I attended a Feed Your Brain lunch session in which the focus was environmental policy. The speaker discussed how there needs to be more of helping political decision makers understand the implications the decisions they are making. Scientists are not the ones who make the decisions, but rather present information and facts for educated decision making by others. The speaker's group of workers come up with scenarios in order to prepare for natural disasters. Emergency drills were put into place incorporating tens of millions of people. The result of her efforts brought about higher building standards, strengthened water systems in buildings, and increased telecommunication standards during emergencies. I had never really put much thought into how scientists are not the ones actually making the decisions that effect us. This talk made me realize the importance of presenting the facts and educating those in charge so that the correct measures can be taken to prevent as much loss of life or destruction as possible from natural disasters.
GSA was not just field trips, talks, and lunch sessions. The exhibits and poster sessions were a way to meet potential graduate schools, employment opportunities, and other advances in science worldwide. Poster sessions were also great to attend. It amazes me that so much research and problem solving is going on by even students!
Elizabeth Haralson
Sunday, October 9, 2016
GSA Talks
I apologize for the late blog post but it has taken me some time to adjust to being home. The whole trip to and from Denver was a blast. We were able to go on mini field trips along the way which greatly enhanced our over all experience. My favorite excursion was Garden of the Gods and Balanced Rock. These two geologic features were amazing to see first hand! White at GSA, I attended numerous talks all on varying subjects. Every topic imaginable had a talk associated with it! My favorite talks were the ones presented by UALR faculty. I especially enjoyed Dr. Ruhl's talk on coal ash weathering. I was a very proud student listening to one of my professors discuss her research with people from all over the country. A close second favorite was a session dedicated to bringing science to religion. It focused primarily on how the Christian Bible should not be taken literally and how geologic deep time can be explained by creationists if the focus is not so small scale. I found it very interesting, with this being my first GSA attendance, the wide range in topics offered. There was a talk for everyone, no matter their interest. It was neat how the talks also did not just focus on research, but on broader topics like the history of women in geology. After GSA, my brain felt overloaded with information and I cannot wait to attend another conference in the future.
Elizabeth Haralson
Elizabeth Haralson
Saturday, October 8, 2016
Feed Your Brain—Hope in the Sciences
On Wednesday, I attended Dr. Claudio Margottini's talk on what he termed cultural geology—an emerging field in the geosciences that combines earth science with other disciplines, specifically cultural anthropology, architectural engineering, and political science. As a UNESCO consultant, Dr. Margottini travels the world working to preserve World Heritage sites in danger from geological hazards, working both with other scientists as well as local populations.
Perhaps one of the most thought-provoking parts of the talk wasn't the actual presentation but a question that was posed by another audience member. A high school geology teacher, she asked if Dr. Margottini had any suggestions for making the media and the public aware of their preservation efforts and successes.
"All the kids ever hear about is that this temple was destroyed, that statue was torn down," she said. "It makes them lose interest. Is there any way we can let people know that there is actually good news too?"
I've been turning this teacher's question over and over ever since she posed it. While raising awareness about the "doom and gloom" both in current events and science certainly has an important place, all too often an invaluable piece of the greater puzzle is left out—hope.
When we present problems without the possibility of a solution or even amelioration—whether the problem is the destruction of ancient artifacts or global climate change—we lose touch with the public. We lose the ingenuity of the younger generation—who wants to go into a field that offers nothing but hopelessness?
As geologists and members of the greater scientific community, we should recognize the truth of an age-old adage: You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. And by searching for fresh, innovative ways to share stories of success, advancement, and hope alongside information about the problems we face, we not only present a more balanced view of science, but attract new individuals to contribute to the advancement of all fields, whether anthropological, geological, or somewhere in between.
-M. Kellum Tate
Friday, October 7, 2016
I fed my brain twice!
Rather than go to one lunchtime talk, I decided to go to two, since Dr. Lucy Jones's talk was on science and society (an issue near and dear to my heart), and Dr. Margottini's talk was on using geosciences to save UNESCO heritage sites.
Dr. Jones's talk was very eye opening. I was only familiar with her as an expert on the San Andreas Fault, having read her liveblog of the movie San Andreas. She worked with the California Seismic Commission on a multihazards demonstration project, which started in 2007. In this project she was asked to create scientifically plausible disaster scenarios, which led to the creation of The Great ShakeOut. 5.5 million people participated in the first year of the ShakeOut, and the 2015 ShakeOut drill had 43 million people participating. Once she finished with the CSC, she created a cooperative project between the USGS and the City of Los Angeles called Resilience by Design. This project made the discussion about the community, and changed multiple city ordinances to make the city as a whole stronger.
