Blanka was scouring the field for evidence, collecting samples and making do with the supplies for a short field trip expeditiously. And then she couldn’t travel back home anymore:
I am stuck at my fieldwork location due to closed borders and social distancing. What to do?
Dear Blanka,
That must be very inconvenient. I do hope that you can manage with the restrictions placed upon your movements in your fieldwork area. I would seek one major benefit of being stuck at a fieldwork location; you’re stuck at a fieldwork location. Ergo, there’s a lot of work to be done in the field. If you can stretch your scientific resources a little you might turn this setback around. Collect double, or triple the samples. Rewalk some of your sections, and make them longer. Cross that part of the map you kinda know has the same characteristics as the juxtaposed sections, and you avoided only due to time concerns; what’s stopping you now? Drill down some additional dozens of holes for your paleomag lab buddies. Hack off, with all the force you can muster, some of those nicely metamorphosed sediments for your thermochron lab buddies. Don’t forget to acquire some highly strained, schisty or mylonitic samples for your laser ablation lab buddies. Prop that shovel in those silty layers for your diatom- and foram-counting, biochem lab buddies. Then haul that shovel over to some neotectonic fault lineaments to dig some trenches for you paleoseis buddies. Catalogue those nicely cyclic strata for your paleostrat lab buddies. Even though I may not be one to rave about papers with an abundance of co-authors, I imagine you should be able to prepare one of the multiest-disciplinary papers. And that while you’ve acquired all of the samples by your lonesome. Consider the exclamation mark you’ll put on the map at your study region! It’s a citation machine ready to get rambling. Only one thing left to do; get one of those shipping containers to transport those tons (yes, double meaning intended) of samples to your labs. No time to waste.
Yours truly,
The Sassy Scientist
PS: This post was written to illustrate the potential of scientific dexterity in times of narrow-minded lockdown.
