Geobulletin alpha

Fossils Camp 

Old sculptures of Tyrannosaurus and Brontosaurus at Dinosaur Park in Rapid City, South Dakota. All images are my own. From June 19th to June 24th, I participated in the Fossils Camp at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSMT) in Rapid City, South Dakota. The camp was hosted by Dr. Darrin Pagnac, a hired

Using Sentinel-2 for crop monitoring 

Sentinel-2 is the optical satellite of the Copernicus programme. It can be compared to Landsat, although it has a better resolution, of 10 to 20 meters. We’ll be using it for crop monitoring with simple vegetation indices. Overview Sentinel-2 is the high-resolution optical satellite of ESA and the EU. The images have a resolution of 10 to 20 meters, higher than Landsat, and, as always with the Copernicus programme, the data are free and open. In this tutorial, we’ll download an [...]

The Aranayake landslide in Sri Lanka 

The Aranayake landslide in Sri Lanka is now thought to have killed about 140 people. Images are becoming available of this complex

Smoke from Alberta Wildfire Reaches Florida 

The image below is also from the Aqua satellite on Friday and the smoke from the fires is clearly visible. The Suomi Satellite has an imager capable of night time images and the CIMMS Satellite blog at the Uni. of Wisconsin just posted this image from Suomi: Looking at the forecast, it looks like a cool front will bring some rain later Sunday, but amounts will be light, and winds

Imaging the Deep Sea 

Thanks to the fast advances in technology, we have now the ability to take very high definition photos in the deep sea. The quality of these images is so high that it is possible to identify any organism big enough to be visible to the naked eye. Therefore, these images can be used identify species assemblages on hydrothermal vent and document changes in their composition over

Images of few of Iceland volcanoes 

When I flew to Denmark on 14th of April the weather was mostly clear skies over Iceland. This allowed me to take pictures of few of the volcanoes in the flight path I was going. Due to constrains … Continue reading

April Data Digest 

Three stories published during April describe the ways remotely sensed data and machine learning are changing how Earth is studied and understood; while a fourth shows the beauty of our planet through images captured by one of the satellites imaging the

Online clay science resources: Glossary & Images 

As stated in a previous post I like to share freely accessible clay science resources. Today, I want to point out two of them that are immensely useful for figuring out how to call that thing correctly when writing, studying, illustrating, or teaching. One is the Clay Minerals Society Glossary of Clay Science Project. An ongoing effort to compile a glossary of terms "as used in clay

Unknown Rhynchonellid brachiopod from the Bois d'Arc formation of Oklahoma 

This next brachiopod is a bit of a mystery to me. I can not find any decriptions or images that match it in Amsden's "Stratigraphy and Paleontology of the Hunton Group" papers nor in Hall's "Paleontology of New York". It is a triangular to sub-pentagonal shaped shell with slightly convex to flat valves. There is a slight sulcus and fold but they are mostly expressed near the anterior margin. The pedicle valve's beak extends beyond the brachial valve and recurves so that the umbo opening is [...]

Sand wars continue, unabated 

It just doesn't stop, and the scale of the damage to communities and the environment is staggering. NASA recently released the pair of images, above, showing changes to the sediment system of Poyang Lake and its rivers. The lake,

My neighborhood in Mitzpe Ramon, southern Israel 

MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL — Some images from the little town in the Negev where I spend my nights. I like being based here because my students and I are central to all of our diverse geological localities. It is also my friend Yoav Avni’s home. Plus, it reminds me of my hometown of Barstow, California,

Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: A Jurassic seafloor assemblage 

Images from fieldwork this week. These are all fossils exposed on a single bedding plane in the Matmor Formation (Middle Jurassic, Callovian) exposed in Makhtesh Gadol. I found them many years ago while working through the stratigraphy near the top of the formation. They present a vignette of life in a shallow carbonate Jurassic sea.

Irish Sunshine from Belfast to New York 

St. Patrick’s Day is not as big a deal in Ireland as it is in America, but it was an unusually nice early spring day there today. Most of the sunshine was in the UK portion, (Northern Ireland) but most areas saw plenty of sun. The weather in New York City for the famous parade was much warmer, with sunshine and temps. near 16C (60F). Images are from the NASA

The new flickr2qgis plugin for QGIS 

In the last week I saw a post on the German ESRI page called GIS-IQ which featured a new widget for ArcGIS which needs you to have the “ArcGIS Web AppBuilder Developer Edition 1.2”. This widget lets you fetch images from flickr and probably show it on the map. I haven’t tried it yet but I thought: lets build something similar for QGIS… so here is my flickr API plugin for QGIS The Beta of flickr2QGIS So let’s get it straight: It’s far from perfect. But see for [...]

Barbra Streisand, Elsevier, and Sci-Hub 

Thirteen years ago, Kenneth Adelman photographed part of the California coastline from the air. His images were published as part of a set of 12,000 in the California Coastal Records Project. One of those photos showed the Malibu home of the singer Barbra Streisand. In one of the most ill-considered moves in history, Streisand sued Adelman for violation of privacy. As

New Webisode Series - My Geotechnical Nightmare 

I'll being doing a series of these on YouTube.  I can jump around and yt fixes it like I have a steady cam. My brain refuses to accept this as reality.  You are viewing images from a crazy brain.  Be warned, do not view this if you are having anger issues, take a pill

Images of the Tbilisi Zoo landslide and flood disaster 

Dr Sergey Chernomorets has kindly provided images taken in September 2015 of the Tbilisi zoo landslide and flood

Living the Dream, Day 4 – A Last Look at the Tapeats 

We depart the Little Colorado in mid-afternoon of an early May day, continuing on Day Four of our excellent Colorado River rafting adventure. The sky that earlier teased us with a warm patchy blue has turned again to cold gray. The sun is a vague, hazy blob behind the thickening clouds. We huddle beneath blue tarps in a futile attempt to stay warm and dry. The Tapeats Sandstone is about to disappear up, up, and away from the water’s edge.The [...]

EGU Photo Contest 2016 

If you are pre-registered for the 2016 General Assembly (Vienna, 17 – 22 April), you can take part in our annual photo competition! Winners receive a free registration to next year’s General Assembly! The seventh annual EGU photo competition opens on 1 February. Up until 1 March, every participant pre-registered for the General Assembly can submit up three original photos and one moving image on any broad theme related to the Earth, planetary, and space sciences. Shortlisted photos will [...]

On Twitter, Oceanographers Show Deep Appreciation for Data-Collection Device 

This is part of a new series of posts that highlight the importance of Earth and space science data and its contributions to society. Posts in this series showcase data facilities and data scientists; explain how Earth and space science data is collected, managed and used; explore what this data tells us about the planet; and delve into the challenges and issues involved in managing and using data. This series is intended to demystify Earth and space science data, and share how this data shapes [...]