Top Travel Tips (3) - Rosalie Tostevin

Rosalie on the edge
of the Namib Desert

Rosalie has spent several months doing fieldwork out in ‘the bush’ – the dry semi-desert that covers southern Africa. Her PhD field area is in Southern Namibia, and she did her undergraduate mapping project in the Karoo, South Africa. Here she shares her top travel tips for travelling in southern Africa:

1) Time of year: Visit in their winter (June-Sept). It will be warm and dry during the day, cool enough to sleep at night, and the insects and snakes will mostly be in hibernation.

2) Clothing: If you wear shorts, your legs will be covered in cuts from the spiny plants and you may develop a rash as some of the spines deliver poison. There are also ticks and biting spiders to worry about. It’s not worth it, even for tanned legs!

3) Money: The exchange rate between the rand (legal tender in both South Africa and Namibia) and the pound varies between 11 and 15. If you need to make a big payment, i.e. for accommodation, ask if you can pay your bill on a day when the rate is favourable. You could save a lot of money.

Leopard snake basking in
the sun on a path in Namibia

4) Snakes: Tap your hammer on the rocks every few minutes to scare the snakes away. Watch out for puff adders, as they like to bask in the sun in open spaces, otherwise known as paths!

Flat tyres are common when
driving on gravel roads

5) Driving: Distances are long and the roads are poor. Make sure you would feel confident changing a tyre, because flat tyres are common on gravel roads and there may be no phone signal and no passing cars. The leading cause of road-deaths in Namibia is a collision with a large animal such as kudu, normally whilst driving at night. Be prepared to sleep in the car if you break down or get caught out after sunset.

GfGD Blog Competition (Overall Winner) - Water of Life Project: Safe Drinking Water in Burkina Faso

As mentioned in Monday's post, Christopher Barry is the overall winner of the GfGD Blog Competition 2012. 

Christopher considers Canterbury to be home although his family has lived overseas throughout his life. He is currently approaching the end of his third year of studies in Earth Sciences at Cambridge and takes particular interest in geophysics and the deep Earth.

Although not decided on long-term plans, he intends to continue his studies next year to complete a MSci, which will include a project modelling chemical processes at the core-mantle boundary. When not studying, Christopher enjoys playing music, running, bird-watching and is a member of the Christian Union and the Zero Carbon Society at his university.

Christopher was privileged to be able to visit Burkina Faso recently, a very rural country where a great number of people are dependent on drilled wells with hand pumps for clean water. In Ouagadougou he met Mark Collier, where they talked at length about hydrogeology in the country. Here Christopher presents the brilliant work of Mark and his colleagues:

Burkina Faso, located in sub-Saharan West Africa has a population of 16 million, of which 80% live in rural communities.  28% of its rural population live further than a kilometre from a source of clean water [1]. These people are often forced to use near-surface water which can be a long walk away and contaminated by human and animal excrement. The annual rainfall is plenty to provide for the population’s usage, but for much of the country safe drinking water can only be found in bedrock requiring drilling equipment.

Fig. 1: A wet well.  

Mark Collier is third from right.

(Source: FIA Website)

Mark Collier, who has worked for Friends in Action (FIA) in Burkina Faso since 2005, takes several volunteer teams each year along with a drilling rig to these isolated villages. They work in the dry season to ensure a year-round water supply. In the far west, deep groundwater can be found reliably in the sandstone with little exploration work.  However, for most of the country, groundwater is in fault zones in granite. During the wet months, Mark uses resistivity surveys to locate water-bearing faults, which show up as a negative anomalies in resistivity [2]. Connected fault systems are important because isolated faults are often not sustainable water sources.

The teams use a mobile rig (Figs. 1,3) to drill down as much as 100m if necessary. Using casings and local materials, they protect the upper parts of the well from contamination whilst allowing deep ground water in (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: General cross section of a well drilled into granite in Burkina Faso

Technical expertise in the construction is vital, but FIA also recognises the importance of the relational side of development work. There are several steps that Mark and his team take to address these issues.

