Through The Sandglass

Please read this

Erik Klemetti is an assistant professor of Geosciences at Ohio's Denison University and he writes Eruptions, a blog about all things volcanic for Wired. A few days ago, he put up the following which I sincerely hope will be taken to heart by untold numbers of students around the world.

Dear College Students: You Should Take Geology

GEOLOGY (OR, MORE properly these days, geosciences) is a field that most incoming first-year students have little experience with. Maybe they had a rock collection, maybe they took AP Environmental Science. Maybe, if they were lucky, they had a high school teacher with some training in the field. However, most of the time, geology is faaaaardown the list of disciplines that any first-year might think to study … and the field doesn’t even cross their mind before they graduate.

That, my friends, is a mistake. Few disciplines in today’s world play such a significant role in how society operates and what we can do to protect our future. Few fields of study can play such a profound role in protecting people’s lives on a daily basis, whether you realize it or not. And few can bring together so many disparate ideas, from sciences to social sciences to humanities to the arts, like the study of the Earth can.

And no, it isn’t “Rocks for Jocks.”

I’m looking specifically at you, Mr./Ms./Mx. “I don’t like science.” Science is all around you, and understanding how the planet on which you will (likely) spend the rest of your life is pretty important. You make decisions every day in which geology was a factor somewhere along the line, so if you are ignorant of those ideas, you might not be making the right decision.

So, what do I mean? Here are some of the ways that taking a course in the geology will impact your life for the rest of it.

Time: Humans tend to not be great about thinking on long timescales—that is, anything longer than maybe their own lifespan. In geology, that is a merely a flash compared to deep time. Deep time is the timescale that takes us back over 4.5 billion years to the formation of the planet. So, while 100 years might seem like a long time now, take a geology class and you’ll be thinking about events that happened 10,000 or 100,000 or 100,000,000 years ago … and that gives you perspective about events happening on our planet today.

Space: Geology is also a discipline that gets you to think about many scales of space. Need to understand the evolution of a continent? We got that. Need to think about how isotopes of an element go into a crystal when it forms? We got that too. Best part: You likely need both ends of the size spectrum to solve problems.

Observation: Many science fields are very theoretical (I’m looking at you, physics … with apologies to the astronomers). That’s great and all, but if all the equations aren’t your bag,* geology is chock full o’ observing. It is these observations that are the backbone of the field, both in looking at a static landscape like the folds in a mountain belt and at active processes, like a landslide or an eruption. Satellites have opened up a whole new world of observations that unlock geologic problems … and offer us tantalizing new ones to examine. The field is a visual one!

*author’s note: contrary to popular belief (at college), geology is not an “easy” science. We do math! We do chemistry! We do biology! We do physics! We do archeology! But if you’re in college to do stuff that’s easy, you’re doing it the wrong way.

Thinking globally: You can’t really avoid thinking about the planet when you study geology. Now, it might not be the surface of the planet—lots of geologists study parts of the Earth deep beneath our feet (I’m talking thousands of kilometers down)—but that’s OK. You’re still thinking on a global scale. Ocean circulation, volcanic ash in the air, plates colliding, earthquakes rattling the planet. All these things (and more) are processes that geologists contemplate on a global scale.

Getting outside: Best thing about thinking globally and wanting to observe the world? It gets you outside. Most geologists covet their time doing “field work” and if you are a geology major, you’re likely going to head off at some point to do “field camp” (where you learn the secrets of mapping the Earth) or “field research,” where you can make observations, collect samples, and think about geologic processes all while hiking some of the most spectacular landscapes. Places I’ve gone as a geologist include the high Andes of Chile, New Zealand, the Cascades in western North America, Hawaii, the coast of Maine, the deserts of California and much, much more.

Climate: Now, so far I’ve talked about all the fun parts of geology. However, if you’re looking for work that is important to you, your family and society across the planet, geology is the place to be. First off, geology is ground zero for understanding climate change across the history of Earth. We’ve been studying the variation in the planet’s ecosystems for two centuries now (heck, paleontology helped start the discipline) and can look back billions of years to see how the climate has varied. This gives us that evidence to show how much our current climate is likely in a state of distress. Geology is also how we can understand what the impact of climate change will be on our planet, both in the short- and long-term.

