Last month, NASA issued a press release to announce that the Curiosity Rover had reached the “Bagnold dunes” and was preparing to investigate. The image above is from that announcement – the landscape covered is only a few meters across,...
From the New York Times: Los Angeles Brown Warns of Drought Disaster; Says ‘Hard Choices’ Face California Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. warned here today that drought-stricken California was “facing a disaster of immeasurable magnitude.” “The specter of drought has...
I was delighted (and flattered) to be invited to participate in a multi-disciplinary symposium, held in Winchester in October, titled Chalk: Time, Sense, and Landscape, part of the town’s biannual 10 day arts festival. Winchester is securely rooted in the...
Among the possible reasons for not reading this might be It seems to be too absurd to be true It’s true, but it’s not a problem You are careful about your blood pressure and the integrity of your digital device...
On my 2013 Moroccan trip, we drove through the town of Ouazazate, “the door of the desert” and an old trading outpost that grew under French colonial rule as a garrison town and administrative centre. Its more recent claim to...
Sunagoyomi, the sand calendar. Not an hourglass, but a yearglass, the centre piece of the Nima Sand Museum in Japan. Turn it, and one year later the last of its estimated 629 billion grains of sand will fall (no, I...
Once in a while I enjoy losing myself in the wonders of Martian landscapes. Words just don't seem necessary for this selection from the latest HiRISE images. [All images courtesy NASA/JPL/University of Arizona and thanks to Lee Allison at Arizona...
In writing The Desert book, I became acutely aware that, as a humble geologist, my knowledge has profound limitations. I am not a biologist, botanist, ecologist - the “ist” list of deficiencies goes on. However, in needing to try to...
Deep-rooted and completely erroneous preconceptions of our planet’s arid lands as sterile bit-players in the great game of the earth’s dynamic systems have long inhibited our scientific enthusiasm for, and understanding of, the desert. We are now beginning to catch...
Images of art and science can be visually stunning at first glance, and then emotionally stunning when the viewer becomes aware of what is depicted. Think microscope images of cancer cells, or some of paintings of Salvador Dali or Max...
Our planet’s deserts are sweeping landscapes of variety and diversity, human and otherwise. But if you are looking for imagery of the desert as desolate and threatening, then the new Mad Max movie will do the trick – in spades....
Yet again, thank you NASA. As announced last month, their latest extraordinary earth-monitoring system is in orbit, commissioned and providing data: SMAP, the Soil Moisture Active Passive mission provides a high-resolution view of continuing changes in soil moisture across our...
Well, sometimes you just have to throw modesty to the dusty winds and shamelessly take on a little self-promotion. The desert book was just reviewed for The Geological Society by Andrew Goudie, Emeritus Professor in Geography at Oxford, a leading...
The possibilities surrounding the re-start of the Large Hadron Collider are endless, but what, of course, intrigued me in a recent piece in the New Scientist was the imagery of the desert. One of the aspirations for my book was...
Over the life of this blog, I have written a number of times on the remarkable and innovative work carried out at Georgia Tech’s Crab Lab, investigations into how critters get around in loose sand and how this can be...
At the edge of the Sahara, I stood for a while and watched a dune move. It pushed out its toes, testing the flat ground in front of it; a small trickle of sand cascaded down the lee side and...
In large areas of Australia there are probably several hundred tons of termites in every square kilometre. From The Desert, Lands of Lost Borders, Chapter 6: The most ubiquitous (and irritating) vegetation in the Australian outback is spinifex, strictly Triodia....
The book is now available in the UK and the US! I have to say that the publishers, Reaktion Books (and the University of Chicago Press in the US), have done a beautiful job – they accepted all my illustrations...
Danuta Ziętala writes: When you visit the Polish coast you have to take a souvenir: a necklace made of amber, a bracelet made of amber, or other jewellery. Prices depend on size, working, the precious items inside (mosquito!). I want...
