During the conference EGU General Assembly 2024 held in Vienna a few days ago, the Short Course “DataViz: Visualise your data effectively and avoid common pitfalls” was delivered. This course was co-organized by the Young Hydrologic Society (YHS) and was designed to help scientists (early career scientists in particular) improve their data visualization skills in a way that the research outputs would be more accessible, less biased and more understandable within the scientific community.
A contribution by Lina Stein, Rodolfo Bezerra Nobrega and Diana Spieler
Raising a child in combination with a full-time career is no easy feat. That is true in general and maybe even more true in academia. Juggling the workload, conference attendance, or the potential requirement to move to a new job all become more demanding when children or other caretaking responsibilities are competing with each other. One would think that academia — a presumed flexible work environment — should be ideal for working parents, but often the focus on productivity measured in publications and funding secured does not make it easy to combine parenthood with science. As a result, around 34% of mothers leave STEM academia after having their first child (Powell, 2021). That is a huge loss of scientific talent.
“I’m a bit disillusioned about this system here […] I think eventually I will have to leave the university” — Female Postdoc in Germany.
Making parenthood more compatible with scientific careers demands systematic and societal changes. We know what works to start with: subsidized childcare, onsite childcare, flexible working schedules, and supportive working environments (Feeney & Stritch, 2019); but the implementation of the basics is still lacking in many institutions.
“A good daycare is worth its weight in gold.”
For this blog series, we gathered views on challenges, advice, and suggested changes in academia from several working parents in hydrology. Our aim is to offer reinforcement to early career scientists who are managing or going to take on childcare responsibilities. What is the best time during your career to have a kid? (Spoiler alert: there is no best time). How to best organize the work-life-kids balance? How to manage conferences, school holidays, or moving because of a new job. We extend this blog series with a list of recommendations to institutions on how they can take a leading role in implementing these systematic changes needed in our field to reduce the hassle for child caretakers.
We contacted several parents in research through our network and asked them to snowball our survey. The response was very enthusiastic: 20 people, equally split between women and men, answered with at times multiple pages of text. It shows that the topic really hit a nerve. The responses are mostly from Europe, though some Canadian, Australian and US perspectives are included as well.
In our blog series, we try to summarize the responses we got under three broad topics:
Want to meet early-career hydrologists and make connections at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) 2024? Then, join us at #HydroMeet, the official networking event organized by us, EGU Hydrological Sciences and IAHS – International Association of Hydrological Sciences !
Preparing a manuscript for submission to a scientific journal can be a challenging task for many scientists. If you would like to improve your skills, please consider that during EGU24 two Short Courses on these topics will be delivered!
Exciting announcement! ✨
Are you attending the EGU-GA for the first time? Or have you already been in Vienna and wanna share some tips with your colleagues?
Join our Pre-EGU Online Networking Event! Come for the annual Early Career Hydrology Meet and Greet between hydrologists from institutions around the world. Bring your drink of choice and get to know some of your colleagues before the upcoming EGU conference!
Pre-#EGU24 online networking event for young #hydrologists will take place on 4 April 2024, 15:00-16:00 CET!
You can register now by clicking on this link: https://forms.gle/URj6m5brP5uW6sMM6
Join the British Hydrological Society and Young Hydrologic Society for the March 2024 episode of “Gotta catch’em all”! The speaker will be Samuel Watkiss, from JBA Consulting and JBA Trust Ltd.
With the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in Vienna (April 14-19) approaching fast, it’s time to assemble the new team to represent Early Career Scientists (ECS) of the Hydrological Sciences (HS) Division!
Thursday, 29th of February 2024, 13:00 to 14:00 UK time, join the British Hydrological Society and Young Hydrologic Society for the first 2024 episode where Dr Ziad G. Ghauch from The Alan Turing Institute will show how to find an escape in the AI labyrinth and use it to protect our critical infrastructure.
Get your free online seat at: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/fe8eaf2e-4096-4515-91d6-5c4111b5feb9@b2e47f30-cd7d-4a4e-a5da-b18cf1a4151b. Looking forward to seeing you there!
Continue readingThe Young Hydrologic Society (YHS) is a bottom-up initiative to stimulate the interaction and active participation of young hydrologists within the hydrological community.