Hazards: If you take geology, you’ll find out about all the ways the planet might be trying to take you out: eruptions, earthquakes, landslides, floods, sinkholes, tsunamis, and more. You’ll also learn how geologists are trying to protect people from perishing in such disasters by better understanding their impacts and assessment of their risk to lives and property. More importantly, you’ll realize how to protect yourself. Buying a house? Maybe you should check to see if you’re on a floodplain. Is the house in an earthquake-prone area? Is the hillslope stable behind the place? Geologic hazards will impact you at some point, so understanding them puts you ahead of the curve.

Resources: Take a look around you right now. I’d venture to say that much of what you see came from a geologic deposit at some point. Copper wires? Maybe from the copper deposits of the Andes. Steel for your car’s frame? Maybe Minnesota. Your iPhone is chock full of rare earth elements that likely came from Chinese carbonatite deposits. The power for your house may be coming from a range of geologic resources: coal (yes, sadly) or uranium (better) or hydro-power. If you study geology, you’ll start to realize the impact that extracting these resources has on the planet (and people) so you can make more sustainable decisions. You might even get a job in geologic resources (and trust me, it is profitable—a practical reason to take geology: to get one of the many high-paying entry level jobs out there).

Synthesis: However, to me, one of the key reasons to take geology is to start thinking about lots of ideas all at once and begin to synthesize the information. If you really want to understand the hazards posed by a volcano, you’ll need to understand magmatic processes that form the magma and allow it to erupt, how that stuff that erupts moves across the Earth’s surface, what people might be living near the volcano, and how it might be best to communicate the hazard to them. Geology has so many intersections across so many disciplines that a background in geology will allow you to intelligently speak about everything from the age of the planet to the potential of an earthquake in your hometown to how animal life has changed in Ohio for the last billion years.

Geology is so central to the lives of so many people. If the goal of college is to create an informed citizenry that can then navigate their lives, a background in geology (even if it might be a single class) might be one of the most important disciplines you could choose. So, if you’re never considered taking that geology class offered on your campus, now might be the time to give it a try. You’ll come out realizing our place in the planet’s long history.

I’m sure I haven’t even scraped the surface, so do you have any more great reasons to take geology?

Thanks, Erik!

The image at the head of this post, in keeping with Erik's volcanic passions, is from Iceland, 2015: the eruption of Holuhraun, courtesy of NASA's Earth Observatory. This is of particular interest to me, since I'm off to Iceland tomorrow (Katla willing) and among the destinations on my itinerary is Askja volcano which, in the cloud and the snow, can be seen 19 kms directly north of the eruption in the NASA image. Exciting, huh? Just hope the weather and lithospheric turbulence don't spoil the fun...

 

The Great Sand Dunes – as seen through the lens of ‘Written in Stone’

 

Earlier this year, I discovered a superb geological and photographic blog that I had not encountered before. ‘Written In Stone…seen through my lens’ is by Jack Share, who describes himself as follows:

I was the kid in the Jackson Browne song “in ’65 I was seventeen”, when my educational efforts were directed toward a degree in zoology and a career in the health professions. Years later, the fossils I found as a kid in Central New York led me to paleontology, their evolutionary relationships and to developmental biology. It wasn’t long before I came to appreciate the importance of an education grounded in geology. Former life and former landscapes are indeed inseparable. In this blog I offer an interpretive and photographic perspective of our world, both past and present, and both within my New England home and well beyond.

Jack wrote to me about his two posts on the Great Sand Dunes of Colorado, the first a comprehensive geological review (the ‘the juicy geological details’), the second a photographic essay, ‘Climbing the geology of the dunes.’ I thoroughly recommend a visit to these posts – and to the rest of the blog. Jack has a natural ability to write clearly and informatively but also to make geology fun, and his photographs are great. As a lure, here is a selection (reproduced with his permission).

