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8 March 2013
My experience as a woman in the geosciences
Being deep in the throes of thesis-wrangling has left me little time for blogging lately, but as a woman and a geoscientist I definitely thought it was important to write a little bit about International Women’s Day, and about my own experiences. I first became aware that this was a day of celebration when my graduate advisor and I encountered a parade in downtown Xela when we were in Guatemala doing fieldwork for my thesis. It was a beautiful day and the parade-goers were lively and excited and enthused.
24 February 2013
So you want to be a volcanologist?
In addition to my blogging and on-again-off-again relationship with Twitter, I like to take my geologizing to places outside the office. Just yesterday, I had the opportunity to talk with a girls’ STEM club at my old elementary school about being a volcanologist. I actually do this fairly often, and I’m always really impressed by the questions the students come up with. They’re always inquisitive and thoughtful, and often catch me off guard – which is good!
18 January 2013
Water in really big groups of hot rocks: When you can’t say “hydrothermal alteration and lava dome collapse hazards”
By now you’ve hopefully seen the geo-meme that Anne Jefferson over at Highly Allocthonous started using the Up-Goer-Five text editor, which forces you to write a description of something using only the thousand most commonly used words in the English language. (It’s based off of this XKCD comic.) Anne challenged the geobloggers to write about their own research using this method, and as much as I enjoy adapting my writing for a wide audience (that’s why I got into blogging!), it’s darn hard to write about hydrothermal alteration in lava domes when you can’t use any of those words (not even dome). Thank goodness rock is still in there, or I’d be in trouble! As it is, I had a bit of trouble describing lava domes and hydrothermal circulation:
11 January 2013
A foray into teaching – and a request for advice!
This semester, as part of an attempt to keep myself funded through the end of my PhD (always an uphill battle), I’m going to be teaching a smallish section of our introductory environmental science course. And the main topic is…deep breath…climate change! Not being an expert on climate change, this has me perusing background information to get ready for the content, but also looking at techniques for teaching controversial environmental topics. And I’m looking for help!
30 December 2012
I was dreaming of a white Christmas, but geology got in the way
It hasn’t been a very white Christmas where I am right now (northern Virginia), but if you’ve been following my fellow AGU blogger Callan on Twitter, you’ll know that’s not the case in other parts of the state. And it’s definitely not the case back in Buffalo, which has been getting snow from several winter storms recently. That got me thinking about how geology – and topography – conspire to produce precipitation. (I think about this a lot more now that I live in Buffalo, since we tend to get much more snow than where I grew up, and UB has this interesting habit of rarely closing for weather.)
22 December 2012
5 years already?!
Wow.
It certainly doesn’t seem like I’ve spent a significant chunk of my life blogging, but the calendar doesn’t lie: it’s been 5 years since my first post on Magma Cum Laude. When I first started, I never really imagined that this would become such a big part of my professional identity as a geoscientist, but I can’t say that I would have changed the path I’ve taken – because it’s led me to some really interesting places! Since I began this blog with the intent to write about becoming a grad student in volcanology, I’ve had the opportunity to write about everything from eruption triggering to fossiling in Western New York to numerical modeling to how many jelly beans it would take to equal the mass of a lava dome. Seriously, everything.
12 December 2012
AGU 2012 Days 4-6
As always, I’m behind on my AGU updates (possibly because I didn’t have a chance to breathe until Wednesday!) There’s so much to do, and Tuesday was the first day that the exhibits were open, which is always a time sink. Wednesday was really the first day that I had a chance to get into the science side of things and listen to some talks and visit posters. I find talks are interesting but somewhat unsatisfying in that you don’t necessarily get much time to ask questions or discuss the topic. Posters, on the other hand, pretty much guarantee that you’ll have a chance to chat about the work with the PI.
5 December 2012
AGU 2012 Days 1 – 3
I’m forgoing my day-by-day posting this year because my schedule has been nuts – I’m hardly able to finish a meeting before I have to move on to something else!
On Sunday afteernoon I arrived to happily clear skies and a relaxing ride into San Francisco. Naturally, this meant I had to immediately start going to meetitngs – training for moderrating my first oral session, and our annual student representative meeting. (Students, watch out for new developments in your sections, including webinars, mentoring programs, and new volunteer opportunities throughout AGU! The Union Council has already added three studeent and three early-career seats, and they’re looking to get students involvedd in even more ways.)
1 December 2012
AGU Fall Meeting 2012: Social Media Roundup
It’s time for my annual addition of your guide to the social media events at AGU’s Fall Meeting in San Francisco! I’ll be attending this year’s meeting (you may see me wearing a press pass and some blogging buttons), and I’ll be attending at least a few of these events. In particular, I’ll be on the panel at the Tuesday Blogger’s Forum, an co-chairing the “Social Media 101” oral session on Tuesday afternoon and the accompanying poster session Wednesday morning. Feel free to say hi if you see me around!
28 November 2012
Increased activity at Santiaguito
A quick note for today: It appears that activity at the Santiaguito lava dome complex in Guatemala has increased significantly, with collapses occurring at the lava flow on the southeastern flank of the Caliente dome. Plumes are visible on GOES satellite images and are reaching 5 km in height (plumes from ash-and-gas eruptions of Caliente are usually less than 1 km high).
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.