Notable happenings and media coverage of the group's research:
Earth and Planetary Surface Processes
Department of Earth, Atmospheric & Planetary Sciences, MIT
Paper on self-organization of topography appears in Nature
July 23, 2009
This week's issue of Nature includes a paper by Taylor Perron, Jim Kirchner (WSL/ETH, Switzerland) and Bill Dietrich (Berkeley) that explores the origin of repeating patterns of ridges and valleys in landscapes (right). The issue also includes a News & Views article by Kelin Whipple (Arizona State University) and a "Making the Paper" piece that tells the story behind the research.
Evenly spaced ridges and valleys in Gabilan Mesa, California (Credit: Ionut Iordache)
Research on Mars' polar record of climate change covered in Science
May 16, 2008
A news article in this week's issue of Science reported on the debate over whether layered polar ice deposits on Mars record climate changes forced by variations in the planet's orbit. The article discussed research by Taylor Perron and Peter Huybers (Harvard) showing that currently available images and topography from the north polar region of Mars cannot reliably demonstrate such a link.
Perspective view of the north polar cap of Mars
Paper on Mars oceans featured on the cover of Nature
June 14, 2007
A paper by Taylor Perron, Jerry Mitrovica (U. Toronto), Michael Manga (Berkeley), Isamu Matsuyama (Carnegie Institute), and Mark Richards (Berkeley), which examines evidence that shorelines formed by ancient oceans on Mars were deformed by a shift in the planet's rotation axis, was the first tagline on this week's issue of Nature. Maria Zuber wrote an accompanying News & Views piece. Some media coverage:
- Nature: editor's summary and podcast
- John Tierney's blog at the New York Times
- We had the Yahoo home page for a couple of hours (but were quickly eclipsed by Paris Hilton)
- CNN science page and article
- National Geographic
- CTV: story and TV interview
- Boston Globe
- A great interactive feature by the American Museum of Natural History
- An online exhibit at the UK Science Museum, London
- Front page and story from The Globe and Mail
- Reuters
- Berkeley home page
- Harvard Gazette and home page
- Science News
- And finally, a reminder from the Toronto Star to move on to the next problem...
March 30, 2007
A report in Science covered Taylor's talk at the the Lunar & Planetary Science Conference.
14 June 2007 cover of Nature
Paper on the influence of life on topography featured on the cover of Nature
January 26, 2006
A review paper by Bill Dietrich (Berkeley) and Taylor Perron (
PDF), which explores the influence of biotic processes on Earth's surface topography, was the cover story on this week's issue of Nature. Some media coverage:
- Nature: editor's summary and podcast
- UC Berkeley home page and press release
- Science Daily
- National Science Foundation
August 4, 2007
The Nature paper and an interview with Taylor Perron were featured in an article in Science News.
26 Jan 2006 cover of Nature, showing the interaction of vegetation and wind transport in the Atacama Desert, Chile.
GRL Special Issue on Titan
September 2004
A special issue of Geophysical Research Letters ("Titan: pre-Cassini View") contains a collection of papers that report recent findings on Saturn's moon Titan, and make some predictions about what the Cassini spacecraft will see. This includes a paper by Taylor Perron and Imke de Pater (Berkeley) that explains why Titan is unlikely to support topographic features more than a few kilometers in elevation.
- Special issue table of contents
- UC Berkeley press release
- Astrobiology magazine
Cover of the special issue