Earth Sciences

A place so barren that NASA uses it as a model for the Martian environment, Chile’s Atacama desert gets rain maybe once a decade. In 2003, scientists reported that the driest Atacama soils were sterile.

Not so, reports a team of Arizona scientists. Bleak though it may be, microbial life lurks beneath the arid surface of the Atacama’s absolute desert. “We found life, we can culture it, and we can extract and look at its DNA,” said Raina Maier, a professor of soil, water a

Scientists funded by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), used Landsat 5 satellite data to look at changes in wetlands areas in south Florida, particularly south and west of Lake Okeechobee.

Using satellite data, land-cover change history, computer models, and weather records, the researchers found a link between the losses of wetlands and more severe freezes in some agricultural areas of south Florida. In other areas of the state, changes in land use resulted in slightl

Drifting buoys & floats weather hurricanes for better storm prediction

While some are still cleaning up from the series of hurricanes that plowed through the Caribbean and southern United States this season, scientists supported by the Office of Naval Research are busily cleaning up valuable data collected during the storms. The rapid-fire hurricanes barely gave researchers time to rest between flights that took them into the hearts of Hurricanes Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne. As pa

The severe droughts and forest fires of recent years underline Mediterranean Europe’s continuing vulnerability to desertification – 300 000 square kilometres of territory are currently affected, threatening the livelihoods of 16.5 million Europeans. A new satellite-based service is set to provide a continuous monitoring of regions most at risk.

ESA’s DesertWatch project involves the development of a desertification monitoring system for the northern shores of the Medit

Understanding how the air and sea interact and affect each other during hurricane conditions is crucial in predicting the storm track, its intensity, storm surges, and ocean wave fields. When scientists create computer models to help them assess the parameters of a hurricane, they must take into account not only the atmospheric conditions of the storm, but also the conditions in the ocean, including the age and the frequency of waves.

In the current issue of the Journal of the

Research refutes long-held belief that diversity was declining

When dinosaurs became extinct from the effects of a massive asteroid hitting Earth 65 million years ago, there were more varieties of the reptiles living than ever before, according to a new analysis of global fossil records by a team of researchers led by a University of Rhode Island paleontologist. “Our analysis finally lays to rest the old, utterly unsupported idea that dinosaurs were declining in diversity during t