The brass section

I do, on occasion – and to the great distress of anyone within earshot – quite literally blow my own trumpet. Or, to be precise, these days, a flugelhorn. It began in the early Pleistocene when I was in high school, playing second trumpet in the band and orchestra to the first, whose surname, gloriously, was “Tootle.” I graduated – to the great distress of anyone within earshot - to the tuba (a fine and much-maligned instrument), and my father always maintained, entirely erroneously, that this was simply because the size of the instrument required my being driven to school on rehearsal days. 

But enough of my instrumental aspirations (as anyone within earshot would agree). There’s always a great and immodest pleasure in finding oneself cited, and there have recently been several examples of this, to which I feel compelled to draw attention. First of all, Andrew Alden on About Geology kindly posted a reprise of his views on Sand, together with a link to the conversation he and I had a couple of years ago. Then Gary Hayes at Geotripper referred to “an excellent geo-blog based on sand” in his recent post, “Sand...Lots of Sand.”

And, just yesterday, Geoff Manaugh, of the acclaimed BLDBLOG, put up two successive posts directly related to topics that I have written about – the New York sand mines, and the Normandy beaches (see the posts, in addition to sections in the book, here, and here).

So thanks to all for the citations and the pleasure. I shall now sign off, without – to the relief of those within earshot – fanfare.

Update 14 August, breaking news! Thanks to Geoff Manaugh and BLDBLOG, I have now made it onto BOINGBOING. 

Sunday sand: Bali again - and a great website

Travelling this weekend, so a perfect time to borrow some images and showcase a great website. Catalin Stefan lives in Dresden, Germany, and is a devoted arenophile. And some of this devotion has been directed to building his World Atlas of Sands website, which I thoroughly recommend as rewarding a visit and a browse – it’s a beautifully constructed site. There are articles, discussions of software and sample storage (he kindly included a photo of my humble efforts), links to an extraordinary range of fellow enthusiasts around the world – and many superb images of samples from his collection. It’s clear to me that his photomicrography skills and equipment are far superior to mine – I need to find out how he does it!

So, enjoy these images of Bali sands – above left, Cucukan Beach, right, Klotok, and below Sanur Beach foraminifera (of which I have written before) on the left, and Legian Beach on the right. But, even more importantly, then visit Catalin’s website and have a look around – you will enjoy it. 

[All images copyright Catalin Stefan reproduced with his permission]

Accretionary Wedge # 32

The March edition of the Accretionary Wedge geoblog carnival is at Ann’s Musings, and the theme is a deceptively simple summons: “Throw me your ‘favorite geologic picture’ mister.”  This is nigh-on impossible and has led to some considerable introspection, not to mention scrabbling around to see what candidates I have with me on my laptop. But the scrabbling stopped as soon as I reminded myself of the image above. At first glance, perhaps it’s not strictly geological – but then again, yes it is. And, because of the very personal impact, it’s one of my favourite pictures – ever.  

It’s from a location in the remote south-western corner of Egypt, a Louvre of rock-art. This is just a small exhibit in a cave shelter covered in human expressions. The setting is geological, the canvas is geological, and the materials are geological, and all combine in the message of the connection between humans and geology. But of course it’s even more than that – we have no idea really who the artists were, exactly when they lived, what the function of this place was in their society, or why they expressed themselves so exuberantly. But the emotional  resonance, sitting there gazing at this, has become deeply ingrained; there is an immediate, intensely human, connection with two unknown people who chose to record their hands reaching out to each other.

It’s not even a picture of sand – but it is probably my favourite geological photo. And, in today’s world, perhaps it has an important message.

A long-tailed black swan visits

A quick visual inspection of the visit stats for this blog reveals a rather startling anomaly: in general a typical day will see a couple of hundred visits, but when I first checked on Tuesday morning the figure was well over 2000 and ended the day close to 4000. I was, to say the least, astonished. There was also highly anomalous twitter and facebook traffic, and it rapidly became clear that all this excitement originated from a post on Reddit, which in turn originated from this, about the extraordinary sand art of Andrew Clemens. This became linked to a very recent episode of Antiques Roadshow broadcast from Des Moines, Iowa, where the State Historical Society hosts a collection of Clemens’ work and kindly gave me permission to reproduce images in the book. This all led to a cascade – indeed, an avalanche – of links and the unprecedented, unpredictable, and unique event on this blog.

