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

x lines of Python: Stereonets

Matt Hall Environmental and Earth Sciences
Difficulty rating: Intermediate A few years back I needed to plot some fracture data without specialist software, so I created an Excel spreadsheet with a polar plot and interactive widgets. But thanks to Joe Kington and his awesome mplstereonet library those days are over. Today I want to share with you how to plot two fracture sets on an equal area Schmidt plot with mplstereonet. Here's what we're going to do — and in only…

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Fantastic Fruits of the Forest Floor

chloevanloon Biology and Life Sciences, Communication, Education and Outreach, Environmental and Earth Sciences
Ahh, the wonderful world of mushrooms. Winter in California means the arrival of rain and therefore the arrival of mushrooms! Yahooo! I wanted to put together a small collection of recently observed mushrooms from the Mendocino and Sonoma County area. Since mushrooms come in almost every color I thought I’d organize them into a rainbow-like pattern with a little bit of info on each. While plants in the winter are beginning their growing phase, fungi…

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Machine learning safety measures

Matt Hall Environmental and Earth Sciences
Yesterday in Functional but unsafe machine learning I wrote about how easy it is to build machine learning pipelines that yield bad predictions — a clear business risk. Today I want to look at some ways we might reduce this risk.The diagram I shared yesterday tries to illustrate the idea that it’s easy to find a functional solution in machine learning, but only a few of those solutions are safe or fit for purpose. The…

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Deadline extended for letters of Intent for knowledge hubs

Chenoa Sly Environmental and Earth Sciences, General Science
The Canadian Mountain Network is funding the development of at least funding at least six place-based knowledge hubs, which will receive $100,000-$300,000 per year (or $300,000 – $900,000 total over the three years) for a total of $3.4 million over 3 years. The deadline for Letters of Intent (LOI) has now been extended to January 20th, 2021 (midnight MST). Learn how to apply here! About the knowledge hubs These knowledge hubs are centers of activity…

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Functional but unsafe machine learning

Matt Hall Environmental and Earth Sciences
There are always more ways to mess something up than to get it right. That’s just statistics, specifically entropy: building things is a fight against the second law of thermodynamics. And while messing up a machine learning model might sound abstract, it could result in poor decisions, leading to wasted resources, environmental risk, or unsafe conditions.Okay then, bad solutions outnumber good solutions. No problem: we are professionals, we can tell the difference between good ones…

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5 Favourite Books of 2020

Sarah Boon Biology and Life Sciences, Environmental and Earth Sciences
This New Year I’ve decided to share the best five books I read in 2020 – not the best books ever, but books that changed the way I see things or introduced me to a time and place I would never have thought of reading about. Books that transformed my perception of both history and other cultures. These are the good books, the books that change you for the better. The books that live on…

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A Survey on Canadian Beliefs – Open Again Until Jan 23, 2021

Steph Halmhofer Biology and Life Sciences, Environmental and Earth Sciences, General Science
First things first, HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2020 was a nightmare year for many reasons, and while 2021 won’t immediately change things (let’s be completely honest about that) it is, at the very least, a fresh new year. That I am going to remain hopeful about. If you’ll remember, a couple of years ago now I ran the Survey of Canadian Beliefs. This survey, which I modelled after the Chapman Survey of American Fears, was designed…

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Burning Questions: The LIM Team’s responses to questions from the online workshop

Landscapes in Motion Environmental and Earth Sciences
The Landscapes in Motion Online Workshop (Oct. 22, 2020) was a great experience for our research team. It was an afternoon marked by great questions and exciting discussion. So much so, we ran out of time to answer the questions pouring into the Zoom chat, and we received several more in our post-workshop survey! Members of the Landscapes in Motion team have responded to the outstanding questions below. Questions and answers have been lightly edited…

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Unbe-LEAF-able Leaves

chloevanloon Biology and Life Sciences, Communication, Education and Outreach, Environmental and Earth Sciences
For the last couple of weeks I’ve been admiring and perplexed by interesting looking leaves I find on the ground while mushroom and bug hunting. Most of the ground in the Central California coast is covered by brownish pine needles, tanish oak leaves, other fallen leaves as well as a thick layer of duff. But every once in a while a leaf stops me in my tracks and I MUST take a photo. Can’t resist.…

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New Years wishes for humans and fishes from Erich Hoyt, Joel Bakan, Marc Bekoff, Carl Safina, Julia Barnes, Robbie Bond & Team Skaana

Mark Leiren-Young Biology and Life Sciences, Environmental and Earth Sciences, Policy and Politics
Skaana guests Erich Hoyt, Robbie Bond, Joel Bakan, Carl Safina, Julia Barnes, Marc Bekoff & the Skaana team share our wishes for a very new New Year in 2021. Skaana connects you to stories about oceans, eco-ethics and the environment. Join the Pod……https://www.patreon.com/mobydoll Spotify……………www.bit.ly/spotify-skaana Apple Podcasts………www.skaana.ca The Orca Bites Podcast (on anchor) ………www.orcabites.com – Skaana home……www.skaana.org Skaana on Medium……www.orcatales.com Our Latest Orca Videos…www.jpod.news – Facebook…………https://www.facebook.com/skaanapod/ Twitter……………https://twitter.com/leirenyoung Instagram…………https://www.instagram.com/skaanapod/ Books on Amazon **Amazon links are affiliate links…

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