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23 March 2014
Edinburgh: Old Town and older volcanoes
My PhD advisor relocated to Scotland last year, and I finally had a chance to visit her in Edinburgh. And wow, what a great place for a geologist to go!
3 February 2014
Benchmarking Time: Nome, Alaska
Evelyn was good enough to remind me that I should get back to showing off other people’s submissions for my benchmark series, and the recent talk of Alaska being warmer in past days than the East Coast reinforced the gentle poking. A few years back, Evelyn and her husband Jackie spent several months working in Nome, Alaska for a marine mining gold exploration company. She’s got a great series of wonderfully kitschy photos from her trip, but she was kind enough to save a few of an Army Corps of Engineers survey mark they found on one of their local hikes.
22 December 2013
AGU Fall Meeting 2013: Photo Wrap-Up
As is traditional, I ended this year’s Fall Meeting by contracting a cold and developing an ear infection by the time I made it back to DC. (In fact, I can only think of one year where something like this didn’t happen, and I got sick over Christmas anyway.) Naturally this meant I was in no mood to do any sort of wrap-up post, and today is the first day I’ve actually felt like sitting upright for any amount of time, so I’m making up for it now.
13 December 2013
AGU Fall Meeting 2013: Thursday
Today was finally a chance to slow down and listen to people talk (instead off talking nonstop myself, which has of course resulted in the traditional mid-week AGU sore throat). In the morning I attended a public affairs session about the intersection of science and policy, something that I spend much of my time thinking about nowadays.
11 December 2013
AGU Fall Meeting 2013: Wednesday
Another busy day in the works! Today I’ll be checking out a new form of talks, the “Water Sciences Pop-Ups” (ED31F, 8-10AM in Moscone South 301). They’re five-minute student discussions about the future of water sciences, without the formality of a powerpoint, and I’m hoping they’ll be exciting and fast-paced.
AGU Fall Meeting 2013: Tuesday
So much to do today! This morning I went to my last student breakfast, and got to tell everyone about the Thriving Earth Exchange, which is a bit like Kickstarter for science (and focuses on bottom-up, community-driven research applications. The breakfast is also a great chance to network with section leaders (and even the President of AGU!) and get yourself noticed, and the food is free, so you really should drag yourself out of bed to go.
2 December 2013
Social Media Roundup: AGU Fall Meeting 2013
It’s that time again! Less than a week until AGU’s Fall Meeting in San Francisco and my schedule is already full with a whole slew of great sessions, events and activities. As is my annual tradition, I’ve collected a list of various social-media-related items for you to peruse.
10 September 2013
Interlude in Pittsburgh
I grew up just outside of Washington, DC, within an easy metro ride of the Smithsonian museums, so I consider myself a bit spoiled. But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate other museums when I see them, and this weekend when I was down in Pittsburgh, I got to see the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. In terms of collections and curation, it’s pretty darn impressive. It must be nice to have a rich patron!
10 August 2013
Fiddling on a crater: Panther Mountain, New York
In my spare time, I play violin – orchestra, rock band, and after this past week, fiddle. I just returned from a whirlwind week at a resort in the Catskills that I spent learning how to fiddle from none other than Gaelic Storm, and on top of the fantastic time we had and wonderful people I met, the scenery wasn’t so bad either. In fact, I spent a good bit of time geeking out about the fact that the resort sits on the edge of the Panther Mountain Impact Structure.
16 July 2013
Signs you may be a geologist (Accretionary Wedge #58)
I don’t get out for field work much anymore (in fact my entire summer has been reserved for thesis writing – grr!), but Evelyn’s call for the July Accretionary Wedge is a good chance for me to look back on past field trips and reminisce. Geologists come across a lot of signs when they do field work, and volcanologists in particular get some doozies. I had a hard time deciding on just one, so I’ve got several offerings for the Wedge, all of them from the two trips I’ve taken to Hawaii.
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.