Earth Sciences

Situated between the continental shelf of the eastern United States and the north wall of the Gulf Stream flowing eastward from Cape Hatteras, the Slope Sea is a transition region between the productively rich coastal waters and the productively static open ocean.

In the current SeaWiFS special issue of Deep Sea Research II, University of Rhode Island oceanographers Stephanie E. Schollaert, Thomas Rossby, and James Yoder describe their four-year, NASA-funded study of the Slope Sea along the

ESA PR 30-2004. ESA’s Earth Observation Programme Board has just decided which of the six Earth Explorer candidate missions, presented earlier in April at the User Consultation Meeting, will be developed and launched. Swarm, an Earth Explorer Opportunity Mission, is a constellation of satellites which will study the Earth’s magnetic field.

A further selection between the Earth Explorer Core Missions EarthCARE (Earth Clouds Aerosols and Radiation Explorer) and SPECTRA (Surface Processes and

A devastating meteorite collision caused part of the Earth’s crust to flip inside out billions of years ago and left a dusting of a rare metal scattered on the top of the crater, says new U of T research.

The study, published in the June 3 issue of Nature, examines the devastating effects of meteorite impacts on the Earth’s evolution. Researchers from the University of Toronto and the Geological Survey of Canada studied the remains of a 250-kilometre wide crater in Sudbury, Ontari

Fossils support idea of lingering bridges between landmasses

The fossil skull of a wrinkle-faced, meat-eating dinosaur whose cousins lived as far away as South America and India has emerged from the African Sahara, discovered by a team led by University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno. The find provides fresh information about how and when the ancient southern continents of Africa, South America and India separated.

The new species, which is 95 million years old, and a

Earthquakes not only shake up the local area but they also increase the rate of earthquake events locally and at a distance. The answer to how this happens may be in the laboratory, according to a Penn State researcher.

“We have learned a lot since the Landers earthquake in the Mojave Desert in 1992,” says Dr. Chris Marone, professor of geosciences. “We learned that earthquake triggering happens a lot more than we thought. The mechanism is not well understood.”

Marone is working wi

Since its launch in October 2001, ESA’s Proba micro-satellite has been returning remarkable imagery of some of our planet’s major landmarks with a compact instrument called the High Resolution Camera.

On display here are some notable examples, ranging from the monolithic Uluru or Ayers Rock in the Australian Outback to the tidal island of Mont St. Michel on the northern coast of France, and the Pyramids on Egypt’s Giza Plain.

Measuring just 80 x 60 x 60 cm, Proba is the size an