Research News 2005
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12/05/05 Scientists from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory will arrive in San Francisco this week to attend the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), an annual gathering of more than 11,000 researchers from around the world who study the Earth and other planets. Representatives from Lamont-Doherty and many other affiliates of The Earth Institute will present a wide range of geologic, geochemical and interdisciplinary research, including the following: |
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11/28/05
Lying far above the Arctic Circle, the Russian archipelago of Novaya Zemlya is one of the most remote places on Earth, which is precisely why these mountainous, wind-swept islands were used as the Soviet Union’s main nuclear weapons test site from 1955 to 1990. Since the end of the Cold War, a great deal of information about the former superpower's nuclear activities has become available. Combined with existing seismic records, this information enabled scientists at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the U.S. Geological Survey to conduct the most comprehensive study ever made of the extent of Soviet nuclear testing at Novaya Zemlya. Their findings appeared in a recent issue of the journal Science and Global Security. |
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10/13/05
Is the worsening of hurricanes due to global warming? And how can we reduce the impact of natural disasters? The answer to these and other questions came from Art Lerner-Lam, director of the Center for Hazards and Risk Research, during a "live chat" sponsored by the Emergency Information Infrastructure Partnership's Virtual Forum. |
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10/07/05
For many residents of New York City and upstate communities, the Hudson River is such a constant presence that it can sometimes fade into the background of daily life. On Wednesday, October 12, however, Earth Institute researchers will contribute to the efforts of volunteers and students from Troy to Brooklyn in putting the Hudson front-and-center by capturing a scientific "snapshot" of the river's estuary. |
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10/06/05 Only in recent years have scientists begun to unravel the causes of persistent droughts in the west. Richard Seager, a senior scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, will visit the New York Academy of Science on October 18 to discuss the history of drought and its consequences. |
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09/24/05
The Natural Disaster Hotspots report released earlier this year showed that the U.S. Gulf Coast is among the world's most at-risk regions in terms of human mortality and economic loss due to storms like Katrina and Rita. |
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08/30/05
Scientists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have ended a nine-year debate over whether the Earth's inner core is undergoing changes that can be detected on a human timescale. Their work, which appears in the August 26 issue of the journal Science, measured differences in the time it took seismic waves generated by nearly identical earthquakes up to 35 years apart to travel through the Earth's inner core. Watch an animation that describes this research |
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08/30/05 Some of the highest quality images ever taken of the Earth's lower crust reveal that the upper and lower crust form in two distinctly different ways. A team led by researchers from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory published the results of their work in the August 25 issue of the journal Nature. |
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08/25/05 Researchers at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory recently resolved a long-standing contradiction about the workings of the deep Earth. For years, many geochemists have argued that parts of the deep mantle remain unchanged since the formation of the Earth, whereas many geophysicists and geodynamicists have held that the entire mantle has been convecting (moving and mixing) over geological time. |
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08/18/05 Columbia University announced today an $18 million gift from Gary Comer and the Comer Science and Education Foundation in support of research at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. |
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07/20/05 When the sea floor off the coast of Sumatra split on the morning of December 26, 2004, it took days to measure the full extent of the rupture. Recently, researchers at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory analyzed recordings of the underwater sound produced by the magnitude 9.3 earthquake. Their unique approach enabled them to track the rupture as it moved along the Sumatra-Andaman Fault, raising the possibility that scientists could one day use the method to track underwater earthquakes in near real time and opening new avenues in seismologic research.
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07/11/05
Gerard Clark Bond, a respected and beloved geologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and resident of Pearl River, New York passed away on Wednesday June 29. He was 65. "Gerard was one of Lamont's legendary researchers," said Michael Purdy, Director of Lamont-Doherty. "He was a great geologist whose most recent work on variations in solar radiation contributed to our fundamental understanding of changes in the Earth's climate system. He will be sorely missed by the scientific community, by Lamont and, most of all, by his family."
