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Categories: Anthropology: Cultures, Geoscience: Geography

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To preserve the important intertidal areas and salt marshes off our coasts for the future, we need more turbid water. That is one of the striking conclusions from a new study.

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The names might not be familiar -- Cowee Creek, Brabazon Range, Upper Pederson Lagoon -- but they mark the sites of recent lake tsunamis, a phenomenon that is increasingly common in Alaska, British Columbia and other regions with mountain glaciers. Triggered by landslides into small bodies of water, most of these tsunamis have occurred in remote locations so far, but geologists say it may just be a matter of time before a tsunami swamps a more populated place.

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Heavy pooling meltwater can fracture ice, potentially leading to ice shelf collapse.

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Evidence from archaeological sites in the medieval English city of Winchester shows that English red squirrels once served as an important host for Mycobacterium leprae strains that caused leprosy in people, researchers report.

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Some of the ocean's tiniest organisms get swept into underwater currents that act as a conduit that shuttles them from the sunny surface to deeper, darker depths where they play a huge role in affecting the ocean's chemistry and ecosystem, according to new research.

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Climate change and human activities like deforestation are causing more fires in central and west Africa's wet, tropical forests, according to the first-ever comprehensive survey there. The fires have long been overlooked.

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A research team studied earthquake hazard maps from five countries and found that all the maps seemed to overpredict the historically observed earthquake shaking intensities. In analyzing the possible causes, the researchers discovered the issue was with the conversion equations used in comparing the maps predicting future quakes with actual shaking data, rather than systemic problems with the hazard modeling itself.

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Researchers have discovered the missing piece of the puzzle behind a rare opening in the sea ice around Antarctica, which was nearly twice the size of Wales and occurred during the winters of 2016 and 2017. A study reveals a key process that had eluded scientists as to how the opening, called a polynya, was able to form and persist for several weeks.

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A research team has found that ancient rocks and fossils from long-extinct marine reptiles in Angola clearly show a key part of Earth's past -- the splitting of South America and Africa and the subsequent formation of the South Atlantic Ocean.

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Researchers have unveiled evidence for ancient human resilience to climate change in the Eastern Mediterranean.

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Evapotranspiration (ET) includes evaporation from soil and open water pools such as lakes, rivers, and ponds, as well as transpiration from plant leaves. The difference between precipitation and ET indicates the water balance available for societal needs, including agricultural and industrial production. However, measuring ET is challenging. A new study presents a computer model that uses artificial intelligence (AI) for ET prediction based on remote sensing estimates.

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A new study that looked at nearly 40 million flights in 2019 calculated the greenhouse gas emissions from air travel for essentially every country on the planet. At 911 million tons, the total emissions from aviation are 50 per cent higher than the 604 million tons reported to the United Nations for that year.

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It has long been thought that meat played an important role in the diet of hunter-gatherers before the Neolithic transition. However, due to the scarcity of well-preserved human remains from Paleolithic sites, little information exists about the dietary habits of pre-agricultural human groups. A new study challenges this notion by presenting compelling isotopic evidence of a strong preference for plants among 15,000-year-old hunter-gatherers from Morocco. This is the first time a significant amount of plant consumption has been measured for a pre-agricultural population, shedding new light on the dietary practices of ancient human societies.

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Landslides are one of the most destructive natural disasters on the planet, causing billions of dollars of damage and devastating loss of life every year. A global team of researchers has provided help for those who work to predict landslides and risk evaluations.

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In unincorporated communities in the United States-Mexico borderlands, historically and socially marginalized populations become invisible to the healthcare system, showing that geography acts as a structural determinant of health for low-income populations.

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Using environmental DNA analysis, an international team of researchers identified a collection of plants used in ceremonial rituals in the ancient Maya city of Yaxnohcah in Mexico. The plants, known for their religious associations and medicinal properties, were discovered beneath a plaza floor where a ballcourt was built.

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Interactions between wind turbines could reduce power output by 30% in proposed offshore wind farm areas along the East Coast, new research has found. In all, the farms could still meet 60% of the electricity demand of New England.

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Oil is an important natural resource for many industries, but it can lead to serious environmental damage when accidentally spilled. While large oil spills are highly publicized, every year there are many smaller-scale spills into lakes, rivers and oceans. The longer that oil remains in freshwater, the more chemical changes it undergoes, creating products that can persist in the environment.

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Dust can have a huge impact on local air quality, food security, energy supply and public health. Previous studies have found that dust levels are decreasing across India, particularly northern India, the Persian Gulf Coast and much of the Middle East, but the reason has remained unclear. Researchers found that the decrease in dust can be attributed to the Arctic warming much faster than the rest of the planet, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. This process destabilizes the jet stream and changes storm tracks and wind patterns over the major sources of dust in West and South Asia.

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Just as water moves through a river, rivers themselves move across the landscape. They carve valleys and canyons, create floodplains and deltas, and transport sediment from the uplands to the ocean.