. Josh Hrala, 18 Mar 2016. http://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-have-witnessed-a-black-hole-flash-red-with-the-energy-of-1-000-suns
Scientists just discovered a black hole that's blasting the fastest 'space wind' in the known Universe. BEC Crew. 22 Mar 2016. http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-just-discovered-a-black-hole-that-s-blasting-the-fastest-space-wind-in-the-known-universe
Keep up-to-date on the latest happenings in geoscience, energy and environment news with EARTH Magazine. EARTH is your source for the science behind the headlines, giving readers definitive coverage on topics from natural resources, natural disasters and the environment to space exploration and paleontology. Order your subscription to EARTH on lineat www.earthmagazine.org.
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GEOETHICS
http://www.icog.es/iageth/
Water emergency in Peruvian Amazon after 3,000-barrel oil spill contaminates 2 rivers
Aerial view of a river in Peru's Amazon region of Loreto © Enrique Castro-Mendivil / Reuters
23 Feb, 2016 Peru is in the midst of an emergency as two rivers in the Amazon basin are now contaminated with 3,000 barrels of crude oil after the country’s main pipeline burst. There are plenty of villagers relying on this water who have effectively been cut off. The Health Ministry has declared a water emergency in five districts in the vicinity.
According to state-owned regional Petroperu, there were two separate breaks in January and early February, which have halted transportation of 5-6,000 barrels of crude per day. According to Petroperu president German
Velasquez, the first rupture appears to have been caused by a landslide. The cause of the other is still being worked out.
The oil is now in the Chiriaco and Morona rivers in northwest Peru, Reuters reported OEFA, the national environmental authority, as saying. There are at least eight native-populated villages now under threat, an indigenous leader told the agency. Petroperu has estimated the amount of the spilled oil at 3,000 barrels.
The company now says it will take “some time” before operations return to normal. But its efforts have been hampered by pouring rain, which led to oil containment walls bursting and the crude flowing into the rivers.
If Petroperu, which is responsible for refining and transportation, is found to have hurt the locals’ health in any way, the company faces 60 million soles ($17 million) in fines.
The OEFA told Petroperu earlier that its pipeline was in need of maintenance and repairs. "It's important to note that the spills...are not isolated cases. Similar emergencies have emerged as a result of defects in sections of the pipeline," the environmental agency said in a statement.
Velasquez says an evaluation is currently being carried out on the 1970s pipeline. But the process could take up to two months.
Allegations emerged that Petroperu was using children to help clean up the spill, something Velasquez has denied, but added he was considering firing four officials, one of whom was linked to allegedly getting children to work on the spill.
At https://www.rt.com/news/333336-peru-oil-spill-amazon/
Plastic Has Become Part Of Earth's Geology
February 2016
Humans have made enough plastic since the second world war to coat the Earth entirely in clingfilm, an
international study has revealed. This
ability to plaster the planet in plastic is alarming, say scientists – for it confirms that human activities are now having a pernicious impact on our world.
According to geologists from the University of Leicester, plastic has become such a central component of modern life, it has found its way into our Earth's crust itself, becoming a geological marker in recent strata.
Anyone who loves The Graduate (and everyone should be someone who loves The Graduate) knows that plastics were still relatively novel when the movie was released in 1967. Scientific American recalls that in 1953, House Beautiful was singing plastic's praise, writing that with plastics, "You will have a greater chance to be yourself than any people in the history of civilization."
But anyone buying, say, a plastic fishing buoy in 1953 might, shockingly, still have it. It takes 80 years for buoys to degrade, which is sadly rather modest compared with other plastic products; a plastic beverage bottle made today will still be intact in the year 2465. According to the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, plastic fishing line would still be here
in 2616. By comparison, a paper towel decomposes about two to four weeks after being discarded, about the same rate as a banana peel.
When these products were first introduced, one can imagine that no one was used to thinking in such grand terms. Just off the edge of World War II, humanity was cautiously patting itself on the back for still existing, rather than worrying about its murderous staying power 600 years hence. But thanks to plastic's nearly incomparable hardiness, today we are surrounded by the stuff, and geologists note that it is caking our Earth with indestructible materials.
There's an upside: "It may seem odd to think of plastics as archaeological and geological materials because they are so new," said Matt Edgewort, an archaeologist and historian, "but we increasingly find them as inclusions in recent strata. Plastics make excellent stratigraphic markers."
Translation: the plastic is so obvious in the Earth's crust, it gives an exact timetable for when that layer of ground became solid Earth. And since it's rarely broken down, it screams out like a child lost in a Home Depot. It simply couldn't be more obvious.
These scientists and others claim that we are now in the Anthropocene epoch, a theoretical geographical period marked by human activity. While other epochs are defined by the Earth's natural forces, the Anthropocene is defined by us. And it's not looking good.
"Once buried, being so hard-wearing, plastics have a good chance to be fossilized - and leave a signal of the ultimate convenience material for many million years into the future," said Jan Zalasiewicz, professor of palaeobiology from the University of Leicester's geology department. "The age of plastic may really last for ages."
At http://www.geologyin.com/2016/02/plastic-has-become-part-of-earths.html
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E.P.A. Faces Bigger Tasks, Smaller Budgets and Louder Critics Wastewater from the
Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colo., was drained into retention ponds to eliminate contamination before it flowed into the Animas River in August. CreditMark Holm for The New York Times
By Coral Davenport, March 18, 2016
WASHINGTON — Under fierce attack from the political right, and with even some Democrats questioning its competence, the Environmental Protection Agency is facing a tumultuous election year — with rising regulatory responsibilities, falling budgets and its very existence at stake.
The agency has long been a favorite political target for Republicans, who criticize its authority to regulate large areas of the American economy as it enacts rules to curb pollution. But the E.P.A.’s challenges in 2016 are multifaceted. The Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, have questioned the agency’s handling of the drinking water crisis in Flint, Mich. And a toxic wastewater spill in a Colorado river last year brought charges of incompetence from both parties.
The leading Republican presidential hopefuls, Donald J. Trump and Ted Cruz, have each vowed to eviscerate the agency.
“We are going to get rid of it in almost every form,” Mr. Trump said at a debate this month. “We’re going to have little tidbits left, but we’re going to take a tremendous amount out.”
Mr. Cruz, at the same debate, added, “I will pull back the federal regulators, the E.P.A. and all the regulators that are killing small businesses and manufacturing.”
And House Republicans, at a hearing Thursday on the Flint water crisis, called for the E.P.A.’s administrator to resign.
Republican policy experts are already talking about how to translate such talking points into concrete elements of the party’s policy platform, to be unveiled this summer at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. While many policy experts are dismissive of Mr. Trump himself, the candidate’s views on a sharply limited federal role in environmental protection align with specific ideas that some conservatives have pushed for years.
No matter who emerges as the Republican nominee, the party’s official policy will almost certainly take aim at the size, scope and structure of the E.P.A.
Conservative policy makers are considering proposals that would effectively strip the agency of its authority to set, put in place and enforce pollution standards. The agency would continue to exist, at least in name, but it could end up functioning only as a small scientific research agency, possibly swallowed into another department.
“There’s no reason to have the agency in its current form,” said Michael McKenna, a Republican energy lobbyist who has played a central role in drafting the party’s environmental policy platform in previous presidential campaigns. “Something’s going to be in the platform that gives the E.P.A. a serious haircut.”
Democratic candidates are not exactly rushing to the agency’s defense. Mrs. Clinton said that as president she would open an investigation into its handling of the Flint water crisis. Mr. Sanders said that he would “fire anybody who knew about what was happening and did not act appropriately.”
At Thursday’s hearing, Representative Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois and a highly regarded Senate candidate, said she was “extremely troubled by how the E.P.A. also failed in its duty to serve as the last line of defense for the children of Flint.”
The agency’s responsibilities have never been greater, and its resources have never been so strained.
Created in 1970 by President Richard M. Nixon, the E.P.A. is charged with writing, carrying out and enforcing regulations under existing laws like the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. Its rules impose restrictions on business, industry and agriculture, limiting the amount and types of pollutants
that can be emitted into the air and water, as well as where and how landowners can use their property. The regulations can sometimes impose billions of dollars of costs on industry, requiring companies to install expensive pollution control technology and in some cases to shut down polluting facilities.
But President Obama’s effort to combat global warming has transformed that mandate. The president’s climate policies require regulations so sweeping that the E.P.A. has essentially been tasked with transforming major sectors of the American economy, including the auto industry and the electric power sector, over the next decade.
Because those global warming regulations have been issued under the legal authority of an existing law, the Clean Air Act, it could be difficult for a Republican president to simply repeal them outright. But substantially weakening the agency that enacts the rules could effectively hamstring Mr. Obama’s climate change legacy.
