The Nature of Fjords

Fjords are steep-walled, U-shaped, glacial-carved coastal valleys.  Especially common along the rocky coasts of Norway, Iceland, Greenland, ...

The Nature of Ukraine

A series of tragic events have kept Ukraine in the news over the past year.  It thus seems appropriate to balance this image with a look at ...

Formation of the Indian Ocean

About 200 million years ago (MYA), the Tethys Sea split Pangea into Laurasia (the northern continents) and Gondwanaland (the southern contin...

Blame it on the Jet

Throughout most of this winter, the jet stream has produced havoc across a large portion of the Northern Hemisphere.  While it generally ass...

Hominin Footprints in England

As I half-watched, half-listened to the news last evening, my attention was drawn to a report that "human footprints" had been fou...

The Camargue

The Rhone River of Western Europe rises at the base of the Rhone Glacier in the Swiss Alps; flowing westward, it passes through Lake Geneva ...

The English Channel

Back in the Eocene, some 50 million years ago (MYA), as mammals exploded in number and variety,  the English Channel did not exist.  England...

Europe's Grand Canyon

Flowing northward through Montenegro, the Tara River has carved a spectacular canyon through the Mesozoic limestones and dolomites of the Di...

Avalonia

There are few terranes that illustrate the science of plate tectonics and continental drift better than Avalonia.  This micro-continent form...

Italy, Earthquakes & Human Nature

After enduring two tragic earthquakes within a span of nine days, residents of northeastern Italy are both distraught and mystified. As emp...

The Eurasian Mountain Arc

Looking at a map of Earth, one sees a complex of mountain ranges from Southeast Asia to Spain. Almost all of these ranges are relatively yo...

Geology of Mt. Etna

The interaction of the African and Eurasian Plates is complex, with areas of compression, subduction and transform-faulting (lateral slippag...