Founded in October 2012 the YHS is currently run by a team of enthusiastic MScs, PhD students and post-docs from several universities across the world. The YHS board members manage the day to day YHS activities: organising conference sessions, creating blog posts and running the YHS twitter account.
YHS is organised as a group of committees supported by the president and secretary. Each board member usually serves a two-year term.
The following committees have open positions:
Blog: The members of the committee invite contributions to the blog and serve as editors and reviewers. There is a close connection to the EGU Hydrological Sciences, HEPEX and AGU H3S blogs in the form of joint blog posts. Multiple vacancies.
National Branches: The members of the committee support new and established national YHS branches and national representatives where necessary Multiple vacancies.
Outreach: The members of the committee manage the YHS platforms on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. That includes sharing YHS news, early career events and job opportunities. 1 vacancy.
Conferences: The members of the committee coordinate YHS-led networking events, short courses and sessions at national and international conferences. For that it can rely on the support of the entire board and the EGU Early Career Representative. Multiple vacancies.
We welcome applications from all Early Career Hydrologists. If you have any questions about the positions you are welcome to contact current or former chairs.
Election Procedure:
A streams of thoughts contribution by Nikolas Galli
The Italian Hydrology Days, the annual meeting of the Italian Hydrological Society (IHS, https://www.sii-ihs.it/), have taken place recently in Matera (Figure 1). In the context of a city that is a UNESCO world heritage also for its unique ancient water infrastructures, hydrologists from all of Italy and beyond have met to discuss the issue of complexity in water management, this year’s conference theme. The three days in Matera have also seen a strong contribution from the Italian branch of the Young Hydrologic Society (YHS-IT), not only to the local restaurants and bars’ businesses, but also to the conference’s activities.
A streams of thoughts contribution by Hayat Nasirova
The deep sea, the largest ecosystem on earth and one of the least explored, is home to high biodiversity and offers an abundance of resources (Ramirez-Llodra et al., 2011).
The Ocean Foundation (https://oceanfdn.org/) defines deep sea mining (DSM) as a commercial industry aimed at mining mineral deposits on the sea floor to extract commercially valuable minerals such as manganese, copper, cobalt, zinc and rare earth elements. Although humans have exploited the oceans for millennia, technological developments now allow the exploitation of fisheries resources, hydrocarbons, and minerals below 2000 m depth (Ramirez-Llodra et al., 2011). The mineral deposits are found in three seafloor habitats: the abyssal plains, seamounts and hydrothermal vents (Gollner et al., 2017). Abyssal plains are large parts of the deep ocean floor covered with deposits of sediment and minerals, also called polymetallic nodules and this is currently the main goal of DSM. With an increasing demand for mineral resources, deep-sea mining brought a critical threshold to the ecosystem (Gollner et al., 2017). This is because the depletion of minerals has irreversible consequences that can lead to the loss of habitats, species, and ecosystem services which are unlikely to recover to their original state (Thompson et al., 2018).
Continue readingJoin the British Hydrological Society and the Young Hydrologic Society for the September episode of “Gotta catch’em all”.
Our speaker will be Nikul Kumari, PostDoc at the University of Technology, Sydney. She will present her work titled: “A Global Eco-Hydro-Geomorphic Analysis in Aspect-driven Semiarid Ecosystems”.
Get your free online seat at https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/05a5fad1-50c7-457c-82f8-5c4b2bc82f2d@b2e47f30-cd7d-4a4e-a5da-b18cf1a4151b to hear about the behaviour of deserts.
Looking forward to seeing you there!
Join British Hydrological Society and Young Hydrologic Society for the July episode of “Gotta catch’em all” to hear about the power of hydrology in leveraging cells and meteorology.
Get your free online seat at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gotta-catchem-all-july-2023-episode-tickets-676578443337?aff=oddtdtcreator.
The idea for YHS India originated during the EGU 2023 conference. Dr Ankit Agarwal from IIT Roorkee noticed that several young hydrologists, including students pursuing Master’s and PhD degrees, postdoctoral fellows, scientists, and early-career Professors, were attending the conference from different universities in India. Surprisingly, despite their substantial presence, many of them were unaware of the various opportunities available at EGU. Additionally, there was a lack of connection among these participants as well as there is no formal framework to connect and collaborate. As a result, several young participants gathered to discuss how they could improve their connections, disseminate information, find PhD partners across borders, propose innovative ideas, and enhance their presentation skills.
