Hello everyone!
I hope you are all staying safe at home, finding things to pass time and entertain yourselves. I wanted to write about something to keep my mind off everything going on in the world right now, so I decided to talk about how I built up my celebration for geologists day! Geologists day was started by a group of Soviet geologists, headed by Alexander Yanshin. It started in 1966 on the first Sunday of April. The reason the first Sunday of April was selected is because it marks the end of winter and beginning of summer field work and expeditions. It has now become a global celebration for geologists, geophysicists, and geochemists. I do need to confess that I forgot about Geologists Day this weekend. However, I unintentionally released a lot of geology themed tweets this last week, so I guess you can say it was a great fit in the end. Last week, I participated in the #7DaysOfFieldwork on twitter where I posted four pictures of locations I have traveled to to conduct field work. I decided to start with my second year undergraduate field course mapping the structural geology of the Sierra Nevada mountains in Spain, and studying the water chemistry of the Rio Tinto Acid mines.
I moved chronologically through my field work day posts. In order, I went from my second year field course in Spain to my fourth year field course studying the oroegnic and metamorphic history of the western alps (mainly Italy and Switzerland). It was by far my favourite undergraduate course, getting to travel from Milan to Bern studying the geology of the Alps from exposed peridotites (rocks only found in the mantle!), marine deposits from the Iapetus Ocean, and change in metamorphic grade.
Day 3 was during the first semester of my MSc at Western University. I was part of the Canadian Space Agency CanMars Sample Return Simulation Mission. My role was to join the field team at Hanksville Utah and simulate the sample collection and instrumentation analysis of a rover on the surface of Mars. In the field, we only operated instruments and sampled when the team at Mission Control located at Western University in London Ontario gave us commands. It was also my most liked #7DaysOfFieldwork post! Probably because I am in a photo with a rover operated by Canadian Space Agency engineers and scientists :D
Day 4 was my field work at Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in 2017. As part of my MSc and now PhD, I studied the surface roughness of the lava flows at the site. Craters of the Moon hosts a variety of lava flow types from smooth pahoehoe flows similar to Hawaiian pahoehoe flows, and extremely rough block flows only found at explosive volcanic sites across the world. During this field work, I got to work alongside NASA FINESSE scientists, so that was exciting and nerve wrecking for me!
Day 5 is when I decided to share my experience on the Planetary Science Surface Processes Field School in 2017! The field school is a course run by Dr Gordon Osinski at Western University and about 25 of us got to travel across Arizona and Utah to study geologic sites that are similar to features observed on the surface of other planetary bodies, including the Moon, Mars, Io and Ceres. It is hard for me to pick a single favourite location, but I will say one of my favourites was Meteor Crater! First time I got to see an impact crater up close :D
Day 6 was the field reconnaissance expedition I took with Dr Matt Bourassa at Lanzarote, Spain. We were both part of the Precursor to Human and Specific Rover (PHASR) mission, a preliminary study for the lunar sample return analogue mission CanMoon. Lanzarote is the fourth largest Canary island and its surface is covered in volcanic features and deposits, including lava flows, pyroclastics and cinder cones. The landscape is very similar to the lunar surface, so we were sent to investigate potential sites where a CanMoon field team could simulate a rover, similar to what I did during the CanMars 2016 mission (Day 3!).
The final day, day 7, was my field expedition to the 2014-15 Holuhraun lava flow-field in the Askja region in Iceland. The lava flow-field erupted in near the end of August 2014 and continued until the 27th of February, 2015. The field site is part of the second chapter of my PhD thesis, where just like at Craters of the Moon I am studying the surface roughness of different lava flow types. Their surface roughness provides information about how lava flows were emplaced during the eruption, and they are an analogue for understanding the morphology and emplacement of Martian lava flows.
If you have some amazing field photos you should definitely participate in #7DaysOfFieldwork! Even though field seasons have pretty much been postponed or cancelled for geology teams across the world this summer, we can still get into the field work spirit :)
I will be posting a very short. fun post in the next couple of days. I am going to make something new to add to this weeks "What Should I Cook/Bake?" addition. Just a bit behind on getting one last ingredient.
Until next time! Stay home, stay safe and stay healthy guys!