News by Subject Earth Science

A first-of-its-kind study led by The University of Texas at Austin has found that rock weathering and water storage appear to follow a similar pattern across undulating landscapes. The findings are important because they suggest that these patterns could improve predictions of wildfire and landslide risk and how droughts will affect the landscape.

A new UC Riverside study finds a naturally occurring "earthquake gate" that decides which earthquakes are allowed to grow into magnitude 8 or greater. Sometimes, the "gate" stops earthquakes in the magnitude 7 range, while ones that pass through the gate grow to magnitude 8 or greater, releasing over 32 times as much energy as a magnitude 7.

A team at HZB, together with partners from Ben Gurion University and the Technion, Israel, has now analysed the optoelectronic properties of rust (haematite) and other metal oxides in unprecedented detail. Their results show that the maximum achievable efficiency of haematite electrodes is significantly lower than previously assumed. The study demonstrates ways to assess new photoelectrode materials more realistically.

Scientists have sequenced ancient DNA from soil for the first time and the advance will transform what is known about everything from evolution to climate change. The findings have been described as the 'moon landings' of genomics because researchers will no longer have to rely on finding and testing fossils to determine genetic ancestry, links and discoveries - and it is thanks to Stone Age black bears who defecated in a remote cave in Mexico 16,000 years ago.

Scientists have identified the primary cause of failure in a state-of-the-art lithium-metal battery, of interest for long-range electric vehicles: electrolyte depletion.

New, detailed study of the Renland Ice Cap offers the possibility of modelling other smaller ice caps and glaciers with much greater accuracy than hitherto. The study combined airborne radar data to determine the thickness of the ice cap with on-site measurements of the thickness of the ice cap and satellite data. Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute - University of Copenhagen gathered data from the ice cap in 2015, and this work has now come to fruition: More exact predictions of local climate conditions.

In the northern Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba, corals have exceptionally high tolerance to increasing seawater temperatures resulting from global warming. However, climate change will also result in more variable weather patterns, including extreme cold periods. Researchers now demonstrate that a winter even 1°C cooler than average results in a physiological stress response similar to that seen in other corals under heat stress, detailing how perilously close they live to their lower temperature threshold.