Before drilling a well, they carefully consider its location, collaborating with the locals. The drilling site is marked out for some time before work begins. This ensures, for example, that the proposed well is not in sacred ground where it would be unused and possibly offensive. Careful planning is necessary to make sure the well is as easily accessible as previous, unclean water sources.

It is essential for the locals to understand that the well is their property and responsibility after the construction. They are encouraged to help with the manual labour, including the making of the well cover (Fig. 2), a visible sign of their contribution. Mark encourages the locals to take ownership through the formation of a well management committee in the village to ensure good maintenance and sustainability.

During the work, the team camps in the village and share the locals’ food. A Burkinabé – from Burkina Faso – pastor accompanies the team who helps with communication, as mostly tribal languages are spoken in rural areas, and explains the compassionate motives for drilling the well. Through building personal relationship, the locals trust that the well is a good and necessary gift. The volunteers receive gifts from many villages, often local produce such as chickens.

FIA started drilling wells in Burkina Faso in 2005, and have drilled almost 200 holes. Their success rate has increased with better surveying. This last year they had twenty-five wet wells from thirty holes (83%) compared to the national average of 60%. Since 2005, only one of their wells has stopped functioning. In the village of Zitonosso, an existing well (not drilled by FIA) had silted up.  FIA offered to replace it if the village could cover the cost of the hand-pump, about $1500. Overnight, the village provided the funds, and the well was replaced in March (Fig. 3); a testimony to the sense of value and ownership of these wells among the Burkinabé people.

Fig. 3: Drilling in Zitonosso (photo courtesy of Mark Collier)

---

[1] http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/burkina-faso/

[2] Resistivity Methods, United States Environmental Protection Agency http://www.epa.gov/epahome/index2.html


Christopher Barry was the overall winner of the GfGD Blog Competition 2012, winning a 1:50,000,000 Geological Map of the World with explanatory notes, and a 1:40,000,000 Map of Global Groundwater Resources .

Guest Blog: Groundwater Use and Challenges in South Asia

Donald John MacAllister is a PhD student at Imperial College London, undertaking research into saltwater intrusion - an important environmental and anthropogenic hazard for many communities around the world. He has a background in both geophysics and water management, with a focus on water supply and sanitation in the developing world. Today he shares about some of his experiences in South East Asia, and the challenges of supplying clean water...

Arsenic, Fluoride and Iron are major chemical contaminants that arise naturally in the groundwater systems of the Gangetic plains and affect huge populations in India and Bangladesh. 

Groundwater has been extensively exploited in large areas of South Asia in the last twenty years or so, in response to the vulnerability of surface water to contamination by chemical and microbiological contaminants.  The health problems related to surface water development are well documented. Surface water is more easily contaminated by microorganisms than groundwater. This occurs because the pathways for contamination are more direct and much quicker through surface runoff processes. Groundwater is particularly low in biological contamination because it is protected by the rock and sediments overlying the main aquifer. A lack of adequate sanitation compounds the problem. Infant mortality is a key indicator of the rate of water related disease and in South Asia this was (and often still is) extremely high. As a result a huge programme of groundwater development was pursued by UNICEF and the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) in Bangladesh in the 1970’s. It was assumed that groundwater provided a safe and relatively inexpensive source of drinking water. To this day little resource assessment is conducted before a well is sunk.

However in the early 1990’s doctors in West Bengal, India, began to identify the first cases of arsenic induced skin lesions. Eventually the source of these lesions was identified. The source was shallow groundwater contaminated by naturally occurring inorganic arsenic. Only recently has the full extent of the problem been realised. Bangladesh and India face a huge public health challenge in addressing this issue. It is estimated that between 35 and 77 million people suffer from arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh alone.

I recently spent a year in the Gangetic plains working with people directly affected by arsenic and fluoride contamination. I was part of a multidisciplinary team working on health sector reforms in Bihar, India. My responsibilities covered six districts in south west Bihar and focused on key WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) challenges.

