Earthquakes9
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Back to Bangladesh to Date Earthquakes and More
I’m back in Bangladesh with a small team after a year and a half away. One different is a police escort as a result of the attacks last year. We start by successfully sampling river sediments to correct the date of an earthquake that caused a river to shift over 3,500 years ago. We also…
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Creating Earthquake Heat Maps: Temperature Spikes Leave Clues in the Rock
When a fault slips, the temperature can spike by hundreds of degrees, high enough to alter organic compounds in the rocks and leave a signature. Lamont scientists have developed methods to use those organic signatures to reconstruct past earthquakes and better understand what controls them.
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Learning from Slow-Slip Earthquakes
Off the coast of New Zealand, there is an area where earthquakes can happen in slow-motion as two tectonic plates grind past one another. These slow-slip events create an ideal lab for studying fault behavior along the shallow portion of subduction zones.
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The Coming Great Quakes in India and Bangladesh?
A new film takes viewers from the eastern highlands of India to the booming lowland metropolis of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh–and explores an ever-more detailed picture of catastrophic earthquake threat that scientists are discovering under the region.
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Listening to Earthquakes – From Inside the Earth
Lamont scientist Ben Holtzman and the Seismic Sound Lab take viewers on an entirely new sensory experience to see, hear and feel earthquakes from inside the planet.
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Harnessing Soil to Rebuild Rural Nepal
Within weeks of a devastating earthquake in Nepal, governments and private groups pledged $4 billion in aid. And something else emerged from the rubble: a grassroots movement to rebuild rural Nepal safely and sustainably.
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Top Seismology Award Goes to Pioneer in Rock Mechanics: Christopher Scholz
For his pioneering work in rock mechanics and his skill at communicating earthquake science, Scholz is being honored on April 20 by the Seismological Society of America with its top award, the Harry Fielding Reid Medal.
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The Earth Shook, but It Wasn’t an Earthquake
Last Thursday, thousands of people on the Eastern Seaboard felt the earth tremble. Seismologists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory quickly concluded it was not an earthquake, but a military exercise.
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Detecting Landslides from a Few Seismic Wiggles
Over the last six years, seismologists Göran Ekström and Colin Stark have been perfecting a technique for picking out the seismic signature of large landslides. They just discovered North America’s largest known landslide in many years – 200 million tons of sliding rock in Alaska.
COP31, the 2026 United Nations Climate Change Conference, aims to advance dialogue, strengthen consensus, and accelerate climate action on a global scale. From November 9–20, 2026 in Antalya, Türkiye, heads of state, ministers, scientists, business leaders, and civil society will gather to advance efforts in emission targets, climate finance, and adaptation and resilience. Once again, our experts, students, and global thought leaders from Columbia Climate School and across Columbia University are contributing to key events, sharing insights, and helping shape the dialogue toward ambitious, science-based solutions. Learn More
