Dr Kaja Fenn (she/her)

My wonderful friend @geologyjohnson.bsky.social is working on early life and some controversial 2.1 billion years old fossils. Check out this article in Scientific American

www.scientificamerican.com/article/comp...

It's a small grant but it is indeed very exciting!

So we have a lot of fieldwork planned in Aotearoa NZ and Tasmania this coming winter & spring 🌏 as well as the 11th IAG International Conference on Geomorphology

Watch this space....

#SouthernDustscapes #Palaeoclimate #NewZealand #Tasmania #Geochronology

We can tackle this gap by studying past dust levels and deposits (loess). But to date Southern Hemisphere has been under-studied, with a handful of sites with continuous record in comparison to 100 high-resolution terrestrial sites in Northern Hemisphere.

Dust plays a crucial role in the Earth system. Its impacts include:
•Climate—heating/cooling the atmosphere
•Ecosystems—fertilising land & oceans, driving CO₂ uptake
•Health—contributing to respiratory & cardiovascular disease
But we still lack data on how much dust is in the atmosphere at any time.

Together with @lydiamackenzie.bsky.social @University of Tasmania, Peter Almond @Lincoln University, Callum Rees & Alan Palmer @Massey University we will investigate aeolian deposits in New Zealand and Tasmania, developing chronologies +environmental reconstructions to trace Quaternary dusty history

In another exciting news I am kicking off a new project generously supported by the @royalsociety.org 🙏

The title tells you the whole story: “SOUTHERN DUSTSCAPES – Reconciling scales of past dust fluxes and their impact on climate in the Southern Hemisphere.”

#LoessIsMore #Dust #Quaternary

Line graph time series of Svalbard sea ice area for 2025 compared to 2012 2020, and the 1981-2010 average with percentiles shown. There is a large seasonal cycle.

Here is a closer look at the record low #Arctic sea ice around Svalbard currently. This coincides with the record warmth as well (check out my earlier post). Earlier last week temperatures in parts of Svalbard were more similar to July than October.

Graphic produced by cryo.met.no/en/sea-ice-i...

Oh caveat 🫂

Headline from an article in Nature this week that states "Prizes must recognize machine contributions to discovery. The future of science will be written by humans and machines together. Awards should reflect that reality."

Lol the Nobels can't even acknowledge women's contribution to discovery. But sure let's acknowledge The Machines.

River Wye pollution prompts UK's largest environmental lawsuit Livestock and water companies are accused of “extensive” pollution in the Wye, Lugg and Usk rivers.

Campaigners + local businesses claim phosphates + nitrates from the collective poo of as many as 23million chickens packed into the Wye catchment from a growing number of intensive chicken farms are driving algal blooms, harming fish + wildlife.
🧵 1/
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Sheesh - a tsunami big enough to push coral boulders 100s of m inland in the British Virgin Islands around the year 1400, likely sourced from an earthquake on the Puerto Rico Trench.

Carbon offsets fail to cut global heating due to ‘intractable’ systemic problems, study says Analysis of 25 years of evidence shows most schemes are poor quality and fail to lower emissions

News that shocks no one: Carbon offsets do nothing for climate.

This supports chronological information derived from nearby Mumba Rockshelter, Lake Eyasi, Nasera Rock-shelter, and Enkapune Ya Muto Rockshelter in southern Kenya.

The new dates provisionally bracket the entire Middle Stone Age (MSA) to Later Stone Age (LSA) transition at Olduvai between roughly 63,000 years ago (the provisional age for the youngest MSA tools in the underlying Ndutu Beds) and 34,000 years ago (the oldest LSA tools in the Naisiusiu Beds).

Dating the Naisiusiu beds has historically been challenging due to scarce datable material. Our results now refine the Naisiusiu beds to:
• Lower Unit by 14C: 49,728±1378 cal year BP
• Middle Unit (hosting the LSA assemblage) by OSL 34.2±2.8 - 24.0±2.0 ka
• Upper Unit by OSL: 24.0±2.0 - 19.6±1.6 ka

📣Our new paper presents new a high-resolution luminescence and radiocarbon chronology for the Naisiusiu Beds at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. This site is crucial for understanding the cultural and biological evolution of Homo sapiens in the Late Pleistocene.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This is a beautiful image

🧩 Highlights:
• First detailed geological sequence for Dalarik-1 Cave
• New age constraints on key volcanic + sedimentary units
• Links between volcanic history and archaeological preservation in the southern Caucasus

Check out our new paper 👇 in Quaternary Science Reviews.
It explores the geological context of Dalarik-1 Cave (Armenia) — refining how we understand early human activity in the Aragats Volcanic Province.
By the wider @humendylab.bsky.social team

📄 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

It’s been a hectic summer and start to the academic year — full of exciting developments that I haven’t had a chance to share yet.

Over the next week I’ll be sharing a few updates — some new papers, additions to the team, a new role, and a brand-new project 👀

Stay tuned — lots of news coming soon!

Opportunities matching 'earth' Search 4 Careers available at University of Calgary.

🚨FOUR tenure track positions in my dept @ucalgary.bsky.social @ucalgaryscience.bsky.social in applied & computational geophysics, subsurface geochemistry, sedimentary geology, and sustainable soil science. careers.ucalgary.ca/search/jobs?...

(please reskeet widely!) #academicsky 🧪⚒️🇨🇦

Powerpoint slides from a presentation entitled “Unleashing the Silent Majority to Beat Bikelash”, which feature photographs of urban transformation from cities around the world.

The global phenomenon of “bikelash” has become one of the biggest barriers to implementing interventions that make our streets more liveable, accessible and sustainable. So how do we best manage it as advocates for change? Here are eight strategies we recently presented at the Velo-city Conference.🧵

always is👍

Our new study lead produced enhanced paleo‑geomorphological mapping of the Ararat Depression to decode how shifting landforms shaped human movement and settlement in the Late Pleistocene
doi.org/10.1016/j.qu...

@humendylab.bsky.social @arikmalinsky-b.bsky.social @yannismicrooikon.bsky.social

Unravelling the formation processes and depositional histories of the Middle Palaeolithic Ararat-1 Cave, Armenia: A multiscalar and multiproxy geoarchaeological approach The sedimentary sequence of Ararat-1 Cave encapsulates an intricate depositional archive (Marine Isotope Stage 3), crucial for our understanding of th…

Unravelling the formation processes and depositional histories of the Middle Palaeolithic Ararat-1 Cave, Armenia: A multiscalar and multiproxy geoarchaeological approach www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Graphs showing 25 years of budgets for the National Institute of Health, NASA, and the NSF. In all cases, the proposed budget for next year is far, far below any year of the previous quarter century.

There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd.
It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.

‘The West Tofts handaxe is a small British Acheulean biface well known for its cortical preservation of a fossilised bivalve shell’
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Great to attend the Mersey Forest plan launch yesterday at the Museum of Liverpool

The Alpine glaciers are lacking snow! ❄️🥵

~2 m of snow less than average on Austrian glaciers! 📈

The difference with last year (a negative annual balance though) is striking!

Half last year accumulation in this snow pit at Hallstätter Glacier (Dachstein) 👇

📷 Giulia Bertolotti / IG