Last night, the Society of Spanish Researchers in the UK, SRUK, hosted an event discussing the past, present and future of scientific publishing (event details). One thing that was nice about this discussion, compared to previous ones I’ve attended in London, was the number of practising academics in the room. Often, academics are excluded from …[Read More]
Retired blogs
Friday Photo (121) – Landscapes of Ladakh
Next week we’ll be announcing two new ways you can get involved with our hazards education programme in Ladakh (taking place in June 2014). Here is another of Rosalie Tostevin’s fantastic images from the region. Credit: Rosalie Tostevin
Science Snap (#22) Landslide in Washinton state
This week, the world has been shocked by images of devastation after a huge landslide buried the town of Oso, north of Seattle, in Washington state, USA. At 11:00 PDT on Saturday 22nd March 2014, a 500m-wide section of mud and rock became detached from a hillside above the 180 population town, and hurtled down …[Read More]
New GfGD University Groups
Over the past month we’ve been working with students at the University of Durham and Camborne School of Mines (University of Exeter) to establish and launch new GfGD University Groups. These groups will join our existing network of groups, based in Cambridge, Imperial College, Leeds, Leicester, Oxford, Plymouth, Southampton, UCL and Trinity College Dublin. University …[Read More]
Active learning in large classes: a gallery ‘walk’ with a 100 students
Active learning in large classrooms is difficult but not impossible – here is one example of an active learning technique developed for small classrooms, the gallery walk, which I have successfully re-purposed for a class of 100 (but I see no real upper limit on class size with the modified version of this activity). “In …[Read More]
The coolest groundwater paper of 2013!
What paper inspired you the most in 2013? The Early Career Hydrogeologists’ Network (ECHN) of the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH) has announced a new contest: ‘2013 Coolest Paper of the Year’ award (described in this Hydrogeology Journal editorial). I nominated Fan et al (Science, 2013) who completed a Herculean effort to map the depth …[Read More]
Co-teaching a blended class across universities: why? and why not?
This term I am co-teaching a graduate class in advanced groundwater hydrology with Grant Ferguson (University of Saskatchewan) and Steve Loheide (University of Wisconsin – Madison). In co-developing and co-delivering this course we have learned a lot – I’ll start here with our initial motivations and write later about our pedagogic decisions, software tools and …[Read More]
Why read “Water Underground” blog? And for me, why write a blog?
My reason to blog is really quite simple: to share what doesn’t currently fit into peer-reviewed articles. I will write about groundwater as well as how I research, teach, supervise and collaborate. In short I hope to cover the whole kit and caboodle of academia, from the underground perspective of groundwater. Why read this blog? …[Read More]
Guest Blog: Iphakade and Earth Stewardship Science from Africa
Jane Robb is the EGU Educational Fellow and Director (Policy and Research) at www.unboxd.co.uk. She has also served on the GfGD Executive Committee since 2012, first as our Communications Officer and currently as University Group Resources Officer – helping to develop resources to equip our growing University Group network. Today she writes about her recent experiences in …[Read More]
‘An amazing and portentous summer..’
Book review: Island on Fire, Alexandra Witze and Jeff Kanipe In Island on Fire, Alexandra Witze and Jeff Kanipe take the reader on a dramatic tour of volcanic eruptions, death and destruction. At its heart is the story of the great 1783-1784 Laki fissure eruption, one of the most significant historical eruptions of Iceland, which …[Read More]