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05/19/05 Buried far beneath the cattails and blackbirds of marshes in the lower Hudson Valley are pollen, seeds and other materials preserved in marsh sediment in the Hudson River Estuary. By examining this material, researchers can see evidence of a 500-year drought, the passing of the Little Ice Age, and impacts of European settlers. |
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04/26/05 Many scientists fight a never-ending battle against dust in their laboratory. Lamont-Doherty researcher Gisela Winckler, however, can’t get enough. Before you send her what’s under your bed, though, she’s only interested in a very special kind of dust — the kind that rains down on the Earth from outer space. |
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04/19/05 Palisades, NY--Sea level may be far more variable over shorter periods of time than can be explained by natural variations in the Earth's orbit. Scientists using a new method of dating fossil coral reefs have uncovered evidence that sea level is capable of changing by as much as 30 meters in just a few thousand years — more quickly and more dramatically than previously believed. The study, carried out by geochemists William Thompson and Steven Goldstein at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, appears in the April 15 issue of the journal Science. |
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04/11/05
Scientists have long held the belief that the fracturing of the Earth's brittle outer shell into faults along the deep ocean's mountainous landscape occurs only during long periods when no magma has intruded. Challenging this predominant theory, findings from a completed study show how differences in mid-ocean ridge magma-induced activity produce distinctly different types of ocean floor faulting. |
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04/07/05 Scientists from the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) have provided new evidence that ocean circulation changes lagged behind, and were not the cause of, major climate changes at the beginning and end of the last ice age (short intervals known as glacial boundaries), according to a study published in the March 2005 issue of Science magazine. |
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03/29/05
Researchers from Columbia University and The World Bank have published a report entitled, “Natural Disaster Hotspots: A Global Risk Analysis,” that presents a global view of disaster risks associated with some major natural hazards — drought, floods, cyclones, earthquakes, volcanoes and landslides. The report identifies high-risk geographic regions so that development efforts can be better informed and designed to reduce disaster-related losses in the future. |
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02/24/05 Working in the subway several hours each day, subway workers and transit police breathe more subway air than the typical commuter. Subway air has been shown to contain more steel dust than outdoor or other indoor air in New York City. But do transit workers’ bodies harbor elevated levels of these metals? And does this translate into a health concern for the workers? |
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02/10/05
Geophysicists from Cornell and Columbia University have proven that wax is a perfect model of the ocean floors. Using a tub of wax, they have produced a predictive model of tectonic microplates — one of the most important and poorly understood features of plate tectonics — for the first time. This research is reported today in the New Journal of Physics published jointly by the Institute of Physics and the German Physical Society (Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft). |
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02/08/05 Experts at the Climate Modeling Group at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), part of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, expect drought to worsen in the Plains and the West over the next several years due to La Niña-like conditions. LDEO's "Persistent Drought in North America" Web site provides an in-depth examination of drought in this region. |
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01/31/05
The difficulties of implementing a tested technology to warn of an infrequent but catastrophic natural disaster were reviewed last week at a hearing of the House Science Committee. While the Bush Administration's proposal to deploy a greatly expanded array of buoys to detect tsunamis received positive marks, expect Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) to correct what he called a deficiency in the Administration's proposal when the Science Committee drafts its bill. |
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01/24/05
Marine seismic research will play an invaluable role in providing the same level of warning currently in the Pacific Ocean to the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, including the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. In January 2005 the Bush Administration committed $37.5 million to expand the current global tsunami detection and warning systems. |
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01/05/05 Well diggers in Araihazar, Bangladesh will soon be able to take advantage of a cell phone-based data system, developed at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory with support from the Earth Institute at Columbia University, to target safe groundwater aquifers for installing new wells that are not tainted with arsenic. Using a new needle-sampler (also developed at the Earth Institute), they will also be able to test whether the water is safe during drilling and before a well is actually installed. |
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01/05/05 The Maurice Ewing, owned by the National Science Foundation and operated by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (L-DEO), is the only research vessel devoted to obtaining images of the deep earth for fundamental earth science research. These images provide information about earth’s active processes, such as the recent earthquake in the Indian Ocean and subsequent tsunami. Only by mapping in and under the ocean can improvements be made in our ability to define the risks associated with major earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, landslides and climate change. (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/fac/oma/mmp). |
Gerard Bond, a Gifted and Tenacious Scientist, Passes Away at 65
Mud Records New York History
Written in Dust 
Sea Level More Variable Than Previously Thought
Study Offers Alternative View on How Faults Form in the Ocean's Depths
Ice Age Ocean Circulation Reacted to, did not cause, Climate Change at Glacial Boundaries
Risk Analysis Reports Over Half of World's Population Exposed to One or More Major Natural Hazards
Researching Airborne Metals in Transit Workers’ Bodies
Wax Works
Drought to Persist in North America Due to La Niña
House Science Committee Reviews Administration's Tsunami Warning Plan
LDEO Marine Seismic Research Contributes to Global Tsunami Detection and Warning System 
New Technologies Reduce Exposure of Bangladeshi Villagers to Arsenic in Groundwater