Recognizing this gap, Dr. Ankit Agarwal (IIT Roorkee), Dr. Bramha Dutt Vishwakarma (IISC), Dr. Priyank Sharma (IIT Indore) and Dr. Vamsi Krishna Vema (NIT Warangal) realized the need for a platform that would bring together young hydrologists in India and foster collaboration and knowledge exchange between them. Indeed, the Young Hydrologic Society (YHS) is a bottom-up initiative to stimulate the interaction and active participation of young hydrologists within the hydrological community. Founded in October 2012 the YHS is currently run by a team of enthusiastic MSc’s, PhD’s and post-doc’s from several universities across Europe.
Dr. Ankit and many interested students had a meeting with Dr Lina Stein to initiate the YHS India Chapter. The membership is free and open to all interested young hydrologists. If you are interested, you can register here for the mail distributor.
More details: here
A streams of thoughts contribution by Hayat Nasirova
The Caspian Sea (CS) is the largest lake on Earth. It is located at the intersection of Europe and Asia. It is called “sea” because it has an ocean-type earth layer at the bottom as being a remnant of the Tethys Ocean and has the dimensions of a sea. The water level is variable, currently it is approximately -28 meters below the ocean level.
The current worry of some hydrologists is whether the CS will follow the same fate as the Aral lake. NASA’s Global Water Monitor, which uses radar altimetry data collected by multiple satellites, shows changes in water levels in the CS since the mid-1990s (Figure 1).
Join us for the fourth episode of the “Gotta catch’em all” series to hear about precipitation downscaling and climate-soil-vegetation interactions.
Get your free place at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bhs-yhs-gotta-catchem-all-may-2023-episode-3-tickets-619587231087
See you there!
A Streams of Thought contribution by Paola Mazzoglio and Miriam Bertola.
The potential of citizen science in hydrology
Citizen scientists (i.e., volunteers who help conducting tasks in scientific research) have the potential to play an important role in hydrology. The main advantage of Citizen science initiatives is that they engage a broad range of individuals since no previous knowledge of the research topic is needed, including ordinary people, students, and educators, and both sides benefit from this collaboration. On the one hand, these initiatives are opportunities to disseminate scientific knowledge and awareness to the public about water-related challenges. On the other hand, citizens contribute to collective tasks that speed up scientific research.
The role of citizen scientists is generally the collection and the analysis of data on water resources or on some component of the water cycle, mainly in terms of quantity and quality. This includes taking measurements of streamflow, rainfall, water temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and other parameters using simple, low-cost tools such as meters, test kits, computers and smartphones. Citizen scientists can, for example, collect water samples for laboratory analysis, which provide information on nutrient levels, sediment loads, and the presence of contaminants. In addition to collecting data, citizen scientists can assist in analyzing and interpreting it.
Continue readingPreparing a manuscript for submission to a scientific journal may be hard work for many scientists. Still, scientific writing is an essential step of the research process, because the form used to present the results is often as important as the results themselves. Writing a scientific paper is a skill that can be acquired with time, while becoming easier with practice.
During the conference EGU23 held in Vienna, the Short Course “Meet the editors (1): how to write and revise your manuscript” was delivered. This short course gave early career scientists simple guidelines on writing about their work and increase the chance of publishing it.
Nadav Peleg, assistant professor at the University of Lausanne, was lecturer of this course. Dr. Peleg is an editor in the Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS) journal and Journal of Hydrology.
Visualisation of scientific data is an integral part of scientific understanding and communication. Scientists have to make decisions about the most effective way to communicate their results everyday. How do we best visualise the data to understand it ourselves? How do we best visualise our results to communicate with others? Common pitfalls can be overcrowding, overcomplicated plot types or inaccessible color schemes. Scientists may also get overwhelmed by the graphics requirements of different publishers, for presentations, posters etc.
