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Matt Herod

Matt Herod is a Ph.D Candidate in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada. His research focuses on the geochemistry of iodine and the radioactive isotope iodine-129. His work involves characterizing the cycle and sources of 129I in the Canadian Arctic and applying this to long term radioactive waste disposal and the effect of Fukushima fallout. His project includes field work and lab work at the André E. Lalonde 3MV AMS Laboratory. Matt blogs about any topic in geology that interests him, and attempts to make these topics understandable to everyone. Tweets as @GeoHerod.

Modelling the Vadose Zone…What fun!

Modelling the Vadose Zone…What fun!

Sometimes our projects take stage and unexpected turns down pathways that we have no experience in whatsoever. My project on the input of Fukushima iodine-129 into groundwater has taken one of those turns. This is not a bad thing, but it is a time consuming one, as these deviations often are. However, instead of bemoaning …[Read More]

#AESRC2014 Highlights

Well, AESRC is done for another year and with it my role as co-chair of the organizing committee! Thank goodness for that! Hopefully, I can finally get some actual thesis related work done in the coming months…and maybe get back to blogging a bit as well. However, as grateful as I am that AESRC is …[Read More]

Opening of #AESRC2014

Today marks the opening of the 13th annual AESRC conference at uOttawa. The AESRC (Advances in Earth Science Research) is the geology conference in Canada that is organized by and for graduate students only. This year uOttawa is the host and March has been a ridiculously busy month preparing to host AESRC for over 120 …[Read More]

The Most Epic Unboxing Ever

The Most Epic Unboxing Ever

There is a strange phenomenon on the internet called unboxing. Unboxing is when a person receives a new package of something and takes a video or pictures of the process of opening it for the first time and posts it online.  Mostly, from what I can see, people “unbox” electronics or hockey cards or things …[Read More]

Some 2014 Ph.D Goal Setting

For my first post of the new year I thought it might be a good idea to make some resolutions, especially since everyone else is doing it. Part of doing graduate work is setting goals, ignoring those goals until the week before, and then working 22 hour days to achieve them. Ian, (my supervisor), if …[Read More]

Reading Past Sea Ice Coverage from strange red blobs!

Sea ice is an interesting phenomenon, especially to a Canadian. The question around this time of year that always arises in the news is will this be a big sea ice year, will we set a new record low, high (haha) or will it be just average? This is a question that gets a lot …[Read More]

New study shows nitrate leaches to groundwater for over five decades

A new and very interesting study just came out in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the other day titled “Long-term fate of nitrate fertilizer in agricultural soils”. This paper addresses some very interesting and extremely important questions using isotopic geochemical tools. The question central to this paper is what happens …[Read More]

A Year in Review

As of October 1st I have been a part of the now 1 year old EGU blog network for a year. I was honoured to be one of the original three network bloggers and looking back this had been a great year of geology blogging. Since we started the network has now grown from three …[Read More]