Environmental and Earth Sciences

Arctic Science, Geography, Geology, Oceanography, Hydrology, Glaciology, Seismology, Meteorology, Climate Science, Limnology, Remote Sensing, Natural Resources, Mining, Green Tech, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Development, Archeology, Paleontology

Spurge is the word . . . around these parts.

chloevanloon Biology and Life Sciences, Communication, Education and Outreach, Environmental and Earth Sciences
When naturalizing Trevor and I have some odd ball saying we say to each other while observing certain species. For example, when we find a weevil which is a small beetle with a long snout at some point we will call it an “evil weevil,” even though they have no evil-ness about them. Another phrase is “spurge is the word.” Usually this is said to each other in a funky voice elongating “spurge” and “word.”…

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The Canadian Mountain Podcast launches Season 3 with new episode about the Canadian Mountain Network

Chenoa Sly Environmental and Earth Sciences, General Science
The Canadian Mountain Network (CMN) is thrilled to launch a third season of the Canadian Mountain Podcast in partnership with the Journalism Program at Mount Royal University in Calgary. Meg Wilcox, Assistant Professor in the School of Communications Studies, serves as Senior Producer with a rotating cohort of undergraduate students from Mount Royal University, who learn about podcasting and mountain systems, while hosting and producing episodes for the first time. New students joining the Canadian Mountain…

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Let’s hear more from the women who leave academia.

Kaitlin Alexander Environmental and Earth Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics
“On International Women’s Day”, I wrote on 8 March, “why don’t we instead highlight women who left the workforce due to structural barriers? The current approach is a bit “let’s celebrate the women who navigated this broken system to distract from the fact that it’s broken”.” So far, I have been one of the women who is “celebrated” on days like this, with social media campaigns showcasing the work of women in science. I am…

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Changing Currents in the North Atlantic

Sarah Boon Biology and Life Sciences, Environmental and Earth Sciences
A recently published paper suggests that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) (also called the Gulf Stream System) is slowing down. What is the AMOC? It’s a current that brings warm waters up to the North Atlantic from the Gulf Stream, then sinks and heads south as the water gets colder, saltier, and denser. Like a conveyor belt, it pulls warm water north as it sinks, bringing mild winters to places like the UK and…

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What does Thecodonty mean?

Aaron Leblanc Biology and Life Sciences, Environmental and Earth Sciences, General Science
The more I study teeth, the more I realize that the words we use in our field matter. Scientists like to categorize things and invent new words to communicate ideas to their colleagues, but we have to choose them carefully. Even though scientists pride themselves on being precise and objective, sometimes a word can carry different … Continue reading What does Thecodonty mean?

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All the wedges

Matt Hall Environmental and Earth Sciences
Wedges are a staple of the seismic interpreter’s diet. These simple little models show at a glance how two seismic reflections interact with each other when a rock layer thins down to — and below — the resolution limit of the data. We can also easily study how the interaction changes as we vary the wavelet’s properties, especially its frequency content.Here’s how to make and plot a basic wedge model with Python in the latest…

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Beginning Again

Sarah Boon Biology and Life Sciences, Environmental and Earth Sciences
This past weekend I read Suleika Jaouad’s book Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted. It follows Jaouad on her four-year journey through leukemia and a bone marrow transfusion in her early 20s. As part of her illness journey, she wrote a column for The New York Times about being young and having cancer, and how clinicians could have dealt with her illness in a way that better addressed her demographic. For example,…

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Discussing the “Charming” Psychopathy of Corporations with Filmmaker Joel Bakan

Mark Leiren-Young Biology and Life Sciences, Environmental and Earth Sciences, Policy and Politics
By Izzy Almasi  What do you think of when you hear the word “psychopath?” Is it Norman Bates dressed in his darling mother’s clothes? Perhaps it’s Christian Bale’s handsome face spattered with blood in American Psycho. I’m sure the logo of a large corporation like Nike or Apple wasn’t the first image to pop into your head. Joel Bakan, the world-famous filmmaker, lawyer, author and esteemed jazz guitarist, has made it his mission to reveal the true…

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The hot rock hack is back

Matt Hall Environmental and Earth Sciences
Last year we ran the first ever Geothermal Hackathon. As with all things, we started small, but energetic: fourteen of us worked on six projects. Topics ranged from project management to geological mapping to natural language processing. It was a fun two days not thinking about coronavirus.This year we’ll be meeting up on Thursday 13 and Friday 14 May, starting right after the Geoscience Virtual Event of the World Geothermal Congress. Everyone is invited — geoscientists,…

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Questions for a Cactus

chloevanloon Biology and Life Sciences, Communication, Education and Outreach, Environmental and Earth Sciences
We are fully into our next location during this nomadic tour of California, and that is the Mojave desert! Being based very close to Joshua Tree National Park means we get to experience the end of winter and early spring in the desert; it’s a totally different landscape, and so beautiful! So with the total switch up in ecosystem from the redwoods of Santa Cruz Mountains where we last inhabited means a totally new switch…

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