Sarah
Dr. Jones's talk was very eye opening. I was only familiar with her as an expert on the San Andreas Fault, having read her liveblog of the movie San Andreas. She worked with the California Seismic Commission on a multihazards demonstration project, which started in 2007. In this project she was asked to create scientifically plausible disaster scenarios, which led to the creation of The Great ShakeOut. 5.5 million people participated in the first year of the ShakeOut, and the 2015 ShakeOut drill had 43 million people participating. Once she finished with the CSC, she created a cooperative project between the USGS and the City of Los Angeles called Resilience by Design. This project made the discussion about the community, and changed multiple city ordinances to make the city as a whole stronger.
"The scientist's job is to make sure the decision maker understands the implications of his decision. It is not to make the decision for him."The UNESCO talk by Dr. Margottini was also incredibly interesting. 76% of all world heritage sites are exposed to at least one geohazard. He spoke of several sites that he had worked on, including Petra in Jordan, which is a city carved from stone at risk for rockfalls. In Machu Picchu, they have installed and integrated monitoring system for fear of possible slope movement of the city. Overall it was an intriguing talk and with luck perhaps I may be able to work on some of these beloved sites in the future.
Sarah
Hello all! Finally sitting down to do my blog. I did a couple of volunteer stints at two different sessions, the first being the Volcanology session Monday morning, and the second being the Engineering Geology session Tuesday morning. Both sessions had talks about a recently discovered landslide in south central Utah that's bigger than the state of Rhode Island! It's called the Markagunt Gravity Slide and it occurred roughly 22 million years ago in volcanic deposits. They found another landslide nearby called the Sevier landslide.
Sunday I attended several talks on mining, including on on the characterization of abandoned uranium mines in New Mexico. They were trying to develop a quick and inexpensive procedure to inventory and categorize legacy mines in New Mexico. Another mining talk was titled Mining, the Environment, and Health and it went through several case studies, the most interesting of which was one from 2010 in northwest Nigeria, where villagers were artisanally processing silver ore by using flour mills to grind the ore and their grain, resulting in serious lead poisoning. Around 700 children younger than five were killed from lead poisoning and thousands more were permanently disabled. The soil was highly contaminated, and the lead carbonate in the ore was highly bioaccessible, meaning it was easily absorbed by the body. Unfortunately even the unground grain was contaminated by mercury and lead!
Sunday I also went to a couple of volcanology talks in the session dedicated to Don Swanson (who was awarded the MGPV's Career Geologist award Tuesday evening for his lifetime of work on Hawaii and the Cascade Range volcanoes). The first talk was titled Milestones on the Road to Eruption Prediction, and discussed current methods of volcano monitoring before moving to lava dome observations at Mt. Saint Helens. Observations and monitoring helped the Cascade Volcano Observatory successfully predict eruptions of Mt. Saint Helens with no false alarms throughout the 1980s. There are several volcano databases and volcanologists are stepping outside their expertise and doing more interdisciplinary work, working to develop new hazard maps.
The Volcanology session on Monday morning was perhaps the most interesting session, with multiple talks on mechanisms and collapse. The most interesting talk was the very first one, given by the year's Arthur L. Day medalist Donald Dingwell. It was titled Experimental Volcanology: Accessing the Inaccessible. In his talk Dr. Dingwell spoke of his eruption experiments at the University of Munich in Germany. There were several amazing slow-motion videos, which may have been the coolest part, because he had a video of when they managed to reproduce volcanic lightning in the lab! Dr. Dingwell's experiments focused on making volcanic ash, capturing the ash, and analyzing the ash. His experiments have shown that you can make ash just by decompression. There were a couple of papers he cited that I need to look into, including one on volcanic lightning.
Tuesday morning was the Engineering Geology session. There were several talks specific to geohazards, including a talk on a new rock classification number, which is a new system proposed to remove some of the subjectiveness and discrepancy when used by personnel with varied experience. This system is more for use when building and maintaining structures. Other talks involved natural disasters, including an investigation of the 2013 Rim Fire in Yosemite National Park, and a new investigation into the causes of the 1889 Johnstown Flood in Pennsylvania.
Tuesday afternoon I attended several more talks focused on landslides. The more interesting one was on the Kumamoto, Japan earthquake in April 2016. There were many landslides in the hilly and forested region, and they were a strange shape in the grasslands, more rectangular than teardrop shaped. The soils there were relatively dry which affected the shape and runout distance. Slides were initiated along ridgelines and convex slopes. In the forests, slides were on steeper slopes and more elongated.
The last talk I attended was on Wednesday afternoon on landslides in national parks. They're putting together a system to monitor slope geohazards in the national parks. Denali National Park is the test for these management programs, having rated all of their slopes. They're even putting together a "new slope event form" for citizens to inform the park service about new hazards observed. Perhaps the coolest thing mentioned in this talk was that they put in a device to measure the movement of the crack running the length of North Window in Arches National Park. This device was able to track even the daily movement of the crack caused by expansion and contraction of the rock!