Historically, environmental regulations have required polluters to install new equipment like so-called smokestack scrubbers and catalytic converters in cars, factories and power plants.
But Mr. Obama’s current suite of climate change regulations, if enacted, would go far beyond that. The E.P.A. would effectively change how automobiles are propelled (with electricity, not gasoline) and how electricity is delivered (via wind and solar, not coal), said Bob Persciacepe, the agency’s deputy administrator during Mr. Obama’s first term.
“We are at a pivotal moment in time, when, in fits and starts, the world is dealing with climate change and every country has to play an important role,” he said. “E.P.A. has been put in the spot to do this. The weight on their shoulders is heavy.”
All of this is supposed to be accomplished under tight budgets imposed by a hostile Congress. The agency’s spending under Mr. Obama has been cut between 10 and 20 percent below the budgets of the previous three administrations, when adjusted for inflation. The agency’s budget has averaged about $8.8 billion annually under Mr. Obama, compared with (in today’s dollars) $9.7 billion under George W. Bush, $10.6 billion under Bill Clinton and $10.4 billion under George Bush. The agency’s 15,408 employees are its fewest since 1989.
As the E.P.A. has taken on more work with fewer resources, problems have proliferated. Last year, after the E.P.A. accidentally spilled three million gallons of toxic wastewater from an abandoned mine into the Animas River in Colorado, a government report found that the agency lacked the technical skills to handle such tricky projects.
The agency has also been criticized for its implementation of a regulation known as “Waters of the U.S.,” which would expand pollution controls over the nation’s rivers and streams.
“It’s clear E.P.A. cannot currently handle the issues on its plate,” Representative Scott DesJarlais, Republican of Tennessee, said Thursday.
A spokeswoman for the E.P.A. declined to comment on the politics swirling around the agency. But Obama administration officials noted that the E.P.A. still enjoyed public support. A Pew poll in September 2015 found that 52 percent of respondents had a favorable view of the agency.
That support could make it more difficult for a Republican president to enact some of the most drastic changes envisioned by those drafting the party’s policy platform, because at least some proposals would have to go before Congress.
And eliminating the E.P.A. would not eliminate the government’s legal obligations to carry out regulations under existing laws.
“I’m a very conservative guy, and there are legitimate criticisms of E.P.A., and there has been E.P.A. overreach,” said Jeffrey Holmstead, a former deputy administrator of the agency under George W. Bush.
But, he noted, under the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, the E.P.A. is required to supply operating permits to industrial plants and manufacturers.
“Even if E.P.A. disappeared tomorrow, the regulations would still have the force of law,” Mr. Holmstead said. At http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/19/us/politics/epa-faces-bigger-tasks-smaller-budgets-and-louder-critics.html?smid=fb-nytscience&smtyp=cur&_r=0
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Continuous leaking of radioactive strontium, cesium from Fukushima to the ocean
March 10, 2016. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Scientists from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) investigated the levels of radioactive strontium and cesium in the coast off Japan in September 2013. Radioactive levels in seawater were 10 to 100 times higher than before the nuclear accident, particularly near the facility, suggesting that water containing strontium and cesium isotopes was still leaking into the Pacific Ocean.
March 11 will be the 5th anniversary since the nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan. The Tohoku earthquake and the series of tsunamis damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) causing a massive release of radioactivity into the atmosphere and the Pacific Ocean. Since then, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Japanese authorities have focused on controlling the water flowing in and out of the FDNPP and on decontaminating the highly radioactive water used as coolant for the damaged reactors (about 300 m3 a day, cubic meter = 1000 L). This cooling water is then stored in tanks and, to some extent, being decontaminated.
A new study recently published in Environmental Science and Technology, uses data on the concentrations of 90Sr and 134,137Cs in the coast off Japan from the moment of the accident until September 2013, and puts it into a longer-time perspective including published data and TEPCO's monitoring data available until June 2015. This study continues the work initiated after the accident in 2011 by some of the authors. These and other partners from Belgium and Japan are currently involved in the European FRAME project lead by Dr. Pere Masqué that aims at studying the impact of recent releases
from the Fukushima nuclear accident on the marine environment. FRAME is encompassed within the European COMET project (https://wiki.ceh.ac.uk/display/COM/COMET-FRAME).
Seawater collected from the sea surface down to 500 m between 1 and 110 km off the FDNPP showed concentrations up to 9, 124 and 54 Bq·m−3 for 90Sr, 137Cs and 134Cs, respectively. The highest concentrations, found within 6 km off the FDNPP, were approximately 9, 100 and 50 times higher, respectively, than pre-Fukushima levels. Before the accident, the main source of these radionuclides was atmospheric deposition due to nuclear bomb testing performed in the 1950s and 1960s. The presence of 134Cs (undetectable before the accident) and the distinct relationship between 90Sr and 137Cs in the samples suggested that FDNPP was leaking 90Sr at a rate of 2,3 -- 8,5 GBq d-1 (giga-Becquerel per day) into the Pacific Ocean in September 2013. Such a leak would be 100-1000 times larger than the amount of 90Sr transported by rivers from land to ocean. Additional risk is related to the large amounts of water stored in tanks that have frequently leaked in the past. These results are in agreement with TEPCO's monitoring data which show levels of 90Sr and 137Cs up to 10 and 1000 times higher than pre-Fukushima near the discharge channels of the FDNPP until June 2015 (most recent data included in the study). The presence of 90Sr and 134,137Cs in significant amounts until 2015 suggests the need of a continuous monitoring of artificial radionuclides in the Pacific Ocean.
At https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160310080824.htm
HUMOR
In bizarro.com
27
LITERATURE
Africa
African Journal of Ecology Volume 53, Issue 1, March 2015, Pages 1–129
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aje.2015.53.issue-1/issuetoc
Jon C. Lovett. Modelling the effects of climate change in Africa. (pages 1–2).
Atmospheric Research Volume 169, Part A, Pages 1-400 (1 March 2016)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01698095/169/part/PA
A. Trabelsi, M. Masmoudi, J.P. Quisefit, S.C. Alfaro. Compositional variability of the aerosols collected on Kerkennah Islands (central Tunisia). Pages 292-300
Cretaceous Research Volume 58, Pages 1-296 (March 2016)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01956671/58
Yuri D. Zakharov, Kazushige Tanabe, Yasunari Shigeta, Peter P. Safronov, Olga P. Smyshlyaeva, Sergei I. Dril. Early Albian marine environments in Madagascar: An integrated approach based on oxygen, carbon and strontium isotopic data. Pages 29-41
Ibrahim M. Ied, Gamal.M.A. Lashin. Palynostratigraphy and paleobiogeography of the Jurassic – Lower Cretaceous succession in Kabrit-1 well, northeastern Egypt. Pages 69-85
S. Benmansour, B. Andreu, A. Yahiaoui. The Campanian–Maastrichtian of the Aures Basin, Algeria: Paleobiogeographical distribution of ostracods. Pages 86-107
Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science Volume 171, (20 March 2016)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02727714/171
M. Bocci, D. Brigolin, F. Pranovi, M. Najih, D. Nachite, R. Pastres. An Ecosystem Approach for understanding status and changes of Nador lagoon (Morocco): application of food web models and ecosystem indices. Pages 133-143
Geomorphology Volume 257, Pages 1-206 (15 March 2016)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0169555X/257
M.A. Hamdan, A.A. Refaat, M. Abdel Wahed. Morphologic characteristics and migration rate assessment of barchan dunes in the Southeastern Western Desert of Egypt. Pages 57-74
Geophysical Journal International Volume 204, Issue 3, pp 1405-1886
http://gji.oxfordjournals.org/content/204/3.toc
Ana Domingues, Graça Silveira, Ana M.G. Ferreira, Sung-Joon Chang, Susana Custódio, And João F.B.D. Fonseca. Ambient noise tomography of the East African Rift in Mozambique. 1565-1578.
