What is better than archaeology? How about space archaeology. More properly known as remote sensing by satellite, the use of satellite imagery has set the field or archaeology alight. And professor of anthropology Sarah Parcak is one of its most enthusiastic torch-bearers. In a book that overflows with wonder, honesty, and hope, she takes the reader on a grand tour of remote sensing, showing how it is transforming this discipline.
satellites
Book review – The Tectonic Plates are Moving!
What has plate tectonics ever done for us? Not having studied geology, I have a basic understanding of the movement of earth’s continents, but this book made me appreciate just how much of current geology it underpins. Marine geophysicist Roy Livermore, who retired from the British Antarctic Survey in 2006 after a 20-year career, convincingly shows here that the discovery and acceptance of plate tectonics was a turning point in geology, on par with Darwin’s formulation of evolution by natural selection. To paraphrase evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky: nothing in geology makes sense except in the light of plate tectonics.
Book review – Brave New Arctic: The Untold Story of the Melting North
You might think that with the constant presence of the subject of climate change in news stories there isn’t much left to tell. But just because a certain sense of climate-change-fatigue might have set in (which is worrying in itself), climate change has not stopped. In Brave New Arctic, geography professor Mark C. Serreze gives an eye-witness account of how the Arctic is rapidly changing, based on his more than 35 years of personal involvement. And as he shows, there certainly are stories left to tell.
The Inquisitive Biologist