Research Update of the Summer

Well, I think we all knew this day would come. A research update post. Now part of the reason for posting a research update this week is because of two things; (1) I could not think of anything this week to talk about that did not have anything to do with my research; and (2) thesis defence is coming up (August 3rd!!!) so I haven't been able to focus on anything that isn't related to my research... Anyway. We are here. So we might as well dive right into it.

What Has Happened All Summer?

When I look back through the month of July, June, and May, I only see a lot of major milestone goals completed, and not a lot of beginnings on new goals. The main goals of this summer was to complete a full draft of my PhD thesis, submit it to my academic committee, review edits, submit my finalized PhD to the University of Western Ontario thesis submission portal, and present my thesis defence presentation on August 3rd. So far, all but one of those goals has been completed. The hardest goal of the lot was definitely putting the final thesis together. It wasn't thinking of what to write about, but thinking how to portray everything in an understandable, but at the same time, scientific manner. The discussion and conclusion chapter was surprisingly easier than I thought to write. I had a good understanding about how my three chapters tied together to address a common thesis goal, and I also was able to link all of them to future work that I plan to conduct after I graduate. The introduction was the hardest part. I had to include a generalized literature review and introduce my research goals, objectives, and motivation. To write it, I had to stray away from my research paper writing brain. I could not just immediately jump into the results and conclusions, but make it obvious what the motivation and purpose of my research was, and introduce each separate research chapter. It definitely took a few attempts to get the introduction chapter right, but eventually I was able to find a rhythm and get a good understanding on what is considered essential to be mentioned in detail in a PhD thesis. I have to admit, what really helped me get going writing my PhD introduction chapter was a dissertation writing seminar I attended in November 2020. I wrote a blog post about this seminar and what I gained from it already, so I won't go into any details in this post. I will mention again, however, that the dissertation writing seminar gave me the opportunity to put all of my thoughts on paper and get a clear picture on what I needed for my thesis. I will leave a hyperlink to the blog post where I talk about the dissertation writing retreat here for anyone who is interested.

On top of writing my PhD thesis, I began making some preliminary plans for research projects I had to put on hold because of my thesis. Most of them build off work that can continue from my PhD chapters. Some are entirely new and require a lot of initial brainstorming, literature review, and data collection. I don't want to talk about all of my research projects right now, since, well, some of them still require a lot of reading to strengthen the overall scientific goal. One that I can mention, involves working with some new synthetic aperture radar data :) For the past couple of weeks, I have been working with some of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Dual-Frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar (DFSAR) data, to try and figure out how to produce circular polarization ratio (CPR) and total backscatter (S1) parameters. I have worked with SAR data acquired by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) Miniature Radio-Frequency (Mini-RF), the Arecibo Observatory, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) AIRSAR and UAVSAR platforms, but they have been relatively easy to process and interpret. The DFSAR data is a slightly different story. The data formating is different to what I have worked with before so I set myself the task to figure out how to process the raw and calibrate data and produce CPR and S1 parameters. The end goal is to study the surface properties of the lunar surface using both S-band and L-band data. Right now, I am at the point where I can produce CPR and S1, but cannot map project them properly over LRO Wide Angle Camera (WAC). I am not sure if I need to map project it in one of the software's I use to process the data, or if I am using the wrong projections in ArcGIS. This will require a bit more time (but I am so close!). I can show you an image of DFSAR CPR data overlain on S1 data (Figure 1, not map projected though...)

Figure 1: CPR and S1 data processed from calibrated DFSAR products. CPR is a measure of surface roughness, quantified by measuring the change in radar backscatter polarization. Blue to green colour indicates a smooth surface at the decimetre-scale and orange to red indicates very rough at the decimetre-scale.

Going to the Field in September!

After 1.5 years of pandemic restrictions preventing me from travelling for field work, I can now say that I am able to return to the field (as long as I stay in Canada XD). With a tentative start date of September 2nd, I will be conducting field work at the Mistastin Lake impact structure located in Newfoundland/Labrador. The purpose of the field work is to collect new impact melt samples from multiple localities (Figure 2) to determine if impact melt was initially superheated >2370 °C across the entire impact structure. Currently, my PhD thesis has only supported that this superheated temperature is preserved in impact glass from a single locality. Originally, we wanted to include this project determining if superheating was occurrent across the entire Mistastin Lake impact structure, but the COVID-19 pandemic prevented us from conducting field work in August-September 2020. Instead, it will be my first official post doctorate research project.

To prepare for field work, I renewed my remote first aid training, began purchasing new field gear to tackle both warm, wet, cold, and windy weather (growing up in Scotland has helped immensely), and started brainstorming ideas for sample collection in the field. We are still in the early stages, although we will be accelerating plans after I have defended my PhD thesis. For the rest of August, I will be focusing on establishing a field plan, and testing all of the field and camping equipment to ensure everything is working correctly.

Figure 2: Google Earth image of the Mistastin Lake impact structure. The red polygons

represent the locations of impact melt deposits mapped out previous by other workers.

To pretty much summarize everything mentioned in this blog post, I will have a lot more to talk about in August and late September.