State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

Earth Sciences76

  • Working in the Bangladeshi Countryside

    Working in the Bangladeshi Countryside

    After traveling by boat for two days, including crossing the Sundarban Mangrove Forest, we finally arrived in Khulna. We drove to the site of our compaction meter and separated into teams servicing the instruments, investigating agricultural practices, measuring arsenic in the well water and taking sediment samples for dating. We had finally started our work…

  • Creating a ‘Safe Space’ for Iconic Ecosystems

    Creating a ‘Safe Space’ for Iconic Ecosystems

    Important global ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest and Great Barrier Reef are in danger of breaking down because of a combination of local pressures and climate change, but better local management could help make these areas more resilient.

  • Sampling up a Storm

    Sampling up a Storm

    I’m writing from where L’Atalante is currently parked, 18S 170W, right in the middle of a giant, anomalously high sea surface chlorophyll patch. Such a high concentration of chlorophyll—a pigment that helps photosynthetic organisms harvest energy from sunlight, and the one that’s responsible for the green color of plants—can mean but one thing in the…

  • Sailing Around Political Unrest in Bangladesh

    Sailing Around Political Unrest in Bangladesh

    With the roads in Bangladesh hazardous to drive because of the ongoing political unrest, our undergraduate sustainable development class managed to proceed with our class trip over Spring Break by doing all travel by boat.

  • Navigating the South Pacific Using DNA

    Navigating the South Pacific Using DNA

    I’ve never been good at navigating. When I come out of the subway I invariably turn the wrong direction, even though I already have my nose buried in Google Maps, and then walk around the block to save face.

  • A Swirling Stew of Trichodesmium

    A Swirling Stew of Trichodesmium

    Greetings from the center of that eddy I mentioned in my last post! We’ve been here for five days so far, but tomorrow we are finally moving on.

  • Trichodesmium is Everywhere!

    Trichodesmium is Everywhere!

    We have completed the first two stations of the OUTPACE cruise and we are steaming to Station 3. By noon tomorrow we should be in the center of an eddy that our colleagues back on dry land have used satellite data to identify.

  • Science Nabs Illegal Ivory Sellers

    Science Nabs Illegal Ivory Sellers

    A Toronto-based company has been convicted of selling illegal ivory in the first case to use a technique for dating ivory developed by a scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

  • OUTPACE Cruise: Setting Sail

    OUTPACE Cruise: Setting Sail

    The OUTPACE 2015 cruise has set sail on February 20! We left port in Nouméa at 8:30 a.m. last Friday morning. I lost sight of land around 10 a.m. or so, and I won’t see it again until we return to port in Papeete, Tahiti on April 3.

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  • Working in the Bangladeshi Countryside

    Working in the Bangladeshi Countryside

    After traveling by boat for two days, including crossing the Sundarban Mangrove Forest, we finally arrived in Khulna. We drove to the site of our compaction meter and separated into teams servicing the instruments, investigating agricultural practices, measuring arsenic in the well water and taking sediment samples for dating. We had finally started our work…

  • Creating a ‘Safe Space’ for Iconic Ecosystems

    Creating a ‘Safe Space’ for Iconic Ecosystems

    Important global ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest and Great Barrier Reef are in danger of breaking down because of a combination of local pressures and climate change, but better local management could help make these areas more resilient.

  • Sampling up a Storm

    Sampling up a Storm

    I’m writing from where L’Atalante is currently parked, 18S 170W, right in the middle of a giant, anomalously high sea surface chlorophyll patch. Such a high concentration of chlorophyll—a pigment that helps photosynthetic organisms harvest energy from sunlight, and the one that’s responsible for the green color of plants—can mean but one thing in the…

  • Sailing Around Political Unrest in Bangladesh

    Sailing Around Political Unrest in Bangladesh

    With the roads in Bangladesh hazardous to drive because of the ongoing political unrest, our undergraduate sustainable development class managed to proceed with our class trip over Spring Break by doing all travel by boat.

  • Navigating the South Pacific Using DNA

    Navigating the South Pacific Using DNA

    I’ve never been good at navigating. When I come out of the subway I invariably turn the wrong direction, even though I already have my nose buried in Google Maps, and then walk around the block to save face.

  • A Swirling Stew of Trichodesmium

    A Swirling Stew of Trichodesmium

    Greetings from the center of that eddy I mentioned in my last post! We’ve been here for five days so far, but tomorrow we are finally moving on.

  • Trichodesmium is Everywhere!

    Trichodesmium is Everywhere!

    We have completed the first two stations of the OUTPACE cruise and we are steaming to Station 3. By noon tomorrow we should be in the center of an eddy that our colleagues back on dry land have used satellite data to identify.

  • Science Nabs Illegal Ivory Sellers

    Science Nabs Illegal Ivory Sellers

    A Toronto-based company has been convicted of selling illegal ivory in the first case to use a technique for dating ivory developed by a scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

  • OUTPACE Cruise: Setting Sail

    OUTPACE Cruise: Setting Sail

    The OUTPACE 2015 cruise has set sail on February 20! We left port in Nouméa at 8:30 a.m. last Friday morning. I lost sight of land around 10 a.m. or so, and I won’t see it again until we return to port in Papeete, Tahiti on April 3.