GeoLog

The enormous space and time scales that Geology covers makes teaching it a challenge, one best overcome by field experience, but it’s a rare thing for a school to be able to explore Geological wonders on the other side of the world. So what if someone brought it to you?

Olivier Galland (who we had the chance to interview in December), together with Caroline Sassier, set up an educational project (The Andean Geotrail) centred on their cycling adventures in the Andean mountains. Seventeen schools followed their 8,000 kilometre journey from Lima to Ushuaia, as they blogged their way from one geo-highlight to the next.

The stunning photos from their travels are being exhibited at the General Assembly (Exhibition Gallery on the First Floor, Green Level) – it’s definitely worth dropping in!

Caroline Sassier on the The Andean Geotrail project, lost in the immensity of the Bolivian Altiplano. Photograph: Olivier Galland.

Geotalk, featuring short interviews with geoscientists about their research, continues this month with a Q&A with Jane Robb from University College London (UCL), who tells us about the excitement of geo-outreach and importance of conserving heritage collections. If you’d like to suggest a scientist for an interview, please contact Sara Mynott.

Jane Robb

First, could you introduce yourself and let us know a bit about your current work at UCL?

Hi, I am Jane Robb and I currently work as a research assistant at UCL’s Faculty of the Built Environment (The Bartlett) in student experience and pedagogy. This is quite a departure from my background – I have a BSc in geology from the University of Edinburgh and an MRes in heritage science from UCL. Not that this explains everything – I find that most people don’t know what ‘heritage science’ is. So let me enlighten you:

Heritage science is a relatively new discipline that incorporates scientific methods and practice into conservation of heritage objects. After my geology degree, I was not enticed by the prospect of a career in oil or mining and stumbled across this research masters. Having had a lifelong interest in geology, I had an affinity for all things old which incorporated museums and archaeology so I decided to combine these two passions in doing this MRes degree.

The degree programme was nested in the Centre for Sustainable Heritage in UCL’s Faculty of the Built Environment, which then led me to get the job as a research assistant improving the student experience and pedagogical practice across the faculty.

So what did you end up doing in your MRes?

Since the Masters was research based, I had the power to mould the degree into something very unique to my own interests. I really wanted to work at the Natural History Museum but keep my connection with geology, which led to me working directly with the famous Russell Collection – one of the best British topographical mineralogical collections. I was really interested in how the collection was managed, and comparing this to the way other heritage collections are managed. Unfortunately geological collections are not commonly associated with our heritage, but do form an important cultural and scientific resource which we have a responsibility to preserve in the best possible condition.

To ensure heritage collections are preserved and that appropriate conservation decisions are made for objects, they are often assessed using an understanding of their value. I am not talking about financial value here, but other values that can often contribute to attribution of financial value: educational, historic, personal, inspirational values and so on. Once again, geological collections have been left in the shadows when it comes to valuation of this kind, and subsequently collections are under-cared for and missing integral parts. I used social science techniques such as interviews and questionnaires and subsequent statistical analysis to understand what expert stakeholders (curators, scientists, conservators) value about geological collections. The results will then be used to help better care for and manage geological collections, and my supervisors and I are planning on publishing my thesis.

As well as working at UCL, you’re also the Communications Officer for Geology for Global Development – how do you balance your work with active science outreach?

I love doing geoscience outreach. I have worked for four years in science centres, education forums and museums as a science communicator and developed my own projects, training and resources around these roles. Because of this I love to spend my time volunteering for organisations such as Geology for Global Development (GfGD). I also volunteer with Rockwatch, the club for young geologists run by the Geological Association, where I write articles for their magazine, judge their annual competition and facilitate events. Of course, I also have my own blog where I like to discuss issues within science communication, specifically geology and I am also trying to find the time to complete training to become a STEM Ambassador and contribute some more to the WikiProject:Geology! It does all manage to balance out though – I manage my time with the help of Google Calendar and task lists, and because I enjoy what I do it means that I never feel bogged down by these commitments.

I also like to do some of my own projects – like the geology of Skyrim or the Twitter and Pinterest mini-project ‘SciAdvent’ where I made an advent calendar which told the history of the Earth in 25 days from a geological perspective. Both projects were just silly things I cooked up, but of all the things I have ever done, they were the projects that managed to get exponential views! Especially the geology of Skyrim, current views count on my blog of 60,000 in one week!