M. Guidarelli and A. Aoudia. Ambient noise tomography of the Cameroon Volcanic Line and Northern Congo craton: new constraints on the structure of the lithosphere. 1756-1765
Geoscience Frontiers Volume 7, Issue 2, Pages 153-298 (March 2016)
Special Issue: Exhuming Asia Edited by Stijn Glorie and Johan De Grave
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/16749871
Alexander Koptev, Evgueni Burov, Eric Calais, Sylvie Leroy, Taras Gerya, Laurent Guillou-Frottier, Sierd Cloetingh. Contrasted continental rifting via plume-craton interaction: Applications to Central East African Rift. Pages 221-236
International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation Volume 45, Part B, Pages 107-244 (March 2016)
Advances in the Validation and Application of Remotely Sensed Soil Moisture Edited by Wouter A. Dorigo and Richard A.M. de Jeu
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03032434/45/part/PB
Fabio Fascetti, Nazzareno Pierdicca, Luca Pulvirenti, Raffaele Crapolicchio, J. Muñoz-Sabater. A comparison of ASCAT and SMOS soil moisture retrievals over Europe and Northern Africa from 2010 to 2013. Pages 135-142
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction Volume 15, (March 2016)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/22124209/15
Adebukola Yewande Daramola, O. Timothy Oni, Olorunfemi Ogundele, Adesoji Adesanya. Adaptive capacity and coping response strategies to natural disasters: A study in Nigeria. Pages 132-147
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Journal of African Earth Sciences Volume 115, Pages 1-282 (March 2016)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/1464343X/115
Hesham Shaker Zahra, Adel Mokhles Nakhla. Tectonic and structural setting of the northeastern central Gulf of Suez area using aeromagnetic data. Pages 1-16
Saliha Najib, Ahmed Fadili, Khalid Mehdi, Joëlle Riss, Abdelhadi Makan, Hakima Guessir. Salinization process and coastal groundwater quality in Chaouia, Morocco. Pages 17-31
Aouiche, L. Daoudi, E.J. Anthony, M. Sedrati, A. Harti, E. Ziane. The impact of storms in the morphodynamic evolution of a human-impacted semi-sheltered beach (Agadir Bay, Morocco). Pages 32-47
Bassem S. Nabawy, Yves Géraud. Impacts of pore- and petro-fabrics, mineral composition and diagenetic history on the bulk thermal conductivity of sandstones. Pages 48-62
Amna Khila, Mohamed Ouaja, Fouad Zargouni. Upper Cretaceous (Coniacian-Campanian) lithostratigraphy on the Saharan platform, Dahar Plateau, southern Tunisia. Pages 71-84
A.M. Abudeif, M.M. Attia, A.E. Radwan. Petrophysical and petrographic evaluation of Sidri Member of Belayim Formation, Badri field, Gulf of Suez, Egypt. Pages 108-120
Takfarinas Lamri, Safouane Djemaï, Mohamed Hamoudi, Basem Zoheir, Abderrahmane Bendaoud, Khadidja Ouzegane, Massinissa Amara. Satellite imagery and airborne geophysics for geologic mapping of the Edembo area, Eastern Hoggar (Algerian Sahara). Pages 143-158
M.E.M. Derder, S. Maouche, J.P. Liégeois, B. Henry, M. Amenna, A. Ouabadi, H. Bellon, O. Bruguier, B. Bayou, R. Bestandji, O. Nouar, H. Bouabdallah, M. Ayache, M. Beddiaf. Discovery of a Devonian mafic magmatism on the western border of the Murzuq basin (Saharan metacraton): Paleomagnetic dating and geodynamical implications. Pages 159-176
Adetunji, V.O. Olarewaju, O.O. Ocan, V.Y. Ganev, L. Macheva. Geochemistry and U-Pb zircon geochronology of the pegmatites in Ede area, southwestern Nigeria: A newly discovered oldest Pan African rock in southwestern Nigeria. Pages 177-190
Ahmed Awad Abdelhady. Phenotypic differentiation of the Red Sea gastropods in response to the environmental deterioration: Geometric morphometric approach. Pages 191-202
M. Manuela Vinha G. Silva, Marina M.S. Cabral Pinto, Paula Cristina S. Carvalho. Major, trace and REE geochemistry of recent sediments from lower Catumbela River (Angola). Pages 203-217
Ntarmouchant, H. Smaili, T. Bento dos Santos, M. Dahire, K. Sabri, M.L. Ribeiro, Y. Driouch, R. Santos, R. Calvo. New evidence of effusive and explosive volcanism in the Lower Carboniferous formations of the Moroccan Central Hercynian Massif: Geochemical data and geodynamic significance. Pages 218-233
Ibtissam Chouikri, Abdennabi el Mandour, Mohammed Jaffal, Paul Baudron, José-Luis García-Aróstegui, Ahmed Manar, Albert Casas. Gravimetry contributions to the study of the complex western Haouz aquifer (Morocco): Structural and hydrogeological implications. Pages 234-245
Dario De Franceschi, Marion Bamford, Martin Pickford, Brigitte Senut. Fossil wood from the upper Miocene Mpesida Beds at Cheparain (Baringo District, Kenya): Botanical affinities and palaeoenvironmental implications. Pages 271-280
Journal of Environmental Quality Volume 45 Issue 1, January-February 2016
https://dl.sciencesocieties.org/publications/jeq/tocs/45/1
Godswill O. Tesi, Chukwujindu M.A. Iwegbue, Fidelis N. Emuh and Godwin E. Nwajei. Lagdo Dam Flood Disaster of 2012: An Assessment of the Concentrations, Sources, and Risks of PAHs in Floodplain Soils of the Lower Reaches of River Niger, Nigeria. 305-314
Journal of Geodynamics Volumes 94–95, (March–April 2016)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02643707
B. Oliva-Urcia, A.M. Casas, B. Moussaid, J.J. Villalaín, H. El Ouardi, R. Soto, S. Torres-López, T. Román-Berdiel. Tectonic fabrics vs. mineralogical artifacts in AMS analysis: A case study of the Western Morocco extensional Triassic basins. Pages 13-33
Journal of Marine Systems Volume 155, Pages 1-98 (March 2016)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09247963/155
Simone Eisenbarth, Michael L. Zettler. Diversity of the benthic macrofauna off northern Namibia from the shelf to the deep sea. Pages 1-10
Marine and Petroleum Geology Volume 71, (March 2016)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02648172/71
Ling Liu, Dazhen Tang, Hao Xu, Lihui Liu. Reservoir prediction of deep-water turbidite sandstones with seismic lithofacies control —A case study in the C block of lower Congo basin. Pages 1-11
Shawky Sakran, Muhammad Nabih, Ahmed Henaish, Abdelmohsen Ziko. Structural regime and its impact on the mechanism and migration pathways of hydrocarbon seepage in the southern Gulf of Suez rift: An approach for finding new unexplored fault blocks. Pages 55-75
Mineralium Deposita Volume 51, Issue 3, March 2016, 1432-1866
http://link.springer.com/journal/126/51/3/page/1
El Mahjoub Mahjoubi, Alain Chauvet, Lakhlifi Badra, Stanislas Sizaret, Luc Barbanson, Abdelkader El Maz, Yan Chen, Méderic Amann. Structural, mineralogical, and paleoflow velocity constraints on Hercynian tin mineralization: the Achmmach prospect of the Moroccan Central Massif. Pages 431-451
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology Volume 445, Pages 1-152 (1 March 2016)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00310182/445
L. Sciscio, H. Tsikos, D.L. Roberts, L. Scott, Y. van Breugel, J.S. Sinninghe Damste, S. Schouten, D.R. Grocke. Miocene climate and vegetation changes in the Cape Peninsula, South Africa: Evidence from biogeochemistry and palynology. Pages 124-137
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Palynology March 2016; 40 (1): 1-143
http://palynology.geoscienceworld.org/content/current
Amr S. Deaf, Ian C. Harding, and John E.A. Marshall. Early Cretaceous palynostratigraphy of the Abu Tunis 1x borehole, northern Western Desert, Egypt, with emphasis on the possible palaeoclimatic effect upon the range of Dicheiropollis etruscus in North Africa. 25-53,
Precambrian Research Volume 274, Pages 1-180 (March 2016)
Craton to Regional-scale analysis of the Birimian of West Africa Edited by Mark W. Jessell, Peter A. Cawood and John M. Miller
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03019268/274
Mark W. Jessell, Peter A. Cawood, John M. Miller. Craton to Regional-scale analysis of the Birimian of West Africa. Pages 1-2
Mark W. Jessell, Graham C. Begg, Meghan S. Miller. The geophysical signatures of the West African Craton. Pages 3-24
Luis A. Parra-Avila, Elena Belousova, Marco L. Fiorentini, Lenka Baratoux, James Davis, John Miller, T. Campbell McCuaig. Crustal evolution of the Paleoproterozoic Birimian terranes of the Baoulé-Mossi domain, southern West African Craton: U–Pb and Hf-isotope studies of detrital zircons. Pages 25-60
Vanessa Markwitz, Kim A.A. Hein, John Miller. Compilation of West African mineral deposits: Spatial distribution and mineral endowment. Pages 61-81
Sylvain Block, Mark Jessell, Laurent Aillères, Lenka Baratoux, Olivier Bruguier, Armin Zeh, Delphine Bosch, Renaud Caby, Emmanuel Mensah. Lower crust exhumation during Paleoproterozoic (Eburnean) orogeny, NW Ghana, West African Craton: Interplay of coeval contractional deformation and extensional gravitational collapse. Pages 82-109
James S. Lambert-Smith, David M. Lawrence, Wolfgang Müller, Peter J. Treloar. Palaeotectonic setting of the south-eastern Kédougou-Kéniéba Inlier, West Africa: New insights from igneous trace element geochemistry and U-Pb zircon ages. Pages 110-135
Erwann Lebrun, Nicolas Thébaud, John Miller, Stanislav Ulrich, Julien Bourget, Ockert Terblanche. Geochronology and lithostratigraphy of the Siguiri district: Implications for gold mineralisation in the Siguiri Basin (Guinea, West Africa). Pages 136-160
Xiaojun Feng, Prince O. Amponsah, Roland Martin, Jérôme Ganne, Mark W. Jessell. 3-D numerical modelling of the influence of pre-existing faults and boundary conditions on the distribution of deformation: Example of North-Western Ghana. Pages 161-179
Remote Sensing of Environment Volume 175, Pages 1-358 (15 March 2016)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00344257/175
Gudina L. Feyisa, Henrik Meilby, G. Darrel Jenerette, Stephan Pauliet. Locally optimized separability enhancement indices for urban land cover mapping: Exploring thermal environmental consequences of rapid urbanization in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Pages 14-31
Resources Policy Volume 47, Pages 1-198 (March 2016)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03014207/47
Nathan Munier. “The one who controls the diamond wears the crown! The politicization of the Kimberley Process in Zimbabwe. Pages 171-177
Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology Volume 226, Pages 1-108 (March 2016)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00346667
Zélia Pereira, Paulo Fernandes, Gilda Lopes, João Marques, Lopo Vasconcelos. The Permian–Triassic transition in the Moatize–Minjova Basin, Karoo Supergroup, Mozambique: A palynological perspective. Pages 1-19
Tectonophysics Volume 671, (7 March 2016)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00401951/671
Maria Laura Balestrieri, Marco Bonini, Giacomo Corti, Federico Sani, Melody Philippon. A refinement of the chronology of rift-related faulting in the Broadly Rifted Zone, southern Ethiopia, through apatite fission-track analysis. Pages 42-55
Volumes 672–673, (16 March 2016) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00401951
Luciano Telesca, Michele Lovallo, Carmen Lopez, Joan Marti Molist. Multiparametric statistical investigation of seismicity occurred at El Hierro (Canary Islands) from 2011 to 2014.Pages 121-128
The Holocene March 2016; 26 (3)
http://hol.sagepub.com/content/26/3.toc
Thomas N Huffman and Stephan Woodborne. Archaeology, baobabs and drought: Cultural proxies and environmental data from the Mapungubwe landscape, southern Africa. 464-470
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water March/April 2016, Volume 3, Issue 2, Pages i–i, 141–281
