Geomorphology in action

Sometimes, you look at a vast, flat landscape—like the Araripe Plateau in northeastern Brazil—and it feels eternal, immovable. But that calm surface hides a dynamic, slowly unfolding story. Despite its apparent stability for nearly 90 million years, Araripe is anything but static. Beneath the quiet lies a tale of erosion, buried sediments, and the delicate balance between geology and time. Your browser does not support audio playback. This conversation has been AI-generated. This plateau isn’t just scenic; it plays a key role in dividing major river basins—the Jaguaribe, the São Francisco, and the Parnaíba—and offers a window into how dryland landscapes evolve over geological timescales. At the heart of this research are two powerful tools:  cosmogenic nuclide analysis  and  geomorphic metrics . The first involves measuring isotopes like beryllium-10 and aluminum-26—natural cosmic “clocks” formed when rocks are exposed to cosmic particles. These reveal...

Taiwan is better known for its frequent typhoons and active tectonics than for ice (except maybe Mango shaved-ice!). Yet, high up in its central mountains, the story of ancient glaciers is written into the landscape — if you know how to read it. Here is a fascinating conversation tracking the elusive traces of glaciation in one of the world’s most active mountain belts. Your browser does not support audio playback. This conversation has been AI-generated. Scientific evidence reveals that Taiwan's higher elevations, particularly above 3,000 meters, were once shaped by colossal forces of ice. These glaciers left behind telltale signs like U-shaped valleys, moraines, and striated bedrock—classic glacial landforms that paint a vivid picture of an icy past. One of the most intriguing aspects of this story is the role of geothermal heat. In geologically active regions like Taiwan, this underground warmth can significantly influence glacier movement and melting. St...

What happens when two virtual geomorphologists—one rooted in field observations, the other immersed in isotopic data—sit down to talk about Taiwan’s landscape? You get a compelling exchange that spans from stormy days to deep geological time: from typhoon-triggered landslides to the slow uplift of mountains forged over millions of years. This is a distilled version of that conversation, revealing how tools attuned to different timescales help decode the story of one of Earth’s most rapidly evolving landscapes. Your browser does not support audio playback. This deep dive has been AI-generated. In Taiwan, mountains rise fast—and wear down just as fast. It’s one of the few places on Earth where geology plays out across all timescales in real time. Rivers swell with sediment after typhoons, landslides redraw hillsides overnight, and entire ranges grow and erode across millennia. Here, the crust is forced upward by the relentles...

A personal journey through the science of landscapes. The Earth’s surface is in constant motion. From mountain building to river incision, from subtle soil erosion to dramatic landslides—these are the processes that fascinate me, and that I explore in this blog. Geomorphology in Action  is a space where I’ll share not just scientific insights, but also personal reflections on landscapes I’ve studied, walked across, and sometimes struggled to understand. My goal is to bring geomorphology to life—not only through theory and data, but through fieldwork stories, historical perspectives, and the occasional analog photograph capturing a moment in time. Expect to find posts about: The hidden stories etched into river terraces, fault scarps and continental escarpments; How we measure geomorphic rates  with tools like cosmogenic nuclides and thermo-chronology (mais pas que !); Field notes from places like Brazil, Morocco, or Taiwan; My own interpretations and evolving views on how huma...