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

Which open licence should I choose?

Matt Hall Environmental and Earth Sciences
I’ve written about open data a few times recently. And not-so-recently. And there’s been quite a bit of chat about open subsurface benchmarks in the Software Underground recently. As more people consider openly releasing data — or code, or other content — one question comes up fairly often is: Which licence should I choose?I’ll start at the beginning, and I am not a lawyer, but this is going to be very high level. So do…

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The procedural generation of geology

Matt Hall Environmental and Earth Sciences
Procedural generation is a way of faking stuff with computers. But by writing code, or otherwise defining algorithms — not by manually choosing or composing or sculpting things. It’s used to produce landscapes and other assets in computer games, or just to make beautiful things. Honestly, I know almost nothing about it, and I don’t play computer games, so I’m really just coming at it from the ‘beautiful things’ side. So let’s just stick to…

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Be a lady (in field biology) they said

Amanda Tracey Biology and Life Sciences, Communication, Education and Outreach, Environmental and Earth Sciences
In honour of the 6th International Day of Women and Girls in Science (February 11th, 2021), we wanted to take the opportunity to explore what it means to be a woman in field biology. While many aspects of fieldwork don’t discriminate by sex or gender (for example, getting bitten by insects, getting dirty, losing your phone/your field notes/your mind), fieldwork can present some unique trials for women – especially when it involves long days, weeks,…

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The Canadian Mountain Network Publishes First Annual Report

Chenoa Sly Environmental and Earth Sciences, General Science
Launched in 2019 with the support of the Networks of Centres of Excellence program and other partners, the Canadian Mountain Network (CMN) is Canada’s first formal research organization dedicated to advancing our understanding of mountain systems. The Network has come into existence at a time when Canada’s mountain systems are undergoing rapid and uncertain change. CMN’s mission is to support the resilience and health of Canada’s mountain peoples and places through research partnerships based on…

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Picture a Scientist

Sarah Boon Biology and Life Sciences, Environmental and Earth Sciences
Tomorrow is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, and in advance of it my husband and I watched “Picture a Scientist,” a documentary directed by Sharon Shattuck and Ian Cheney, that outlines the sexism faced by women in science. It was recommended to me by a friend and fellow woman in science who works for the government, and who likely has her own stories to tell about harassment. The movie features Dr.…

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What is an Ormsby wavelet anyway?

Matt Hall Environmental and Earth Sciences
If you dabble in reflection seismic analysis, you probably know the Ricker wavelet. We’ve visited it a few times on this blog — Evan once showed how to make and plot one, I looked at some analytic properties of it, and we even played golf with it.The Ricker is everywhere, but it has an important limitation — bandwidth. Its shape in the frequency domain is roughly Gaussian (below, left), which is the reason it only really has…

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AOL: Animals On-Line

fRI Research Biology and Life Sciences, Environmental and Earth Sciences
Dr. Lucy Poley has started a research project mining a trove of wildlife photos that the Caribou Program has been collecting since 2013. The pictures are all snapped automatically by hundreds of trail cameras spread out on seismic lines. Poley, a post doc at the University of Calgary, is trying to find out which species match up with different kinds of seismic lines. In order to drive seismic equipment for oil and gas exploration through…

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Moth Madness! Reflections from a Year of Mothing

chloevanloon Biology and Life Sciences, Communication, Education and Outreach, Environmental and Earth Sciences
In this post I reflect back on what my hubs and I have learned about mothing over the past year or so, and a look into the science of why moths are attracted to light. We first started mothing back in October of 2019 and our first attempts were pretty pitiful, and we’ve come a long way. Thank goodness! When we lived in San Jose, we’d drive 45 minutes up to Montebello Open Space Preserve,…

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Nuggets of knowledge in unexpected places!

Staffan Lindgren Biology and Life Sciences, Environmental and Earth Sciences, Science in Society
In these Covid times, I get what little inspiration I can muster from reading books. I admire the skill of authors who dive deep into old documents to find information for their stories. Most of what I read is non-fiction, so the information I gain is either directly from quotes by someone from a letter or other written document, but more often a mix of quoted text and the author’s interpretation of what happened. Natural…

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A New Canada Water Agency

Sarah Boon Biology and Life Sciences, Environmental and Earth Sciences
Since 2020, the federal government has been soliciting input from Canadians about a new Canada Water Agency (CWA). The goal is to connect all departments and programs across governments (federal, provincial, municipal, Indigenous) that deal with freshwater, and to also connect with academics and organizations focused on Canadian freshwater. The government has released a white paper that you can read here, which lays out the groundwork for the agency, and the departments and organizations who…

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