From EARTH Magazine, 11/13/2015  --  For years historians and scientists have tried to understand the ancient marvel of the Roman aqueducts to better understand Rome itself. Now archaeologists are using a new method - the buildup of travertine within the Anio Novus aqueduct - to determine how much water flowed into Rome.

From EARTH Magazine, 10/28/2015  --  In a Utah cave, paleontologists are exploring the fossil record preserved in owl pellets since the Pleistocene glaciation. The fossils in the pellets are giving the scientists a glimpse of how the ecosystems have changed over time both from natural variation and more recent changes brought on by human settlement. 

From EARTH Magazine, 10/21/2015  --  What's the origin of the smartphone you're holding or the tablet from which you are reading this? They're made from minerals such as tin, tantalum and tungsten - minerals that aren't found in many places in the world. One place they are found in relative abundance is the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where these minerals have been fueling militias in an ongoing war for the last 25 years.

From EARTH Magazine, 10/13/2015  --  Typically, mountains get steeper with increasing altitude. However, during the Pleistocene, a geologic epoch with extensive glaciation, the tops of some mountains, like the Alps, were scoured away. This left mountains that were steeper at a lower elevation than they were at a higher elevation.

The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) publishes a monthly eNewsletter titled The Earth Science Week Update.  The Table of Contents is listed below for the Vol. 13, No. 9, September 2015 issue.

From EARTH Magazine, 09/30/2015  --  Water demand in communities nationwide is decreasing due to better efficiency and more effective conservation programs, but also due to demographic shifts that may require a rethink in the way that water usage is modeled. 

From AGI, 09/23/2015  --  Dr. Sharon Mosher, Dean of the Jackson School at the University of Texas at Austin, guest authored Currents #106 displaying the list of skills and competencies considered critical for success of undergraduate geoscience majors.  The data are part of a NSF-funded project, the Summit on the Future of Geoscience Undergraduate Education. 

From EARTH Magazine, 09/17/2015  --  Americans are reminded in September to be prepared for natural hazards during "National Preparedness Month." A major goal of preparedness is to provide early warnings for earthquakes. Earthquake early warning (EEW) is exactly what it says: It is an early warning that shaking is coming and it can typically give a few seconds to a few minutes, at most, of warning. The warnings can be sent off just after an earthquake occurs on a fault, but before the damaging secondary waves are felt. It is not earthquake prediction.

From EARTH Magazine, 09/10/2015  --  In a study covered by EARTH Magazine, geoscientists identified fossils that are helping close the 15-million-year period in the fossil record known as Romer's Gap - the time from when fish showed early evidence of arms and legs until we definitively see  four-legged land animals.

From AGI, 08/25/2015  --  Science teachers and students can go online today to use a new educational resource of the Earth Science Week website, the "Visualizing Earth Systems" page, which features instructive visualizations of Earth science phenomena.