My work at UCL compliments the skills I need to communicate science as well. I run an event called Bartlett Showoff – inspired by the popular Science Showoff with built environment professionals from The Bartlett which has turned out a great success as well as a new scheme for graduates where they can become ambassadors for the faculty when they graduate and finally organising an international conference! Learning how to organise these events from scratch myself is invaluable, and communicating to such a different audience in all of the student experience resources I develop offers a good challenge. The Bartlett’s ‘architecture speak’ is so wildly different from science speak!

What are your future research plans – or do you hope to move further into science communication?

I am really excited about (hopefully!) publishing my Masters research, but I don’t know whether more research is on the cards for me right now. I would like to continue down the road of science communication, and at the moment I am building my ‘portfolio’ for this!

What advice would you give early-career researchers looking to communicate their work with the public?

Well, there is no harm in coming up with a project just by yourself and taking it forward. You don’t need to be part of something official to communicate science – just go out and do it! However, remember to take notice of when something does and doesn’t work – don’t get carried away with an idea just because you think it’s good.

Make sure you have a blog and talk about what you do, but also wider issues associated with your field and the challenges of communicating in it. Have a presence on Twitter – something I have found out working with GfGD and UCL is that not enough students are taking full advantage of Twitter as a resource for information and discussion on the latest topics that relate to them. Use it!

And finally there is no right or wrong way to start out in communicating your work. No one expects you to be a genius with your first try, whether this be a blog post, a set at Science Showoff or a full on event. I started out with no knowledge of communication working at a science centre and was there full time every summer for four years (and part-time during term). Every day I met different people who responded differently to various forms of explanation or interaction with science, and this taught me more than anything that to be a good communicator you have to be adaptable: you need to understand that there are so many diverse audiences out there and if you start learning how to be a communicator you will never stop.

Teachers and educators interested in taking part in the 2013 Geosciences Information for Teachers (GIFT) workshop should submit their symposium applications and requests for travel and accommodation support by 30 October 2012.

As previously announced on the EGU website, the GIFT workshop will be taking place on April 8-10 2013 at the EGU General Assembly in Vienna, Austria. The topic of the 2013 edition of GIFT is Natural Hazards, and the workshop will explore the complex relations between natural hazards – such as earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, or floods – and society. Application information is available for download in PDF format, and the document also includes the preliminary programme.

More information about the GIFT workshops can be found in the GIFT section of the EGU website.

GIFT 2013 – Natural Hazards

A Tuscan sunset to end the first day of proceedings at the 2012 EGU outreach retreat. (photo: Edvard Glücksman)

Members of the Munich-based Executive Office recently met with other members of the EGU Outreach Committee just outside Pisa, Italy, to brainstorm about the Union’s various outreach activities. The two-day meeting, led by Chairman of the EGU Outreach Committee Niels Hovius, was held primarily to establish a coherent long- and short-term outreach plan for the Union, some of which will be covered in more depth at the upcoming EGU Council Meeting on 18-19 November in Munich.  Topics discussed include the EGU’s commitment to education and the GIFT Programme, the Union’s media communications products, meetings support, and more general outreach developments that may be implemented in light of next year’s General Assembly.

Hard work in a beautiful setting!

Powering through to cover as much material as possible in two days. (Photo: Edvard Glücksman)

Members of the EGU Outreach Committee (Photo: Kostas Kourtidis)

In this month’s Geosciences Column, Wayne Deeker tells us about a new game – first presented in EGU’s Hydrology and Earth System Sciences – that aims to teach how to best share water resources.

With shrinking glaciers, depleted groundwater stores, and rising populations, water resources have never been under such pressure, and worse is yet to come. The resulting conflicts can get ugly and bring high stakes across borders. Resource management professionals, and especially today’s resource management students, are the ones who will bear the brunt of solving these problems. Any aid to make the teaching of water management easier is welcome.

Computer simulations have a long heritage in resource management teaching. Games, in particular, can effectively help students engage with, and understand, the issues. However, many previous water-management teaching games, which aimed to be as realistic as possible, were complex and difficult to understand. The ideal would be a game that simplifies reality yet also hits the key teaching points.

A hydrologist and a programmer from the University of Zurich, Jan Seibert and Marc Vis,  have devised a solution. Their game, called Irrigania, is a web-based teaching resource that simulates irrigation conflict issues among farmers and villages. The researchers presented this new teaching tool in a paper published last month in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, an Open Access journal of the European Geosciences Union.

Though Irrigania’s parameters are simplified compared to reality, they are well chosen and accurately modelled. Hence, the game authentically illustrates the issues typical in conflict situations in an understandable way.