One of the first tasks I had was to visit various water treatment plants that had been installed by contractors to the local PHED a year earlier. The plant consisted of a solar pumping unit (, with an adsorbent unit acting to remove the arsenic from the water supply. The water was then piped to a public tap stand. The plant had been designed and constructed by a contractor with a year’s operation and maintenance included in the contract. The village was in a fairly remote area of Bihar and the operation and maintenance of the plant had not been considered beyond the first year’s contract. A local man from the community had been trained at the start of the project in basic maintenance but that training did not extend to more technical aspects of the maintenance of the plant. As a result when the filter needed replacement the plant ceased to function. With the filter soiled and the tap stands damaged the community returned to their traditional, contaminated, handpump sources.

In another example, the local government had installed multiple handpump attachment units to pre-existing handpumps. Again the PHED does not have the manpower or the expertise to maintain these. The complexity of the technology is beyond the scope of the mistris (maintenance man) skills (basic mechanical repairs). However the issue here was different, the pump with the treatment unit attached produced a significantly smaller discharge than the equivalent pump without the attached treatment unit. As a result the pump users disconnected the treatment unit and returned to using the untreated water. The day when I was there, a child was collecting water from one such pump (top picture). It was clear that for this child the work was significantly reduced by disconnecting the filter. The community were aware of the water quality problem, but as there was no immediate health effects they had reverted back to using the contaminated supply to minimise collection times.

These experiences made me acutely aware of some of the key challenges in the WASH sector, challenges such as the selection and use of appropriate technology. How do we ensure the sustainability of the technologies and avoid the problem I witnessed with the handpump attachment units? One way is to involve the user at all stages of the process, from selection to installation to operation and maintenance, accepting however that some level of outside support is likely to remain necessary. 

The contamination of groundwater by heavy metals in South Asia is a huge public health and environmental challenge. It is important to consider whether groundwater is the correct source in these communities with the knowledge we now have? If it is, there is a need for a thorough understanding of the processes leading to arsenic and fluoride contamination and the best way to develop groundwater in regions were these contaminants are a problem. This requires well trained hydrogeologists willing to cooperate with local communities and institutions to help them address this huge challenge.

For a good background reading on Arsenic in groundwater and strategies to reduce its impact see this link from UNICEF. 

Guest Blog: Ocean Nutrients - Geoscientists Have The Right Balance

Rosalie Tostevin is a PhD student and GfGD Ambassador at University College London (UCL). Her research examines the link between ocean chemistry and the emergence of the first animal life. Rosalie has written for the GfGD blog before, about the terrible situation in central Africa regarding conflict minerals and the negative impact on communities. Today she writes about the health of the oceans, the importance of nutrient balance, and why this is relevant for communities across the world:

The chemical elements carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous are all essential components of DNA, and their availability places major constraints on the oceans’ capacity to nurture life. Nutrient limitation and nutrient pollution are both caused by imbalances in local biogeochemical cycles (cycles in which chemical elements or molecules move through biotic, e.g. biosphere, and abiotic, e.g. atmosphere or lithosphere, parts of the earth). Management of both these very modern problems will require the expertise of the geoscience community.

Nutrient-rich deep water that upwells off the coast of Antarctica is not utilised efficiently by phytoplankton, because their growth is limited by the slow supply of an essential trace element, Iron. Not all of the upwelled carbon is converted to organic matter, as it is in the rest of the ocean, and so the carbon leaks out into the atmosphere. Supplementing the diet of the Southern Ocean with iron could block this leak and help us to offset anthropogenic CO₂ emissions. But before we embark on any geo-engineering missions, we need to appreciate the complex nature of nutrient availability.

Algal Bloom of the coast of Cornwall
(Source: NASA)

In coastal regions we often have the opposite problem: nutrient pollution. Anthropogenic activity elevates nutrient levels in coastal zones, with fertiliser and animal waste being the biggest contributors. High levels of nitrogen and phosphorous can induce algal blooms, leading to oxygen-deprivation (hypoxia) and the collapse of the local ecosystem. Once damage occurs, the system may never fully recover.

