GeoLog

The broken heart by Natalia Rudaya, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.

We humans have a tendency to see familiar shapes in things such as animals in clouds, faces on Mars, and even food in rocks. The photographer, Natalia Rudaya saw a broken heart in a curious Taiwanese rock, the centrepiece of the beautiful photograph we are featuring this week.

Aside from its interesting shape, the Broken Heart rock has strange dents, which tell of its geological history. These forms are the result of differential erosion caused by so-called honeycomb weathering, a type of weathering that affects rocks in environments with high level of salinity making their surfaces look like a honeycomb.

The picture was taken in Yehliu Cape, Northern Taiwan in 2010, when Natalia (now at the Institute of Archaeology & Ethnography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk) was working at the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan as a guest scientist. “In my last weekend there, I visited one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen – the Yehliu Cape. It has unique moon-like landscapes sculpted by the ocean and the wind,” says Natalia.

The most famous rock sculpture in Yehliu is the Queen’s Head, which has a shape resembling the profile of Queen Elizabeth II.

Imaggeo is the online open access geosciences image repository of the European Geosciences Union. Every geoscientist who is an amateur photographer (but also other people) can submit their images to this repository. Being open access, it can be used by scientists for their presentations or publications as well as by the press. If you submit your images to imaggeo, you retain full rights of use, since they are licenced and distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.

This is your chance to offer us feedback on EGU’s merchandise, available from our booth at the General Assembly and several other major conferences. To have your say, take a look at our products on Facebook  and use the ‘like’ button and leave comments to make your voice heard. If you don’t use Facebook, view the images below and leave your comments below this blog post. We would also be keen to hear from you about ways in which we can develop our merchandising. For example, would you be interested in an Imaggeo-based calendar?

Free items:

1. EGU 3D ruler (free)

2. EGU sweets, various flavours (free)

3. EGU General Assembly tote bag, 41 x 38 cm (free)

4. General Assembly and Union stickers (free)

5. Postcards with winning images from the EGU Photo Competition (free, and you can also send them postage-free from EGU Booth at the General Assembly)

6. EGU pen with grip (free)

Products for sale:

7. T-shirts with winning images from the EGU Photo Competition (€15)

8. EGU cartoon t-shirt (€15, also available in kids size)

9. DVD: 365 days under Antarctic Ice, a 2008 documentary film (€20)

10. Cap with embroidered EGU logo (€6)

11. Polo with EGU logo (€18)

12. EGU pen with laser pointer (€7)

13. EGU General Assembly 2011 tilted mug (SOLD OUT)

This week, we are excited to introduce a new monthly blog column called Geotalk, featuring short interviews with geoscientists about their research. To kick-start this regular Q&A series, we talked to Dr Guillermo Rein of Imperial College London about “the largest fires on Earth” and how they can contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.

Dr Rein next to a water vapour vent on top of the 30m-high Bogside bing, near Glasgow, Scotland. This bing is a man-made hill of mining waste, and started to smoulder in 2009, approximately 80 years after the closure of the pit. The spread of the combustion is accompanied by the development of vents ahead of the front. (Image by Dr Ricky Carvel and Dr Guillermo Rein, distributed under a CC BY-SA Creative Commons licence)

First, could you introduce yourself and let us know a bit about your research topic(s)?

I was born in Madrid, and studied engineering at ICAI (Ingeniero Industrial 1999). I then moved to the University of California at Berkeley to study combustion science where I got an MSc (2003) and PhD (2005), both in Mechanical Engineering. After six years at the University of Edinburgh, I am now a Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London. I research on fire dynamics, both in the built and the natural environments. At the EGU General Assembly, I usually talk at the Soil System Sciences sessions about my work on smouldering wildfires of peat and coal, which I claim are the largest fires on Earth. As a scientist and engineer, I want to understand these fires so that I can then solve the problems they pose.

A particular interesting area of your research is that of smouldering fires and related burning of fossil fuels. To start, could you explain to us what the difference is between smouldering fires and the more familiar flaming fires?

In wildfires, there are two types of combustion, smouldering and flaming, and depending on what is burning one dominates over the other. Pyrolysis of biomass always takes place due to the heat released by the wildfire, and it leads to the formation of two chemical products: pyrolysate (gas) and char (solid). In flames, the fuel oxidising is the gaseous pyrolysate so the reaction is airborne. In smouldering, the fuel is the char and the reaction is on the pores of the biomass, not airborne but on the solid itself (thus on the ground and under the ground as well). Smouldering is slow, low-temperature, flameless, and represents the most persistent type of combustion phenomena (easier to ignite and more difficult to suppress than flaming).