Players take the role of farmers who aim to make the best profit. Each farmer must irrigate up to ten fields, and decide whether to use rain, river, or ground water. Each has different costs, revenues, and recharge parameters. For instance, use of river water leads to quick depletion, yet this source has no yearly memory; groundwater overuse will not be apparent for some time, but aquifers take several years to recharge. The winner is the player who can make the highest profit; to achieve it they must work cooperatively, as other farmers in the same village draw from common resources. The main teaching issue is achieving the collective optimum, and showing that this may be different from the preferred solution for any individual player.

A screenshot of Irrigania (from Seibert & Vis, 2012)

Irrigania has two login modes, teacher and student. Teachers can obtain a teacher-login by registering with the authors; then teachers set up the game, specifying the game’s length, the number of villages and farmers, precipitation conditions, and whether farmers can see each other’s input values. Players obtain their login details from the teacher and make decisions on how to use their fields. When all players have entered their values, the server runs the calculations and the game steps forward one year. During the game, farmers can see their accumulated balance, current hydrological conditions, and the previous year’s input of other farmers. At the end, farmers can go to the results page, tabulating outcomes per farmer and per village.

The authors recommend running game sessions in a computer laboratory where a class of students can communicate. They also suggest playing several rounds, exploring the game’s settings and possibilities. Irrigania can be played with any number of players, but four to six per village yields the most interesting outcomes and discussions.

Specifically, the authors noted that farmers in cooperative villages did best on average, though selfish farmers could still win. In such cases, the other players punished the selfish player by overusing their own resources, decreasing the whole village’s income. While not strictly rational behaviour according to conventional game theory, this realism is one of the game’s strengths. Hence, when players play several rounds, the folly of selfish behaviour becomes more apparent, making the tactic less attractive next time. Furthermore, when students did not know who the other farmers were, the lack of social control led to greater overuse and less income on average. Thus greater overuse should occur when players can make their decisions in secret. Cooperation also makes students more aware of the importance of keeping groundwater stable. Finally, the game illustrates the increasing difficulty of decision-making given unpredictable rainfall. When the game is set to random rainfall, players operate with partial information and, just as in real life, this makes long-term decisions more difficult.

As a tool for teaching water management issues, especially the classic Tragedy of the Commons, Irrigania should benefit teachers and students alike.

By Wayne Deeker, freelance science writer

Applications for the 2012 GIFT Symposium should be received by November 30, 2011. Send your application via email to any of the members of the Committee on Education preferentially the member in your country if there is one. Details for the application are below.

The 2012-GIFT (Geosciences Information for Teachers) symposium will take place on April 23-25, 2012 during the General Assembly of EGU in Vienna Austria. The general theme of the workshop is « Water!» and will be dedicated to the study of the hydrological problems of our planet.

The water cycle, also known as the hydrological cycle, describes the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth. It also involves the exchange of heat energy, which leads to temperature changes. The water cycle figures significantly in the maintenance of life, society and ecosystems on Earth. However, several problems threaten water resources today, which are related to the unsustainable use of water and the lack of adequate supply of water in many parts of the world. Such problems are caused by an ever increasing population, consumerism, urbanization and changes in agricultural practice.

In addition, as the water cycle involves heat exchange, it has a two-way feedback with our climate as well. In particular, the effects of atmospheric global warming on the water cycle are significant. Observed warming over several decades has been linked to changes in the large-scale hydrological cycle such as:

• increasing atmospheric water vapor content;
• changing precipitation patterns, intensity and extremes;
• reduced snow cover and widespread melting of ice;
• and changes in soil moisture and runoff.

As a consequence, water resources have already been deeply affected by global warming: sea levels have risen, glaciers have retreated. The hydrological cycle is heavily affected by land use change which in turn affects groundwater recharge. The above problems cause concerns in almost every sector of everyday life, and geo-engineers are seeking ways of mitigation. All water bodies are going to be affected by global warming, making knowledge of the water cycle essential for any kind of human activity. Entire regions on Earth would face extreme temperatures eventually associated with torrential rainfalls whilst other regions would experience scarcity of water and droughts.

In the GIFT workshop “Water!” all the different aspects of the water cycle will be described and discussed. Talks will focus on global freshwater availability and distribution, overexploitation of water, strategies for sustainable use of water in the future and the threats by environmental change. Particular regions where global warming will have a major impact, such as the regions depending on the water supply from the Himalayan, Alpine and Andes mountain glaciers will be used as exemplars. The use of naturally occurring isotopes to “fingerprint” sources of water in precipitation and rivers, and the presence of ‘ancient’ water beneath the deserts and other areas, will also be discussed..

