What's wrong with the sign above? In the recent issue of Geology Today, Tony Waltham of Nottingham Trent University wrote about this roadside sign he had encountered in Oman, warning of dune encroachment. However, there's a slight error - clues...
For those non-UK readers who are saying to themselves, "Dr Who?" and suspecting that this might be a version of the "who's on first?" routine, I'm referring to a British science fiction TV series. A distinctly cult series, if ever...
The efficiency with which bacillus pasteurii manufactures calcium carbonate and glues things together makes for ways in which our microbial friend can assist us beyond just preventing earthquake damage and sculpting deserts (see the previous post) and here's, literally, a...
I love connections. Those unexpected and wonderful threads of stories that link and flow from one subject to another, subjects that would have seemed to have had nothing in common whatsoever. So here's one such story. The thread is earthquakes-bacteria-desertification-tafoni-sustainable...
A while ago, I picked up on the odd need of tourism promoters to expropriate other people's landscapes in their advertising (Spain's Costa Brava boasting a Bahamas beach); now its happened again, this time perhaps even more bizarrely. The last...
I was recently contacted by Larry Deemer, who is lucky enough to live in Breezy Point, a coastal neighborhood in Queens, the borough of New York City. Larry spends time on the beach, observing - obviously with great pleasure and...
Some further observations, and hints for readers who wish to try this at home (or in the classroom). I was, as you could probably tell, flushed with the success of making cross-bedding in the comfort of my own kitchen, and...
I've just been contacted by Betsy Kimak who works as an independent web designer out of Denver and who had nice things to say about this blog. Betsy is a self-confessed arenophile - as she describes herself: I’ve always liked...
It will be obvious to those who have read items on this blog that I find the bizarre behaviours of granular materials fascinating. It was only as I was working on the book that I encountered just how weird and...
It was my intention to put together a more technical post on the challenges of measuring the shape of a sand grain - an apparently esoteric endeavour, but in fact of surprising importance in science and our daily lives. However,...
It's billed as the toughest footrace one earth, a reputation difficult to dispute - lunacy in a good cause. The 24th Marathon des Sables has just finished in the Moroccan Sahara south of the town of Ouarzazate (at least, I...
In the film blog of the British newspaper, The Guardian, a few days ago, the weekly feature called "Clip joint" called on readers to submit movie scenes featuring the desert, to compile "a tour of the best web morsels on...
Leaving the tarmac, anywhere in the world, is liberating. For a geologist, a dirt road is often the highway to fieldwork and all its pleasures, satisfactions, frustrations, and challenges. You set out, going through in your mind the plan for...
A brief break from my normally arenaceous topics to pause and reflect on the first four months of this blog. I've just finished a total of fifty posts - not exactly a frenetic rate, I know, but a landmark for...
Last Sunday was World Water Day, highlighting the global issues associated with this precious resource. But one of those issues is, as with all natural resources, its distribution, and for the residents of the Red River Valley it's a case...
Rivers are vital but also complex and dynamic systems - vital for the planet and vital for us. Civilization has always had an intimate relationship with rivers. They provide habitable areas, transportation and communication routes, food, power, and constantly replenished...
A hundred million years ago, today's Mediterranean didn't exist. Continental bits and pieces that would become Spain, Italy, France, and the whole geological jigsaw that we see today jostled around in balmy tropical seas at the western end of the...
Right, a new category for this blog - sport. I tend, not surprisingly, to collect images that use sand in any way, and the picture above comes from an advertising campaign last summer by the major sponsor of the English...
Dunes move - it's what they do, it's what makes them dunes as opposed to lifeless piles of sand; and nothing will stand in their way. The images above are of dune invasion in the Bahariya oasis of Egypt's Western...