My true expertise is smouldering combustion, a rare topic, really. There are very few people who work on that but this might change in the incoming decade. I have coined the term “accidental burning of fossil fuels” referring to the wide spread of smouldering megafires of ancient carbon stored in natural coal and peat deposits, and burning for decades in six continents. It is a rather novel topic quickly attracting scientific attention.

On a video on your website you mention a smouldering fire that has been burning for the last 6,000 years. How is this possible, and how could such fires be extinguished?

That is a talk I gave at UC Berkeley. I always mention the case of the Burning Mountain, Australia. It is remarkable. It is a large coal seam partially exposed to the atmosphere and partially underground. It is now a National Park that one can visit, and it is also a sacred ground for natives. There are very few papers in the scientific literature where it has been studied. One of them from 1974 roughly estimated that, given the current burning rate and the burnt pattern left behind, it had been burning for six millennia. I always add at this point that at least the British cannot be blamed for it.

It is very difficult to suppress large smouldering fires like this one because it requires total flooding, fuel removal, or smothering. You can imagine that flooding or removing a massive portion of soil in a remote location is not always viable or desirable. Smothering is often attempted but it requires very long holding times (several years of continuous application) and is prone to sealing failures. However, more advanced techniques can be developed in the near future by combining technologies already used in seismic and petroleum engineering.

Is it possible to reduce the atmospheric carbon emissions related to smouldering fires? If so, how?

The problem with smouldering fires is that peat and coal are made of ancient carbon stored in the soil. This massive amount of carbon is slowly released to the atmosphere during fires creating pollution, haze episodes, and climate change. Moreover, it destroys accidentally valuable energy and ecological resources without any benefit to anyone whatsoever. The best way to avoid this is prevention: avoid smouldering fires from igniting to begin with (mainly via keeping organic soils moist, avoiding drainage, and keeping ignition sources away). When prevention fails, monitoring and suppression are the next tasks. But current monitoring and suppression technologies for smouldering fires are costly, rudimentary and rather inefficient. We need something better, and advanced science can feed and develop the needed technology.

Last but not the least, can you tell us a bit about your future research plans?

My research aim in the long term is to develop detection, monitoring and suppression technologies. Current knowhow comes 90% from flaming wildfires and unfortunately it does not work well for smouldering. However, before that happens, the science that allows us to understand these fires and provides a larger framework of knowledge must be developed first. My immediate plans are to contribute to this framework. With my team, I study peat and coal fires in the laboratory and in the field, including the chemistry of smouldering, the required ignition conditions, the spread patterns, the emissions, and so on.

One of my most pressing current objectives is to convince the scientific community that smouldering creates a positive feedback mechanism to climate change. This is because warmer organic soils and moisture deficiency create and accelerate smouldering hotspots, thus leading to the burning of more ancient carbon, closing the loop when the climate warms up and dries more organic soils. The theory and laboratory results are clear. I am now working on a paper putting everything together.

A lone tree destroyed by the 2006 Rothiemurchus peat fire in Scotland, UK. The trunk and lower branches have been charred by flames but the soil has been destroyed by a smouldering fire, exposing the trees roots and ultimately leading to the death of the tree. (Image by Dr Guillermo Rein and Dr Claire Belcher, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.)

Jökulsárlón by János Kovács, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.

This photo of an awe-inspiring icy landscape is without a doubt one of the best we have ever featured in our weekly Imaggeo on Mondays. The Icelandic glacial lagoon Jökulsárlón is gloomy and cold. Yet the brilliant blue of the ice and the turquoise of the water stand out beautifully in this image, giving it a je-ne-sais-quoi of magic.

The photographer, János Kovács, a geologist at the University of Pécs in Hungary, is no stranger to taking stunning geosciences-related photos, one of which we featured previously in our weekly column. “Both pictures were taken on a field trip with colleagues, which we did not embark upon for research purposes, but for deepening our geoscience knowledge and experience,” he says.

Jökulsárlón, which means ‘glacier river lagoon’, is fed by the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier and began to form a few decades ago when the glacier started receding from the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. The lagoon has been growing in size at varying rates ever since. Its area has increased by a factor of four since the 1970s and the lake recently became the deepest in Iceland at over 248 metres.

