Alexandria, VA - Technology is creating a new breed of scientist. I’m talking about citizen scientists - ordinary people and volunteers from all walks of life coming together to help monitor, and possibly mitigate the next big earthquake through an innovative program called NetQuakes. A play off the popular company Netflix - a movie company that allows users to rent movies through the mail — NetQuakes allows ordinary people to volunteer as a kind of host “family” for one of the program’s many blue seismometers. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA - Since January 2010, Syracuse University has been bringing lava to Central New York. Using commercially available basalt gravel and a coke-fired furnace, the geologists involved with the Syracuse University Lava Project are able to produce a wide range of flow morphologies and other features at a scale comparable to natural flows. Although one of the most common and voluminous types of lava flows, basaltic lava is still not completely understood. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA — A team of researchers may have discovered a way to hear earthquakes. Not the noises of rattling windows and crumbling buildings, but the real sounds an earthquake makes deep underground as rock grinds and fails catastrophically. Typical seismic waves have frequencies below the audible range for humans, but the August issue of EARTH shows you where to find the voice of one seismic monster: the March 11, 2011, magnitude-9. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA —- Through collaborative efforts with other top scientific societies, the American Geosciences Institute (AGI) has helped formulate a list of critical science policy questions to pose to President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney in the upcoming presidential election. Many of the questions, which cover topics from natural resources and energy production to climate change and ocean health, require geoscientists and a geoscience literate public to address. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA - The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) has joined the Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Expert Partnership. This partnership is a result of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2012 Global Diaspora Forum and includes top scientific organizations and the U.S. Department of State. The STI Expert Partnership aims to promote economic prosperity, democratic governance, and social development through increased scientific and technological diplomacy worldwide. With the support of U.S. embassies and international networks, the Partnership will expand the reach of U. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA - December 21, 2012 — the purported last day of a 5,125-year cycle in the Mesoamerican calendar — has been added to an endless list of days when the world has been expected to end. But what are our real chances of being wiped out by a catastrophic event - the kind that has happened in the past and will inevitably occur again someday? In the August issue of EARTH, we explore four of the most probable global events that could change life on Earth forever. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA - One man’s trash is quickly becoming society’s new treasure. In the August issue of EARTH Magazine, we explore how materials that were once considered garbage are now being recognized for their true potential as valuable energy resources capable of solving multiple problems at once. If successful, these “waste-to-energy” options could serve as a silver bullet - displacing fossil fuels, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and decreasing the amount of trash that winds up in already teeming landfills. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA — Resting in the Karakoram Range between northern Pakistan and western China, the Karakoram glaciers are stumping scientists. Unlike most mountain glaciers, the Karakoram glaciers, which account for 3 percent of the total ice-covered area in the world, excluding Greenland and Antarctica, are not shrinking. On the contrary, a team of French glaciologists has recently confirmed that these glaciers on average have remained stable or may have even grown slightly in recent years. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA — The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is pleased to announce its intention to launch a new initiative to address the critical need of increasing geoscience literacy. AGI’s new Center for Geoscience Education and Public Understanding will serve as a centralized ‘go to’ hub for essential geoscience educational material, current information on geoscience topics, new educational tools, and a home for Geoscience Critical Issue Forums to define the state of the science knowledge on key topics relevant to society. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA - What are today’s biggest unanswered questions in earth science? In the July issue of EARTH Magazine, experts from a variety of disciplines weigh in on what they consider to be the biggest unsolved mysteries across the geosciences and how they think we may solve them. Of course, in science, answering one question typically floods the field with new questions and thus new lines of investigation. For example, the discovery in the mid-19th century that carbon dioxide traps heat in Earth’s atmosphere led scientists to engage in lengthy studies — many that continue today — on the mechanics of the greenhouse effect, emission sources and impacts on global climate. [Read More]