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Kimberlite Kimberlites are volcanic eruptions that start deep inside Earth’s mantle, at depths of hundreds of kilometers. At that depth, carbon dioxide may not easily fit into the available minerals, and might instead sit as a (supercritical) fluid, in-between larger mineral crystals.
Seasonality On the shoreline of the Lena River, north of Yakutsk, Russia, sits this phenomenal feature. These 100-meter high rock towers are the Lena Pillars, produced by a combination of extreme freeze/thaw processes and erosion of the remnants.
Volcanic ash burp on the Siberian snows One of the more active regions of the ring of fire that marks the edge of the Pacific ocean where it is subducting beneath other plates is the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's frosty Far East. The one that has been sprinkled with its own products in the form of dark grey ashfall is called Klyuchevskoy, a very active smoker indeed. The lava that exploded out of the vent and fragmented into dust formed as the mantle melted due to the rising water baked out of minerals in the subducting slab, some 150km deep in the entrails of the Earth. Several smoking peaks are visible in the photo giving us an idea of their density in this region, where some sort of crustal weakness such as a fault is allowing the magma to rise to the surface. Our past posts on this Siberian volcano: http://bit.ly/1eDdqgz, http://bit.ly/1eDdqgz and http://bit.ly/1Dd8sCG, http://on.fb.me/1Dd74zS Loz
A quick drone exploration of Remote Russian landscapes. Sites included: "Dombay, North Osetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Altay, Kola Peninsula, lake Baikal, Karelia"
During the Siberian Winter, the surface of Lake Baikal freezes completely shut, and stress building up in the ice causes it to crack. These cracks cross cut the ice, and re-form every year. This 360 degree Drone Video lets you fly over the landscape and spin around, seeing this amazing site all over the frozen surface.
Travel to the snowy Caucasus mountains of the nation of Georgia along with a group of snowboarders in this video. They're truly surrounded by amazing landscapes the whole way down.
An exploration of landscapes in Europe viewed from above. Original caption:
""Serenity" is a non-narrative short drone film, produced with the unique camera angle, facing straight down at -90º at the wonderful texture of earth landscapes.Because of this and the subjects it captures, you can watch this film both horizontally or vertically. Here is a horizontal version, but you can see the vertical one, on my Instagram or IGTV.
The film itself is a 3 minutes blend of total tranquility and calmness that allows you to escape reality for just a short while. Shot in different places on earth such as Iceland, Norway, Spain, Portugal, Belarus and Russia, it shows the unique and gorgeous landscape at an unusual angle. So bring up the volume or put on headphones and immerse in it."
Carnivorous plant fossil In an amber mine near the Russian city of Kaliningrad, scientists from the German University of Göttingen found the world’s oldest example of a carnivorous plant set in amber.
Biking at the northern tip of European Russia. Lovely rocky, forested landscapes to travel through, with the occasional road or old structure
Mönkh Saridag, the highest peak in the Sayan Mountains at 3,941m. It is situated on the international border between Mongolia and Russia.
Could not even guess what the narrator says on this (I think it's Russian), but hey, if someone is going to film a short wedding video on a large lava flow and put it online to share...I might just do that. If I'm right on the language/accent maybe this is Kamchatka?
Salt mine of many hues When sea evaporate, often time and again as climate oscillates, very thick zones of salt can result, such as the Permian era (roughly 300-250 million years ago) Zechstein that underlies much of Europe. Near the type locality for the era near around the Russian city of Perm is an abandoned salt mine, where the evaporating waters were rich in potassium as well as sodium, and a mixture of evaporite minerals were deposited. These have created amazing swirls and psychedelic patterns om the tunnels, made of mixed halite (rock salt) and the potassium magnesium chloride mineral carnallite.
Wave clouds shimmering off the Kuriles Dropping southwards down the sea of Okhotsk from Russia's Kamchatka peninsula towards Japan, these islands are a volcanic arc born of the subduction of the Pacific oceanic plate under the Okhotsk micro plate. Stretching some 1300km along the rim of fire this line of 56 stratovolcanic peak also divides ocean from sea. There are a hundred or so volcanoes in the chain, 40 of which are very active. The amazing image snapped by NASA's AQUA satellite shows how the chain affects air masses. The winds of the building storm system are leaping over the peaks, and forming turbulent patches of air behind the isles, creating the pattern of wave clouds. Loz Image credit: NASA https://go.nasa.gov/31lKF47
Sphalerite Dal'negorsk, Primorskiy Kray, Russia, Asia
Siberian Heat Wave This is a plot of average global surface temperatures for the first 5 months of 2020 – over 75% of the Earth’s surface was above its long-term average temperature, and this time period has been the warmest January-May that humans have recorded. Notice the gigantic red spot over Siberia? Right now, Siberia is experiencing some of the warmest conditions that area has seen since records began, building on the temperature extremes from earlier this year.
