art - Through the sandglass

art books climate_change coastal education environment geology history photography rivers_water sand science travel wildlife

USGS beach health advice - but let's hear it for meiofauna

The US Geological Survey newsroom has just put out an advisory on the importance of washing your hands after playing in the sand on the beach: By washing your h...

August 1, 2009 7 min read

art books coastal education geology geomorphology history photography rivers_water sand science travel

A different "beginning" - and a short, off-piste, rant

Sir Laurence Dudley Stamp (my previous post) must be turning in his grave. It’s ironic that, shortly after my modest proposal on the inspirational potential of...

July 1, 2009 5 min read

art books coastal education environment geology geomorphology history photography sand science travel wildlife

"Giant sand worms lived in Torbay"

What a headline - how could I resist? It’s from the UK newspaper, The Telegraph, earlier this year - it’s not the paper I read, so I only just came across it on...

July 1, 2009 5 min read

art books climate_change coastal environment geology history photography rivers_water sand science travel

Rivers Run Dry - but why?

This map shows the change in runoff inferred from streamflow records worldwide between 1948 and 2004, with bluish colors indicating more streamflow and reddish...

July 1, 2009 5 min read

art books environment geology history photography rivers_water sand science travel

Thinking like a pile of sand

It sometimes seems to me that managing my thoughts (and memories) resembles trying to control a pile of sand grains as they sift through my fingers. Now, new ne...

July 1, 2009 4 min read

art books coastal education environment geology geomorphology history photography sand science travel wildlife

July 2009

Musings and news on the extraordinary stories sand has to tell of our planet and daily lives

July 1, 2009 5 min read

art coastal education geology history photography rivers_water sand

Writing in sand - sedimentary structures

Just as literature students develop the craft of analyzing the structure of a story, so do geologists analyze the structures of sediments and the stories that t...

July 1, 2009 2 min read

art geology history photography sand travel

All that glitters ...

At the end of my last post on granular segregation and placer mineral deposits, I included a photo of a sand sample from Yosemite that is reputed to contain fla...

June 1, 2009 2 min read

art climate_change coastal education environment geology geomorphology history photography rivers_water sand science travel

Granular segregation and the Gold Rush

Anyone walking on the beach or through the dunes will often notice areas of dark gray smeared across the surface, often outlining ripples, as if an artist had h...

June 1, 2009 15 min read

art climate_change environment geomorphology history photography sand

On the road in California 3 - tafoni yet again

I’ve done a couple of posts on tafoni, the exotic and wonderful natural sculpturing of, commonly, sandstones. As I was putting together the piece on the ways in...

June 1, 2009 2 min read

art books climate_change coastal education environment geology history photography rivers_water sand science travel

Streams of grains - some more amazing granular research

As I’m sure I’ve said before, to watch the sands of an hourglass in action is to observe all kinds of natural phenomena at work - and all kinds of questions to...

June 1, 2009 6 min read