Coastal zones are important because they host 25% of global biological productivity, and border more than 70% of the world’s mega-cities. Unlike global warming, this issue affects Europe equally, if not more severely, than developing nations. However, this problem is particularly difficult to manage in developing countries, where legislating against the growing use of fertiliser would stifle development, analogous to attempts to reduce carbon emissions at the expense of industrial growth. The Rio+20 conference identified nutrient pollution and hypoxia as one of the emergent problems of the 21^st century. The UNEP Manila programme recognises that many people depend on the Oceans for their health, food security and economic livelihood. They pledge to:

‘Acknowledge the large increases in the levels of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus entering the world’s environment as a result of human activity, and note the severity of the environmental problems caused by nutrient excess, including eutrophication of coastal waters and oxygen depletion, and the associated damage to ecosystems, biodiversity and coastal water quality’.

Managing nutrient pollution is difficult, because often the source of the nutrients cannot be pinned down to an individual factory or farm. The nutrients enter the atmosphere, plants, groundwater and rivers, where they are cycled many times before they reach the estuary. Input to the ocean is associated with storm activity, and so is sporadic and unpredictable.

Oil Seed Rape
(Source: Petr Kratochvil)

Fertiliser controls brought in in the 1980’s led to a slight decline in nitrogen flux, but the problem has intensified again in recent years. The UK has switched to growing spring wheat, as it is more profitable, but this leaves bare soil in winter, which promotes faster nutrient flow. A surge in the farming of oil seed rape, which needs 3 times more fertiliser than conventional crops, has been driven by a demand for biofuels.

The solutions fall into two categories: damage prevention and damage management. The biggest single change we can make to prevent nutrient pollution is to reduce our meat consumption. Recent research has highlighted the additional benefits of reduced meat consumption; improved health, lower greenhouse emissions and the ability to feed an expanding population, making this a particularly relevant policy focus. In addition, we need to manage coastal systems that have already been damaged. The first step is to understand the complexity of, and coupling between, biogeochemical cycles, something geologists are routinely trained to do. We can also learn from the response of nutrient cycles to past tectonic and climatic events. For example, the effect of increasing bioturbation on nutrient feedbacks during the Cambrian Period (approx. 542-488.3 million years ago) can be assessed using nitrogen and carbon isotopes. The approach must be holistic; geoscientists are particularly adept at working with multiple component systems. This is a problem that calls upon 21^st century geologists to put their knowledge and skills to use for the benefit of coastal communities and shallow marine wildlife.

GfGD Blog Writing Team

As many of you will have noticed, we have been gradually adding to the regular GfGD writing team over the past few months, and are taking this opportunity to introduce them to you. As well as a number of excellent guest blogs over the past year - we currently have a team of three regular writers :  

Joel Gill is the Director of GfGD and established the blog in 2011 as part of his work to raise the profile of international development within the geoscience community. A trained engineering geologist with experience of working on water projects in East Africa, he is currently a PhD student at King's College London - undertaking researching into natural hazards and disaster risk reduction.  

Dan Sharpe is a geology student at the University of Leeds, and has been contributing to the blog since February 2012. Dan is a regular columnist - writing articles on a broad range of topics from geohazards to mining. He regular brings interesting and relevant stories in the news to the attention of our readers in an engaging and helpful way. Dan is also a GfGD ambassador, establishing a GfGD group at the University of Leeds.

Alex Stubbings is a recent graduate of the Universities of Birmingham and East Anglia. Having specialised in climate science, he spent time working in Bangladesh before returning to the UK. Alex is our regular climate change correspondent - writing posts primarily on this important area of research, policy and practice, but also writing some posts on other topics of interest. Since March 2012, Alex has been writing a mini series of posts introducing the theme of climate science and the impact a changing climate will have on the developing world.  

We are still keen to find other regular contributors - so if you're keen to develop your science communication skills, share your thoughts on geoscience and development, and support this important tool of GfGD get in touch. There are options to write as a columnist (on varied topics of your choice - with editorial input - either every fortnight or every month) or as a specialist correspondent (writing on topics primarily related to one main theme, such as water, geohazards, agriculture, mining etc). Posts are normally around one side of A4.

We also very much welcome guest blogs from students, recent graduates and professionals. If you have a topic you'd like to write about, then please do get in touch to discuss it with GfGD Blog Editor, Joel Gill. 