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wat2.2016.3.issue-2/issuetoc
Innocent Pikirayi, Federica Sulas, Tendai Treddah Musindo, Acquiline Chimwanda, Joseph Chikumbirike, Ezekia Mtetwa, Bongumenzi Nxumalo and Munyaradzi Elton Sagiya. Great Zimbabwe's water. (pages 195–210)
30
Links to Journals, Reviews & Newsletters
New entries in red.
A AAPG Bulletin: http://aapgbull.geoscienceworld.org/
Acta Crystallographica Section A: http://journals.iucr.org/a/issues/2016/02/00/
Acta Crystallographica Section B: http://journals.iucr.org/a/issues/2016/02/00/
Acta Crystallographica Section C: http://journals.iucr.org/c/issues/2016/02/00/
Acta Crystallographica Section D: http://journals.iucr.org/d/issues/2016/02/00/
Acta Crystallographica Section E: http://journals.iucr.org/e/issues/2016/02/00/
Acta Crystallographica Section F: http://journals.iucr.org/f/issues/2016/02/00/
Acta Geologica Sinica (English Edition): http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acgs.2015.89.issue-1/issuetoc
Acta Geologica Sinica: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1755-6724
Advances in Materials Science and Engineering: http://www.hindawi.com/journals/amse/
Advances in Space Research: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02731177
Advances in Water Resources: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03091708
Aeolian Research: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/18759637
African Journal of Ecology: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aje.2015.53.issue-1/issuetoc
Agricultural Meteorology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00021571
Agricultural Water Management: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03783774
American Journal of Climate Change: http://www.scirp.org/Journal/Home.aspx?JournalID=1304#.Vio6D_krLIU
American Mineralogist: http://ammin.geoscienceworld.org/
Annales de Paléontologie: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/07533969
Annals of Geophysics: http://www.annalsofgeophysics.eu/index.php/annals/index
Anthropocene: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/22133054
Applied Clay Science: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01691317
Applied Geochemistry: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/08832927
Arabian Journal of Earth Sciences: http://www.arabianjournalofscience.com/index.php/AJES/index
Area: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1475-4762
ASLO: Limnology and Oceanography: http://www.aslo.org/lo/
ATBU Journal of Environmental Technology: http://www.ajol.info/index.php/atbu
Atmospheric Environment: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/13522310
Atmospheric Research: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01698095
Atmospheric Science Letters: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asl2.2015.16.issue-1/issuetoc
Australian Journal of Earth Sciences: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1440-0952
B Basin Research: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2117
Biogeosciences: http://www.biogeosciences.net/
Boreas: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1502-3885
Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geologyhttp://bcpg.geoscienceworld.org/
Bulletin of Geosciences Czech Geological Survey: http://www.geology.cz/bulletin/
Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America: http://bssa.geoscienceworld.org/
C Canadian Journa of Earth Sciences: http://cjes.geoscienceworld.org/
Canadian Mineralogist: http://www.canmin.org/
CATENA: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03418162
Chem Sus Chem: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1864-564X
Chemical Geology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00092541
Chemie der Erde: Geochemistry: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00092819
Chinese Journal of Geophysics: http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2326-0440/
Clays and Clay Mineralshttp://ccm.geoscienceworld.org/
Cold Regions Science and Technology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0165232X
Comptes Rendus Geoscience: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/16310713
Comptes Rendus Palevol: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/16310683
Computers & Geosciences: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00983004
Computers and Geotechnics: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0266352X
Continental Shelf Research: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02784343
Cretaceous Research: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01956671
Crystal Research and Technology: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1521-4079
Crystals: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/crystals
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/18773435
Current Science on-line: http://www.currentscience.ac.in/
D Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09670645
Deep SeaResearch Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09670637
Dendrochronologia: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/11257865
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Doklady Earth Sciences: http://www.maik.rssi.ru/cgi-bin/journal.pl?name=earthsci&page=main
Dynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03770265
E Earth and Planetary Science Letters:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0012821X
Earth, Planets and Space: http://www.earth-planets-space.com/
Earthquake Science: http://www.springer.com/earth+sciences+and+geography/geophysics/journal/11589?wt_mc=email.newsletter.8.CON26924.ISI_1
Earth and Space Science: http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2333-5084/
Earth Science Frontiers: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/18725791
Earth Science Reviews: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00128252
Earth Surface Processes and Landforms: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1096-9837
Earth System Science: India: http://www.ias.ac.in/jess/index_body.html
Earth’s Future: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2328-4277
Ecohydrology: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1936-0592
Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene: http://www.elementascience.org/
Elements: http://www.elementsmagazine.org/
Energies: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/energies
Engineering Geology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00137952
Enseñanza de las ciencias de la tierra (Spanish): http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/revista?codigo=1892
Environmental and Engineering Geoscience: http://eeg.geoscienceworld.org/
Environmental Health Perspectives: http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/
Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1944-7450
Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1552-8618
Environmetrics: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-095X
ENVOLVERDE: Revista Digital de Meio Ambiente e Desenvolvimento (Portuguese): http://envolverde.com.br/
Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2324-9250
Episodes: http://www.episodes.org/
Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02727714
Estudos Geologicos (Spanish): http://estudiosgeol.revistas.csic.es/index.php/estudiosgeol/issue/archive
European Journal of Mineralogy: http://eurjmin.geoscienceworld.org/
European Journal of Soil Science: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2389
Evolution: Education and Outreach: http://www.springer.com/life+sciences/evolutionary+%26+developmental+biology/journal/12052
F Fuel Processing Technology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03783820
Fuel: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00162361
G Gems and Gemmology: http://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology
Geoarcheology: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1520-6548
Geobiology: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1472-4669
Geobios: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00166995
GEOBRASIL(Portuguese): http://www.geobrasil.net/geobrasil.htm
Geochemistry, Geophysics, Gedosystems: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1525-2027
Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems: http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1525-2027/
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Geochemistry: Exploration, Environment, Analysis: http://geea.geoscienceworld.org/content/current
Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00167037
Geoderma: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00167061
Geofluids: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1468-8123
Geografiska Annaler: Series A, Physical Geography: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1468-0459
Geography Compass: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1749-8198
Geologica Acta: http://www.geologica-acta.com/ContentsAC.do
Geological Journal: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-1034
Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland Bulletin: http://www.geus.dk/publications/bull/index-uk.htm
Geology (GSA): http://geology.gsapubs.org/
Geology Today: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2451
Geomorphology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0169555X
Geophysical Journal Internationalhttp://gji.oxfordjournals.org/
Geophysical Prospecting: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2478
Geophysical Research Letters: http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1944-8007/
Geophysical Research: Space Physics: http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/jgr/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2169-9402/
Geophysics (GSA): http://geophysics.geoscienceworld.org/
Geoscience Australia AusGeo: http://www.ga.gov.au/ausgeonews/ausgeonews201309/
Geoscience Data Journal: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2049-6060
Geoscience e-Journals At-A-Glance: http://www.univ-brest.fr/geosciences/e-journals/iconography.html
Geoscience Frontiers: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/16749871
Geosciences: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/geosciences
Geosphere: http://geosphere.geoscienceworld.org/
Geostandards and Geoanalytica lResearch: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1751-908X
Geotextiles and Geomembranes: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02661144
Geothermics: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03756505
Global and Planetary Change: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09218181
Global Biogeochemical Cycles: http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1944-9224/
Global Biogeochemical Cycles: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1944-9224
Global Ecology and Biogeography: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1466-8238
Global Journal of Environmental Sciences: http://www.globaljournalseries.com/index.php/gjes
Global Journal of Geological Sciences: http://www.globaljournalseries.com/index.php/gggs
Gondwana Research: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/1342937X
Greenhouse Gases: Science and Technology: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2152-3878
Groundwater Monitoring & Remediation: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1745-6592