Overall I had a great time at GSA 2016 and am thankful for the ability to go!
Sarah
Sunday I attended several talks on mining, including on on the characterization of abandoned uranium mines in New Mexico. They were trying to develop a quick and inexpensive procedure to inventory and categorize legacy mines in New Mexico. Another mining talk was titled Mining, the Environment, and Health and it went through several case studies, the most interesting of which was one from 2010 in northwest Nigeria, where villagers were artisanally processing silver ore by using flour mills to grind the ore and their grain, resulting in serious lead poisoning. Around 700 children younger than five were killed from lead poisoning and thousands more were permanently disabled. The soil was highly contaminated, and the lead carbonate in the ore was highly bioaccessible, meaning it was easily absorbed by the body. Unfortunately even the unground grain was contaminated by mercury and lead!
Sunday I also went to a couple of volcanology talks in the session dedicated to Don Swanson (who was awarded the MGPV's Career Geologist award Tuesday evening for his lifetime of work on Hawaii and the Cascade Range volcanoes). The first talk was titled Milestones on the Road to Eruption Prediction, and discussed current methods of volcano monitoring before moving to lava dome observations at Mt. Saint Helens. Observations and monitoring helped the Cascade Volcano Observatory successfully predict eruptions of Mt. Saint Helens with no false alarms throughout the 1980s. There are several volcano databases and volcanologists are stepping outside their expertise and doing more interdisciplinary work, working to develop new hazard maps.
The Volcanology session on Monday morning was perhaps the most interesting session, with multiple talks on mechanisms and collapse. The most interesting talk was the very first one, given by the year's Arthur L. Day medalist Donald Dingwell. It was titled Experimental Volcanology: Accessing the Inaccessible. In his talk Dr. Dingwell spoke of his eruption experiments at the University of Munich in Germany. There were several amazing slow-motion videos, which may have been the coolest part, because he had a video of when they managed to reproduce volcanic lightning in the lab! Dr. Dingwell's experiments focused on making volcanic ash, capturing the ash, and analyzing the ash. His experiments have shown that you can make ash just by decompression. There were a couple of papers he cited that I need to look into, including one on volcanic lightning.
Tuesday morning was the Engineering Geology session. There were several talks specific to geohazards, including a talk on a new rock classification number, which is a new system proposed to remove some of the subjectiveness and discrepancy when used by personnel with varied experience. This system is more for use when building and maintaining structures. Other talks involved natural disasters, including an investigation of the 2013 Rim Fire in Yosemite National Park, and a new investigation into the causes of the 1889 Johnstown Flood in Pennsylvania.
Tuesday afternoon I attended several more talks focused on landslides. The more interesting one was on the Kumamoto, Japan earthquake in April 2016. There were many landslides in the hilly and forested region, and they were a strange shape in the grasslands, more rectangular than teardrop shaped. The soils there were relatively dry which affected the shape and runout distance. Slides were initiated along ridgelines and convex slopes. In the forests, slides were on steeper slopes and more elongated.
The last talk I attended was on Wednesday afternoon on landslides in national parks. They're putting together a system to monitor slope geohazards in the national parks. Denali National Park is the test for these management programs, having rated all of their slopes. They're even putting together a "new slope event form" for citizens to inform the park service about new hazards observed. Perhaps the coolest thing mentioned in this talk was that they put in a device to measure the movement of the crack running the length of North Window in Arches National Park. This device was able to track even the daily movement of the crack caused by expansion and contraction of the rock!
Overall I had a great time at GSA 2016 and am thankful for the ability to go!
Sarah
Thursday, October 6, 2016
Feed Your Brain: Science In Society
Feed Your Brain
So, down to the meat and potatoes of the lecture. Dr. Jones founded, after retiring from the USGS where she currently still consults, The Dr. Lucy Jones Center for Science and Society. She is a scientist emerita for the USGS and a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech). Dr. Jones, upon her retirement and founding of her organization, was given an opportunity to work for the mayor of Los Angeles, CA in efforts to promote public knowledge and provide awareness to the public officials in a local, state, and federal level. Dr. Jones stands firmly in her belief that, quote,"... A scientists job is to make sure that the decision maker and officials understand the implications of their actions, not to make the decision(s) for them." Dr. Jones was given a break from the USGS for the period of one year, in its entirety, so that she could work directly with the LA and California govt. officials. During this time, Dr. Jones and the mayor of LA developed the Resilience By Design campaign, the Shakeout, and a series of amazing commercials promoting public awareness of potential disasters in the area. Dr. Jones never took credit for the success that LA and California has had with their efforts to involve science in public policy more so than ever before, instead she stated that it was a collaboration between all local and scientific communities.
