#seismic-imaging

#seismic-imaging

Along coastlines, where tides are typically magnified, they profoundly affect navigation, commerce, coastal flooding, water properties and sediment transport. Tides impact the flooding of rivers and, thus, influence the extent of their floodplain, which has cascading effects on biogeochemical and ecological processes.

To capture the biological impact of this extreme environment, I used a comprehensive suite of sensors and biomarker analyses. I wore a wireless electroencephalograph (EEG) system to monitor brain activity, sleep stages and neural signatures of stress and adaptation; the Oura Ring to continuously track sleep patterns, heart-rate variability and circadian-rhythm shifts; and the glucose monitor to follow metabolic responses in real time.

Although Kansas has no active volcanoes, the region marks the southern reach of the Midcontinent Rift System, a massive tectonic event that nearly split North America apart in Earth's distant past. When magma forced its way through the crust during that period, it left behind hardened igneous rock and deep fractures that remain buried thousands of feet underground.

The city passed legislation nearly 18 months ago requiring property owners to retrofit their multi-story, wooden-frame buildings with at least three units constructed before 1990. It delayed implementation, however, when the federal government rolled back significant funding to facilitate the repairs. But after a court-granted injunction required the release of some of those federal funds, the city approved a $1.6 million pilot financing program in hopes of rolling out a larger critical life-safety initiative in the future.

The 1993 erotic thriller Sliver should have ended differently: Zeke, played by William Baldwin, was scripted to fly a helicopter towards an active volcano, after Sharon Stone's character, Carly, reveals she's the killer. The pilot, Craig Hosking, had been tasked with flying low over Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, accompanied by the director of photography, Mike Benson, and his assistant Christopher Duddy, to film the bubbling lava and white plumes of smoke escaping from the Puu Oo vent.

Land is one of those things that can disappear even as you see it. It falls away beneath you, becoming merely the ground under your feet, because you're thinking about where you're going, or a place slowly blurring out of focus from the airplane window. Land is a primal word, primordial even, like lava. And it is a loaded word if, say, you're Indigenous or descend from a people whose land was taken from them.

A team of geologists has found for the first time evidence that two ancient, continent-sized, ultrahot structures hidden beneath the Earth have shaped the planet's magnetic field for the past 265 million years. These two masses, known as large low-shear-velocity provinces (LLSVPs), are part of the catalog of the planet's most enormous and enigmatic objects. Current estimates calculate that each one is comparable in size to the African continent, although they remain buried at a depth of 2,900 kilometers.

My father was a petroleum geologist. A lot of my childhood, he was gone, away on oil rigs in the Powder River Basin and remote parts of Wyoming, living in man camps long before cellphones. We had to wait days to talk to him. When he went into the nearest town to shower, he'd find a payphone and call us. I was always breathless with news.

Remembering the life and work of the geologist George Poulett Scrope, and salmon stories in this week's pick from the Nature archive.

In this photo, I'm preparing drifting buoys for deployment. This was my main responsibility aboard the RV Falkor (too), during a 27-day research expedition in October 2025 exploring the Malvinas Current, an ocean current that runs alongside Argentina. The expedition included biologists, geologists and physical oceanographers such as myself; I'm a PhD candidate at the Sea and Atmosphere Research Center (CIMA) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.