Groundwater: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1745-6584
H Hydrological Processes: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-
1085
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences: http://www.hydrology-and-earth-system-sciences.net/
Hydrology: Current Research: http://www.omicsonline.org/ArchiveHYCR/currentissue-hydrology-current-research-open-access.php
Hydrometallurgy: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0304386X
I Icarus: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00191035
Inovative Energy and Research: http://www.omicsonline.com/open-access/ArchiveIEP/currentissue-innovative-energy-policies-open-access.php
International Councilfor Science (ICSU) Newsletter: http://www.icsu.org/news-centre/insight
International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) E-bulletin: http://www.igbp.net/
International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03032434
International Journal of Climatology: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1097-0088
International Journal of Coal Geology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01665162
International Journal of Coal Science and Technology: http://www.springer.com/energy/fossil+fuels/journal/40789?wt_mc=email.newsletter.8.CON26924.ISI_1
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/22124209
International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/17505836
International Journal of Mineral Processing: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03017516
International Journal of Mining Science and Technology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/20952686
International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/13651609
International Journal of Sediment Research: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10016279
Interntional Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning: http://www.witpress.com/journals/sdp
International Journal of Waste Resources: http://www.omicsonline.com/open-access/ArchiveIJWR/currentissue-international-journal-waste-resources-open-access.php
International PeatJ ournal: http://www.peatsociety.org/publications/International -peat-journal
International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) E-Journals: http://www.iugg.org/publications/ejournals/
Interpretation: http://interpretation.geoscienceworld.org/
Island Arc: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1440-1738
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijgi
ISPRS Journa of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09242716
Italian Journal of Geoscience: http://italianjgeo.geoscienceworld.org/
J Journal for Nature Conservation: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/16171381
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1942-2466
Journal of Aerosol Science: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00218502
Journal of African Earth Sciences: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/1464343X
Journal of Applied Geophysics: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09269851
Journal of AppliedCrystallography: http://journals.iucr.org/j/issues/2016/01/00/ new
Journal of Applied Volcanology: http://www.appliedvolc.com/
Journal of Arid Environments: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01401963
Journal of Asian Earth Sciences: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/13679120
Journal of Astrobiology & Outreach: http://www.esciencecentral.org/journals/astrobiology-and-outreach.php
Journal of Astrophysics & Aerospace Technology: http://www.omicsgroup.org/journals/ArchiveJAAT/currentissue-astrophysics-aerospace-technology-open-access.php
Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/13646826
Journal of Climatology and Weather Forecasting: http://www.esciencecentral.org/journals/ArchiveJCWF/currentissue-climatology-weather-forecasting-open-access.php
Journal of Coastal Zone Managenent: http://www.omicsonline.com/open-access/ArchiveJCZM/currentissue-coastal-development-open-access.php
Journal of Contaminant Hydrology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01697722
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1936-704X
Journal of Earth Science and Climate Change: http://www.omicsonline.org/ArchiveJESCC/currentissue-earth-science-climatic-change-open-access.php
Journal of Environmental & Engineering Geophysics: http://jeeg.geoscienceworld.org/
Journal of Environmental Quality: https://www.agronomy.org/publications/jeq
Journal of Flood Risk Management: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1753-318X
Journal of Foraminiferal Research: http://jfr.geoscienceworld.org/
Journal of Geochemical Exploration: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03756742
Journal of Geodynamics: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02643707
Journal of Geography & Natural Disasters: http://www.omicsgroup.org/journals/ArchiveJGND/currentissue-geography-natural-disasters-open-access.php
Journal of Geography and Regional Planning: http://www.academicjournals.org/JGRP/Archive.htm
Journal of Geology & Geophysics: http://www.omicsgroup.org/journals/ArchiveJGG/currentissue-geology-geosciences-open-access.php
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Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres: http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/jgr/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2169-8996/
Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences: http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/jgr/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2169-8961/
Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface: http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/jgr/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2169-9011/
Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans: http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/jgr/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2169-9291/
Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets: http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/jgr/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2169-9100/
Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth: http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/jgr/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2169-9356/
Journal of Geoscience and Environmental Protection: http://www.scirp.org/journal/gep/
Journal of Great Lakes Research: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03801330
Journal of Hydrology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00221694
Journal of Integrated Coastal Management: http://www.aprh.pt/rgci/index_eng.html
Journal of Integrated Coastal Zone Management / Revista de Gestão Costeira Integrada: http://www.aprh.pt/rgci/revista14f4.html
Journal of Marine Systems: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09247963
Journal of Metamorphic Geology: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1525-1314
Journal of Meteorology and Climate Science: http://www.ajol.info/index.php/jmcs
Journal of Mining and Geology (Nigeria): http://www.ajol.info/index.php/jmg/index
Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/18755100
Journal of Paleontology (GSA): http://jpaleontol.geoscienceworld.org/
Journal of Petroleum Exploration and Production Technologies: http://www.springer.com/earth+sciences+and+geography/geology/journal/13202?wt_mc=email.newsletter.8.CON26924.ISI_1
Journal of Petroleum Geology: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1747-5457
Journal of Petroleum Geology: http://www.jpg.co.uk/
Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09204105
Journal of Petroleum Technology: http://www.spe.org/jpt/
Journal of Quaternary Science: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-1417
Journal of Remote Sensing and GIS: http://www.omicsgroup.org/journals/ArchiveJGRS/currentissue-geophysics-remote-sensing-open-access.php
Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/16747755
Journal of Sedimentary Research: http://jsedres.geoscienceworld.org/
Journal of Soil and Water Conservation: http://www.jswconline.org/
Journal of South American Earth Sciences: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/08959811
Journal of Structural Geology-http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01918141
Journal of Sustainable Development in Africa: http://www.jsd-africa.com/
Journal of Terramechanics: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00224898
Journal of Tethys: http://jtethys.org/
Journal of the Geological Society: http://jgs.geoscienceworld.org/
Journal of Unconventional Oil and Gas Resources: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/22133976
Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03770273
K, L Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia e Geologia (Portuguese):
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Lakes & Reservoirs: Research & Management: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1440-1770
Land Degradation & Development: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-145X
Lethaia: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1502-3931
Limnology and Oceanography Bulletin: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1539-6088
Limnology and Oceanography e-Lectures: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2164-0254
Limnology and Oceanography: Fluids and Environments: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2157-3689
Limnology and Oceanography: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1939-5590
Limnology and Oceanography: Methods: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1541-5856
Lithology and Mineral Resources: http://www.springerlink.com/content/106290/
Lithos: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00244937
Lithosphere: http://lithosphere.gsapubs.org/
M Madagascar Conservation & Development: http://www.ajol.info/index.php/mcd
Mantle Plumes: http://www.mantleplumes.org/RecentPapers.html
Marine and Petroleum Geology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02648172
Marine Chemistry: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03044203
Marine Ecology: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1439-0485
Marine Environmental Research: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01411136
Marine Geology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00253227
Marine Micropaleontology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03778398
Marine Pollution Bulletin: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0025326X
Meteoritics & Planetary Science: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1945-5100
Meteorological Applications: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1469-8080
Mineral Research & Exploration Bulletin (Turkey): http://www.mta.gov.tr/v2.0/eng/all-bulletins.php?id=145#down
Mineralium Deposita: http://link.springer.com/journal/126
Mineralogical Magazine: http://minmag.geoscienceworld.org/content/current
Minerals Engineering: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/08926875
Minerals: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/minerals
Mining Science and Technology (China): http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/16745264
Mining Weekly: http://www.miningweekly.com/
Mires and Peat: http://mires-and-peat.net/pages/volumes.php
Monthly Notes of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa: http://www.mnassa.org.za/