The segment on the TV program is well-worth watching – for the moment, at least, it’s available on the New Hampshire Public Television site – the discussion of Clemens begins at around 22 minutes.

What happened has, when I think about it, always been within the universe of possible events, but well outside the historic metrics and the limited world of expectations – hence this post title. When I wrote the “Sandpile world” post last week, little did I think that this would be dramatically illustrated by imminent events on the blog itself!

 

[By the way, Sandglass will shortly be travelling to distant parts – a couple of posts have been pre-scheduled for the coming week, and I hope to be reporting “live” soon thereafter.]

A catch-up round-up of the Geoblogosphere

  
If I were one for New Year’s resolutions, which, after decades of disappointing self-scrutiny, I’m afraid I’m not, I would probably resolve to try to manage my time better. A large part of that challenge is simply the escalating wealth of fascinating stuff that is available and addictive – it seems as if every time I check Google reader there are several hundred new items to peruse, while the stratigraphic accumulation of periodicals reaches periodic proportions, and I have to resort to used train tickets to keep the place marked in each of the components of the pile of books that I’m determined to read. If only I could focus, impose some kind of filter on my magpie mind – but then life would be that much less interesting….

I have recently added to my enjoyable burden by discovering two new Geoblogs and reminding myself of another that I had failed to catch up on. First, it was a great pleasure on my November transatlantic voyage, sermonizing periodically about arenaceous topics, to find that one of my fellow lecturers was Susan Humphris, a Senior Scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute; Susan was a member of the 1986 Atlantis II/Alvin scientific party that made the first discovery of hydrothermal vents in the Atlantic Ocean – it was an honour to meet and talk with her and to find how well some of our topics interwove. During the trip I was contacted out of the blue by one of Susan’s graduate students who had seen my post and made the connection; she is Evelyn Mervine, “a geologist, writer, traveler, and aspiring polyglot,” who, since November last year, has her own blog, Georneys (header image shown, without explicit permission, above, left). Evelyn is working on the fascinating potential of certain rock types to soak up carbon dioxide, notably the old mantle material of ophiolite complexes: much of her work is based in Oman, site of perhaps the world’s premier ophiolite. This is doubly of interest to me since I did field work in Oman a long, long, time ago – while the amenities and infrastructure of the country, and our understanding of its geology, have changed out of all recognition, the rocks themselves have not, and I much enjoyed the audio slide show on her work that Evelyn provides a link to in one of her posts – well-worth watching. For amusement, and an illustrative break, here are some lantern slides from my time in Oman – the central image is of graded bedding – sedimentary structures – formed in a magma chamber deep in the earth’s mantle.

Second, early last month I did a Sunday Sand post on Australia’s North Stradbroke Island; it’s considered to be the world’s second largest sand island, and I posed the question of which is the largest. Just today came a comment with the correct answer – Fraser Island, not far away from North Stradbroke. I apologised for there being no prize, but, as I always do when a new reader of this blog posts a comment, I followed up on the url provided and found that Malcolm is a “geography undergraduate in an underfunded and unappreciated Canadian university” and has today begun his own geoblog, the gloriously named “Pawn of the Pumice Castle.”  The header image from Malcolm’s blog is, again without permission, on the right at the head of this post.

And Chris Rowan, over at Highly Allochthonous has announced a great new idea - a place for folk who don't want to set up their own blog but nevertheless would like somewhere to write stuff periodically. The site is aptly named Earth Science Erratics and explains that:

Earth Science Erratics is conceived as a place for geoscientists or geosciences enthusiasts to be able to write one or a few blog posts, on any earth science topic of their choice, without the necessity of establishing their own blog. Think of this space as a field of erratics…

…We’d like to host an assortment of posts here – from the consulting geologist sharing tales of a field project in an exotic locale, to the grad student anxious to practice his science writing skills explaining a part of their discipline…from the amateur earth scientist who wants to write about the geology in her neighborhood to the researcher who wants to share her newly published results with an audience broader than journal readers.

