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Dragging for Data

WHOI coastal geologist Ilya Buynevich, right, and Lithuanian colleague Albertas Bitinas use ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to map ancient surfaces beneath Baltic Sea dunes. They are looking for “paleosols”—old soils buried under sand. These layers sometimes poke out as blackened ridgelines visible from the surface. More often, Buynevich and Bitinas find them with GPR signals that pierce the earth and reflect the historic patterns of climate change in Europe. (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)