N Natural Gas & Electricity: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1545-
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Natural Resources Forum: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1477-8947
Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html
Nature Climate Change: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/current_issue.html
NERC Open Research Archive: http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/
New Scientist: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02624079
New Zealand Journal of Geology & Geophysics: http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/publications/journals/nzjg
O Ocean & Coastal Management: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09645691
Ocean Modelling: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/14635003
Oil and Energy Trends: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1744-7992
Oil Geology in Geology & Geophysics: Africa - Offshore Magazine: http://www.offshore-mag.com/geology-geophysics/africa.html
OPEC Energy Review: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1753-0237
Ore Geology Reviews: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01691368
Organic Geochemistry: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01466380
P PAGES – Past Global Changes – Magazine: http://www.pages-igbp.org/
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00310182
Palaeoworld: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/1871174X
Paleoceanography: http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1944-9186/
Paleontology: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1475-4983
Palynology: http://palynology.geoscienceworld.org/
Papers in Palaeontology: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2056-2802
Petroleum Exploration and Development: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/18763804
Petroleum Geoscience: http://pg.eage.org/publication/latestissue?p=3
Petroleum Science: http://www.springer.com/earth+sciences+and+geography/geology/journal/12182?wt_mc=email.newsletter.8.CON26924.ISI_1
Photogrammetria: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00318663
Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, PartsA/B/C: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/14747065
Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00319201
Planetary and Space Science: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00320633
PLOSONE: http://www.plosone.org/
Polar Research: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1751-8369
Polar Science: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/18739652
Precambrian Research: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03019268
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Procedia Earth and Planetary Science: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/18785220
Proceedings of the Geologists' Association: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00167878
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America: http://www.pnas.org/
ProGEO–The European Association for the Conservation of the Geological Heritage: http://www.progeo.se/
Progress in Oceanography: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00796611
Progress in Physical Geography: http://ppg.sagepub.com/
Q Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology:
http://qjegh.geoscienceworld.org/
Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology: http://qjegh.geoscienceworld.org/
Quaternary Geochronology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/18711014
Quaternary International: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10406182
Quaternary Research: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00335894
Quaternary Science Reviews: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02773791
R Remote Sensing of Environment:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00344257
Remote Sensing: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing
Rendiconti Online della SGI(Italia) : http://www.socgeol.it/318/rendiconti_online.html
Resources Policy: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03014207
Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00346667
Revista de Geociencias (Portuguese): http://www.revistageociencias.com.br/
Revista geologica de Chile (Spanish): http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_issuetoc&pid=0716-020820050002&lng=es&nrm=iso
Revue de Micropaléontologie (French): http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00351598
River Research and Applications: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1535-1467
Royal Society Publishing: Earth Sciences: http://royalsocietypublishing.org/site/authors/earthscience.xhtml
Russian Geology and Geophysics: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10687971
S Science Frontiers Digest of Scientific Anomalies: http://www.science-
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Science Magazine Online: http://www.sciencemag.org/contents-by-date.0.shtml
Sedimentary Geology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00370738
Sedimentology: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-3091
Seismological Research Letters: http://www.seismosoc.org/publications/srl/srl-toc.php
Société Algérienne de Géophysique (SAGA) Newsletter: http://www.sag.dz/
Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02677261
Soil Use and Management: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1475-2743
Soils and Foundations: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00380806
South African Journal of Geology: http://sajg.geoscienceworld.org/archive/
South African Journal of Plant and Soil: http://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajps
Space Research Today: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/17529298
Spatial Statistics: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/22116753
T Tectonics: http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1944-9194/
Tectonophysics: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00401951
Terra Nova: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-3121
The Anthropocene Review: http://anr.sagepub.com/
The Depositional Record: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2055-4877
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The Geographical Journal: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1475-4959
The Leading Edge: http://tle.geoscienceworld.org/
The Open Geology Journal: http://bentham.org/open/togeoj/index.htm
The Photogrammetric Record: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1477-9730
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Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/08867798
Turkish Journal of Earth Sciences: http://journals.tubitak.gov.tr/earth/index.php
U UN-SPIDER Knowledge Portal: http://www.un-spider.org/about/updates/
Urban Climate: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/22120955
V Vadose Zone Journal: http://vzj.geoscienceworld.org/
Volumina Jurassica: http://voluminajurassica.org/
Waste Management: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0956053X
W Water and Environment Journal:
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Water Research: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00431354
Water Resources Research: http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1944-7973/
Wave Motion: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01652125
Weather and Climate Extremes: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/22120947
Weather: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1477-8696
Wetlands Ecology and Management: http://link.springer.com/journal/11273
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1757-7799
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2049-1948
X, Y, Z Zeitschrift für anorganische und allgemeine Chemie:
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EVENTS
New Eevents in Yellow highlighted!
In Africa and about Africa
Next Month (April 2016): 2016.04.02-05 African Seismological Commission First General Assembly. The conference will take place in a cruise ship between Luxor and Aswan, Egypt,
http://afsc2016.org/
2016.04.04-07 MEDYNA-TERINOV workshop - Montpellier, France. Please contact : http://rig-2016.gm.univ-montp2.fr/?lang=fr 2016.04.13-14 Mine to Market Conference 2016, Emperors Palace, South Africa. http://www.saimm.co.za/saimm-events/upcoming-
events?page=shop.product_details&category_id=2&flypage=flypage_events.tpl&product_id=98
2016.04.13-18 3o Congresso de Geologia dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (3rd Geology Congress of hte Portuguese Speaking Countries), Praia, Cabo Verde, http://www.cogeplip.org/
2016.04.27-28 Mozambique Mining and Energy Conference, Maputo, Mozambique. http://www.mozmec.com/
2016.05.01 Southern African Rock Engineering Symposium, Cape Town, South Africa. http://www.isrm.net/conferencias/detalhes.php?id=3267&show=conf
2016.04-06 Southern Africa Energy & Infrastructure Summit, Maputo, Mozambique, http://www.energynet.co.uk/event/southern-africa-energy-infrastructure-summit-2016
34
2016.05.10-12 Geological Days of Morocco 2016, Rabat, Morocco, http://www.mem.gov.ma 2016.05.12-13 Mining Copperbelt Trade Expo and Conference. Kitwe, Zambia, http://www.cbm-tec.com/
2016.06.17-19 Encontro Luso-Afro-Americano de Geografia Física e Ambiente - Luso-Afro-American Meeting of Physical Geography and Environment, Maputo, Mozambique. http://elaagfa.weebly.com/
2016.06.27-29 International Conference on Mining and Metallurgy, Cape Town, South Africa. http://mining-metallurgy.conferenceseries.com/
2016.07.15-19 GeoMEast 2017 International Conference, Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, http://www.geomeast2017.org/En/62/Details.aspx
2016.08.08-12 33rd International Pittsburgh Coal Conference, to be held in Cape Town, South Africa. http://www.engineering.pitt.edu/pcc/
2016.08.16-19 10th Heavy Minerals Conference, "Expanding the horizon", Sun City, South Africa, http://www.saimm.co.za/saimm-events/upcoming-events?page=shop.product_details&category_id=2&flypage=flypage_events.tpl&product_id=85
2016.08.27-2016.09.04
35th International Geological Congress (35 IGC), Cape Town, South Africa. http://www.35igc.org/
2016.08.27-2016.09.04
35th International Geological Congress, Cape Town, South Africa. http://www.35igc.org/
2016.10.01-07 8th Conference of the AAWG, Sibiu, Romania. E-mail: [email protected]
2016.11.08-11 Oil & Gas Summit'16, Maputo, Mozambique. http://www.mozambique-gas-summit.com/?utm_source=SalesFusion&utm_campaign=MGS2016-EM1&utm_content=&utm_term=&utm_medium=CWC%2BEmail (new date)
2016.11.16-18 XIII Congresso de Geologia dos Pa]ises de L]ingua Portuguesa *13rd Geological Congress of the Portuguese Spraking Countries(, Praia, Cape Verde. http://xiiicgplp.com.br/ (in Portuguese)
2016.11.18-22 Fourth Arab Impact Cratering and Astrogeology Conference, Algiers and Laghouat, Algeria. http://www.aicac4.sitew.eu/#Home.A
2017
2017.01.22-27 The First ASRO Geological Congress – [ASRO – GC 2017], El Jadida, Morocco, http://asrongo.org/conferences/asro-geolocical-congress/first-asro-geological-congress/
2017.07.15-19 GeoMEast2017 International Conference, Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. http://www.geomeast2017.org/
2017.09.18-22 11th International Kimberlite Conference, Gaborone, Botswana, http://www.11ikc.com/ (active!)
