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24 February 2017
(Geo)science Matters: Snow surveys aren’t just for TV
Everyone (in California, at least) has seen those clips that get run every winter of the snow surveys: people walking out into a white-blanketed meadow to shove a pole into the snow and record the depth. Or, in the case of the 2015 broadcast, walking out onto muddy grass and gesturing sadly at a lack of snow in which to do this. It’s a good photo op, but the broadcasts rarely follow up with much of the science behind the survey.
27 January 2017
(Geo)science matters: Landslide research in California
Right now it’s incredibly important for scientists to hammer home why science is essential, important and needs to be practiced rigorously, transparently and without censorship. It’s clear that we can no longer limit ourselves to broader impact statements in our next grant applications. I thought I’d do my part by starting a new blog series and highlighting United States geoscientists and their work in action.
9 January 2017
Fast-forward your volcano
Remember a couple of months ago when Google Earth Timelapse got updated? I didn’t spend a lot of time looking at it back then, but I’ve taken it for a spin since then and – being a volcanologist – decided to look at volcanoes. And it turned out to be a lot of fun.
8 December 2016
AGU Fall Meeting 2016: Social Media (and Communications) Roundup
I’ve had to back out of attending the Fall Meeting this year, but I didn’t want to abandon my yearly Social Media roundup even though I won’t be joining in. It’s been great over the years to watch the social media and science communication activities balloon from a couple of sessions and a meetup or two to scads of activities.
26 February 2016
Resurrected post: Earth science-y catchphrases
My father and I share a habit: we tend to point out and grumble over certain catchphrases we hear or read in a news report, mostly because they’re misused, overused, or just plain don’t make sense. He dislikes things such as “address the issue” or “touch base” or “spearhead”. Me? I make faces when I hear Earth science terms getting co-opted.
18 December 2015
AGU Fall Meeting 2015: Guide TO Conference-Goers
You’ve probably seen all the excellent “How to navigate a conference” posts that pop up in the fall and winter each year, and they’re great, but this isn’t one of them. My take is a little different; I’m going to give you a kind of bird-watcher-style guide to the people you’re sure to meet every year at AGU Fall Meeting. Many of us fall into one or more of these categories, depending on the ways we find to survive the whirlwind conference week.
17 December 2015
AGU Fall Meeting 2015: Making Connections
It’s the third day of the meeting and I’m already exhausted. But this is par for the course when you try to do everything at AGU! It’s possible to spend all of your time in talks and posters and immerse yourself entirely in new research, but most people here end up mixing in other things: workshops, town hall discussions, service groups, and of course meeting with colleagues and collaborators. The …
14 December 2015
AGU Fall Meeting 2015: Taking the Lead
This year, you may have noticed I didn’t do a Social Media Roundup, and I’m not using my usual Day 1, Day 2, etc. titles. Partially, that’s because AGU has been doing a fantastic job of advertising the social media activities going on this year, and because there are now too many social-media-related sessions, talks and posters to list in one place. That’s wonderful! But I’m also changing things up …
27 April 2015
Things you learn doing outreach
A short, light post this time. I’ll be doing an outreach event as a USGS rep in a couple of weeks, and having done the demo once already at AAAS’s 2015 Family Science Days, I was thinking about the things I learned last time. Some of these have also applied to other outreach I’ve done (I love doing video chats with students and science clubs, especially if I can get people excited about geology!)
13 February 2015
Movies in your geology
No, that’s not a typo – it’s the topic of a discussion I prompted on Twitter a few weeks ago and then immediately forgot to post about. Fortunately, through the wonder of Storify, I can recap it for everyone. The backstory is that I had a request from a reader for movies he could show that featured geologically interesting places, but weren’t necessarily about geology or disasters. He also requested that they be fairly popular (things that had done well at the box office and might be expected to have been seen by a wide audience) and that they be things that intro students would recognize, either because they were recent or widely re-watched.
Jessica Ball is a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, researching volcanic hydrothermal systems and stability, and doing science communication for the California Volcano Observatory. She previously worked at the Geological Society of America's Washington DC Policy Office, learning about the intersection of Earth science and legislative affairs. Her Mendenhall postdoc and PhD focused on how water affects the stability of volcanoes, and involved both field investigations and numerical modeling applications. Her blogging covers a range of topics, from her experiences in academic geosciences to science outreach and communication to her field and lab work in volcanology.