So, there we are, three new sources of fascinating stuff to keep track of. And, if this weren’t challenging enough, I recalled that Brian Romans at Clastic Detritus, having not long ago migrated to the Wired Science blog community, had also begun a blog for for the Quest Northern California multimedia site. Having overlooked this, I have now begun catching up with this, and, of course, found that this is another non-trivial task. The wondrous geo-turmoil that comprises California’s landscapes, above and below sea-level, makes for literally endless fascination, and Brian’s enjoyment of this is obvious. I was also delighted to see that several of the topics, such as the legacy of the Gold Rush, detail topics that I have occasionally rambled on about.

The joys of Northern California’s geology have been highlighted recently as a result of the Annual Meeting of the American Geophysical Union being held in San Francisco. I am conscious of the need to avoid undertones of envy as I write – reports from the meeting only emphasise the excitement of actually being there. And there have been many such reports around the Geoblogosphere, too many to link individually, but I should express my appreciation of at least vicariously knowing what was going on and being pointed to projects of interest. And, having been in the Bay Area myself earlier this year (and wiring about, for example, Marshall Beach and the sands of the Exploratorium), the descriptions of field trips and other extra-curricular activities have been most enjoyable – if bad for the envy-control challenge. Callan Bentley's series has been typically entertaining.

One item from the AGU meeting that I have missed details on was the session on geoblogging – can anyone point me in the direction of a summary or whatever?

So, time-management, an ever-increasing problem, but an enjoyable one at the end of the day (that arrives, always, too soon). I shall instead devote my attention to a couple of trivial New Year’s resolutions: finding a job and writing another book.

Accretionary Wedge: the Geoblogosphere

Dave Bressan (History of Geology and Cryology and Co.) has posted a call for a new Accretionary Wedge episode with the grand theme of the geoblogosphere, geology, and society. David and I have corresponded on various topics, including this one, and so here I am in a kind of supporting role in this carnival. A few months ago, I put up a commentary on the geoblogosphere that I had written for the Geological Society's online discussions; Chris Rowan, of Highly Allochthonous, contributed to this piece, and it was our hope that it might stir things up a little in the relatively sedate worlds of not only the Society, but also the UK geoblogosphere in general. Alas, this hope was not to be fulfilled - the response was not one that required earplugs.  

Having been scribbling away on Through the Sandglass for some twenty months now, and following as many science blogs as I can, I find the dynamics and issues around the whole process and product fascinating. I write the blog because I enjoy it and because I am put in touch with people that I never otherwise would have known, even vicariously. And I learn a lot in the process. This satisfaction is derived from a very modest scale of things - I note that a typical post on Pharyngula receives more comments than I have over the entire life of my blog; but then I also note that many of the comments on Pharyngula are not ones that I would want to publish anyway - I enjoy his posts, but have no desire to emulate PZ.

One of the many things that strike me about the geoblogosphere is its civility and objectivity. The more lurid and globally popular segments of the blogosphere as a whole are filled with vituperative, ad hominem - and often inarticulate and, of course, anonymous - rants. Not so with us geobloggers, which is a good thing - is this something that can be exploited constructively? There is, after all, much discussion (much of it vacuous) about the role of the blogosphere, and I've been doing a little probing around some of the (non-vacuous) examples of this. One of the "debates" is whether blogging is journalism - in my view, this question, as such, doesn't mean much since both blogging and journalism cover such a multitude of sins. But the question is interesting in terms of the relationship between blogging and journalism, within which lies a possible future vector for the responsible blogosphere. Read, for example, the piece (and the comments) on the BBC College of Journalism blog, titled "Blogs are not real journalism." And then consider this from one of the comments:

To say "blogging is not journalism" is a rather meaningless statement as it depends on what definition of "journalism" one picks, surely?

A rather important point is that in blogging about science the bloggers are often people who know far more about science than the journalists who cover it. This is one of the reasons why blog coverage of scientific stories is often far more accurate and informed than what appears in the mainstream media.

