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18 May 2011
National Geographic’s “X-Ray Earth”
On Sunday night, I watched the National Geographic Channel’s new special “X-Ray Earth”. From the commercials advertising it, I thought the show might be interesting; it looked like there would be a significant part devoted to remote sensing techniques that I (and other Earth scientists) are familiar with using – and the show didn’t disappoint me.
5 March 2008
Alien Invaders
National Geographic has posted an interesting web article about invasive plants edging out native species in Hawaii. Scientists from the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (Stanford and Hilo) have used imaging spectroscopy and LiDAR to map 850 square miles of rainforest on Hawaii’s Big Island in order to understand how nonnative plants are affecting the current populations of native species (mainly ‘ohia, a Hawaiian tree with bright red flowers called lehua). The …
23 December 2007
The Gods must be restless? Take a look at the scientists.
I just finished reading the most recent National Geographic, and I spent some time thinking about Andrew Marshall’s article, “The Gods Must Be Restless”. In it, he talks about some of the beliefs that have grown up around Indonesian volcanoes – and there are a lot of them, considering that Indonesia has the most active volcanoes of anywhere in the world. I found myself conflicted about the attitudes of some …
Jessica Ball is a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, researching volcanic hydrothermal systems and stability, and doing science communication for the California Volcano Observatory. She previously worked at the Geological Society of America's Washington DC Policy Office, learning about the intersection of Earth science and legislative affairs. Her Mendenhall postdoc and PhD focused on how water affects the stability of volcanoes, and involved both field investigations and numerical modeling applications. Her blogging covers a range of topics, from her experiences in academic geosciences to science outreach and communication to her field and lab work in volcanology.