Earth Observatory of Singapore

The Mentawai Gap — Tsunami Earthquake Risk Assessment (MEGA-TERA) project is a scientific expedition that aims to investigate the cause of tsunamis in the seismically active zone west of Siberut Island, near Sumatra.

Asia and the Pacific are most at risk from natural disasters, according to a report from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. More than 90 million people worldwide were affected by natural disasters in 2015. Asia is the world’s most disaster-prone continent, with 152 out of the 346 reported disasters worldwide. This isn’t surprising, given that it is both geologically active and the most populous region on Earth. In the last few decades, earthquakes,...

As the Asian Monsoon migrates north-eastward off the Bay of Bengal, Myanmar is one of the first places the rains make landfall. It is an ideal place to conduct research that will lead to a better understanding of the moisture trajectory of the monsoons from the past and how they may look in the future. The photographs in this series illustrate the journey that scientists from The Earth Observatory of Singapore and their Myanmar colleagues took as they visited thirteen caves in Kalaw and Taungyyi townships to collect samples that will...

"One of the things that first made me interested in geology was hearing about the number of places that geologists travel to for work." Tim Dawson, a Senior Engineering Geologist at California Geological Survey, reflects on the perks of being a geologist, and describes his most recent adventure in the trenches in northern Myanmar and Thailand during an earthquake geology...