News EU announces climate and energy goals for 2030 The European commission has announced a target to reduce its emissions by 40% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. It also stated that 27% of total energy production should come from renewable sources. The announcement came on 22 January following intense negotiations between its member states. The 40% reduction is at the high end of the range of pro ...[Read More]
KT Cooper is a PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. A carbonate geochemist by training, she has just returned from a three-month secondment to Houston, Texas, USA working with Exxon Mobil. Last week the newly formed Bristol Doctoral College hosted a postgraduate seminar entitled “Surviving the stress of a PhD” by James Hayton, PhD. My initial thoughts on atten ...[Read More]
Volcanoes at Lake Atitlan, Guatemala In the foreground is the volcano San Pedro, on the south-western shore of Lake Atitlan. San Pedro (approx 3000m) is believed to be extinct, but Atitlan (in the background is dormant). Credit: Joel Gill, Geology for Global Development (2014)
Update: June 2015 Our open access research paper on Aluto volcano is now available online: Hutchison et al., 2015, Structural controls on fluid pathways in an active rift system: A case study of the Aluto volcanic complex, Geosphere 11, 542-562, doi:10.1130/GES01119.1
As promised, here is the next post in the series I started towards the end of last year: Making the Most of you PhD. This is the third post in the series and I want to cover a subject very close to my heart. (For the previous posts in the series, have a look here and here). Public Engagement, Science Communication and Outreach is something I feel quite passionately about, but the point of this pos ...[Read More]
Mel Auker is an Earth Sciences PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. A mathematician by trade, Mel’s PhD uses numerical approaches to better understand past, present, and future global volcanic hazard and risk. Kawah Ijen volcano forms part of the Ijen volcano complex situated at the eastern end of Java, Indonesia. Kawah Ijen is topped by a 1 kilometre-wid ...[Read More]
The records, reports and testimonies of past volcanic eruptions and their consequences contain a wealth of information from which we can learn valuable lessons. This, in a nutshell, is the starting point of one strand of the STREVA project, ‘Strengthening Resilience in Volcanic Areas‘, which is a large programme funded by two British funding agencies (NERC and ESRC) and directed from t ...[Read More]
‘Tis the season of thesis writing! Well, in my office of fourth years (!) at least. By this stage of PhD life, most of us have our own ‘toolkit’ of computer applications that we’ve settled upon to complete the task, but in the first year or two, it’s a case of trying lots of options and finding the one that works best for your PhD and style of working. Here, I’v ...[Read More]
Over the next couple of months, Joel Gill (GfGD Founding Director) will be reporting live from Guatemala, whilst undertaking interdisciplinary field research relating to natural hazards and disaster risk reduction. This fieldwork forms part of a NERC/ESRC funded PhD, supervised by staff in the Department of Geography at King’s College London. One of the first things I want to do when arriving in ...[Read More]
Dinosaur skeletons are a thing of pure beauty. Being able to see and touch something that has been dead for millions of years instills a sense of wonder; what did they look like, how did they behave, were they like anything we see today? Palaeontology is a science that raises more questions than it answers, but these questions are the ones that drive the science, but also maintain that sense of fa ...[Read More]