This natural wonder is one of the country’s most popular attractions, being also a preferred spot for shooting movies. It has featured in two James Bond films, as well as in “Tomb Raider” and “Batman Begins”.

For more information about how the lake formed, check out the image description at Imaggeo, where you can also view and download the full resolution image.

Imaggeo is the online open access geosciences image repository of the European Geosciences Union. Every geoscientist who is an amateur photographer (but also other people) can submit their images to this repository. Being open access, it can be used by scientists for their presentations or publications as well as by the press. If you submit your images to imaggeo, you retain full rights of use, since they are licenced and distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.

Journalist Alexandra Witze was one of two winners of the EGU’s first Geosciences Communications Fellowship. We asked her to report back from a recent trip to Iceland, where she and her husband, science writer Jeff Kanipe, were gathering material on the 1783 eruption of the volcano Laki. They are working on a popular book about Laki for Profile Books.

Kanipe and Witze at Thingvellir National Park, along the Mid-Atlantic Rift. (Credit: Witze/Kanipe)

When you’re hot on the trail of a particular Icelandic eruption, it’s hard not to get distracted by all the other volcanoes that dot the landscape.

Just driving east from Reykjavik is like volcano overload. There, off to the left, is mighty Hekla, its snowy slopes rising dramatically. Up ahead is infamous Eyjafjallajökull, its shoulders still dusted with the dark ash that closed European airspace for a panicky week in spring 2010. And just behind that lies a massive ice cap smothering one of the island’s most active volcanoes: Katla.

It was this volcanological bounty that led the American Geophysical Union to hold a Chapman conference on volcanism and the atmosphere in the town of Selfoss in June. We attended all week, eager to learn about how Laki fit into Iceland’s violent past. On a field trip to Eyjafjallajökull, Thor Thordarson of the University of Edinburgh told the group how the eruption sent a glacial flood, or jökulhlaup, bursting from beneath the mountain’s ice cap to carve a devastating path to the sea. On another trip to Thingvellir National Park, we watched as workers repaired the visitor’s pathway that had been destroyed by the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates pulling apart — just another casualty of building right on the Mid-Atlantic Rift.

An outlet glacier on the north side of Eyjafjallajokull, taken during a conference field trip. (Credit: Witze/Kanipe)

We also learned how Laki’s 1783 outburst fit into the history of other climate-altering eruptions. For eight months the ground literally ripped open, sending fire fountains spurting along a fissure that eventually stretched for 27 kilometers. It was one of the biggest lava flows in historical times, and it pumped some 100 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the polar jet stream above Iceland. Those acidic fumes soon spread across Europe, killing crops and choking people.Particles spewed by Laki also reflected more sunlight back into space, cooling much of the Northern Hemisphere. Shivering in Paris in the winter of 1784, Benjamin Franklin and others proposed that an Icelandic eruption was to blame — the first scientific recognition that a volcano could cool climate. At an impromptu session on Laki convened the last day of the Chapman conference, Stephen Self of the Open University and others talked about how future computer modeling could resolve questions over how much of Laki’s aerosols made it to the stratosphere, and how many weird weather events in 1783–1784 can be blamed on it.

Within Iceland, the effects were obvious. Poisonous fumes including fluorine settled on the grass, killing livestock in a national disaster known as the “mist hardships.” One-fifth of all Icelanders died in the barren aftermath, many from starvation.

Two and a half hours east of Selfoss, the town of Kirkjubæjarklaustur was ground zero for this misery. Here a local priest named Jón Steingrímsson kept a grim census, recording the deaths of his parishioners one by one. Today his chronicle, known as the Eldrit or Fires of the Earth, is the main source of detailed information on the Laki eruption.

Just above the town of Kirkjubaejarklaustur, this pile of congealed lava in the middle of the Skafta river gorge shows where the lava flow stopped as Jon Steingrimsson led his famous fire mass. (Credit: Witze/Kanipe)

Steingrímsson was also a proto-volcanologist, and he carefully observed how layers of ash settled over the landscape and how lava traveled down the gorge of the Skafta river. Six weeks after the eruption began, when it looked as if flowing rivers of fiery rock would envelop the village, Steingrímsson famously led his spiritual flock into the church and prayed for deliverance. When they emerged they saw that the lava had miraculously stopped, just upstream from the village.