Guest Blog: A Hydrogeologist’s Role in Redevelopment

Olivia Osicki is a fourth year MSci student at the University of Cambridge, and recently went to a seminar organised by the GfGD University Group there. The seminar, given by Elizabeth Sharpe of Mott Macdonald, examined the role of a hydrogeologist in the redevelopment of a nation after a major natural disaster. It looked at many of the challenges and difficulties that can be encountered in this nature of work. 

"With the dominance of oil and mining companies on our career horizons, it can often be challenging to think of a valid alternative for a job that uses geology. Elizabeth Sharpe, however, who came to speak to the Cambridge GfGD group, has found a way to incorporate geology and global development, in a mainstream career with the engineering consultancy Mott MacDonald.

Affected Region (Source: Wiki)



Elizabeth completed her Master’s in hydrogeology at Birmingham, joining Mott MacDonald upon graduation. For eleven months in 2007-2008 she worked in Aceh, (Sumatra, Indonesia), working with the American Red Cross as a consultant to rebuild water supplies for 46 communities in the area. The region was in the redevelopment stage following the disastrous impact of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, caused by a magnitude 9.1 earthquake. The earthquake produced a 20m wave, killing 200,000 globally and leaving many families homeless and lacking adequate water supplies. Elizabeth’s role with the American Red Cross was to review available information about local water supplies, combining data from geophysics, boreholes, maps, and water quality analysis to identify available options and present them to local communities.

Global development and aid work is often glamorised in western society, and yet Elizabeth was keen to emphasise the challenges that accompany working in difficult areas with fragmented communities from a different cultural background. Furthermore, the number of aid agencies in the Aceh region, all with different agendas, meant that often there was a severe lack of communication between the organisations which resulted in wasted time and resources. Working in a region which had just emerged from conflict meant that communities often mistrusted one another, and the number of aid agencies they had to work with meant that they had little faith that anything useful would be achieved. A further problem was that local Acehnese people were aware of the large quantities of aid money available and so any work or legislation that was required was prone to overcharging and corruption. The effects of the tsunami three years before meant that the knowledge most relied on by aid agencies, that of local people, was lost or not relevant because so many villages had to be relocated.

There were technical challenges too, including contamination, inappropriate technology, and lack of basic infrastructure. Elizabeth’s biggest disappointment was that after locating an appropriate water source for a relocated village, a road was built by another aid agency through the spring and the water supply was lost.

It is all too easy to think of development work as glamorous and thrilling, but the day-to-day realities and challenges that can be encountered should not be underestimated."

Guest Blog: Is There Blood In Your Mobile?

Rosalie Tostevin is a PhD student and GfGD Ambassador at University College London (UCL). Her current research is looking at the link between ocean chemistry and the emergence of the first animal life. She has a strong interest in improving science communication and the ethical behaviour of the geoscience industry. Rosalie writes today about the terrible situation in central Africa regarding conflict minerals and the negative impact on communities - her post finishes with a strong call to action.

I recently went to a screening of Frank Poulson’s film, “Blood in the Mobile”, which investigates the use of conflict minerals in electronic products. Here I review the main message of the film and discuss the role for geoscientists may play in resolving the conflict.

RC (Source: CIA)

The wilderness of Kivu province, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is littered with mines. The land is rich in coltan (tantalum ore - an essential component in many electronics) and many other minerals that the developed world depends on. Young men and children stay down unstable mine shafts for up to a week at a time in crowded unsanitary conditions. Unregulated soldiers earn money by taxing the miners every time they pass through control points and then take the product across the border to be distributed around the world.

Profit from the mining industry is fuelling the various militia groups in the area, a hangover from the end of the civil war in 2003. War is good for business - not only in the DRC, but in the West too. The US, China and Western Europe are making large amounts of profit from equipping them with arms.

Militia groups are outside of UN control, despite peacekeeping troops in the region constituting the UN’s second largest source of expenditure in 2011. Many of us were recently reminded of the situation in central Africa by the Kony 2012 campaign. The Lords Resistance Army (LRA) is now predominantly operating in eastern Congo alongside many other groups. There are countless stories of on-going war crimes and human rights abuses. Rape is being used as a weapon to tear apart communities and clear them off the land in order to ensure access to natural resources. 

