Earth and Planetary Sciences – Resources

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Planetary science is the research of the solar systems, the seven planets and the moon on how they came to existence. The research comprises the history, what composes the objects and their sizes. The study incorporates fields such as geochemistry, cosmochemistry, atmospheric science, exoplanety, glaciology, oceanography, hydrology and space physics.

The planetary scientist learns about the outer space environment through the help of the robotic spacecraft in the space. The robotic spacecraft use remote sensing to gather data about the planetary system. The planetary science research is being done extensively by universities and other allied institutions.

What is Earth Science

Geoscience is a branch of planetary science. It is the study of the earth planet and the atmosphere. It researches about the climate, floods, fossils, earthquakes, and rain. Earth planetary science has four majors which are lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere.

Geoscience helps the scientists to understand the earth and its surroundings. The earth scientists interpret the impact of humans doings, help people to be prepared in case of earthquakes and floods and locate mineral resources. Due to the geosciences affecting our daily lives it touches on various subjects. You have to comprehend geography, chronology, physic, chemistry, biology, and mathematics to be an earth scientist. Thus you can be a meteorologist, hydrologist, seismologists or geologists. An earth scientists explore the mountains, caves, and oceans to collect data for research.

The Importance Of Studying Earth And Planetary Science

Climate Change

Humans activities are the cause of climate change. The pollution of the atmosphere and erosion of the ozone layer is causing global warming. The use of coal and oil to generate energy is resulting in negative effects of the earth. Therefore, the earth scientists have to explore and discover new sources of energy. The sources of energy have to be clean. As a result, negative climate change will reduce.

Calamities

There is an increase of calamities on planet earth. Everyday news inform there is some region being affected by floods, hurricanes, landslides, earthquakes and volcano eruption. Scientists’ researches help people be prepared before the calamities occur. Their prevention will guard us from any loss of lives or property.

Mineral Resources and Metals

There is a lot to discover in the earth and outer space. Humans need new minerals to store energy, strong and durable metals to construct structures such as bridges to withstand earthquakes.

Planets Composition

Scientists have to study whether other planets can support human life. All planets are not the same. Most planets do not have an atmosphere and are too far from the Sun. Earth, Venus, and Mars are the only ones with a considerable atmosphere. Only the planet Mars can support human-life like the Earth does.

It is important to research more about the planets and their surroundings. The universities and state institutions studying planetary and earth science should be given get more funds for their development.

When more powerful spacecraft are built we will collect more data and discover more. The data will help scientists to know more about the formation and composition of the planets.

Check our useful sources for Earth and Planetary Sciences subject

• • Sites of interest for Earth and Planetary Sciences
    American Mineralogist Crystal Structure database

    http://rruff.geo.arizona.edu/AMS/amcsd.php

    Birkbeck Students Geological Society

    http://www.birkbeckgeology.org/

    British Geological Survey GeoScenic – the National Archive of Geological Photographs

    http://geoscenic.bgs.ac.uk/asset-bank/action/viewHome

    Palaeontology

    http://bubl.ac.uk/link/linkbrowse.cfm?menuid=6409

    Lists of resources from BUBL

    Earth Sciences

    http://bubl.ac.uk/link/linkbrowse.cfm?menuid=6408

    Lists of resources from BUBL

    Columbia Earthscape

    http://www.earthscape.org/

    An aggregation of resources in the Earth and Environmental Sciences

    Earth Sciences

    http://dmoz.org/Science/Earth_Sciences/

    dmoz open directory project

    EarthChem

    http://www.earthchem.org/

    One-stop shop for geochemical data

    Earth Lab datasite

    http://internt.nhm.ac.uk/jdsml/nature-online/earthlab//

    Earth Observatory

    http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/

    (NASA)

    Earth Pages

    http://www.earth-pages.com/

    a starting point for web exploration in the earth sciences

    Earthquakes in the British Isles

    http://www.earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/

    from the British Geological Society

    EarthRef.org

    http://earthref.org/

    The Web Site for Earth Reference Data and Models

    Earth Science World

    http://www.earthscienceworld.org/

    from the American Geological Institute

    GeoChemistry.com

    http://www.geochemistry.com/

    The Geochemistry Portal

    Geokem -Geochemistry of Igneous Rocks

    http://www.geokem.com/

    An eText of Geochemical Data Interpretation

    Geo-Guide

    http://www.geo-guide.de/

    Subject gateway to scholarly websites in earth sciences, geography & mining

    GeoIndex

    http://www.geoindex.com/geoindex/

    Geo-environmental search engine

    Geological Time Machine

    http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/help/timeform.html

    at UCMP Berkeley. Geological time scales

    Geology.com

    http://geology.com/

    Geoscience Australia

    http://www.ga.gov.au/

    GeoScienceWorld

    http://www.geoscienceworld.org/

    Access to abstracts of geoscience journal articles, maps and images

    Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

    http://www.gees.ac.uk/

    Higher Education Academy:

    InfoMine

    http://infomine.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/search?bioag

    Biological, Agricultural and Medical Resources

    Internet Detective

    http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/detective/

    an online tutorial that will help you develop Internet research skills

    Internet Earth Scientist

    http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/tutorial/earth

    A free teach yourself tutorial on Internet information skills for earth scientists

    Intute Earth Sciences Gateway

    http://www.intute.ac.uk/sciences/earthsciences/

    JISCMail

    http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/

    UK academic email discussion groups

    Marine Geoscience Data System

    http://www.marine-geo.org/

    Paleonet

    http://www.nhm.ac.uk/paleonet/Index.html

    A variety of electronic resources for palaeontologists

    SciCentral

    http://www.scicentral.com/

    Portal to breaking scientific research news

    SciCentral – Earth and Space Sciences

    http://www.scicentral.com/S-02eart.html

    ScienceResearch.com

    http://www.scienceresearch.com/

    Portal that searches online scientific journals and databases. Results give abstracts and sometimes access to full text

    Scirus

    http://www.scirus.com/

    a search engine specially developed to find scientific information
    Scirus journal listings now link through to our e-journal subscriptions – to see these links, click on Search Preferences and choose Birkbeck from the list of Library partners. Then click on the Check Birkbeck Library links from your search results.

    Space.com

    http://www.space.com/earth/

    NA

    Virtual GeoscieOnline course material

    WWW sites for Geoscientists

    http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/template.cfm?name=links

    list maintained by the Geological Society

    WWW Virtual Library – Earth Sciences

    http://vlib.org/EarthScience

    Yahoo! Earth Sciences Section

    http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Earth_Sciences/