The chief scientist at Esri wound her path into and out of academia.
Alka Tripathy-Lang
Alka Tripathy-Lang is a freelance science writer covering stories about Earth and environmental science. Alka holds a Ph.D. in geology from Arizona State University and conducted postdoctoral research at the Berkeley Geochronology Center.
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Hunting Hurricanes
NOAA’s Hurricane Hunters risk their lives each time they fly into the eye of a storm to collect crucial data for forecasting, hurricane modeling, and research.
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Rocky Voices: A Q&A with Eva Enkelmann
A new book aimed at young adults explores the construction of the Canadian Rockies from the perspective of the minerals, fossils, and waterdrops that make and shape the landscape.
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Crystals Track Magma Movement Beneath Iceland
Crystals from Fagradalsfjall’s eruption mark how mantle magma might have been moving years before geophysical indicators alerted scientists to unrest.
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Grains of Sand: Too Much and Never Enough
Sand is a foundational element of our cities, our homes, our landscapes and seascapes. How we will interact with the material in the future, however, is less certain.
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Scientists EEAGER-ly Track Beavers Across Western United States
Efficiently tracking nature’s engineers—beavers—at the scale of entire watersheds over time is now possible, thanks to a new artificial intelligence–trained model called EEAGER.
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The Great Unconformity or Great Unconformities?
Some scientists think the Great Unconformity was caused by Snowball Earth’s glaciations. Recent work suggests these phenomena might not be related.
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Stories Scribed on Palm Leaves Help Scientists Understand Ancient Eruption
Deposits from the 1257 Samalas eruption may contain artifacts of an ancient kingdom, according to scientists who link volcanology studies with histories written onto palm leaves.
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Making Underwater Cables SMART with Sensors
Future cables that stretch across the ocean, transmitting cat videos and financial transactions, could also contain temperature, pressure, and seismic sensors that would allow scientists to spy on the seafloor.
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Billion-Year Rewind Tracks Supercontinents and Mantle Structures
Scientists have traced past pathways of tectonic plates back a billion years using computer models, with intriguing results. Incorporating geologic data as a check on model output, however, has proven tricky.