Taliban officials have a plan to turn one of the country’s most remote corners into a global trade hub by linking the Afghan heartland with China.

Below Mount Jefferson and McKenzie Pass is a massive storehouse of water three times the size of Lake Mead, say Oregon researchers.

Rivers began pumping weathered material into the sea about a billion years after Earth formed, suggesting continents may have gotten an early start.

Hubbard, who first joined the USGS as a postdoc, is part of the agency’s Earth Mapping Resource Initiative (Earth MRI).