During the conference EGU23 held in Vienna, the Short Course “DataViz: Visualise your data effectively and avoid common pitfalls” was delivered. This course was co-organized by the Young Hydrologic Society (YHS) and was designed to help scientists improve their data visualization skills in a way that the research outputs would be more accessible within their own scientific community and reach a wider audience.
One of the major challenges in water resources management today and in the coming future is reducing the risk related to extreme events, i.e. floods and droughts, mainly through a reliable flow prediction. Large-scale hydrological models have been widely proposed to gain insights into dominant water processes, quantify the role of human-water interactions, and identify emergent global patterns in a changing world.
During the conference EGU23 held in Vienna, the Short Course “Hydroinformatics for hydrology: Introduction to large-scale hydrological modelling” was delivered. This course was co-organized by the Young Hydrologic Society (YHS). Dr. Niko Wanders from Utrecht University was the lecturer of this course.
Are you attending the EGU-GA for the first time? Or have you already been in Vienna and wanna share some tips with your colleagues?
Join our Pre-EGU Online Networking Event! Come for the annual Early Career Hydrology Meet and Greet between hydrologists from institutions around the world. Bring your drink of choice and get to know some of your colleagues before the upcoming EGU conference!
When: 19 April, 2023, 4-5pm CET
Registration: https://forms.gle/6NgjWgPBbiyoS2aeA
Join us for the third episode of the “Gotta catch’em all” hydrology online series to hear about precipitation extremes and radiometers!
Get your free place at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bhs-and-yhs-ec-talks-march-episode-tickets-592374547217?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=escb
See you there!
Contribution by Ritesh Patro.
Let’s get the basics. Name, where you are from, and your current affiliation and advisor?
My name is Athanasios V. Serafeim, and I originate from a small city in Northern Greece named Edessa. I recently received my Ph.D. from the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Patras, under the supervision of Prof. Andreas Langousis. Currently, I serve as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Patras focusing on the design, monitoring and management of urban water networks, while working also as a consultant of TECHNOR Engineering LTD (https://technor.gr/en/).
What is the research you are currently working on?
My main research focuses on the development of an integrated, theoretically founded, and practically applicable methodological framework for resilient reduction of leakages in water distribution networks (WDNs), which combines: a) a set of probabilistic approaches for minimum night flow (MNF) estimation and parametric modeling of water losses in WDNs, and b) a combination of statistical clustering and hydraulic modeling techniques for WDN partitioning into pressure management areas (PMAs; or districted metered areas, DMAs). A side project I am currently working on investigates the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on domestic water consumption patterns.
Continue readingContribution by Paola Mazzoglio (PM)
Alberto graduated in Environmental Engineering at the Politecnico di Torino (Italy) with a thesis on “Turbulence structures in the canopy layer”. He carried out his Ph.D. on the theme “Non-supervised statistical methods for the prediction of hydrological variables in ungauged sites” at the Hydraulic Department of Politecnico di Torino (2004-2007). He worked as a Research Fellow at TU Wien (Austria) in the field of “Flood Hydrology” from 2007 until 2018. Since 2019 he is an Associate Professor at the Politecnico di Torino. He is currently EGU HS Division Deputy President and, in April, he will become EGU HS President for the years 2023–2025.
PM. Was becoming a scientist your career plan when you were a student? Did you envision yourself as a professor at any point? If not, which events led to where you are now?
AV. I can say I have been fascinated by science since I was a kid. “Il mondo di Quark”, a popular Italian science television show, was always in my allowed daily ration of TV (I had to sacrifice a cartoon for it, but it was worth it). And I liked scientists in comics, books, and movies. For sure I didn’t imagine I would have ended up being a scientist, though. Well, I don’t consider myself a scientist anyway… but I couldn’t imagine I would have become a professor at the university, and that has happened!
Continue readingContribution by Lina Stein
If you work in research, sooner or later you will be asked to attend a scientific conference. In Hydrology, there is a whole host of conferences to choose from. The usual suspects would be the big ones: AGU, EGU, IAHS… but what about the small ones? Here, I want to talk about a small conference that I went to a few years ago (in 2019 to be exact), the Gordon Research Conference. I liked it so much that I directly volunteered to be the early career chair for the next one. Well, with Covid that chair position took a bit longer that usual, but this year, finally, the next Gordon Research Conference (or GRC for short) in Catchment Science will take place.