Indeed it seems to me, from reading the works of the mainstream media science correspondents, that the ones whose copy is generally more accurate are the ones who follow the science blogs. I wonder what that is telling us?

Then I came across a workshop put on earlier this year by the Harvard Kennedy School's program on Science, Technology, and Society (STS). Titled Unruly Democracy: Science Blogs and the Public Sphere, it's quite an intriguing series of talks and discussions - but, unfortunately, the sessions are documented only through a series of rather poor-quality videos - I've watched some, and they're interesting, but I'm afraid that I haven't had the stamina to complete the course. Being a bit of a luddite, I'd really like to be able to digest a written summary - the only one I can find is an entertaining discussion by Jessica Palmer (who was there) - well worth a read.

So there's a lot to talk about on this subject - David and I really look forward to your observations and, most importantly, ideas, for the geoblogosphere - where to go, how to add value, how to leverage the creativity and the passion of geobloggers. Out of the box, folks!

The Geoblogosphere: a commentary

 

Curious about the cultural dimensions of the International Geoblogosphere, and with the impression (without much in the way of supporting statistics) that the UK earth science "community" lags behind international colleagues in the extent to which it has embraced  this medium of communication, I recently wrote a piece for the Geoscientist, the magazine of the Geological Society here in London. Including helpful commentary from Chris Rowan, the intention was to stir things up a little; so far, it has appeared only on the Geoscientist online site, and, while circulating around the discussions of the already-converted, so far has not proved particularly provocative (to my knowledge). Posting it here will, I appreciate, largely reach that same group (the small but much-appreciated readership of Through the Sandglass), but I look forward to comments and suggestions; for example, the Geological Society holds an admirable number of meetings on diverse topics every year - disseminating the highlights via the blogosphere would seem to me to be a great idea.

The Geoblogosphere

Blogs. The self-absorbed ramblings and rants of adolescents of all ages? Political and social tirades from grinders of the well-honed axes of zealotry? Mindless and breathless accounts of minor celebrities and nonentities? Well, yes. But is there also wheat to be found amongst the piles of chaff? The answer to that too is an emphatic “yes”, and I will argue here that the potential value of this much-derided form of communication is under-appreciated and under-exploited, particularly here in the UK.

Until a little over a year ago, I was very much in the derisive camp: I had never looked at a blog and had no intention of doing so. Then the University of California Press, who had kindly and of course wisely agreed to publish my book, pointed out to me that many of their authors set up a blog to help publicise their work, and suggested that I might do the same. I did, with the aspiration that my efforts should represent a few grains of wheat as well as sand. And, in doing so, I discovered, to my surprise and pleasure, just how many valuable blogs there are out there, and how powerful they can be in initiating rewarding lines of communication that otherwise would simply not be open. I discovered the cumbersomely but aptly named geoblogosphere, a global community of geologists who write blogs. There are, literally, hundreds of geoblogs: while the dominant language is English, it is a truly international community, and, while the majority of the writers are academics (faculty and students), included are geologists of all professional stripes as well as freelancers and enthusiastic non-professionals. The theme, content, character, and style of these blogs are, unsurprisingly, diverse – some are more light-hearted than others, some are seriously scholarly, but almost all are informative and entertaining.

So far, so well and good – but what’s the point? Why do these geologists write blogs and what is their value? A recent survey of the geoblogosphere conducted by Lutz Geissler of the Technical University Bergakademie in Freiberg, in collaboration with Robert Huber of the University of Bremen and Callan Bentley of Northern Virginia Community College, helps answer the first question and informs the second. The equally top-ranked responses to the question “why do you blog?” were “to inform”, “to share knowledge”, and “to popularise the geosciences” (followed closely by “to have fun”). Combine this motivation and energy with the significant audience for many of these blogs, and there is arguably the prime value: knowledge-sharing and outreach. From my own experience I take equal pleasure from the virtual conversations that my blog has stimulated with professional geologists and the informed and enthusiastic “interested public”. I not only enjoy, but learn from the selection of geoblogs that I read regularly, taking advantage of the scope of their reports and their links to research news and geological events that, chances are, I would not have otherwise come across. I subscribe (largely online) to several professional journals, but, for sheer breadth of supplementary coverage, the geoblogosphere is unequalled.

