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 ...[Read More]
Green Tea and Velociraptors
The future of scientific publishing
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 the discussions about scholarly publishing, whi ...[Read More]
Geology for Global Development
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
GeoLog
Sniffing out signs of an earthquake
Last year Kate Ravilious was awarded an EGU Science Journalism Fellowship to follow scientists studying continental faults. Now she’s out in Nepal alongside researchers who are working out when the county’s next big quake will be… Sometimes the best rocks are found in the worst locations. Yesterday I was reminded of this as I watched Paul Tapponnier, from the Earth Observatory of Singapore, ...[Read More]
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
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 the slope at high speed. Deposits from the landslip are up to 6m deep and cover over a s ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Presenting at the Assembly: A quick ‘how to’ from the EGU
The schedule is out, presentation slots have been assigned and it’s time to start thinking about putting yours together. Whether you have an oral, poster or PICO slot, we have a suite of simple guidelines to get you ready for the conference! Orals The guidelines for oral presentations are online. All oral presentations should have the dimensions 4:3 and last about 12 minutes, with 3 minutes for qu ...[Read More]
GeoLog
GeoTalk: The mantle and models and measurements, oh my! Talking geophysics with Juan Carlos Afonso
This week in GeoTalk, we’re talking to Juan Carlos Afonso, a geophysicist from Macquarie University, Sydney. He explains how a holistic approach is crucial to understanding tectonic processes and how a little “LitMod philosophy” can go a long way to achieving this… First, could you introduce yourself and tell us a little about what you are currently working on? My name is Juan Carlos Afonso and I’ ...[Read More]
Geology for Global Development
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 Groups are an opportunit ...[Read More]
WaterUnderground
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 Gallery Walk student teams rotate to provide bulleted answers to questi ...[Read More]
WaterUnderground
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 to the water table globally for the f ...[Read More]