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29 May 2009
An interesting field trip at the Portland GSA
While I was at the Toronto AGU, I happend to be looking at GSA’s website for their annual meeting, which is going to be held in Portland this year. Naturally, I’m excited for the chance to get closer to some volcanoes (which are noticeably lacking in Toronto), and I was even entertaining the idea of going on a field trip. So when I saw this title, I perked up a …
4 December 2008
A Big Island Geology Tour
Callan suggested that I post the advice I gave him for his recent trip to Hawaii, and since I haven’t had time to write anything really meaningful lately (darn you, end-of-semester crunch time!) I think I’ll do just that. You can follow along with his fantastic photos and discussion of the locations he visited – I’ll link to each of his blog entries as they go up. (Those links are …
11 November 2008
Wild (and not so wild) animals in the field
I don’t want to miss out on the domesticated or wild fun, so here are my contributions to the recent animal memes. New and creepy insects are always turning up on field trips: Fortunately, there are birds to take care of them – when they’re not trying to steal your food. Of course, why worry about birds when there are four-legged critters to watch out for? Some are cute… Some …
5 October 2008
Tricky, tricky
Still haven’t got my laptop back (!), but I decided that I don’t need to spend all of my Sunday-in-the-lab writing fellowship applications. Anyway, last weekend was the big field trip for the intro geo class that I TA for. We spent some time looking at the geology and history of Niagara Falls (which are apparently not very exciting if it’s a Sunday morning and you’ve been indulging the night …
11 July 2008
A musical interlude
With all the things I’ve been doing to get ready for my move to Buffalo, I haven’t had much time to write much on here. I’ve noticed that Julian has been posting about geology in music, and it got me thinking about how I associate geology and music. I play violin and various other obscure stringed instruments, which meant that I was steeped in Classical orchestral music (and later …
6 July 2008
I’ve got the Blue Ridge Blues (Quartz, of course)
After realizing that I hadn’t been camping for more than a year (yikes!) I immediately jumped on an opportunity to help my undergrad adviser with some fieldwork in the Blue Ridge last weekend. It was great fun to work with all the old hands in the department again, although bushwhacking through tick-infested thornbushes was not my favorite part of the weekend. (Not to mention that making an eight-hour trip up …
30 June 2008
Traveling again
Sorry for the sparse posting again – I’m on a whirlwind tour of the wilds of the Blue Ridge, followed by the wilds of…Buffalo’s rental communities! Hopefully I’ll have time to do some posting this week in between inspecting apartments and trying not to get lost in Western NY.Coming up: blue quartz, structure cubes and earthquake initiatives.
13 June 2008
Everything I need to know in life, I learned on geo field trips
Can you tell I’d rather be in the field than at a desk right now? Maybe in a few weeks. But in the meantime, because it’s Friday and it’s fun to make lists, I thought I’d go through some of the useful things I’ve learned in the field – mostly through personal experience or helping bandage up someone else who didn’t learn them fast enough. (Fortunately none of them required …
4 June 2008
Suburban excursions
I went on a short hike recently to find samples of Virginia rocks to fill out my collection and use for a presentation I’m going to be making at a career fair. Because I didn’t feel like trekking all the way out to the mountains by myself (not at all environmentally conscious!) I went looking for them in the stream beds near my house. I live in a pretty generic …
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.