Rest of the World
Next Month (April 2016): 2016.04.03-06 AAPG ICE, Barcelona, Spain, http://www.seg.org/web/ice-barcelona-2016/
2016.04.06-07 3rd EAGE/SBGf Workshop 2016 Quantitative Seismic Interpretation of Lacustrine Carbonates, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1414&Opendivs=s3
2016.04.11-12 3rd International Conference on Geology, Dubai, UAE http://geology.conferenceseries.com/
2016.04.11-14 Saint Petersburg 2016 International Conference & Exhibition Understanding the Harmony of the Earth’s Resources through Integration of Geosciences Saint Petersburg, Russia, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1366&Opendivs=s3
2016.04.12-14 Coal To X 2016 Conference, Beijing, China, http://worldctx.com/
2016.04.12-15 CTX 2016 Conference, Beijing, PR China, http://worldctx.com/
2016.04.13-16 1st International Meetiung of Early/stage Researchers in Palaeontology, Alpuente, Spain, http://imerp-ejip2016.blogspot.com.es/
2016.04.14-16 9th International Meeting of Astronomy and Astronautics, Campos, Brazil, http://www.eventbrite.com/e/9th-international-meeting-of-astronomy-and-astronautics-tickets-19288827402
2016.04.17-22 The Dynamic Ionosphere session, EGU General Assembly 2016, Vienna, Austria, http://www.scar.org/events/51-events/108-egu-ga-2016
2016.04.21-22 2nd International Conference on Geology” which is going to be held at Dubai, UAE, http://geology.conferenceseries.com/
2016.04.25-27 EAGE Workshop on Velocities: Reducing Uncertainties in Depth, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1417&Opendivs=s3
2016.04.25-28 2nd Conference on Forward Modelling of Sedimentary Systems, From Desert to Deep Marine Depositional Systems, Trondheim, Norway, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1415&Opendivs=s3
2016.04.25-28 econd SPE/EAGE Reservoir Life Cycle Management, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1385&Opendivs=s3
2016.04.25-29 Engineering Geophysics 2016Conference and Exhibition, Anapa, Russia, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1424&Opendivs=s3
2016.04.28-29 Windpower Tech Brazil 2016, São Paulo, Brazil, http://www.windpowertechbrazil.com/ 2016.05.02-04 5th EAGE Shale Workshop Quantifying Risk and Potential, Catania, Italy, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1330&Opendivs=s3
2016.05.02-04 EAGE/SPE Subsalt Imaging Workshop Challenges of Subsalt Imaging and Exploration, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1399&Opendivs=s3
2016.05.06-07 6th EARSeL SIG LU/LC & 2nd EARSeL LULC/NASA LCLUC Workshop . Prague, Czech http://web.natur.cuni.cz/gis/lucc/
2016.05.10-12 7th In-Situ Rock Stress Symposium 2016, Tampere, Finland. http://www.isrm.net/conferencias/detalhes.php?id=3297&show=conf
2016.05.10-13 4th International Climate Change Adaptation Conference, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. http://www.adaptationfutures2016.org/
2016.05.10-13 Earth Observation and Cryosphere Science 2016, Prague, Czech Republic, http://www.eo4cryosphere2016.info/
2016.05.10-11 22nd International Symposium on Polar Sciences, Incheon, Korea, https://symposium.kopri.re.kr/
Geoinformatics 2016-XVth International Conference on Geoinformatics - Theoretical and Applied Aspects, Kiev, Ukraine, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1463&Opendivs=s3
2016.05.24-26 SUSI 2016 - 14th International Conference on Structures Under Shock and Impact, Crete, Greece. http://www.wessex.ac.uk/16-conferences/susi-2016.html?utm_source=wit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=susi16rem1&uid=225297
2016.05.25-27 GEOSAFE: 1st International Symposium on Reducing Risks in Site Investigation, Modelling and Construction for Rock Engineering, X'ian, China. http://www.isrm.net/conferencias/detalhes.php?id=3289&show=conf
2016.05.25-27 Risk Analysis 2016 - 10th International Conference on Risk Analysis, Crete, Greece. http://www.wessex.ac.uk/16-conferences/risk-analysis-2016.html?utm_source=wit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=risk16rem1&uid=225297
2016.05.25-28 NGM 2016, The Nordic Geotechnical Meeting, Reykjavik, Iceland. http://www.ngm2016.com
2016.06.01-02 COMNAP Search and Rescue (SAR) Workshop III (2016), Valparaíso, Chile, http://www.scar.org/events/51-events/106-comnap-sar-workshop-2016
35
2016.06.01-03 Geological Association of Canada – Mineraological Association of Canada Annual Meeting, From the Margin of Laurentia, to the Margin of Beringia, to the Margin of Society Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. http://whitehorse2016.ca/
2016.05.30-2016.06.02
78th EAGE Conference & Exhibition 2016- Efficient Use of Technology - Unlocking Potential, Vienna, Austria, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1391&Opendivs=s3
2016.05.31-2016.06.03
19th Southeast Asian Geotechnical Conference & 2nd Agssea Conference - Deep Excavation and Ground Improvement, Subang Jaya, Malaysia, http://seags.ait.asia/news-announcements/12858/
2016.06.07-09 Waste Management 2016 - 8th International Conference on Waste Management and the Environment, Valencia, Spain, http://www.wessex.ac.uk/16-conferences/waste-management-2016.html?utm_source=wit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wm16cfp&uid=225297
2016.06.08-10 3rd International Conference on Environmental and Economic Impact on Sustainable Development, Valencia, Spain, http://www.wessex.ac.uk/16-conferences/environmental-impact-2016.html?utm_source=wit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=eid16cfp&uid=225297
2016.06.12-19 EARSeL: Imaging Spectroscopy in environmental analyses. Prague, Czech Republic. http://www.isprs2016-prague.com/program/scientific-program-sessions/special-sessions#sps17
2016.06.19-22 AAPG2016 Annual Convention & Exhibition, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. http://www.aapg.org/events/conferences/ace/announcement/articleid/5662/aapg-2016-annual-convention-exhibition
2016.06.19-22 2nd Student Workshop on Ecology and Optics of Coastal Zones. Museum of the World Ocean, Kaliningrad, Russian Federation. http://www.earsel.org/SIG/ET/2nd-student-workshop/index.php
2016.06.20-22 Air Pollution 2016 - The 24th International Conference on Modelling, Monitoring and Management of Air Pollution, Crete, Greece, https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/1521465c9ed533e0
2016.06.20-24 XIth International Conference on Permafrost (ICOP 2016), Potsdma, Germany, http://www.icop2016.org/
2016.06.23-24 Sustainable Earth 2016 - a global forum for connecting research with action, Plymouth, UK, https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/research/institutes/sustainable-earth/sustainable-earth-2016
2016.06.24-26 36th EARSeL Symposium. Bonn, Germany. http://www.earsel.org/symposia/2016-symposium-Bonn/
2016.06.26-27 International Conference on Intelligent Earth Observing and Applications, Guilin, China. http://www.glut.edu.cn/Git/Index.asp
2016.06.26-2016.07.01
Goldschmidt Conference 2015, Yokohama, Japan, http://goldschmidt.info/2016/
2016.06.27-29 Water Pollution 2016 - 13th International Conference on Modelling, Monitoring and Management of Water Pollution, Venice, Italy, http://www.wessex.ac.uk/conferences/2016/water-pollution-2016?utm_source=wit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp16rem2&uid=225297
2016.06.29-2016.07.01
FRIAR 2016 - 5th International Conference on Flood Risk Management and Response, Venice, Italy. http://www.wessex.ac.uk/16-conferences/friar-2016.html?utm_source=wit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=friar16rem1&uid=225297
2016.07.04-15 WG-EMM-16 Working Group on Ecosystem Monitoring and Management, Bologna, Italy. http://www.ccamlr.org/en/wg-emm-16
2016.07.11-15 Mining meets Water – Conflicts and Solutions, Leipzig, Germany. http://www.imwa2016.com/
2016.07.18-20 4th International Conference on Oceanography & Marine Biology (Oceanography 2016), Brisbane, Australia. http://www.oceanographyconference.com/
2016.07.21-22 2nd Global Geologists Annual Meeting, Brisbane, Australia. http://annualmeeting.conferenceseries.com/geologists/
2016.07.21-23 World Congress on Petroleum and Refinery. Brisbane, Australia. http://petroleum.omicsgroup.com/
2016.07.24-28 Microscopy & Microanalysis 2016, Columbus, OH, USA. http://www.microprobe.org
2016.07.25-27 GeoChina 2016, Shandong, China. http://geochina2016.geoconf.org/
