GeoSphere

GeoPoll # 1 – What does a geology education need?

Matt Herod May 5, 2014

I’d like to inaugurate a new series of posts, that will pop up on a semi-regular basis, namely, whenever I feel like it. Since day 1 of this blog, even way back in my pre-EGU days, I have tried to encourage participation from readers. To date, the only way for you to engage with me is to comment. However, in reality, not that many people are so moved that they feel like responding directly. Certainly, the proportion of readers to commenters is easily around 100:1, if not more when you take comments from family members out (haha, kidding).

Picard Engage - IT's TIME TO ENGAGE!

Therefore, to try and encourage involvement and hopefully even spur some discussion from time to time I’ll be posting a poll every so often. The plan is that I’ll write the question. It could be serious or humorous or even a bit of both. Question and answer suggestions are very welcome. I’ll also post a variety of answers that ideally will cover a range of opinions. Hopefully, with these informal opinion polls we can generate some interesting discussions and see how people feel about issues that geologists care about. The first test of the poll system a few weeks ago in my post about vadose zone modelling generated over 30 responses, so I am going to call that a success and continue polling.

This weeks poll to kick things off concerns a topic that every geoscientist should have an opinion on. Namely, what key items are necessary for a good geology education? My personal undergrad geology experience included almost all of these things and certainly lots of number 3. However, that does not mean they are truly integral to producing a geologist. Indeed, what could be dropped from a geoscience education without compromising the quality of education and what could not?

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Just a minor note, click the “view results” button on the poll to see how everyone is voting, and if you would like to add a response you can do so in the “other” box or in the comment section to start some more in depth discussion on the topic.

Happy opining!

Matt

Modelling the Vadose Zone…What fun!

Matt Herod April 24, 2014

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 my new lot in life as modeller of the unsaturated (vadose) zone, I thought I’d share a bit of what I’m doing. By the way, if any of you reading this have any experience modelling the vadose zone I’d love to talk in greater detail with you.

Modelling is an interesting field. The basic idea behind modelling is to try and make a computer program predict what is happening in reality by putting in a bunch of experimental or estimated parameters in and letting the model work through calculations that predict what would happen in nature. This is terrific since it is impossible for me to actually observe what is happening in the vadose zone of my field site. Sure I can do a bunch of experiments to try and empirically measure what is happening over time in the field. However, the cost and time is simply too prohibitive and there is no guarantee that I could even sample in such a way as to get good data back. This is the sort of circumstance where the model really comes into its own.

Models are great, but it is important to remember they do not provide the final answer. It doesn’t matter what is being modelled, the real world is orders of magnitude more complex than the model. Therefore, drawing conclusions based solely on the results of modelling is risky and certainly provides and incomplete picture of reality. Furthermore, models provide such pretty pictures and simple explanations for complex phenomena that it is easy/tempting to fall into the trap of over concluding from the model results. Therefore, when using a model to try to simulate reality is it very important to take the conclusions and results with a grain of salt whether you are the modeller, reviewer or reader.

A picture from my model showing 129I transport in grams. The height of the column is proportional to depth.

The beautiful column of blue and green above shows a very preliminary attempt by me to model the transport of iodine-129 through the vadose (unsaturated) zone of an aquifer over a period of time in 2011. The way the model works is I input a bunch of data (educated or even not so educated guesses) on the soil conditions such as porosity, hydraulic conductivity, moisture content and much more. Then I add in the amount of rain that fell on my study area that has a known concentration of iodine. I then let the model run and watch the 129I infiltrate into the ground. When it gets to the bottom that means it has reached the water table. I can then look through the dataset that the model produces and see the number of grams of 129I that have travelled through the vadose zone and how long it took for them to do so.

A graph of the model output showing concentration with depth. Each line represents a different snapshot in time. e.g. 7 represents 7 days.

The next step once the model produces a scarily large table of numbers is to try and make some sense of what happened. The blue-green thing is nice, but it doesn’t give a whole lot of information about what is happening over time at different depths. With this table I can then make graphs showing the movement of my iodine over time into the vadose zone. As you can see the “peak” migrates downwards pretty rapidly and within just over a month has moved 7 metres! Of course, this result makes us all think that iodine infiltrates into groundwater really rapidly. The actual truth is not nearly so black and white however. In fact, if I tweak the parameter that controls how iodine sticks to soil I can prevent it from ever getting past the ground surface. This is why all models should be taken with several grains of salt. The input control the outputs, however, a small change in the input can result in a radically different output. Which is the truth??? Only observation and more modelling can tell us!

