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11 December 2018
Far from the science-ing crowd
This year, sadly, I’m not attending AGU’s Fall Meeting. It’s partly personal choice – I have several big projects scheduled for December and January – and partly that I don’t want to make two cross-country flights to go to a meeting and head home for the holidays (the timing doesn’t line up well). It’s also partly because in the USGS (and in the government in general), our choice of conferences to …
24 September 2018
For great Italian geology, go to church
There’s so much to see in Naples – so much gelato to eat – but one thing I learned was that if you want to sample the local geology, you could do worse than visit a church.
22 September 2017
The human side of volcanology at IAVCEI 2017
Every four years, the volcanological community gets together somewhere in the world to spend a week (or two) talking about…you guessed it, volcanoes. And because volcanology – like any ‘disaster science’ – occupies a special intersection of geologic processes and human impacts, there is an inherent social science aspect in its practice.
1 April 2016
Geomancy for the mundane geologist – “Games Wizards Play” by Diane Duane
I don’t often do book reviews on here (Callan is your go-to guy for that), but I recently finished a novel by one of my favorite authors and I really wanted to write about it. Diane Duane, if you’re not familiar with her, is the author of a long-running series about wizards. But not just any wizards – in her version of the universe, which is very similar to our own, wizardry is a science in and of itself.
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 …
19 December 2014
AGU Fall Meeting 2014: Day 3
Wednesday was a bit of a break in terms of activities for me. I had the chance to sit down and listen to some talks about multiparameter monitoring at volcanoes (including hearing about Diana Roman’s “BENTO Box” instrument platform, which reminds me of the ‘spiders’ that the USGS uses to get seismometers out to difficult field sites).
17 December 2014
AGU Fall Meeting 2014: Day 2
Tuesday I spent most of my time in the poster hall – a full day on my feet, in fact, which I’m regretting slightly today. In the morning I was learning about fluids and mineralization in hydrothermal systems in a number of places – Iceland, Chile, mid-ocean ridges, among others – and in the afternoon I saw some presentations on eruptive dynamics, particularly at my old field area of the Santiaguito lava domes in Guatemala.
16 December 2014
AGU Fall Meeting 2014: Day 1
And we’re off! Monday was a mixed bag of service and science for me – I started off as a panelist for the first-ever workshop on Honors nominations, talking about the successful nominations I’ve seen while serving on the Science For Solutions committe
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.