2016.07.25-27 5th International Conference on Earth Science & Climate Change, Bangkok, Thailand. http://earthscience.conferenceseries.com/
2016.08.01-07 16th International Summer School on Crystal Growth - ISSCG-16, Otsu, Shiga, Japan. http://www.iccge18.jp/isscg16/
2016.08.07-12 18th International Conference on Crystal Growth and Epitaxy ICCGE-18, Nagoya, Japan, http://www.iccge18.jp/
2016.08.07-12 Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society, Berlin, Germany. http://www.meteoriticalsociety.org
2016.08.15-19 15th International Peat Congress - "Peatland in Harmony-Agriculture, Industry, Nature", Kuching, Malaysia, http://www.ipc2016.com
2016.08.19-31 XXXIV SCAR Meetings and Open Science Conference, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, http://scar2016.com/
2016.08.21-24 25th ASEG-PESA-AIG International Geophysical Conference And Exhibition, Adelaide, South Australia, http://www.conference.aseg.org.au/
2016.08.21-25 252nd ACS National Meeting & Exposition, Philadelphia, PA, USA. http://www.acs.org
2016.08.21-26 International Congress on Ceramics (ICC6), Dresden, Germany. http://www.icc-6.com
2016.08.22-26 GeoBaikal 2016: Expand Horizons-From East Siberia to the Pacific – Geology, Exploration and Development, Irkutsk, Russia, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1433&Opendivs=s3
2016.08.29-31 EUROCK2016 – The 2016 ISRM International Symposium-Rock Mechanics & Rock Engineering, Ürgüp-Nevşehir, Turkey. http://eurock2016.org/
2016.08.29-2016.09.01
15th European Conference on the Mathematics of Oil Recovery, Amsterdam, Netherlands, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1416&Opendivs=s3
2016.09.04-07 3rd ICTG International Conference on Transportation Geotechnics, Guimaraes, Portugal. http://www.webforum.com/tc3
2016.09.04-08 22nd European Meeting of Environmental and Engineering Geophysics - Near Surface Geoscience 2016, Barcelona, Spain, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1419&Opendivs=s3
2016.09.04-08 1st Conference on Geophysics for Mineral Exploration and Mining-Near Surface Geoscience 2016, Barcelona, Spain, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1420&Opendivs=s3
2016.09.04-08 2nd Applied Shallow Marine Geophysics Conference- Near Surface Geoscience 2016, Barcelona, Spain, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1421&Opendivs=s3
2016.09.05-09 International Ni-Cu-PGE Symposium, Perth-Fremantle, Western Australia. http://geoconferences.org.au/events/13th-international-nickel-copper-pge-symposium/
2016.09.05-09 World Multidisciplinary Earth Sciences Symposium- WMESS 2016, Prague, Czech Republica, http://www.mess-earth.org/index.html
2016.09.05-09 10th International Geostatistical Congress, Valencia, Spain, http://geostats2016.upv.es/
2016.09.06-08 Energy Quest 2016. 2nd International Conference on Energy Production and Management in the 21st Century. Ancona, Italy. http://www.wessex.ac.uk/16-conferences/energy-quest-2016.html?utm_source=wit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=eq16rem1&uid=225297
2016.09.11-15 EMC2016 - 2nd European Mineralogical Conference, Rimini, Italy. http://emc2016.socminpet.it
2016.09.12-15 Geomodel 2016, Gelendzhik, Russia, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1448&Opendivs=s3
2016.09.12-16 Congress of the University of the Arctic 2016, St Petersburg, Russia, http://www.scar.org/events/51-events/104-uarctic-congress-2016
2016.09.15-17 13th Baltic States Geotechnical Conference, Vilnius, Lithuania. http://www.13bsgc.lt
2016.09.18-23 15th International Conference on Thermochronology. Thermo 2016, São Paulo, Brazil. http://thermo2016.rc.unesp.br/
2016.09.25-26 SEG 2016 Conference: Tethyan Tectonics and Metallogeny, Çeşme, Turkey. http://www.seg2016.org/
2016.10.01 ARMS9 - 9th Asian Rock Mechanics Symposium, Bali, Indonesia. http://www.isrm.net/conferencias/detalhes.php?id=3268&show=conf
2016.10.02-05 EAGE Workshop on Petroleum Geochemistry in Operations & ProductionA Tale of Fluids in Carbonate Reservoirs, Doha, Qatar, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1435&Opendivs=s3
2016.10.03-07 EAGE Young Professional School in Quantitative Geoscience, Tenby, United Kingdom, http://lg.eage.org/index.php?evp=18142
36
2016.10.09-12 EAGE/SPE Workshop on Tar Mats and Heavy Oil Fluid Characterization and Development / Operational Challenges, Muscat, Oman, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1405&Opendivs=s3
2016.10.09-12 2nd EAGE Borehole Geology Workshop - Bringing Value to the Field Development Lifecycle, St Julians, Malta, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1429&Opendivs=s3
2016.10.16-18 Recent Advances in Rock Engineering - RARE2016, Bangalore, India. http://www.isrm.net/conferencias/detalhes.php?id=3312&show=conf
2016.10.16-19 Mudstone Diagenesis Research Conference, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA https://www.sepm.org/MudstoneConference
2016.10.16-21 15 Water Rock Interation, Évora, Portugal. http://wri15portugal.org/
2016.10.23-26 EAGE/SPE Workshop on Integrated Geomechanics in E&P - Manage & Improve Asset Performance using Geomechanics, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1429&Opendivs=s3
2016.10.23-28 XIV. International Palynological Congress / X. Inter-national Organisation of Palaeobotany Conference 2016, Salvador, Brazil, http://www.palynology.info/meetings/
2016.10.26-28 2nd EAGE-TNO Workshop on Deltaic Reservoir Connectivity-Bridging the gap between concepts and (exploration & production) data, The Hague, Netherlands, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1432&Opendivs=s3
2016.11.13-18 2016 AIChE Annual Meeting, S. Francisco, Ca, USA, http://www.aiche.org/conferences/aiche-annual-meeting/2016
2016.11.21-23 3rd SPE/AAPG/EAGE Shale Gas in the Middle East WorkshopTBC, United Arab Emirates, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1455&Opendivs=s3
2016.11.27-29 EAGE Workshop on Evaluation and Drilling of Carbonate ReservoirsChallenges, Uncertainties and Solutions, Muscat, Oman, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1297&Opendivs=s3
2016.12.04-07 14th Conference of the Asian Crystallographic Association, Hanoi, Vietnam, http://www.asca2016.org/
2016.12.05-07 6th Arabian Plate Geology Workshop- Late Cretaceous and Early Tertiary (Arabian Plate Sequences 9 & 10) Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1406&Opendivs=s3
2016.12.06-08 Sustainable Development and Planning 2016 - 8th International Conference on Sustainable Development and Planning, Penang, Malaysia, http://www.wessex.ac.uk/conferences/2016/sustainable-development-and-planning-2016?utm_source=wit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=sdp16rem2&uid=225297
2017
2017.02.05-08 3rd EAGE Workshop on Naturally Fractured Reservoirs- Calibration Challenges, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, http://www.eage.org/event/index.php?eventid=1266&Opendivs=s3
2017.02.13-17 International Symposium on the Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. Wellington, New Zealand, http://www.scar.org/events/51-events/72-cryosphere-in-changing-climate
2017.04.14-17 24th International Mining Congress and Exhibition of Turkey (IMCET2015), Antalya, Turkey http://imcet.org.tr/defaulten.asp
2017.04.25-27 Air Pollution 2017, Cadiz, Spain, http://www.wessex.ac.uk/conferences/2017/air-pollution-2017
2017.06.12-15 79th EAGE Conference & Exhibition 2017, Paris, France, http://www.eage.org/index.php?evp=4021
2017.07.02-07 28th International Cartographic Conference. Washington, D.C., USA. http://www.icc2017.org/
2017.07.17-21 XVI ICC International Clay Conference, Granada, Spain, http://www.16icc.org/
2017.08.21-28 XXIV Congress & General Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography, Hyderabad, India, http://www.iucr2017.org/
2017.09.17-22 28th IMOG Florence, Italy, http://www.eaog.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/IMOG17brochure.pdf
2018
2018.06.15-27 POLAR 2018 - XXXV SCAR Meetings and SCAR/IASC Open Science Conference, Davos, Switzerland, http://www.polar2018.org/
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INTERESTING PICTURES
Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia
Location: 55°47'31.23"N / 159° 2'49.56"E ;
images from a ppt, unknown author.
