Post by Samuel Zipper, postdoctoral fellow at both McGill University and the University of Victoria, in Canada. You can follow Sam on Twitter at @ZipperSam. ___________________________________________________________ How can society best cope with water scarcity? With Cape Town on the verge of being the first major city to run out of water (a topic for a future post here on Water Underground), thi ...[Read More]
Post by Elco Luijendijk, a junior lecturer, and David Hindle, lecturer and head of geodynamic modelling, both at the Department of Structural Geology and Geodynamics at the University of Göttingen, in Germany. _______________________________________________ As we’ve firmly moved into 2018, we can say happy 50th birthday to one of the most revolutionary scientific theories of the last century: plat ...[Read More]
Post by Jared van Rooyen, MSc candidate in Earth Science at Stellenbosch University, in South Africa. Part two of three in a Crowdfunding Science series by Jared. ___________________________________________________________ During March of 2017, myself and a group of students supervised by Dr. Jodie Miller of Stellenbosch University’s Earth Science department (South Africa) completed a 5-week long ...[Read More]
Post by Matt Herod, Waste and Decommissioning Project Officer for the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, and Adjunct Professor in Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Ottawa, in Ottawa, Canada. _______________________________________________ I have always been a mineral and fossil collector. It was a hobby that stuck and blossomed into a career. I still collect minerals and fossil ...[Read More]
Post by Andy Baker, Professor researching groundwater, caves, past climate, organic carbon and more at the University of New South Wales, in Australia. __________________________________________________ We often come across items that glow after being exposed to ultraviolet light. Fluorescent stickers can be bought for the ceilings of bedrooms; fluorescent hands on analogue clocks and watches; flu ...[Read More]
Post by Mark Cuthbert, Research Fellow and Lecturer at Cardiff University, in the United Kingdom, and by Gail Ashley, Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University, in the United States. _______________________________________________ During the dry season, Lake Masek in Northern Tanzania (see map) is a lovely place to be if you’re a hippo or a flamingo, but for humans it’s an inhospitable environ ...[Read More]
Inspired by the famous list of unsolved math problems (hence the header image), the International Association of Hydrological Sciences has an interesting challenge for us all: define 23 unsolved problems in hydrology: The International Commission on Groundwater is going to submit a few problems via the LinkedIn forum. A few of us at Water Underground are going to put our thinking caps on and submi ...[Read More]
Post by Viviana Re, a post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences of the University of Pavia, in Italy. _______________________________________________ Should we feel a moral obligation to engage, if our work has real implications on society? As an environmental scientist, with a PhD in Analysis and Governance of Sustainable development, I grew up “multidisc ...[Read More]
Post by Jim Roy, Research Scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada. _______________________________________________ A recent editorial in Nature highlighted the relative scarcity of academic positions available to graduating PhD students (Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects; 25 October, 2017). It notes that “it has been evident for years that internatio ...[Read More]
Two words: French Quarter. OK, well beyond that quite a few things… On Sunday the fun kicks off with the Hubbert Quorum (link) – a nice and informal meeting with lots of interaction. On Monday is Advances in Hydrologic Science by Early Career Scientists: A Discussion of the Publishing Process (TH13A; link) On Tuesday is Mars Underground: Subsurface Waters, Diagenesis, Hydrothermal/Meta ...[Read More]