Or so the story goes. In reality, many of the experts we met say, Steingrímsson had been paying close attention to the lava, and he recognized that it would likely halt at the place where there was enough water to cool the flow and halt its advance. It was perhaps the earliest and most brilliant public-relations move by a budding volcanologist.

The ruins of the old church at Kirkjubaejarklaustur (buried beneath this lawn) are marked by a white cross to commemorate the famous fire mass, and a low horizontal gravestone marks the burial place of the priest Jon Steingrimsson and his wife. In the background of the picture, towards the left, is a low rise that marks a mass grave of victims from the 1783 Laki eruption. (Credit: Witze/Kanipe)

Thanks to the help of the EGU fellowship, we were able to visit the row of Laki craters and the village of Kirkjubæjarklaustur, where we stayed directly across the street from the ruins of Steingrímsson’s church. A simple white cross in the courtyard still commemorates the famous fire mass. Steingrímsson himself is buried at the site along with his wife, who died in the mist hardships. In one corner of the churchyard lie yet more victims of Laki, piled by the dozens in a mass grave. Most tourists driving through this town stop briefly to fuel their cars and get a bite to eat, unaware that modern volcanology took some of its first tentative steps here.

The row of Laki craters, seen stretching off into the distance. (Credit: Witze/Kanipe)

Other experts graciously shared their knowledge of Laki with us. Two hours north of Reykjavik, the volcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson showed us around his excellent volcano museum and told us how glass inclusions in Laki rocks preserve chemical evidence of its high sulfur content. At the University of Iceland, historian Sveinbjörn Rafnsson walked us through how poor rural farmers would have coped with devastating 18th-century eruptions.

We returned home from Iceland with a bulging notebook, more than 1,000 photographs, and as many Laki souvenirs as we could find. Now our task is to tell the story of this amazing eruption.

By Alexandra Witze

You may have seen some of the 2012 General Assembly videos we posted on the blog in the last few months – all of these clips were originally published on EGU’s YouTube channel, and we’re happy to announce that many more EGU videos (over 100 in total) are now available on the same page!

We have organised the clips into playlists to make it easier for you to access videos from specific events. As you can see from the list, the focus is on past General Assemblies, and we feature both web-streamed talks and press conferences in each GA playlist. (Clips from this year’s presentations will be available soon.)

You can also find videos from GIFT, the Geosciences Information For Teachers workshop, on the YouTube channel.

Water or new iridescent fluid? by Alessandro Arato, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.

At ambient conditions, water is an odourless, tasteless, transparent liquid. It’s a vital fluid yet it has very simple properties. Unlike soap bubbles, for example, water is not iridescent – it does not appear to change colour when we view it from different angles. Unless, of course, there is something colourful in the background that the water reflects giving it an apparent iridescence. This is what happened in this simple yet luminous scene captured by Alessandro Arato of the Polytechnic University of Turin in Italy.

He took this picture about a year ago in a small village in the Alps near Turin, known locally as the ‘village of the fountains’. “Fountains have traditionally been the place for people to get their water supply (from the water sources and after depuration processes) in remote Alpine villages, and also for social life. Even today, it is still common to hear villagers say ‘Hey folks, let’s meet at the fountain’,” explains Alessandro.

“After a whole year of working and studying, August 2011 was dedicated to relaxation.” he says. “I was sitting on a bench in front of the fountain. The village balconies were filled with flowers, and when I grabbed the camera and pointed at the water, I saw the amazing variety of colours that now are in the photo.”

Imaggeo is the online open access geosciences image repository of the European Geosciences Union. Every geoscientist who is an amateur photographer (but also other people) can submit their images to this repository. Being open access, it can be used by scientists for their presentations or publications as well as by the press. If you submit your images to imaggeo, you retain full rights of use, since they are licenced and distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.

The EGU’s Twitter Journal Club had its second virtual meeting yesterday, this time focusing on a paper from the EGU’s journal Biogeosciences, investigating the means by which microscopic life is sustained in the hostile aridity of the Atacama Desert. Read a full transcript of our discussion on our Storify page!