Joseph Kabila (Source: US Defense)

Charities such as Oxfam and Save the Children are providing short-term relief and support for the victims, who are overwhelmingly women and children. However, there has not been enough focus on the underlying drivers of the humanitarian and developmental crisis. The militia groups are uncontrollable because of the unstable and corrupt political system. President Joseph Kabila came to power in the DRC’s first democratic elections in 2006. He also claimed victory in the recent election, which is riddled with accusations of rigging. The recognition of his leadership by the international community has angered many citizens of the DRC, both in the DRC and around the world. Protests have been organised every two days at the DRC embassy in London but have been largely unreported by the British press. Shana Mongwanga-Eloko, from ‘Africa lives!’ has been promoting campaigns driven by Congolese women. The Congolese people are fighting back, though if you watched the Kony 2012 video, you would be forgiven for thinking only westerners are trying to ‘save the Congo’.

How can we make a difference? Certainly not by sharing a viral video and it’s not as simple as a donation to charity either. There are two groups benefitting from this conflict: electronics companies and arms dealers. We need to legislate to ensure electronics companies publish their supply chain so that consumers can make informed ethical choices.

Blood in the Mobile

The geoscience community needs to develop a method of tracing mineral ores using geochemical fingerprints and radiometric dating techniques. Current efforts are focused on laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, which generates a chemical profile that can then be compared to a master sample from a known location. Once the ore is processed it can no longer be fingerprinted, so it is necessary to test ores at an early stage, perhaps even in the field. However, no laboratory in the DRC is currently equipped to run these experiments. Companies such as Nokia claim they cannot trace or confirm the source of the minerals used in our phones. The film’s conclusion: we all have blood in our mobiles.

Guest Blog: The Social Geologist

“the social geologist...

thinking about people and not just rocks”

Last week I introduced the blog of PhD student Jonathan Stone, undertaking research into volcanic systems at the University of East Anglia. Jonathan has written an entertaining and informative piece for the GfGD blog about the social geologist...

As a young undergraduate, I used to love going out into the field - swinging my hammer at any outcrop foolish enough to show itself to me. Whilst I wasn’t as hammer happy as some of my peers (“Jackhammer” Jake in particular), there seemed to be so much rock out there, and too many samples to collect. I can distinctly remember though, standing on a desolate beach in Somerset on a windy afternoon, being told we were not allowed to hammer at rocks here, as the site was a SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest). This was probably my first introduction to geologists having an obligation to preserve things, even at small scales such as this.

As geologists we have a responsibility to do things sustainably, to preserve and in some cases protect, whilst making the most of the world that we live in and its resources. This obligation, or responsibility, doesn’t stop with the natural environment and its feelings or preservation, but also to the people that live in it. Can the people be more important than the resources or the scientific research? Of course they can and indeed they are - a fact that can often be overlooked.

But why, as geologists, should we be bothered about people? Isn’t that what geographers or social scientists do? I remember having some disdain for “Jackhammer” Jake, famed for his rock smashing prowess, when he switched courses from geology to environmental geoscience. It was almost as if the word ‘environmental’ made us ‘pure’ geologists shudder. Jackhammer however, was just ahead of the curve and spotted a trend that we should all take note of. It is impossible to divorce the world of science from the public’s impression of it, and so we really do need to keep people in mind when we plan our next research, exploration or extraction. I’m not calling for everyone to become social scientists, not every geologist needs to go out and interview people (please don’t just go out and do a questionnaire to tick this box), but all of us need to at the very least, engage with those that do try to listen to or understand people (social scientists) and we need to keep an open mind.

Half way into my MSc, I worked at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory in the role of scientific communication and outreach. I had gone out there to work at a volcano observatory, hoping to do some quantitative volcanic risk assessment work if the volcano started to erupt, but ended up learning profound lessons about the intersection of people and science. Heightened activity in December 2009 meant that we were no longer able to give sufficient warning to some people in a particular community there, and so the authorities took the decision to evacuate them. Residents there were quite unhappy with the decision to evacuate and in some cases angry. The decision was based on sound scientific evidence, so why didn’t people understand? I was perplexed, but just tried to continue acting professionally. Only later, having acquired some social science research training and returning to Montserrat, did I manage to talk to some of the residents and understand from their point of view why they were so unhappy with the evacuation. What may have seemed black and white to scientists did not seem that way to the residents. You see, we are all people with emotions, feelings and opinions, but we sometimes forget this when we are being professional scientists. We then manage to divorce emotion from our thinking and in some cases decision making, instead relying on pure logic. Clearly from a practical point of view it is sometimes necessary to act with cold logic, but we should be aware of the other dimension, so that we can at least understand, even if it sometimes does not change the decisions we make.