The Gordon Research Conference in Catchment Science: Interactions of Hydrology, Biology and Geochemistry is a five-day conference in New Hampshire, USA, every two years. In the two days before the GRC the Gordon Research Seminar (GRS), the early career conference takes place.
Continue readingJoin us for the second episode of “Gotta catch’em all” talk organized by the British Hydrological Society and the Young Hydrologic Society to hear about Indiana Jones-like hydrology discoveries and the first-ever type of network.
Get your free place at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bhs-yhs-gotta-catchem-all-second-episode-tickets-526614055817
See you there!
The application for the role of Early Career Scientist Representative (ECS Rep) for the EGU Division on Hydrological Sciences (2023-2025) is open!
More details can be found in the official statement.
Contribution by Paola Mazzoglio (PM)
Luca Brocca received the M.Sc. degree in Environmental Engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering, both with excellence, from the University of Perugia, Italy, in 2003 and 2008, respectively. Since 2009 he is a Researcher at the National Research Council (CNR), Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection (IRPI) of Perugia (Italy). Since 2019 he is the Director of Research at the same institute. The main research interest of Luca Brocca lies in the development of innovative methods for exploiting satellite observations for hydrological applications (webpage).
PM. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and education? Was becoming a scientist your career plan when you were a student?
LB. I always enjoyed mathematics and environmental science, that’s why I have selected environmental engineering in my city, Perugia. I started studying hydrology because I did my master thesis in this field, then as soon as I got my degree I was selected at CNR-IRPI for a scholarship in Hydrology, and here I am. I did my PhD for studying soil moisture spatial-temporal variability and its use for hydrological modeling, all my career so far has been around the soil moisture topic. The long-term satellite soil moisture product (ESA CCI soil moisture) started in November 1978, the month I was born; I don’t think this is by chance! By the way, I am not a typical researcher as I did my studies and I always worked in my city (with just a very short period abroad)!
Continue readingFaranak (FT) is the incoming President for the Young Hydrologic Society. Here the outgoing President Lina (LS) interviews her about what it is like finishing the PhD, why she would recommend people to join YHS, and what she plans for the future.
LS: You just finished your PhD. Congratulations! How does it feel?
FT: It feels great but a bit sad as well. It feels good, because I actually wrapped up this chapter. At the same time, it is sad not to be a student anymore. I feel a bit nostalgic because I really had good time as a PhD student in Uppsala university.
The British Hydrological Society and Young Hydrologic Society would invite you to join the first “Gotta catch’em all” talk on 17th January 2023, 14:30-15:30 CEST. The speakers will talk about hydrology tips and rainfall data decimation.
Contribution by Paola Mazzoglio (PM)
Heidi Kreibich is head of the working group “Flood risk and climate adaptation” at the Section Hydrology, German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ. Heidi’s research is focused on flood risk assessment and mitigation with a background in Environmental engineering, Hydrology and Geography. Heidi is particularly interested in understanding and modelling flood damage processes and in human-flood interaction. She coordinates the IAHS Panta Rhei Working group “Changes in flood risk”.
PM. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and education? Was becoming a scientist your career plan when you were a student?
I studied environmental engineering at the Technical University of Berlin. Coming from a village in Bavaria, studying in the highly dynamic city of Berlin right after reunification opened up a new world for me. I had a wide range of interests, participated in independent student projects such as self-organised seminars on feminist environmental research and also completed internships in consulting companies, administration and research institutions. Above all, my study project during an Erasmus semester at Lancaster University, UK with Prof. Kevin Jones and my diploma thesis at CSIRO in Melbourne, Australia under the supervision of Dr. Rob Gillett awakened my passion for science and I decided to do a PhD and go into research.
Continue readingLet’s get the basics. Name, where you are from, and your current affiliation and advisor?
Hi, my name is Sarpong Hammond Antwi. I am originally from Ashanti Region, Ghana. I received an MSc in Energy Policy from the Pan African University (Institute of Water and Energy Sciences), in Tlemcen, Algeria, in 2019 and currently I am a PhD candidate at Dundalk Institute of Technology, Ireland. I am advised by Dr Suzanne Linnane, Dr David Getty and Dr Alec Rolston.
