We arrived in Argentina after a night in the air—maybe the first time I’ve ever gotten a (nearly) decent night’s sleep on a plane. We took a taxi across the city. It’s hot and flat, and our taxi driver explains that they’ve had torrential rains for several weeks; all the lowlands alongside the highway are…
Research Ship Will Image Faults, Seek Signs of Hidden Dangers
A few days ago we reached our main study area in the eastern Amundsen Sea. Here we are using sonar to map the contours of the seafloor in great detail. During the last glaciation the Antarctic ice sheet was much larger and covered most of the continental shelf, an underwater extension of the continent that…
One of the main threats to health in both the developing and developed worlds is the increasing resistance of bacteria to antibiotics. On February 19, Kartik Chandran, Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Engineering talked with Water Center staff and students about his study of the role wastewater treatment might play in this complex issue.
New research from the UK’s National Oceanography Centre, Southampton shows that plans to pump nutrient-rich water up from the deep ocean in order the boost algae growth at the surface to absorb CO2 would likely only sequester a small amount of total anthropogenic carbon emissions, and if the system was stopped could lead to rapid…
The Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI) and the Earth Institute (EI) were honored to host Accra Mayor Alfred Vanderpuije this week, for a series of lectures and meetings focused on Ghana’s capital. Mayor Vanderpuije met twice with the leadership of the MCI Accra team – Professor Patricia Culligan, Vice-Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied…
Natalie Boelman is an ecologist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who studies the effects of climate change on organisms throughout the food chain. She first visited the Alaskan Arctic in 2001, and will return to the North Slope this spring and summer to continue a wildfire-mapping project and to set up a field study that will…
Here is a video montage showing highlights of the seafloor deployment of the VentCam (created by Carl Robinson): You can read more about this project here, and more on the deployment of this particular instrument here.
Following the launch of the Corporate Circle in October 2009, we are thrilled to welcome Con Edison, Nestlé and Walmart as new Sustaining Members with their $25,000 gifts to the institute. At this level, all three corporations are supporting the core sustainable development work of the Earth Institute and joining a network of top companies…