Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory120
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Seeking Humanity’s Roots
Who were our earliest ancestors? How and when did they evolve into modern humans? And how do we define “human,” anyway? Scientists are exploring Kenya’s Lake Turkana basin to help answer these questions.
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Crushing Ice to Learn About Glaciers & Icy Moons
To understand how quickly ice from glaciers can raise sea level or how moons far across the solar system evolved to hold vast, ice-covered oceans, we need to be able to measure the forces at work. A new instrument designed and built at Lamont does just that.
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New Support For Human Evolution In Grasslands
A 24 Million-Year Record of African Plants Plumbs Deep Past
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The Plate Tectonics Revolution: It Was All About the Data
The young scientists who led the plate tectonics revolution 50 years ago showed how asking the right questions and having access to a wide range of shared data could open doors to an entirely new understanding of our planet.
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John Imbrie, a Pioneer of Paleoceanography
Imbrie, a former head of the Department of Geological Sciences, helped confirmed connections between changes in Earth’s orbit and the timing of the ice ages and was a co-founder of CLIMAP, an international effort to use sediment cores to map Earth’s climate at the height of the last ice age.
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Walking in the Shadow of a Great Volcano
On a ledge just inside the lip of Chile’s Quizapu volcanic crater, Philipp Ruprecht was furiously digging a trench. Here at an elevation of 10,000 feet, a 1,000-foot plunge loomed just yards away, and wind was whipping dust off his shovel. But the volcanologist was excited. Ruprecht had just found this spot, topped with undisturbed…
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Photo Essay: In the Shadow of a Great Volcano
High in the southern Andes, Chile’s Quizapu crater is one of South America’s most fearsome geologic features. In 1846, it was the source of one the continent’s largest historically recorded lava flows. In 1932, it produced one of the largest recorded volcanic blasts. The volcano is currently inactive, but could revive at any time. What…
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Iron Fertilization Won’t Work in Equatorial Pacific, Study Suggests
Over the past half-million years, the equatorial Pacific Ocean has seen five spikes in the amount of iron-laden dust blown in from the continents. In theory, those bursts should have turbo-charged the growth of carbon-capturing algae, but a new study shows that the excess iron had little to no effect.
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From Top to Bottom: Scientists Map a New Island Volcano
One of the earth’s newest islands exploded into view from the bottom of the southwest Pacific Ocean in January 2015, and scientists sailing around the volcano this spring have created a detailed map of its topography.
AGU25, the premier Earth and space science conference, takes place December 15-19, 2025 in New Orleans, Louisiana. This year’s theme—Where Science Connects Us—puts in focus how science depends on connection, from the lab to the field to the ballot box. Once again, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Columbia Climate School scientists, experts, students, and educators are playing an active role, sharing our research and helping shape the future of our planet. #AGU25 Learn More
