Scientists living on the edge!

Erwane Amice and Laurent Chauvaud, photographers and divers at the CNRS, discover the seabed near the French Antarctic base of Dumont d'Urville. They photograph the underwater polar fauna and flora which, in contrast to the surface, are very rich. In particular, they study scallops and date the marks on the surface of their shell, the chemical contents of the shell which are used as tracers to obtain information about sea water (salinity, temperature).

Mount Merapi is one of the permanently active volcanos on the island of Java, with a dense population living and working on its very fertile slopes. Every year since 1977, French specialists under the direction of Haroun Tazieff have come to sound the volcano and monitor changes.

On Lake Titicaca, between Bolivia and Peru, the Pachamama mission researchers study the changes and transformations of pollutants in order to better hinder their mutations and reduce their poisonous impact on the environment. They focused on methylmercury, the most toxic form of mercury. It poisons molluscs and small animals that feed on the biofilms present on the totora (reeds that have been exploited for centuries by local populations), then their predators, thus infecting every link in the…

For the International Polar Year, the CNRS and the French Polar Institute, Paul-Emile Victor (IPEV) have joined forces to produce podcasts on polar research. Extreme Expeditions? by Yves Frenot, ecologist at the CNRS Module 4: Wintering an unforgettable experience?

For the International Polar Year, the CNRS and the French Polar Institute, Paul-Emile Victor (IPEV) have joined forces to produce podcasts on polar research. Is Wildlife endangered? by Pierre Jouventin, ecologist at the CNRS -Module 6: What dangers for Researchers in Antarctica?

In September 1998, a group of fifty or so researchers and technicians from France and China met together in Gonghe, a tiny hamlet to the north of the Tibetan highlands, to carry out one of the most extensive seismological studies ever organized in China, the observation of a 1000-km long section of the earth's crust.