The youngest, easternmost part of continental Australia formed in an ancient subduction zone by rifting of the crust. This drove melting of the underlying mantle, producing basaltic magmas that intruded the crust. We determined the composition and ages of these intrusives, finding that they predate other types of magmatic intrusion in the area. This indicates progression in magma types from basaltic (mantle origin), through mixed, to granitic (crust recycling) during the growth of this region.

Clay is the prominent barrier material in the geosphere, but diffusion of dissolved species is possible. Diffusion parameters are commonly determined on small samples, disregarding heterogeneity. With positron emission tomography (PET), we monitored heterogeneous transport patterns on larger samples. From the time dependence of the spatial tracer distribution, we derived reliable anisotropic diffusion coefficients, and found indications of preferential transport zones.

Transport processes can be observed with input–output experiments, disregarding the impact of heterogeneities, or they can be modelled, based on structural images. In contrast, positron emission tomography (PET) directly yields the spatio-temporal distribution of tracer concentration. PET benefits from its molecular sensitivity together with a reasonable resolution. We illustrate its use with examples of process monitoring of advection and diffusion processes, and we discuss benefits and limits.

This paper presents the results of two experiments of revegetation techniques in context of water erosion and mountainous Mediterranean climate. We studied the interest of a wood chip amendment, applied on soil surface (mulch), and its interaction with plant development. The use of different plant species and the monitoring on three growing seasons (with climatic variations) allow us to specify the interest of wood chip mulch to improve revegetation especially in erosion and drought conditions.

Here we aim to demonstrate that a dpatial decision support system based on geospatial cyberinfrastructure (GCI) can profitably address many contrasting demands on our landscape concerning agriculture and environment as well as many land degradation problems. In this paper, we discuss methods and results of a special kind of GCI architecture, highly focused on soil and land conservation, developed in the framework of the SOILCONSWEB LIFE+ project.

Here, we present the results of tunable diode laser observations at four quiescent volcanoes: Nea Kameni, Hekla, Krýsuvík, and Vulcano Island, which display a range of fumarolic activity from weak to moderate. This study contributes to better characterising the typical levels of CO2 emission from such feeble volcanic point sources, suggesting that the cumulative contribution from weakly degassing volcanoes may be significant at global scale.