A team of UA geoscientists figured out how China’s Loess Plateau, a dust deposit the size of the state of Arizona, came to be. Dust deposits known as loess often create good agricultural soil. (more…)
Study shows how much enters air from plants, soil, surface water
More than a quarter of the rain and snow that falls on continents reaches the oceans as runoff. Now a new study helps show where the rest goes: two-thirds of the remaining water is released by plants, more than a quarter lands on leaves and evaporates and what’s left evaporates from soil and from lakes, rivers and streams. (more…)
Earth is known as the Blue Planet because of its oceans, which cover more than 70 percent of the planet’s surface and are home to the world’s greatest diversity of life. While water is essential for life on the planet, the answers to two key questions have eluded us: where did Earth’s water come from and when? (more…)
ANN ARBOR — As much as two-thirds of Earth’s carbon may be hidden in the inner core, making it the planet’s largest carbon reservoir, according to a new model that even its backers acknowledge is “provocative and speculative.” (more…)
It will take about 11 trillion gallons of water (42 cubic kilometers) — around 1.5 times the maximum volume of the largest U.S. reservoir — to recover from California’s continuing drought, according to a new analysis of NASA satellite data. (more…)
Sturchio co-authors Nature Geoscience paper on technique to date groundwater
Neil Sturchio, chair of the Department of Geological Sciences at University of Delaware, is co-author of a Nature Geoscience paper detailing a pioneering new technique to date groundwater.
Knowing the age of the groundwater provides important clues about the sustainability of water resources, information that is particularly important in dry or arid climates. (more…)
Geologists are letting the air out of a nagging mystery about the development of animal life on Earth.
Scientists have long speculated as to why animal species didn’t flourish sooner, once sufficient oxygen covered the Earth’s surface. Animals began to prosper at the end of the Proterozoic period, about 800 million years ago — but what about the billion-year stretch before that, when most researchers think there also was plenty of oxygen?
Well, it seems the air wasn’t so great then, after all. (more…)
The planet’s largest and most powerful driver of climate changes from one year to the next, the El Niño Southern Oscillation in the tropical Pacific Ocean, was widely thought to have been weaker in ancient times because of a different configuration of the Earth’s orbit. But scientists analyzing 25-foot piles of ancient shells have found that the El Niños 10,000 years ago were as strong and frequent as the ones we experience today. (more…)