Eruption of Soufriere Hills, Montserrat, November 2009 - (Courtesy of Jonathan Stone)

People, us scientists included, have opinions and feelings, based on a vast many things. Some opinions may seem ‘wrong’ scientifically, but are they any less valid? The ‘social geologist’ doesn’t need a social science degree... they need to stop and consider the opinions of others before they smash the rock with their hammer, sink a new well or evacuate a village. They are aware of the importance that people and their voices should have in decision making, and strive to be inclusive. If you read the news or articles in scientific journals, our world is facing an uncertain future, in terms of climate, competition for resources or increasing vulnerability to natural disasters. Scientists can’t answer and fix these issues on their own, so we need to include and listen to the public. We can no longer hide inside a lab or behind a computer screen but rather we should make concerted effort to engage with and communicate to people whose lives we affect with our decisions.

Guest Blog: Earthquake Education in Central Asia

Claire Fyson is in her fourth year at the University of Cambridge, reading Natural Sciences and specialising in Geology. Last year she became one of GfGD's first University Ambassadors - leading the GfGD Cambridge group with co-student Tim Middleton. Claire has kindly written a very interesting guest blog following a GfGD seminar they organised in Cambridge.



Solmaz Mohadjer

 Having been taught bits and pieces about the way the Earth works since I started secondary school, I’ve never quite realised how lucky I’ve been. Natural hazards such as tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes have been explained to me in great detail - I’ve even learnt what to do in the event of such disasters. Sadly, it is often the people who live in regions prone to earthquakes and other natural hazards that are the least informed and prepared to respond appropriately. In the first of our Geology for Global Development seminars at the University of Cambridge, Solmaz Mohadjer from the ParsQuake Project highlighted how little the people of Central Asia know about the earthquakes that they experience on a regular basis. She also talked about how to tackle the problem – how a basic understanding of Earth sciences and local geohazards can save lives if disseminated and used in the right way.

The region of Central Asia is experiencing deformation as a result of the collision between the Indian and Eurasian plates. Unfortunately, regions with the highest strain rates are often heavily populated. As part of the fieldwork for her Masters in geophysics, Solmaz spoke to the locals to find out how much they knew about earthquakes and earthquake preparedness. For a variety of reasons, many people in the region find it difficult to reconcile their cultural and religious beliefs with the need to prepare for earthquakes. For example, some people in Pakistan believe earthquakes are divine punishments for sins. By contrast in Tajikistan, some believe that living or dying in an earthquake is part of a divine plan, and therefore, preparing for earthquakes strikes them as pointless. This seems akin to the evolution debate in the US, but in this case the consequences are considerably greater: – people’s lives are at risk.

Why does the earth shake?

Of the students who participated in Solmaz’s research, none knew how to prepare for an earthquake, and yet all had felt at least one in their lifetime. The locals had become so accustomed to the tremors that two earthquakes felt by Solmaz during her first night in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, went un-noticed by her students and neighbours. When asked how they dealt with earthquakes, 37% of her students took no action – a worrying statistic given how dangerous the consequences of doing nothing might be. As for the mechanism behind earthquakes, a common explanation is that there is a giant bull inside the Earth that shakes its head when a mosquito lands on it.

Using a wooden block model

Here’s where the geologists come in. In response to her research, Solmaz created a 12-step education plan. This included simple but ingenious experiments covering topics such as the unpredictability of motions along faults (using wooden block models, see picture), liquefaction (using sand and water) and how to build an earthquake-resistant wall (using craft sticks). It is easy to see how such a programme could inspire locals to put some of their new knowledge into action.

