Based on massive amounts of geoscientific data measuring the seafloor, an additional 1.2 million square kilometres could be added to Canada’s land area of 9.98 million km².

The world’s oceans in their great vastness support an incredible diversity of aquatic species. But how much do we really know about life beneath the surface? For instance, in the deep waters off the coasts of B.C. and Alaska, a truly unique community of organisms combines to form glass sponge reefs that were once thought to be extinct — a discovery so unexpected that scientists often compare it to finding a herd of dinosaurs still roaming the earth.

The boreal forest of North America developed after the last ice age about 10,000 years ago. We might expect that climate change and human occupation of the territory would put the boreal forest at greater risk of fire. But a recent scientific study involving Martin Girardin, a research scientist from the Laurentian Forestry Centre at the Canadian Forest Service, has found the opposite.

Historically, much of the waste from mining activities has posed long-term liability issues with little or no economic value. But what if mining companies could recover the metals, like gold, and then sell them? The answer, these days, is obvious: they could reduce their environmental impact and, at the same time, contribute to a green economy.

For weeks, Simon Tolszczuk-Leclerc and the Emergency Geomatics Service (EGS) team have been following the spring thaw and river ice breakup. They know exactly what to do, and they’re ready to take immediate action.

On the morning of February 8, 1855, a 5.2-magnitude earthquake near Moncton, New Brunswick, sent rumbles through the Maritimes and Maine. Over a century later, newspaper archives have allowed research scientists to uncover much information about this event.

Global warming provides some of the most dynamic backdrops for climate change scientists at work today. This is especially true for Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) researchers who are on the leading edge, looking to gain a greater understanding of the unsettling effects of climate change.

What do 360-degree virtual reality, the oil and gas sector and threatened boreal caribou have in common? Plenty, it turns out. And especially in Alberta, where work is underway to restore tens of thousands of kilometres of seismic lines — those narrow clear-cut strips found throughout Canada’s boreal forest that were created to help locate oil and natural gas deposits.

Hydrogen — the most abundant element in the world — has the potential to fuel underground mining vehicles, and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) scientists are using its power in new technologies to bring clean energy to the mining industry.

Getting from point A to point B using your smartphone’s web mapping application with the familiar pulsing blue dot is part of our daily lives — thanks to satellite system receivers that use global positioning systems (GPS) to give location and time information. Positioning technology is evolving, and today a typical smartphone can pinpoint a person’s location within a few metres, which is adequate for most personal use. But for a future that includes autonomous driving, precision agriculture and natural disaster early warning systems, centimetre-level accuracy will be crucial.