Focus will also be put on climate model simulations for the 21st century, mitigation measures to reduce the magnitude of impacts of global warming on water resources, and water resources management and its impacts on other policy areas.

As in every GIFT Symposium, contributions by the attending teachers on particular “off-the-program” activities that they may have had in their classrooms are particularly welcomed, either as poster or oral presentations, even if their subject is not directly related to the theme of the workshop.

Also, a first step will be a guided visit to the Vienna Museum of Natural Sciences, on Sunday April 22 afternoon, followed by a small reception as an ice-breaker event.

Grants are available to support teachers to participate in the 2012 Geosciences Information for Teachers (GIFT) Symposium at the 2012 European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly in Vienna, Austria. Selected teachers will receive a travel /hotel stipend and free registration to the meeting.

Participating teachers will be selected based on their teaching experience and a supporting statement from their school administration. Selected teachers will be expected to attend the entire workshop and submit a statement within 1 year after the workshop on their impression of the workshop and how they plan to use this experience in their future teaching activities.

To apply please submit the following information:

• Applicant name, contact information, E-mail address
• School name and address
• List the subjects you teach, and the ages of students
• The workshop will be conducted in English. Please describe your capability to understand and speak English.
• A description of any leadership activities you have taken at your school or in national educational activities (examples: training new teachers, developing curriculum, etc.).
• A letter of recommendation from the senior administrator in your school supporting your application (by attached pdf document).
• (Optional) There will be opportunities for teachers to present any creative science activities they have developed for their classrooms to other teachers at the workshop. These presentations can be in the form of a talk, a poster or a demonstration. If you would like to present a science activity, please provide a title and description for inclusion in the program.

Applications should be received as soon as possible and in any case no later than November 30, 2011.

This information is also available in pdf format.

In response to EGU members’ requests individually and at Town Hall meetings at the General Assemblies 2010 and 2011, the European Geosciences Union is trialling a mentoring scheme for members. Initially this will be for female mentees (mentors can be of either gender).

The mentoring scheme is designed so that face-to-face contact is not vital and is meant to be an enriching experience for both the mentor and mentee. Guidelines will be issued to both parties before the start of the mentoring process. You can be both a mentor and mentee in the same cycle of partnerships. Mentees can be from undergraduate level and above, mentors can be masters students and above. We encourage applications from mentors from all sectors of the Geosciences e.g. industry, government, academia.

To ensure your inclusion in this exciting initiative, please submit your details before the 31 October. The sign up forms for Mentors and Mentees are online. Information on the scheme is online via the EGU webpage. Mentoring partnerships will be provided with guidelines and agree a partnership contract concerning types and frequency of meetings and the topics to be covered.

We will try to consider all of your requests when assigning mentoring partnerships. If you have further questions, please email Jennifer Holden.

A Geosciences Information for Teachers (GIFT) Workshop was held in Penang, Malaysia on the 23rd and 24th June 2011 on theme of ocean acidification. Over 40 teachers took part, participating in 8 lectures and a viewing of Tipping Point. The brochure, presentations and a video are available online on the GIFT pages on the EGU website.

The 2012 GIFT (Geosciences Information for Teachers) symposium will take place on April 23-25, 2012 during the EGU General Assembly 2012 in Vienna Austria. The general theme of the workshop is «Water!» and will be dedicated to the study of the hydrological problems of our planet. The deadline for applications is 30 November 2011. This pdf gives more details (also available on the EGU website.

In the GIFT workshop “Water!” all the different aspects of the water cycle will be described and discussed. Talks will focus on global freshwater availability and distribution, overexploitation of water, strategies for sustainable use of water in the future and the threats by environmental change. Particular regions where global warming will have a major impact, such as the regions depending on the water supply from the Himalayan, Alpine and Andes mountain glaciers will be used as exemplars. The use of naturally occurring isotopes to “fingerprint” sources of water in precipitation and rivers, and the presence of ‘ancient’ water beneath the deserts and other areas, will also be discussed.

The presentations from the GIFT workshops at past General Assemblies are now available online (where the author has given permission).

The GIFT programme offers teachers of elementary to high school the opportunity to upgrade their knowledge in geophysical themes and to shorten the time between new discoveries and textbook information. There are three main activities to the programme, one of which is The GIFT Workshop. This symposium (at the General Assembly each year) combines presentations on current research by leading scientists with hands-on activities presented by science educators for about 100 invited teachers.

A new part of the GIFT programme: GIFT Distinguished Lectures Series, is being inaugurated. For details of how apply see the PDF on the EGU homepage.