Earth Sciences

Suspected large lakebeds that once were scattered on the planet Mars have not yet been found, say the research team that operated the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Their work appears in the current issue of Science magazine.

Members of the team have written several articles in the magazine, among them “The Spirit Rover’s Athena Science Investigation at Gusev Crater” that deals with the search for water on the red planet, and “Pancam Multispectral Imaging Results from the

University of Nevada, Reno researchers have for the first time recorded a cluster of nearly 1,600 small earthquakes 20 miles beneath Lake Tahoe — the world’s second-largest alpine lake. Based on observations from the university’s Nevada Seismic Network and an ultra-sensitive Global Positioning System (GPS) station at Slide Mountain, the researchers believe the quake cluster coincided with an unprecedented 8-millimeter uplifting of the ski resort mountain in the Sierra Nevada.

EarthScope Project Scientists Lead Modern-Day ’Journey to the Center of the Earth’ In a modern-day journey to the center of the Earth, geologists are exploring the structure and evolution of the North American continent at scales from hundreds of kilometers to less than a millimeter – from the structure of a continent, to individual faults, earthquakes and volcanoes. The project is called EarthScope. With approximately $200 million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), EarthScope wi

Scientists at Stockholm University in Sweden may have developed a new method for predicting earthquakes with the help of geochemistry. The method involves metering the content of certain metals in underground water, which changes before and after an earthquake.

The team of researchers behind these discoveries, presented in the latest issue of the scientific journal Geology, is led by Alasdair Skelton, professor of petrology and geochemistry at Stockholm University. An other member o

Originally developed to pinpoint attacking aircraft during World War Two, today’s advanced radar technology can detect a very different moving target: shifts of the Earth’s crust that occur as slowly as the growth of your fingernails.

Radar data from satellites such as ESA’s Envisat are used to construct ’interferograms’ that show millimetre-scale land movements. These rainbow-hued images provide scientists with new insights into tectonic motion, and an enhanced ability to calculate

In a new study, NASA and United States Geological Survey (USGS) scientists found that retreating glaciers in southern Alaska may be opening the way for future earthquakes.

The study examined the likelihood of increased earthquake activity in southern Alaska as a result of rapidly melting glaciers. As glaciers melt they lighten the load on the Earth’s crust. Tectonic plates, that are mobile pieces of the Earth’s crust, can then move more freely. The study appears in the July issue