March | 2015 | Geography, geology and environment at Brighton

Archaeology – my career is in ruins

This year’s Sicily trip introduced two new Archaeology days for the first time. As part of the activities, we visited two sites, Aci Castello which is a rather impressive Norman Castle built above a wave cut platform and Giardini Naxos which is the site of the earliest Greek settlement on the island. The trip to Aci…

Madonna and Mount Etna

Today we investigated vegetation succession on Mount Etna by stopping at four different lava flows of known ages and sampling the plants found there. The first stop was Madonna di Monpilleri. It was the oldest lava we would work on, dating from 1669. The site supported many different plant species with strange names (Soapwort, Broom,…

A day of two halves

Today consisted of using various different methods to estimate river water discharge. The group was split into two after Ray Ward had given the morning lecture. One set of students with Ray and another with myself (Rob). Ray’s group were using 3 different methods which included, the velocity float method using our specially calibrated flotation…

Diary of a volcano visit. Day 2, sampling the Sicilian coastline

Today one of our groups went to four sites along the Sicilian coastline to assess whether these sites were suitable for the award of a Blue Flag. We were lucky to see some beautiful sunshine on the coast, but the sea was the roughest it’s been in recent years. This made conditions challenging for water quality sampling….

Diary of a volcano visit. Day 1, heading through the clouds

After our stirring morning lecture we had a lunch stop, scoffing down arancini and very nice coffee, fueling up for the afternoons activities! The first stop for the afternoon took us further up Etna and into the snow line. This as you can imagine, led to numerous snow balls being lobbed between students (and staff…)….

Diary of a volcano visit. Day 1

Today we made our first visit to the second most active volcano on the planet, Etna. We met our group leader, Boris Bencke, and then ventured to our first site: a 1992 lava flow. Boris talked to us about marvels of mumma Etna and how its behaviour has been changing as of late to more…

Getting ready for our volcano visit

Hope everyone is packing away in anticipation for the trip tomorrow! The weather forecast suggested it will be varied, so make sure you pack a good mixture of clothing. Layers is the key to keeping warm and are also easy to put on and take off when you’re trekking up and down Etna! Don’t forget that for…

Geography and environment at Brighton

Geography and environment students tell us what they think about their course

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