Judgment of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of Raghubir Singh Garia Vs State of Uttarakhand & Others dated 22/04/2025. The matter related to illegal mining of soap stone in village Papon, District Bageshwar, Uttarakhand. The complainant, a resident of the village said that illegal mining of soap stone …
Yet another addition to the fleet of satellites peering down on earth is Japan's Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (adeos). Bristling with sensors for measuring everything from stratospheric ozone to ocean turbulence, the satellite launches Japan into the upper realms of remote-sensing science. Carrying eight instruments from Japan, France and the …
Antarctica, which till 1960 was considered an aseismic area, now supports seven seismic observatories. India will also set up an observatory near its permanent station Maitri during its 16th expedition to the continent towards the end of this year. The aim of the broad-band digital seismic observatory is to monitor …
a jet of molten lava arises from the womb of the earth, pierces through the seabed and gives rise to islands amidst a turbulent ocean. In a rare feat of scientific endeavour, the birth throes of an emerging island in the ocean were witnessed for the first time by scientists …
according to a new study by William Thomas, a geologist at the University of Kentucky, us , a large chunk of the eastern foothills of the Argentine Andes was once a part of North America. About 535 million years ago, a piece roughly the combined size of Portugal and Spain …
in spite of tremendous advancements in the technology of seismological tools, the deepest interior of the earth has remained inaccessible to geophysicists. So, when a team of seismologists led by Xiao Dong Song and Paul Richards of the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, New York, us , announced …
Geologists at Stanford University in the US have predicted that the next earthquake that hits the San Francisco bay area could be more devastating than the one that occurred in 1868. Working on the rupture patterns of the Hayward fault
Beneath the lofty Himalayan ranges lie extremely hot and radioactive rocks, the origin of which has remained a point of debate among geologists for years now. Recently, Audrey Huerta, a geophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, offered yet another explanation. She suggests that these rocks originally …
THE discovery of certain rocks in the Swiss Alps is proving to be an earth-shattering news for geologists the world over, as it holds the promise of shaking the basic tenets of the subject. Found high in the mountains of southern Switzerland, near the Italian border, these rocks are thought …
Slow, creeping movements of the earth might actually precede earthquakes, according to Clifford H Thurber, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin, US. Monitoring these creep events in the San Andreasfaultin California for some time now, Thurber contends that these may prove useful in providing short-termwarning (of about four months) …
Human endeavours like the building of dams are now being held responsible for the planet spinning a wee bit faster. Benjamin Chao, a geophysicistat NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, US, says that the days are shortening by about O;2millionthsofa second per year. Chao's observations are based on …
Massive earthquakes that shook the American midwest in the last century were attributed to movements in the New Madrid fault zone in southern Missouri. Reportedly, there are innumerable such weak zones which can cause earthquakes iQmidcontinental US, according to Stephen Marshak and Timothy Paulsen of the University of Illinois in …
MARINE geologists in the us are currently being deluged with sea-floor data collected by two satellites -the us Geosat and the European Space Agency's ERS-l. These satellite images have revealed hitherto unknown features of the ocean floor, which could question the basic premise of existing geological theories. The two satellites …
PRECARIOUSLY perched rocks, a sight common to trekkers, can actually be a repository of clues pointing to the vulnerability of a particular region to earthquakes. Geologists who until recently seem to have overlooked the fact are now trying to get to the bottom of these perched rocks. These insecurely placed …
The South Pole is given to changing its location every year, making the exact pinpointing ofits site, a difficult job. But, with the "advent of the Global Positioning System -the satellite based navigation system - the positioning of this southern- most point on the earth has been made easier (New …
THAT the earth's crust wasb~ing recycled was a suspicion held for long by earth scientists. They believed that the crust which disappeared below the subduc- tion zone, went into the molten rock layer -the mantle. This later reap- pearedtotally altered after undergoing changes due to high temperature and pressure conditions. …
IT IS the phosphorus element that holds the key to the oxygen feedback mechanism, according to Philippe Van Cappellen of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and Eltery Ingall of the University of Texas at Austin, us. Atmospheric oxygen is mostly produced by the photosynthetic algae floating on the …
IT WAS believed that about 500 million years ago in the Palaeozoic era, there were two major land masses - Gondwana and Laurentia. While the southern supercontinent of Gondwana comprised of present day Africa, Australia, Antarctica, South America and India, North America and most of Europe and Asia, excluding India, …
An unique sea-floor observatory to keep a watch on two under-sea volcanoes is in the offing near the coasts ofWashington and Oregon in the US. Part of the National Science Foundation's RIDGE (Ridge Inter- Disciplinary Global Experiments) programme, the observatory will be set up on the ocean floor to monitor …
The Indian subcontinent and Australia are moving away from each other. This is the result of the cracking up of the massive Indo- Australian crustal plate just south of the equator beneath the Indian Ocean. The study carried out by scientists at Columbia University!s Lamont Doherty Earth observatory, New York, …
GEOSPHERE versus biosphere interactions not only precipitate but also moderate changes in the global environmental system. While several studies have concentrated on modern anthropogenic activities, the socioeconomic dimensions of human-environment relationship over time has not been properly documented. It is here that the remote sensing and geographical information system (GIS) …
