News
Coral reefs, some of the planet’s most beautiful and biodiverse ecosystems, face many natural and anthropogenic threats. Tremendous effort has gone into protecting and rehabilitating these reefs worldwide, but the mounting problem of ocean acidification has the potential to obliterate all progress made by marine scientists, conservationists, and policy-makers thus far.
If you went to Greenland, almost 80 North,
And drilled your way down … a mile, then more,
You’d find some strange layers, a story’d come forth
A record of ice ages locked in a core.
The creation of the narrow isthmus that joins North and South America changed not just the world map, but the circulation of oceans, the course of biologic evolution, and probably global climate. Scientists try to decipher the story behind its formation.
The formation of the slender land bridge that joins South America and North America was a pivotal event in earth’s history. At its narrowest along the isthmus of Panama, it changed not just the world map, but the circulation of oceans, the course of biologic evolution, and global climate. Cornelia Class, a geochemist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and Esteban Gazel, a Lamont adjunct researcher now based at Virginia Tech, are looking into a key factor: the Galápagos Plume.
Gerardo Iturrino, a longtime engineer and ocean explorer at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, passed away unexpectedly on March 12. A resident of nearby Nyack, he was 51; the cause was heart attack, said his family. His incessant curiosity about the structure and origin of the Earth drove his career, the last 18 years of which he spent as a researcher at Lamont. During his time there, he participated in 16 deep-sea expeditions, most of them aboard the JOIDES Resolution, the flagship vessel of the International Ocean Discovery Program, which drills cores from ocean floors around the world.
Bess Koffman, a postdoctoral researcher at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, recently traveled to New Zealand to collect dust ground-up by glaciers during the last ice age. In this photo essay, she explains how she collected the dust, what analysis looks like in the lab and what she hopes to learn.
Searching for a fast, simple and low-cost way to monitor Earth’s changing coastlines, a team of scientists, including Lamont-Doherty Observatory postdoctoral researcher and marine scientist Alessio Rovere, has found an innovative use for drones.
It was time to pack up and leave. Shofiq, who is from Sylhet, was dropped off near his home and the fellowship of the rocks was broken. We settled in for another long drive. We made an impromptu stop at one of the numerous brick factories scattered across Bangladesh. Here, the workers immediately started snapping pictures of us with their phones.
Most field trips have a “death march” hiking a long way through forest, swamps, hills or deserts to get to a remote outcrop. We have a “death bus ride” instead.
The first day was very light for the jet-lagged students, just a short introduction to the field school and some background, and then introductions all around as we started to get to know each other. The final group of nine students finally arrived around 9 p.m. They were the most worn-out, bedraggled bunch of travelers I have ever seen.
New research about West Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier suggests the glacier’s recent and rapid thinning and melting may continue for decades or centuries to come. British Antarctic Survey’s Joanne Johnson’s research, done in collaboration with scientists at Lamont-Doherty, might not have been possible without Lamont’s effort to promote women scientists.
Feb. 21 is Language Day in Bangladesh. It is a holiday, now adopted by the UN as International Mother Language Day. It commemorates a day in 1952 when a crowd of Bengali students protesting Pakistan’s adoption of “Urdu and only Urdu as the official language of Pakistan” were fired upon by the police. It marks the beginning of the move towards the independence of East Pakistan.
Earth Institute field researchers study the planet on every continent and ocean. Projects are aimed at understanding the fundamental dynamics of climate, geology, ecology, human history and more. Here is a partial list of upcoming expeditions.
Rushing around SW Bangladesh by boat and car, we managed to install or repair four GPS sites in record time. We caught up our lost day and managed to get to the ruins of the Shakher Temple in the Sundarban mangrove forest.