news 2012

Ice extended further across the UK than previously thought and played a part in sculpting the rocky landscape of Dartmoor in South West England during the last Ice Age, according to new research which challenges previously held theories. A study of the National Park area of Dartmoor, UK, shows for the first time that an ice cap and  valley glaciers were present in its centre and that the naturally castellated stone outcrops, known as tors, were survivors.

New research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has found that levels of methane-a potent greenhouse gas emitted from many man-made sources, such as coal mines, landfills and livestock ranches-are at least one-and-a-half times higher in California than previously estimated.

A team of scientists studying last year's eruption of Axial Seamount now says that the undersea volcano some 250 miles off the Oregon coast gave off clear signals hours before the eruption. The findings, plus those from scientists who mapped the lava flow, are published this week in three separate articles Geoscience.

ESA's Mars Express has provided images of a remarkable crater on Mars that may show evidence that the planet underwent significant periodic fluctuations in its climate due to changes in its rotation axis. On 19 June 2011, Mars Express pointed its high-resolution stereo camera at the Arabia Terra region of Mars, imaging the Danielson and Kalocsa craters.

Scientists have developed a new technique to accurately measure the weight and size of dinosaurs and discovered they are not as heavy as previously thought. University of Manchester biologists used lasers to measure the minimum amount of skin required to wrap around the skeletons of modern-day mammals, including reindeer, polar bears, giraffes and elephants.

A forensic approach that links changes deep below a volcano to signals at the surface is described by scientists from the University of Bristol in a paper published today in Science. The research could ultimately help to predict future volcanic eruptions with greater accuracy. Using forensic-style chemical analysis, Kate Saunders and colleagues directly linked seismic observations of the deadly 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption to crystal growth within the magma chamber, the large underground pool of liquid rock beneath the volcano.

The influence of the ground beneath us on the air around us could be greater than scientists had previously thought, according to new research that links the long-ago proliferation of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere to a sudden change in the inner workings of our planet.

While many are focusing on atmospheric solutions to reduce greenhouse gases, some researchers are setting their sights on the ground - deep underground. Li Li , an assistant professor of energy and mineral engineering at Penn State, is investigating geologic carbon sequestration (storing carbon dioxide deep beneath the surface of the Earth) as a way to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Volcanoes on the seafloor can grow or collapse tens of metres in just a few days, a new study has found, suggesting that that the seabed is much more unstable than previously thought. Researchers, led by Professor Tony Watts of Oxford University's Department of Earth Sciences, report how they surveyed the topography of the active Monowai volcano, a submarine volcano on the southwest Pacific Ocean floor near Tonga, in May and June 2011.

When the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, 2010, residents feared that their Gulf of Mexico shores would be inundated with oil. And while many wetland habitats and wildlife were oiled during the three-month leak, the environmental damage to coastal Louisiana was less than many expected, in part because much of the crude never made it to the coast.

For those who study earthquakes, one major challenge has been trying to understand all the physics of a fault—both during an earthquake and at times of "rest"—in order to know more about how a particular region may behave in the future. Now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed the first computer model of an earthquake-producing fault segment that reproduces, in a single physical framework, the available observations of both the fault's seismic (fast) and aseismic (slow) behavior.

A project to map part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has shown that the region may be on the threshold of change. Scientists from the University have mapped the ice-covered, largely unexplored landscape from the air. They uncovered a deep sub-glacial basin close to the edge of the ice sheet near the Weddell sea.

Last year, images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured sand dunes and ripples moving across the surface of Mars—observations that challenged previously held beliefs that there was not a lot of movement on the red planet's surface. Now, technology developed by a team at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has allowed scientists to measure these activities for the very first time.

SEAPLEX researchers collected an alarming amount of small bits of broken down plastic floating across thousands of miles of open ocean. Photo credit: Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego A 100-fold upsurge in human-produced plastic garbage in the ocean is altering habitats in the marine environment, according to a new study led by a graduate student researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Scientists at the University of Glasgow have been collaborating with colleagues at the University of Nevada, Reno to watch the Sierra Nevada mountain range grow in real time. Using cutting-edge measurement technology, they have concluded that the range, which stretches for 400 miles between California and Nevada, is rising at a relatively fast rate of one to two millimetres each year.

A volcanic super-eruption in America's Yellowstone National Park two million years ago was actually two smaller eruptions 6,000 years apart, new research has revealed. Scientists at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre (SUERC) and Washington State University in the USA have used a 'rock clock' dating technique to more precisely determine when volcanic rock samples from the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff were created.

Determining the habitability of rocky, Earth-like planets in the universe will be crucial for us as a species, according to scientists from The Australian National University. But the good news is that these planets are probably more abundant than stars, researchers from the ANU Planetary Science Institute have discovered.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. As the Marcellus natural-gas play unfolds in Pennsylvania, several trends are becoming increasingly clear, according to researchers at Penn State. First, most of the development is occurring on private land, and the greatest amount of development falls within the Susquehanna River basin.

Defects found in rocks below the Earth's surface have a major impact on the transmission of seismic waves, such as those caused by earthquakes, researchers at The Australian National University have discovered. Professor Ian Jackson, from the Research School of Earth Sciences, part of the ANU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, said the team's research allows us to better understand the way seismic waves travel through the mantle deep below the Earth's surface.

Far-off cousin of part-time African lake found on Titan A region on Saturn's moon Titan has been found to be similar to the Etosha Pan in Namibia, Africa. Both are ephemeral lakes - large, shallow depressions that sometimes fill with liquid. Ontario Lacus is the largest lake in the southern hemisphere of Saturn's moon, Titan.