Thursday, February 14th, 2019
Set to fly in 2022, ESA’s Biomass Earth Explorer satellite with its 12-meter diameter radar antenna will pierce through woodland canopies to perform a global survey of Earth’s forests—and see how they change over the course of Biomass’ five-year mission. Trees are an integral, much-loved element of our environment; they also hold clues to our
Tuesday, February 12th, 2019
The Amazon rainforest isn’t necessarily a place that many would associate with a drought, yet prolonged dry spells are projected to become more prevalent and severe because of climate change. The question at hand is how these droughts are going to affect the rainforest, as it has a large influence on global climate and future
Tuesday, February 5th, 2019
Earth’s northern magnetic pole is moving quickly away from the Canadian Arctic toward Siberia. This movement has forced National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) scientists to update the World Magnetic Model (WMM) mid-cycle. Typically, a new and updated version of the WMM is released every five years. With the last release in 2015, the next
Tuesday, January 29th, 2019
The Sustainable Ocean Alliance (SOA), a global nonprofit organization that advances the impact of young ocean leaders, released its first State of Our Ocean Annual Report, an annual assessment of the health of our ocean based on the analysis of SOA young leaders and ocean experts. In launching this report at the start of 2019,
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2019
The Copernicus Sentinel-2B satellite collected this image of the lower reaches of the brown, sediment-rich Uruguay River where the river forms the border between Argentina and Uruguay, and is the site of the Esteros de Farrapos e Islas del Río Uruguay wetlands. Composed of lagoons, swamps and 24 islets, the Esteros are a haven for
Tuesday, January 15th, 2019
In the early 1990s, Acton Lake in southwestern Ohio had a muddy problem. Large amounts of sediment from nearby farms were entering the lake’s watershed. These sediments traveled through streams draining the landscape and were filling up the lake. So the USDA gave local farmers incentives to change some of their farming practices. One of
Tuesday, January 8th, 2019
This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows Korolev crater, an 82-kilometer-across feature found in the northern lowlands of Mars. This oblique perspective view was generated using a digital terrain model and Mars Express data. The crater itself is centred at 165° E, 73° N on the martian surface. The image has a resolution of roughly
Monday, December 17th, 2018
Infrared (IR) thermal imaging cameras have been used for decades for a variety of oil and gas applications, including electrical/mechanical inspections, tank level inspections, and even examinations of pipe integrity within process equipment. In recent years, new optical gas imaging (OGI) technology has been developed that can “see” hydrocarbon gases and volatile organic compounds (VOCs)
Tuesday, December 11th, 2018
GSSI, a manufacturer of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) equipment, is continuing its partnership with the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation. GSSI archaeologists Dan Welch and Peter Leach brought new GPR equipment to remotely sense what lies beneath Jamestown. Jamestown—known for being the first permanent English settlement in the New World—will be commemorating in 2019 the 400th anniversary of
Tuesday, December 4th, 2018
According to a new Finnish-Chinese study reported in Global Change Biology, global warming increases frost damage on trees in large areas of Central Europe. Late frost damages are economically important in agriculture and forestry. In certain years, they are known to have caused losses amounting to hundreds of millions of euros. Climate change and increasing