Vast expanse of Chile’s Atacama Desert, one of the most arid regions in the world. (source: Wikimedia)

The European Geosciences Union, through publishing house Copernicus Publications, publishes 14 peer-reviewed Open Access journals. Biogeosciences (BG, IF 3.587)  is an international scientific journal dedicated to the publication and discussion of research articles, short communications and review papers on all aspects of the interactions between the biological, chemical and physical processes in terrestrial or extraterrestrial life with the geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. The objective of the journal is to cut across the boundaries of established sciences and achieve an interdisciplinary view of these interactions.

Cordillera del Paine by Martin Mergili, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.

Images such as the one above inspire scientists and nature lovers alike. This photograph, showing a Chilean landscape with elements representative of various Earth-science disciplines, is simply stunning. In a beautiful mix of shapes and colours, a quiet lake with floating icebergs appears tucked in between a roughed mountain in the background and a colourful double rainbow in the foreground.

The photographer, Martin Mergili of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, captured this inspiring scenery during a holiday trip a few years ago. The photo shows the eastern edge of the southern part of Cordillera del Paine, a “small but spectacular” mountain group in the Torres del Paine National Park, which is located in Chilean Patagonia almost 2,000 kilometres south of Santiago de Chile.

“The prominent peaks visible in the left portion of the image are the Cuernos del Paine,” Martin explains. “The rainbow in the foreground is not just decoration, it reflects the ever-changing weather patterns characteristic of that area. Even though it is located in the rainshade of the Cordillera at the edge of the semi-arid Patagonian lowlands, the westerlies bring a lot of moist air from the Pacific Ocean. The icebergs in the lake in the foreground (Lago Grey) originate from the large Glaciar Grey calving into the lake.”

More stunning images of this and other landscapes are available from Martin’s website.

Imaggeo is the online open access geosciences image repository of the European Geosciences Union. Every geoscientist who is an amateur photographer (but also other people) can submit their images to this repository. Being open access, it can be used by scientists for their presentations or publications as well as by the press. If you submit your images to imaggeo, you retain full rights of use, since they are licenced and distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.

Time for the second edition of the EGU’s Twitter Journal Club, our interactive online discussion about a timely scientific article. Full details can be found here. 

This time, our article focuses on one of the most extreme environments on Earth, the Atacama Desert in Chile, and the method by which rock-dwelling microorganisms obtain their water. The Twitter discussion will take place on Thursday 12 July at 17:00 CEST (hashtag #egutjc2). Please email the EGU’s Science Communications Fellow Edvard Glücksman with further questions. Happy reading!

The Atacama Desert is one of Earth’s driest environments. (credit: Wikimedia)

Novel water source for endolithic life in the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert
Biogeosciences, 9, 2275-2286, 2012

Abstract. The hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert, Chile, is possibly the driest and most life-limited place on Earth, yet endolithic microorganisms thrive inside halite pinnacles that are part of ancient salt flats. The existence of this microbial community in an environment that excludes any other life forms suggests biological adaptation to high salinity and desiccation stress, and indicates an alternative source of water for life other than rainfall, fog or dew. Here, we show that halite endoliths obtain liquid water through spontaneous capillary condensation at relative humidity (RH) much lower than the deliquescence RH of NaCl. We describe how this condensation could occur inside nano-pores smaller than 100 nm, in a newly characterized halite phase that is intimately associated with the endolithic aggregates. This nano-porous phase helps retain liquid water for long periods of time by preventing its evaporation even in conditions of utmost dryness. Our results explain how life has colonized and adapted to one of the most extreme environments on our planet, expanding the water activity envelope for life on Earth, and broadening the spectrum of possible habitats for life beyond our planet.

Questions to think about:
1. How would you summarise this article in a tweet?

2. The Atacama Desert is one of the driest environments on the planet. Can you think of others, and do you know of similar studies done there?

3. What is the link between the research presented here and our quest to find extraterrestrial life?

4. How could the methods presented here be improved in follow-up studies?

5. Do you see industrial applications for these findings?

Related media coverage
National Geographic Magazine
Sydney Morning Herald

The European Geosciences Union, through publishing house Copernicus Publications, publishes 14 peer-reviewed Open Access journals. Biogeosciences (BG, IF 3.587)  is an international scientific journal dedicated to the publication and discussion of research articles, short communications and review papers on all aspects of the interactions between the biological, chemical and physical processes in terrestrial or extraterrestrial life with the geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. The objective of the journal is to cut across the boundaries of established sciences and achieve an interdisciplinary view of these interactions.