What is the research you are currently working on?
My PhD research focuses on water governance and management in the Republic of Ireland. I use a mixed method approach under a theory of change influence to assess the changes in policies and management practices and how this impacts water availability amidst climatic changes, demographic and economic growth, agricultural and land use changes.
Continue readingIn the final week of September, there will be a summer school near the Hedwigepolder. We have arranged that we can visit on the final day (Friday 30. September). We will receive a tour (starting at 13.00h) and afterwards there will be a BBQ! For the latter we need to know how many of you would like to join, so please fill in this form. The deadline is this Friday, 9. September, at 16.00h, because we need to let the organisers know by Friday afternoon. The transportation costs from the location we meet and the BBQ are free of charge. You only have to get to our meeting spot. More information will follow after you’ve signed up.
We hope to see many of you there!!
Cheers,
The Young Hydrologic Society Netherlands
Fransje van Oorschot, Jerom Aerts, Melanie Martyn Rosco, Qianqian Han, Janneke Remmers, Linda Bogerd & Ruben Imhoff
– A streams of thoughts contribution by Hayat Nasirova; co-edited by Paola Mazzoglio, Ritesh Patro and Swamini Khurana
“Mud volcano” is a generic term commonly used to describe any structure that emits water, mud, or hydrocarbons. Although mud volcanoes occur most commonly offshore, onshore mud volcanoes also exist in selected localities, generally in compressional tectonic settings (Milkov, 2000; Kopf, 2002). The petroleum bearing Caspian basin (CB) is located within the Alpine-Himalayan mobile tectonic belt, where earthquakes and intense modern earth crust movements have been observed. CB is a relic of the Tethys Ocean originating in the post-orogenic stage of regional development. It is an intermountain basin surrounded by mountain systems: Great and Lesser Caucasus, Talysh, Elburs, Kopetdag and Balkhan (Feyzullayev, 2012).
Dashli Island is one such island formed by a mud volcano. It was discovered in the 18th century by Russian sailors under Peter the Great who named it “St. Ignatius Stone”, after Ignatius of Antioch. The Dashli mud volcano emits hotbeds of polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) with continuous methane discharge as well (Remizovschi and Carpa, 2021).
Continue readingOne of the fundamental drivers of scientific progress is research integration and synthesis, which is essentially beneficial for developing a research vision. Hence, literature reviews prove to be highly useful to many researchers at all academic stages. Analysing the literature and writing reviews for a thesis, article or project proposal can sometimes be challenging to fresh early-career scientists. For a review paper, even greater attention must be given to the methodological approach to conduct a reproducible and thorough review of the existing scientific literature.
On Thursday, 26 May, YHS organized a short course at EGU 2022 in a hybrid format, where Lina Stein, Edoardo Martini, Swamini Khurana, with inputs from Navid Ghajarnia and Sarah Schneeman (Copernicus Imaging team) presented salient features of scientific visualisation and how to create publication ready figures using R and python. Guillaume Vigouroux demonstrated how Inkscape can be used to make simple edits without going back to the code, and to combine numerous figures into one figure.
The course materials are available below:
Jamboard for audience engagement about how to improve figures
The presenters can be contacted vie email for any questions and follow-ups:
Let’s get the basics. Name, where you are from, and your current affiliation and advisor?
Hi, I am Shashank Bhushan, I grew up in Patna, Bihar, a city located in the floodplains of the river Ganges in India. I am currently a PhD student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington. I am advised by Dr. David Shean.
What is the research you are currently working on?
For my PhD dissertation, I have been learning and improving methods to derive high resolution topographic maps of the Earth’s surface from satellite imagery. If we have two or more of these topographic maps computed from images acquired at different times but over the same region, we can compare them to accurately measure the changes in the ground surface over that particular region! For the “science” component of my thesis, I use this technique to study the surface evolution of High Asia glaciers, document the rates at which the glacier ice is thinning or thickening, and analyze how fast or slow these glaciers are moving.
