Q&As

Nature Geoscience spoke with Daniel Andrade (Instituto Geofísico, Escuela Politécnica Nacional, Ecuador), Lucia Capra (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico), Kyoko Kataoka (Niigata University, Japan), and Anke Zernack (Massey University, New Zealand) about lahars — volcanic mud and debris flows — and the hazards they pose.

Nature Geoscience spoke with Jonatan Lassa, a scientist working on risk and disaster governance at Earth Sciences New Zealand; Carina Fearnley, an interdisciplinary scientist researching natural hazards and warning systems at University College London (UK); and Jeroen Warner, a social scientist studying disaster governance from Wageningen University (Netherlands), about how institutions, communities, and decision-making processes shape the effectiveness of natural hazard management and disaster mitigation.

Nature Geoscience spoke with Susanne M. Straub, an igneous geochemist at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory; Susan Q. Lang, a chemical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; and Yige Zhang, a palaeoceanographer at the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, about science supported by deep ocean drilling and the impact of the recent decommissioning the JOIDES Resolution drilling vessel run by the International Ocean Discovery Program.

Nature Geoscience spoke with Dr Mariana Clare, a machine learning scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts; Prof. Haifeng Qian, an environmental scientist at Zhejiang University of Technology; and Dr Theresa Sawi, a seismologist at the US Geological Survey, about using artificial intelligence (AI) in their research and in geoscience generally.

Nature Geoscience spoke with Samantha Hansen, a geophysicist at the University of Alabama and Sebastian Rost, a global seismologist at the University of Leeds about the ultralow velocity zones in the lowermost mantle.

China has made progress in improving air quality, but current levels of air pollution still have great health impacts. Dr Qiang Zhang, an atmospheric chemist at Tsinghua University, speaks to Nature Geoscience about air pollution control in China, and the challenges and opportunities faced under global environmental change.

India is currently one of the most polluted regions in the world. Dr Chandra Venkataraman, an expert in climate change and air pollution at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, speaks to Nature Geoscience about challenges and opportunities facing air pollution control in India.

The United States currently has modest levels of air pollution after decades of clean air actions. Dr Colette Heald, an atmospheric chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, speaks to Nature Geoscience about air pollution control in the US, and the challenges and opportunities faced under global environmental change.

Nature Geoscience spoke with Dr Shlomit Sharoni, an ocean biogeochemist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Dr Kelly Andersen, a tropical ecologist at Nanyang Technological University about the interplay between phosphorous cycling and the ecosystems they study.

Nature Geoscience spoke with Dr Qingyang Hu, a high-pressure mineralogist at HPSTAR; Prof. Suzan van der Lee, a geophysicist at Northwestern University; and Prof. Katherine Kelley, a geochemist at the University of Rhode Island about their work and what the future of deep-water research might bring.

We chat with Vincent Ialenti, a University of Southern California Berggruen Fellow, about thinking on geological timescales. Ialenti’s recent book, Deep Time Reckoning (MIT Press, 2020), chronicles his anthropological work on the institution responsible for the long-term safety of a Finnish nuclear waste repository.