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Published on April 10, 2026

Large earthquakes occurring along tectonic faults are known to trigger long sequences of aftershocks in their surroundings. Conversely, they are rarely preceded by precursory signals, with the consequence that these large and often devastating earthquakes are difficult to predict. The physical origin of this strong difference between what is happening before and after large earthquakes remains highly debated nowadays.
A team of ISTerre scientists, both in Grenoble and Chambéry, recently (…)

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Published on April 03, 2026

Almost 20 years after the devastating 2005 Mw 7.6 Kashmir earthquake, the land in northern Pakistan continues to move. Using GNSS (GPS) stations and InSAR satellite imagery, ISTERRE researchers have tracked ongoing slow slips along the Balakot-Bagh fault and the deeper Main Himalayan Thrust (MHT).
These movements are subtle but measurable. In the northwest of the MHT, a large slow slip occurred in the years immediately after the earthquake, while in the southeast of the MHT , a smaller (…)

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Published on March 27, 2026

Focusing on volcanic environments, this study presents the latest research and discussions from a 2025 conference in Rwanda, covering everything from lava flows and volcanic lakes to the health and climate impacts of volcanic particles, while underscoring the value of promoting science in Africa
This work highlights the complexity and interconnectedness of volcanic environments and their societal impacts. It stems from a conference held in September 2025 at the East African Institute for (…)

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Published on March 19, 2026

The magnetic fields of planets and stars are generated by motions in electrically conducting fluids, a process known as the dynamo effect. These motions usually arise from convection, where a lighter material lies beneath a heavier one. In this study, scientists from CNRS Terre & Univers at the Institute of Earth Sciences (ISTerre-OSUG, CNRS / IRD / UGA / Univ. Savoie Mont-Blanc / Univ. Gustave Eiffel) investigate whether magnetic fields can also form in the opposite case, through the (…)

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Published on March 11, 2026

A new approach developed by researchers helps identify how risk prevention and management decisions can influence the extent of damage.
Driven by climate change, governments’ legal obligations to manage foreseeable damages from natural hazards are expanding. Earthquakes are a particularly complex example. In the event of a disaster, establishing responsibility relies on the causal link between the triggering event and the damage incurred. Beyond the classical definition of risk based on (…)

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Published on March 06, 2026

A team of glaciologists, seismologists, and geophysicists from the University of Oslo, ISTerre (CNRS/University of Grenoble Alpes), the Norwegian Polar Institute, NORSAR, the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, IGE (CNRS/University of Grenoble Alpes), and the University Center of Svalbard has attempted to understand why the Kongsvegen glacier, Svalbard, is now advancing at a rate of more than 100 meters per year, compared to just a few meters per year in the early 2010s. Increased surface (…)

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Published on February 23, 2026

Satellite radar interferometry (InSAR) allows measurement of Earth’s surface deformation over time and can detect very small displacements related to processes such as interseismic loading around tectonic faults. Over the past decade, large-scale processing of InSAR data at the continental scale has been enabled by the development of automated processing services such as FLATSIM (FormaTerre LArge-Scale Multi-Temporal Sentinel-1 InterferoMetry), led by a team from ISTerre in collaboration (…)

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Published on February 05, 2026

A recent publication from the ERC Synergy project MEET, hosted by Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA), reports geochemical evidence suggesting that different tectonic regimes may have coexisted on Earth during the Hadean eon (more than 4 billion years ago). By examining the chemistry of ancient zircon crystals (Figure 1) from Australia and South Africa, the researchers identified signatures indicative of both stagnant-lid behavior and mobile-lid processes similar to modern plate tectonics (…)

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Published on January 29, 2026

New in situ X-ray scattering experiments reveal how additives act at the prenucleation stage. The research was carried out on ID15A with very challenging samples. The results could lead to more efficient and environmentally-friendly materials and are out now in Nature Communications
Additives are small amounts of extra molecules mixed into a material as it forms crystals. They can slow down or speed up crystal formation, change the shape or size of the crystals, or even steer the process (…)

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Published on January 23, 2026

Ocean waves play a major role in breaking up sea ice at the edges of ice-covered regions, known as the Marginal Ice Zone (MIZ). This wave-driven fragmentation strongly influences how sea ice evolves, but it is still not well represented in many climate and sea ice models. One reason is the difficulty of observing, in real conditions, how waves interact with ice and how this interaction leads to cracking, bending, and eventual breakup.
To address this challenge, we present a unique dataset (…)

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