But what is this content, what do geoblog writers write about? The majority write about their own work and scientific articles that interest them in the geosciences in general. The geoblogosphere can thus be categorised in a number of different ways – according to discipline (sedimentology blogs, palaeontology blogs, seismicity blogs, and so on), to geographical location and focus, and to specific projects and events (an Ocean Drilling Program leg, for example). Then there are blogs directed at a specific audience – earth science teachers in the U.K., for example, can find valuable support in blogs such as Keele University’s http://earthlearningidea.blogspot.com/. What the majority have in common, however, is that they are current and immediate. Whether reporting on an ongoing research or fieldwork project, a volcanic or seismic event, providing links to newly published papers, or seeking ideas on the design of a new course, these blogs represent a unique means of rapidly disseminating – and accessing – information and ideas.

And it is not just individual scientists who take advantage of this – many institutions and professional societies, particularly in the U.S., maintain blogs or continually updated news sites; the USGS is an excellent example (see http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/). It is within this context that the currency and immediacy of the blog format provides unique value: reporting on geoscience conferences and meetings. Not only do the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union actively encourage and support individuals blogging from their conferences, but the AGU published its own blog of the recent annual meeting in San Francisco – http://www.agu.org/blog/fm09/. Through the combined efforts of the host institution and individuals writing about sessions they had just attended and papers they had just heard, professional scientific news is disseminated with unparalleled immediacy.

Live conference reporting represents one aspect of the serious science end of the spectrum that is the geoblogosphere, but it is not the only one. Chris Rowan, at the University of Edinburgh, together with Anne Jefferson at the University of North Carolina, publishes the widely respected Highly Allochthonous geoblog (http://scienceblogs.com/highlyallochthonous/). Chris is far closer to the research coalface than I am, and writes:

At its core, blogging is about sharing; in the case of (geo)science blogs, what is being shared is your expertise and your passion for geology. When writing about a recently published paper, you can provide some depth to those interested in not just what we know, but how we know it. By providing a glimpse into how scientific ideas are debated and destruction tested against reality within our community, you help to chip away at the misunderstandings of the scientific process that remain well-entrenched in the public mind, and are all too easily exploited by the unscrupulous, to all our detriments. I personally believe that as a publicly funded scientist, sharing knowledge is as important a part of my duties as generating it in the first place, and blogging is an effective and powerful tool for discharging this duty.
But beyond this, I have a much more selfish reason for investing my time in writing a blog: it makes me a better scientist. I have discovered that my thinking about science – my research, the work of others, basic concepts in our field – becomes much more coherent after I have been forced to properly articulate it. I also find myself properly engaging with a much broader range of geological subdisciplines, counteracting the natural pressure to focus only on my narrow area of research. Furthermore, I'm sure that writing regularly for my blog has greatly improved my communication skills in the conference hall and the lecture theatre - after all, the ability to clearly explain your thoughts to others only comes with time and practice. Finally, it allows you to have a bit of fun; amidst the day-to-day grind of lab work and administration, communicating your excitement about a new geological discovery, or sharing your appreciation of a beautiful geological image, or simply interacting with interested readers in your comments section, helps to remind you why you first took up science in the first place.

I hope that this brief summary of the nature of the geoblogosphere supports my case for its being of potential value. But discerning, selecting, and accessing that value is clearly up to the individual, and the scope of the geoblogosphere, modest though it is in a global context, is broad. How to sample and focus? First of all, Huber and his colleagues maintain a list of more than 250 geoblogs worldwide, and this can be found at http://geoblogs.stratigraphy.net/?action=list. But it’s a long list; some blogs are more active than others, some more serious and science-focused. For a quick review of who is writing about what, the associated aggregator, Geoblogosphere News (http://geoblogs.stratigraphy.net/?action=news) is ideal. The latest posts from every geoblog are listed as a title and opening words, together with a link to the blog.