Continue readingA Streams of Thought contribution by Swamini Khurana (she/her), in conversation with Toma Rani Saha (she/her) and Pallav Kumar Shrestha (he/him)
The South Asia Drought Monitor (SADM) is a portal where people can monitor the condition of soil moisture in the South Asian subcontinent using time varying maps. SADM focuses on monitoring agricultural drought at a high-resolution (~27 km) (Saha et al., 2021). The portal transfers information from science to practice; scientific jargons are bypassed and the soil condition is presented as six categories of dryness, varying from no dryness through to exceptional drought. It is well known that drought is a creeping phenomenon that expresses itself through soil moisture which moves slowly. Therefore, in addition to monitoring, SADM also provides the opportunity to look into the near future based on current soil moisture conditions.
Let’s get the basics. Name, where you are from, and your current affiliation and advisor?
My name is Aspen Anderson and I am originally from Colorado, USA. I received a BSc in Geophysical Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. I am currently a Ph.D. candidate with Dr. Diana Allen at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC.
What is the research you are currently working on?
My Ph.D. research focuses on fresh groundwater availability in coastal deltas. Many cities that are built on coastal deltas, like Vancouver, rely on groundwater to meet freshwater demand. My research uses numerical modeling to understand what geomorphic conditions affect delta formation and how this ultimately impacts the groundwater system.
Continue reading
Let’s get the basics. Name, where you are from, and your current affiliation, advisor and profile?
I am Pertti Ala-aho, from Oulu Finland. I am a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oulu, Water, Energy and Environmental Engineering.
What is the research you are currently working on (projects/funding/teaching)?
My central focus is on snow isotope hydrology. I want to understand just how important snowmelt is for ecosystem water use and in recharging our water resources in groundwater and streams. Other important research themes and methods for me are numerical modeling and new snow hydrology measurement technology. My ongoing Postdoctoral Research Fellow project “Where does water go when snow melts” is funded by the Academy of Finland.
Share your experience of recent personal Academy of Finland (AOF) competitive funding you won and what would be your tips for young hydrologists applying to AOF funding.
The basis is a novel research question and a clear impact of your research, which you can articulate The basis is a novel research question and clear research impact, which you can articulate well. The competition is fierce, so you need to have an x-factor that sets you apart from other applicants. For me it was a 2-year postdoc position at the University of Aberdeen Northern Rivers Institute, which gave me a great opportunity to grow my international network and publish with some of the leading scientists in hydrology. You should find, or create, that something to raise the necessary extra interest, whatever that may be.
Continue readingGökben Demir (GD) in conversation with Sam Illingworth (he/him) and Louise Arnal (she/elle) from Consilience and ConciliARTe
Consilience is an inclusive online journal that provides space for people’s exploration between art and science. While Consilience creates a bridge between poems and science, ConciliARTe (part of Consilience) builds that connection with audio and visual arts.
Gökben Demir (GD) caught up with Sam Illingworth (SI), founder of Consilience and Louise Arnal (LA), co-editor of ConciliARTe, to have a chat about how science and arts meet via Consilience and ConciliARTe.
Continue readingWe note with great sadness and worry the Russian invasion in Ukraine. We call on Russia to stop the unprovoked aggression immediately.
Ukrainian and Russian students and early career researchers both in the conflict zones and abroad will be impacted by current events and should not be forgotten. We encourage the global scientific community to keep them in mind, and support them as much as possible in continuation of their research. The current conflict will have far reaching consequences on progress of science in both Ukraine and the world.
We applaud the bravery of the Russian scientific community in calling out their government for the invasion. At the same time we are deeply concerned about the cessation of research partnerships built over decades between Ukraine, Russia and the rest of the world. While all actions short of aggression should be considered to bring an end to the conflict, scientific relations should only be ceased with a heavy heart. We see science as a powerful diplomatic tool and an important step in reclaiming peace.
We, at YHS, call for an end to violence in all forms, and stand in solidarity with all academic and scientific communities in both countries who do so as well.
We would like to take this chance to express our solidarity with all victims of violent conflict, in any of its forms, in every part of the world. Beyond science, beyond hydrology.
Further resources for displaced scientists:
A Streams of Thought contribution by Clare Stephens, Danlu Guo, Nevenka Bulovic, Fiona Tang, Anna Lintern and Pallavi Goswami.
