“There’s no roads, there’s no helicopters, there’s not even a donkey.”
It’s just another day in the field.
The spartan accommodations available to scientists tracking Uganda’s dwindling glaciers is not universal to geoscience fieldwork, but they’re a good indication of the lengths to which scientists will go—enthusiastically—to discover and document our planet’s particularities. Read all about it in “A New 3D Map Shows Precipitous Decline of Ugandan Glaciers.”
Volcanologists on La Palma, the largest of the Canary Islands, faced a different challenge during their work in the field: an actively erupting volcano. In “Volcanic Anatomy, Mapped as It Erupts,” Vittorio Zanon and Luca D’Auria share how near-real-time petrological analyses can help support the safety of surrounding communities as well as associated scientific efforts.
Scientists on an Antarctic research cruise found themselves stymied by sea ice. But when a Chicago-sized ice shelf unexpectedly calved, the crew quickly pivoted and discovered a surprisingly “Thriving Antarctic Ecosystem Revealed by a Departing Iceberg.”
Far from being stranded, scientists “Tracking Some of the World’s Fiercest Ocean Currents” around the Mozambique Channel found that the eddy-ring dipoles there transport nutrients and biota at a rate of 1.3 meters per second.
Hazards like volcanoes, ice shelves, and ocean currents may ultimately be no match for the “looming catastrophes—funding cuts, software obsolescence, and loss of community support,” however. To this end, the data scientist–authors of “The Valuable, Vulnerable, Long Tail of Earth Science Databases” share research-based recommendations for supporting expert community-curated data resources.
Geoscience fieldwork is globe-spanning and mind-bending, and we hope you enjoy the ride.
—Caryl-Sue Micalizio, Editor in Chief