I recognise that every individual structures their relationship with the internet differently, but I find that the most effective way of keeping track of blogs and news sites that interest me is through an overall aggregator – I use Bloglines, but there are various choices, all of them entirely free. This allows me to subscribe not only to the Geoblogosphere News, but to specific individual blogs and other sources. This is a “one click” solution to tracking activity – the aggregator simply lists the latest articles and I can follow up on whatever I wish, given whatever time is available. Furthermore, each blog whose content and style attracts an individual reader will generally include a list of blogs and resources that the writer follows – often a good shortcut to new sites of similar character and focus.

I realise that undoubtedly many Fellows of the Geological Society are not only aware of, but actively participate in, the geoblogosphere. But my purpose here is to try to spread the awareness of its value more broadly, for there is a clear geographical – and possibly cultural – imbalance, a statistical anomaly. The energy and activity of the geoblogosphere comes dominantly from the United Sates. More than half of the respondents to Geissler’s survey were based there; more writers responded from Spain and Germany than from the U.K. And this imbalance is also evident in audience statistics: here, I can only speak for the numbers relating to my own blog, but I suspect that they are fairly representative. While Through the Sandglass has been visited from over a hundred countries, U.S. readers account typically for half of the audience, those from the UK perhaps ten percent. Now it might be argued that these numbers are simply representative of the relative populations of the U.K. versus the U.S.; however, while population statistics of geoscientists per capita are difficult to find, the numbers of geosciences degrees awarded each year are not, and they point clearly to a higher concentration of geoscientists in the U.K..

So, if, as would seem to be the case, the level of representation, activity and interest in a valuable and informative communication tool is lower in the U.K. than in the U.S., why is this? As geoscientists in today’s world, we are surely concerned not only with the progress and vitality of our discipline, and communicating effectively with each other, but also with, for want of a better word, outreach. Who could dispute that any means of more effectively communicating how our planet works, how our science works, how we work, is worth exploring? I will not presume to answer these questions, but simply, through this article, hope to stimulate interest and discussion of the effective use of the geoblogosphere.

Oh, and might The Geological Society (not to mention society in general) benefit from its own blog?

Links:

The summary results of Lutz Geissler’s survey are available at http://www.geoberg.de/blog/geoblogosphaere-web-2-0/short-summary-of-the-geoblogosphere-survey-results-2009

Kim Hannula, whose blog is titled All of my faults are stress-related (but she is currently taking a break), has, together with Anne Jefferson, conducted an interesting survey on women geoscientists and blogs. The results were recently reported at the GSA Annual Meeting, and are summarised at http://scienceblogs.com/stressrelated/2009/12/women-in-geoscience_and_blogs.php

The GSA abstract of the paper is at http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2009AM/finalprogram/abstract_161556.htm

The UK representatives of the geoblogosphere that I have been able to identify (with apologies to those that I have missed) are:

http://daveslandslideblog.blogspot.com/

http://earthlearningidea.blogspot.com/

http://hypocentral.com/blog/

http://scienceblogs.com/highlyallochthonous/

http://volcanism.wordpress.com/

http://geologywestcountry.blogspot.com/

http://www.ethicalpalaeontologist.com/

http://bobjamieson.net/

http://throughthesandglass.com (my own)

Below is a very personal selection of the international English-language blogs that I follow which provides a sampling of the diversity of the geoblogosphere:

http://geology.about.com/

http://clasticdetritus.com/

http://www.earthmagazine.org/rss/index/Blogging_on_Earth

http://nvcc.edu/home/cbentley/geoblog/index.htm, now http://mountainbeltway.wordpress.com/ (Callan Bentley’s blog)

http://stories-in-stone.blogspot.com/

http://lrrd.blogspot.com/

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/

http://my.opera.com/nielsol/blog/

http://geology.com/news/

And finally, to illustrate the ways in which communicating research can be done through blogging, here’s a link to the geosciences category at Research Blogging:

http://researchblogging.org/post-search/list?tag_id=7