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30 July 2009
Italy (Part I)
I’m finally in one place for a couple of weeks this summer, and that means it’s time to start posting photos while I delay writing real blog entries. (There’s some cool stuff I saw on both my Italy and Utah trips that I definitely want to discuss, but my brain is still adjusting to the DC-area sauna, so they’ll have to wait until I”m feeling more creative.) Anyway, here are …
4 June 2009
2009 AGU Joint Session in Toronto: Sightseeing
Whoops! Guess I promised some Toronto photos – here they are, full of things I saw when I wasn’t at the meeting trying to stuff my head with talks and poster sessions. The St. James Anglican Cathedral at sunset. I haven’t seen so many pretty cathedrals since I was in Paris – not something you expect in a North American city! The CN Tower was right next to the conference …
28 May 2009
2009 AGU Joint Session in Toronto: Days 3 & 4
Having hit conference overload about halfway through the day on Tuesday, I neglected to blog about what I’d been seeing, so I’ll be combining two days. Tuesday was definitely talk day; I attended volcanology and kimberlite sesions in the morning and afternoon, in which I heard about: How melt inclusions in olivines and glass from eruptive products on Procida Island, Italy could be used to trace the volatile evolution, and …
25 May 2009
2009 AGU Joint Assembly in Toronto: Day 2
Today started out with the early (7AM) student breakfast, in which we got to meet some of the AGU big shots. Our table seemed particularly attractive, since I was chatting with the president, president-elect, the manager of AGU’s education and career services, and one of the Union’s lobbyists. I immediately discovered a few connections to my previous job, and was steered toward the only volcanologist present, who turned out to …
24 May 2009
2009 AGU Joint Assembly in Toronto: Day 1
After a long drive up to Toronto from Buffalo, encounters with surly border guards and confusing elevator mechanisms, and a really wonderful dinner at an Indian Restaurant on Jarvis Street, I’m finally diving into my first AGU. It doesn’t seem like there are a lot of people here, which is nice – not too overwhelming. The conference organizers decided to put together a mostly useless session guide that doesn’t actually …
3 March 2009
For my spring break…
I will not be blogging, because I will be here: View Larger Map Staying out of the way of this: And looking for things like this: Some people spend their spring breaks at the beach. I spend them hauling my butt up a steep, very active Guatemalan volcano looking for clay and structural weaknesses in a bunch of lava domes. Ah, life. Well, I’ll at least have some very good …
15 December 2008
100 (geologic) things meme
Looks like another fun meme going around the geoblogosphere. Let’s see how I score… (Things I’ve done are in bold, and my comments are in italics.) 1. See an erupting volcano 2. See a glacier3. See an active geyser such as those in Yellowstone, New Zealand or the type locality of Iceland4. Visit the Cretaceous/Tertiary (KT) Boundary. Possible locations include Gubbio, Italy, Stevns Klint, Denmark, the Red Deer River Valley …
8 August 2008
Costa Rica: Volcanoes in the mist
Costa Rica lies at the boundary where the Caribbean Plate is subducted underneath the Cocos Plate. Both are relatively small, compared to the North American or Pacific Plates, but the subduction zone forms a string of volcanoes (the Central American Arc) that stretches from Costa Rica to Guatemala. Costa Rica contains six: Rincon de la Vieja, Miravalles, Arenal, Poas, Turrialba, and Irazu. Turrialba and Irazu are both located very close …
3 August 2008
Costa Rica: Don’t drink the water…but the swimming’s fine
I’m back! Having survived Costa Rica’s rainy season, attacks by macaws and capuchins, cheesy coffee tour guides and every kind of biting insect in existence (and all without getting sunburned!), I have lots of great photos and stories to tell. As my masters research may be taking me to Guatemala, I was glad to have the chance to spend time in a Central American country, although I have to report …
20 July 2008
In the Humorous Vein #9
Blogging will be a bit (more) sparse in the next two weeks, as I’m escaping the heat and humidity of NOVA to go to…Costa Rica. (Hmm. Perhaps this plan would work better if I hadn’t chosen to escape to a tropical country…) I’m not sure if I’ll be able to post while I’m there, but I’ll be back with fantastic volcano photos! In the meantime, I’m going to set up …
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.