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
The site where Europes spacecraft are launched into orbit, the Atlantic shoreline of French Guiana, is also the starting point for another hardly less remarkable journey: the epic migration of the critically endangered leatherback turtle.
Scientists have been using tracking sensors to follow the long treks of individual leatherbacks, then overlaying their routes with sea state data, including near-real time maps of ocean currents gathered by satellites including ESAs ERS-2
In the next 100 years, Alaska will experience a massive loss of its historic tundra, as global warming allows these vast regions of cold, dry, lands to support forests and other vegetation that will dramatically alter native ecosystems, an Oregon State University researcher said today.
Polar regions such as Alaska will be among the first to illustrate the profound impacts of climate change, said Dominique Bachelet, an associate professor in the OSU Department of Bioengineering and
By applying new mathematical techniques to river ecology, a University of Maryland biology professor has found that removing dams to reconnect rivers in a watershed like Oregons Willamette River could result in significant wildlife habitat restoration benefits at a comparatively small economic cost.
William Fagan, associate professor of biology at the University of Maryland, presented his findings at the Society for Conservation Biologys Annual meeting, last week at Colum
MIT research on the most exciting questions in astrophysics and space science has been recognized by a $7.5 million gift from the Kavli Foundation that will jumpstart new studies of the cosmos.
“The Kavli gift allows us to invest in new scientific areas and new technologies at the forefront of these fields,” said Professor of Physics Jacqueline N. Hewitt. “We can bring new tools to bear on some of the most interesting questions before us: What is the dark energy that appears to
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