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#AESRC2014 Highlights

Matt Herod April 8, 2014

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 done, I have to say that it was a fantastic conference this year with a host of terrific talks from keynotes and grad students alike.

As I mentioned in my conference opening post AESRC is the only conference in Ontario, maybe Canada for all I know, that is organized by and for graduate students. The entire organizing committee is composed of graduate students and all of the talks, with the exception of keynotes, are given by graduate students. AESRC is meant to be a place where new and experienced grads alike can talk about their work in a less nerve-racking environment. We encourage in progress research or research that does not even have results yet. The idea is that every graduate student can feel comfortable, practice presenting to an educated audience and hopefully enjoy themselves and meet their colleagues from across the province.

This AESRC was by far the most well attended in the past 10 years, with over 100 delegates attending from 8 different universities. The conference kicked off with the Icebreaker at a campus pub, where we all got meet each other or reconnect in many cases, while watching hockey and drinking beer. A nice relaxing end to the week and prelude to the science of the weekend. On a personal note, it is always worth attending the Icebreaker at every conference I have been to. More often than not there is free food and drink, but it is a great opportunity to meet new people, spot that keynote you want to talk with and introduce yourself. I try to make of point of meeting at least one new person at every Icebreaker I go to.

Saturday started with some great talk on Environmental Geoscience (my session) and Sedimentology and Petroleum Geology. We had two keynote speakers on Saturday: Paul Mackay from the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists and Dr. Jack Cornett from uOttawa. The video of Jack’s talk is below.

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To summarize, in case you didn’t watch the entire video, Jack discusses the incredible range of radionuclides that are found naturally occurring on Earth and the vast range of geologic problems these nuclides can be applied to. He also talks about how we can use accelerator mass spectrometry to measure these radionuclides at incredibly low levels, which is how we are able to apply them to geologic questions. To illustrate this point Jack discussed the case study of chlorine-36 in the Cigar Lake uranium mine in Saskatchewan, Canada.

Saturday concluded with a fantastic dinner at the nearby National Arts Centre and another terrific keynote by Dr. Becky Rogala on the challenges of extracting bitumen from the oil sands and the importance of having an accurate understanding of the sedimentology to ensure maximum efficiency of SAGD recovery. There was also quite a bit of beer.

Sunday started nice and early with the Geophysics session as well as the Paleontology and Tectonics sessions as well. Our keynote for the geophysics session was Dr. Glenn Milne from uOttawa, who was an author on the most recent IPCC report and is an expert on sea level change.

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We also had another great keynote from uOttawa in the tectonics session in Dr. Jon O’Neil. The video of his talk on the oldest rocks on Earth (4.4 billion years old) is coming soon! That pretty much wraps up AESRC2014! It was a great weekend, there was lots of great science and I am really glad its over. I likely won’t be around for next year’s AESRC at Queens University (fingers crossed), however, I am sure it will be great.

Yours truly giving his talk on iodine-129 fallout from Fukushima. (Photo: Viktor Terlaky)

Opening of #AESRC2014

Matt Herod March 28, 2014

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 delegates including faculty from uOttawa and other Canadian geology departments as well as industry representatives.

This year’s AESRC marks a number of significant milestones for the conference and we hope it will be the best ever. This will be the biggest AESRC ever with close to 50 oral presentations and 30 posters by graduate students from all over Ontario and Quebec. This is also the first time AESRC has had to run concurrent session rooms as well. One of the best things about AESRC is that it allows grad students a somewhat lower stress place to present research in progress to their peers without fear of being embarrassed at a large international conference where most talks are nearly ready for or already have been published. AESRC is considered and excellent place to present work that is in varying stages of completion from early conception and looking for suggestions and constructive feedback to practicing a talk for an upcoming Goldschmidt or AGU. This philosophy makes AESRC unique as far as I know and it is a truly valuable and rewarding experience to be a part of (plus there is a lot of prize money up for grabs)!

We are also fortunate enough to have several excellent keynotes whose talks will be videotaped and posted here and on the AESRC website for all to enjoy. I will also be live tweeting AESRC under the hashtag #AESRC2014 and posting a few blog posts here as well briefly summarizing some of the terrific science that Canadian geology grad students are working on.

One thing I should also mention is that AESRC would not be possible without the generosity of the Canadian geology community, the department hosting and the host university. Numerous times all I had to do was say the words “grad student run conference” to get university departments to lower fees and help facilitate this weekend. There are also perennial AESRC sponsors that year after year contribute money to help the local organizing committee put on a fantastic conference and allow us to charge only a nominal registration fee.

Stay tuned for lots more to come!

Matt