Tectonic plates can be broken into smaller blocks with deformation concentrated at their boundaries. We use remote sensing and field studies to investigate how faulting accommodates deformation at the northern boundary of the Quito-Latacunga microblock (Ecuador & Colombia). We show this boundary is a wide zone characterized by several parallel faults capable of hosting moderate to large (<M7) earthquakes, such as the one in 2022, and which may be influenced by nearby volcanism.

The Camp Century subglacial core stores information about past climates and glacial and interglacial processes in northwestern Greenland. In this study, we investigated the core archive, making large-scale observations using computed tomography (CT) scans and micron-scale observations observing physical and chemical characteristics of individual grains. We find evidence of past ice-free conditions, weathering processes during warmer periods, and past glaciations.

Understanding the electromagnetic properties of plant roots is useful to quantify plant properties and monitor plant physiological responses to changing environmental factors. We investigated the electrical properties of the primary roots of Brachypodium and maize plants during the uptake of fresh and saline water using spectral induced polarization. Our results indicate that salinity tolerance varies with the species and that Maize is more tolerant to salinity than Brachypodium.

In 1966, the U.S. Army drilled through the Greenland Ice Sheet at Camp Century, Greenland; they recovered 3.44 m of frozen material. Here, we decipher the material’s history. Water, flowing during a warm interglacial when the ice sheet melted from northwest Greenland, deposited the upper material which contains fossil plant and insect parts. The lower material, separated by more than a meter of ice with some sediment, is till, deposited by the ice sheet during a prior cold period. 

In this study, we use cosmogenic-sourced ³He to determine the eruption ages of 23 lava flows at Mt Ruapehu, Aotearoa New Zealand, and we show how this method can help overcome challenges associated with traditional dating methods in young lavas. Comparison with other methods demonstrates the accuracy of our data and the method's reliability. The new eruption ages allowed us to identify periods of quasi-simultaneous activity from different volcanic vents during the last 20 000 years.