As part of the MODSIM conference held in Sydney, December 2021, a group of around 30 Early Career Researchers (ECRs) gathered in-person and virtually for a workshop on interdisciplinary research. We heard from three inspiring speakers: Prof. Gabriele Bammer, Prof. Corey Bradshaw and Dr. Arunima Malik, followed by break-out group discussions about our own experiences guided by the speakers. This article summarizes our thoughts and lessons learned.
Challenges identified for interdisciplinary research
Most of the workshop participants had limited experience with interdisciplinary research, and they identified a number of barriers that have made it difficult for them to get involved. Many of these challenges were related to career metrics and funding policy in Australia and elsewhere. Interdisciplinary research may not align with the indicators we need for career progression, which tend to reward fast publication rather than encouraging research across broader disciplines and diverse teams requiring substantially more time to develop. Funding for interdisciplinary research can be difficult to obtain in countries where impact is measured with respect to a particular field of research (as is the case in Australia). Similarly, job applications tend to relate to a specific area of expertise and the participants felt that there was less demand for interdisciplinary scientists. Time pressure is also a key issue, which makes it difficult for ECRs to learn about topics outside their main areas of focus, particularly as employment is often tied to funded projects with little flexibility in the role.
Continue readingThe Young Hydrologic Society (YHS) is a bottom-up initiative to stimulate the interaction and active participation of young hydrologists within the hydrological community.
Founded in October 2012 the YHS is currently run by a team of enthusiastic MScs, PhD students and post-docs from several universities across the world. The YHS board members manage the day to day YHS activities: organising conference sessions, creating blog posts and running the YHS twitter account.
YHS is organised as a group of committees supported by the president and secretary. Each board member usually serves a two-year term.
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Please find details and how to apply How to apply for EGU-HS rep. Please see the EGU ECS page for eligibility.
A Streams of thought contribution by Francesca Casale.
In November 2021, I attended the COP26 in Glasgow, the Conference of Parties of the UNFCCC (United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change). I have been attending the COP since 2017. It is always an interesting experience. I have had the opportunity to meet a lot of people from all over the world and to exchange learnings and ideas.
As a member of the civil society, I attended COP26 as an observer. In practice, observers can attend some of the plenaries, the informal sessions, and the bilateral meetings with national delegates. Observers are admitted to the conference to guarantee the transparency of the process. Through the constituencies, observers can ask the delegates for some improvements to the draft and decision texts.
At COP26 I was part of the delegation of Italian Climate Network, an Italian NGO focused on environmental divulgation, especially during the UNFCCC negotiations. As an organization, we work with young people in primary and secondary schools in Italy, organizing lessons on climate change and environmental issues.
Bridging science with action-oriented decisions
During the COP26, our principal task was to report on negotiations. So, I followed the negotiation sessions, and I reported the progress through some articles on the Italian Climate Network website (e.g., nature based solutions to achieve climate goals, cop26-towards-the-second-week) I also attended a lot of side events, to better understand the negotiation process and to integrate my knowledge about scientific, social, and economic aspects of the discussion themes in COP26.
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Let’s get the basics. Name, where you are from, and your current affiliation/ advisor and profile?
I’m Antonio Annis, from Italy, currently CEO and Co-founder of GRIDDIT Srl and research fellow at the Water Resources Research and Documentation Center (WARREDOC) at Università per Stranieri di Perugia. My advisor and partner in the Company is Prof. Fernando Nardi.
What is the research you are currently working on?
My main activities are:
–contribution by Navid Ghajarnia (NG) to Hallway Conversations (HC)
Dr. Nicholas J. Kinar (NK) is the Assistant Director of the Smart Water Systems Laboratory at University of Saskatchewan with the Global Institute for Water Security. Many hydrologists know Nicholas from his Twitter page, Hydrology Paper of the Day (@KinarNicholas)! At YHS, we decided to have a Hallway Conversation with Nicholas to get to know him better and to introduce him from a different perspective to the hydrology society. During the interview, he was kind, enthusiastic and full of positive energy! Read this interview and you’ll get a new perspective and a warm feeling when you read Hydrology Paper of the Day on Twitter from now on!
Young Hydrologic Society 