Backstory

Daniel Rothman and colleagues imaged underground water and made friends with a hatchet-wielding prisoner during their attempt to understand the mechanics of stream development.

Robin Fergason and colleagues sent a rover to Meridiani Planum to better understand the history of the red planet.

Timm John and colleagues soaked up the beauty, and rain, of Western Norway while attempting to unlock the secrets of deep earthquakes.

Russell Schnell and colleagues trawled through meteorological datasets to solve the mystery of the winter ozone anomalies in Wyoming.

Jessica Conroy and colleagues braved mud and rain and got nipped by sea lions in an attempt to unravel the record of tropical Pacific climate change.

Yoshihiro Furukawa and colleagues stuck to their guns in an attempt to recreate life on the early Earth.

Deep-sea drilling was the order of the day for Peter Clift and colleagues on their expedition to the South China Sea.

Stephen Rintoul and an international team of oceanographers headed south on the Australian icebreaker, Aurora Australis, to discover how Southern Ocean currents influence climate and biodiversity.

Nathalie Goodkin and colleagues dug deep into coral geochemistry and wrestled with waves for a 200-year record of the North Atlantic Oscillation.

Aaron Berger and colleagues leapt out of helicopters in the snow and fog in their quest to understand the effects of glacial erosion on mountain formation.

William Bowman and colleagues braved beverages of pig fat and vodka in their attempt to understand the impact of long-term nitrogen deposition on Slovakian soils.

Catherine McCammon and colleagues surmounted experimental obstacles at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in France to unlock the secrets of iron in the Earth's lower mantle.

Nicole Posth and colleagues spent a month touring South African rock formations in their quest to understand the origin of ancient iron and silicate layers.

Corey Archer and colleagues sailed into the wilds of Sweden and the Amazon to collect river water and the trace metal isotopes it carried.

Research opportunities can present themselves at the most unexpected times. When Ingrid Ukstins Peate and Scott Bryan went on a conference field trip in China, they didn't expect to steer previous geological interpretations in a new direction.

Chien-Lu Ping and his colleagues got their plane stuck in a runway of melting seasonal frost during their survey of North American soil organic carbon pools.

A trip to the British Antarctic Survey herbarium in Cambridge marked the beginning of a journey into the Earth's ultraviolet-B history for Barry Lomax and colleagues.

Balancing their instruments on precarious cliff faces and braving intense media and public attention, Thierry Oppikofer and colleagues monitored the evolution of a rockslide along the eastern flank of the Eiger peak in the Swiss Alps.

Lenny Winkel and colleagues found that strong arm muscles can be required to test South Sumatran groundwater samples for arsenic content.

Dan Santamaria Tovar, along with advisor Jamie Shulmeister and colleagues, hiked, kayaked and mountain-biked their way through dense New Zealand rainforest in search of the origins of the Waiho Loop moraine.