One of the new practices that was put in place regarding the discussion and implementation of new ideas and policies was a reorganized progression from idea(s) through the successful passing of new policies. These new guidelines consisted of, in order: the idea of a likely disaster, the problems associated with the occurrence of the disaster, solutions to these problems, peer reviews from other scientists and officials involved, the results from the reviews, changes made in response to the reviews, an action plan to minimize problems during the disaster should it actually occur, then to practice the action plan until it's learned and familiar to all government and emergency officials.
Some ideas that were proposed and have been implemented into city, county, state, and in some cases federal policy include the water and gas mains, other utility lines, and infrastructure including building codes/ordinances. Using the water main as an example, let's explore what Dr. Jones said about an idea that seems so simple. If there is a fault that slips, an earthquake, or any type of ground movement, then water main(s) could break in their fittings or split entirely. Should this happen, what's the plan? There's only so many emergency water crews available to repair lines at any given time, and there's only so many parts at the warehouse to make the repairs at that time. So, the issue is now water mains that may or may not be fixed in a timely manor. But let's keep going... Say the water department(s) are unable to flush the mains due to low pressure from other breaks in the area, then there's a Boil Order issued to the area. Well, the issue now is where there's a water main there's likely power lines and gas lines as well. If the water main broke, the others likely did too. So now there's a boil order with no way to boil the water, no power for a stove and no gas for heating the water either. Some said that water could be boiled with fire outside... True! But is it really smart for everyone to start lighting fires outside with winds and flame sparks flying around in an area of the country that's prone to wild fires? Plus, there's no/little water available to extinguish the fire should it arise. So, we have no/little water and we can't boil it for sanitation purposes if necessary. This combined with the endured wait on crews/parts to make all of the repairs needed could potentially take weeks, months, or years to fully recover from. So then the mayor of LA and other officials were asked, "would you stay in this location under these circumstances while trying to take care of yourself, family, and children, or would you have had enough and simply move elsewhere?" Theft, break-ins, water shortages, etc. can all spiral out these conditions. The officials were astonished by the question and ideas presented, imagining what it would mean to the city/area to have all these infrastructure issues and be losing the citizens that ultimately assist in the funding/from it (tax $). As you can see the issues have a domino effect and could continue well into another paragraph, but I'll spare you because you deserve it for making it this far! :)
The above scenario leads right back to Dr. Jones' first description of the role of a scientist in policy, which was "...A scientists job is to make sure that the decision maker and officials understand the implications of their actions, not to make the decision(s) for them." The results from this scenario consisted of immediate funding and repair to old, decaying utility mains, including the use of new coupling designs that have up to several feet of shifting capabilities during ground movement and new codes/ordinances governing the placement and materials used in all future lines installed. Furthermore, this and other scenarios were practiced as if they had actually occurred so that response teams would know how to react if and when it actually does take place in the future. The purpose of these styles of action are to help solve tomorrows issues today while we have time and can pay for them slowly over that time, not wait and have it all dropped in your lap at once.
In the words of Dr. Lucy Jones, "Science is not a series of facts, it's presentations of evidence that provide clues and give plausibility to a hypothesis."
I thoroughly enjoyed this talk and my words herein have not provided it its deserved justice. For more information, videos, pictures, action plans, etc., you can visit Dr. Jones' website at www.drlucyjonescenter.org .
* * * Comical note: Dr. Jones stated that she received lots of letters and calls with questions and comments about all of the work she's done with public officials in the California/federal level. One that she read to us stated," Dear Dr. Jones, I know that you can't tell me when the BIG ONE is coming, but could you at least let me know when you send your kids out of town." HaHaHaHa! This was the type of talk that Dr. Jones gave... I wish you all could've been there!
Thanks for reading,
Kevin Gardner
For the required 'Feed Your Brain' talk I chose to attend the one titled 'Geosciences Save UNESCO Heritage' given by Claudio Margottini. This talk was one of the best talks I attended the whole meeting. Very interesting and eye opening to how diverse our geology world is. UNESCO is used for the conservation of cultural monuments and also used to prevent geohazards. They travel all over the world to try and save monuments/areas that are being affected by the changing world around us or even human impacts. Places that have already been visited are places such as Bamiyan, Afghanistan, Petra, Jordan, Lumbini, Nepal and Rapa Nui, Chile. Fun fact, there is a culture that actually built churches and other monuments straight into the rock. Not above it, into it. I found that absolutely amazing! There is a debate that if this sort of work is actually creating a new section of geology that would be called 'cultural geology', Either way, it's defiantly a section of geology that I could see myself getting into.
Unitl next time,
Autumn
Unitl next time,
Autumn
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