Teachers Without Borders was asked to address a similar knowledge gap in the education system in Sichuan, China. Many teachers in this region lost loved ones in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, so the task of educating them about such events was a sensitive one. Having been asked to do that by Teachers Without Borders, Solmaz focussed on making her assistance as sustainable as possible: she chose four dedicated geography teachers who she worked with over a year to build and implement an education programme about earthquakes and school safety. This is far better than a fly-in-fly-out approach, which has a much smaller impact. The involvement of local teachers means the education will continue in Solmaz’s absence, and that language and cultural barriers will no longer be a problem.

Returning to her own heritage, Solmaz has recently set up an organisation called ParsQuake (www.parsquake.org). ParsQuake’s mission is to raise levels of earthquake awareness, education, and preparedness in Persian-speaking schools and communities around the world. Through its website, ParsQuake provides education materials in Farsi, Tajik, Russian and English, and its members conduct training sessions in which the trainees eventually become the trainers. The theme of sustainability is clear, and Solmaz has future hopes of an earthquake education workshop in India, to be run by the trainees from Tajikistan and Afghanistan.

Ye Zhiping

Personally, I found this to be a very inspiring seminar. We hear all too often about the tragedies that result from natural disasters, but little about the wonderful people who are helping to save lives through education and action. Solmaz is one of those people, spreading her knowledge and love of geophysics to those who need it most. One of the stories that she shared at the seminar was of another such person in Sichuan, China. Appalled by the poor construction of his school, Ye Zhiping (right), the principal of Sangzao Middle School, raised over $60,000 for an earthquake retrofit project. The school subsequently survived a magnitude 8 earthquake in 2008 which killed about 10,000 children in classrooms around the region. All 2,323 of Ye’s students survived. This is an excellent example of how a little awareness and perseverance can help to avert tragedy. The message of Solmaz’s talk was clear: we have no excuse not to share our knowledge, especially when a lack of knowledge can have such a high cost.

GfGD Archive: Guest Blogs

This year we've had a number of excellent guest blogs:

Geraint Burrows: Hydrogeologists Without Borders

Dr D Vasudevan: Some Thoughts on Agrogeology

Louisa Fearn: Rethinking Development in the Age of Uncertainty

Laura Rose Wilson: Attachment with the Geological Survey of the Solomon Islands

Richard Boak (pictured): The Importance of Groundwater Monitoring

If you'd like to write a guest blog then get in touch via our website, you can download a list of suggested topics from our website.

Guest Blog - The Importance of Groundwater Monitoring

The latest in our series of guest blogs is an article on the importance of groundwater monitoring, written by Richard Boak, an independent hydrogeologist. Richard has over 30 years of hydrogeological experience, and has done much of his work internationaly with a strong focus on Africa.  

"I attended the launch in London recently of a joint publication from the Institution of Civil Engineers, Oxfam GB and WaterAid entitled “Managing Water Locally”, which encourages water resource management to take place at local or community level. I was very pleased to see that the report also emphasises the importance of long-term monitoring of key parameters such as rainfall, groundwater levels and water abstraction. This is a subject close to my heart – I’ve lost count of the number of times in my career that I’ve wished that basic monitoring data were available. When called in to advise on why groundwater levels are falling, why a well has dried up, or how deep should a new borehole be drilled, then several obvious questions raise themselves. What is the normal seasonal behaviour of the groundwater levels in this area? How often does the well dry up? What are the highest and lowest groundwater levels that have been observed? What is the typical difference between the rest water level and the pumping water level, for different pumping rates? Has the pattern of groundwater abstraction changed recently (increased consumption, for example, or new abstractions elsewhere exploiting the same aquifer)? All of these questions can be answered fairly easily with some good monitoring data, and the longer the data record, the better. Without this information, we are working in the dark, and the risk of a groundwater source failing to live up to expectations rises enormously.

So please, if you are involved in planning a new water supply scheme, or rehabilitating an existing groundwater source, start collecting data now (to paraphrase the proverb: the best time to start monitoring groundwater is twenty years ago; the second-best time is now). Make sure you include access for monitoring equipment in the design of headworks for boreholes and wells (this is not complicated, and is usually as simple as a well-placed hole with removable cover). Involve the local community in collection of data, and ensure that people are trained and equipped to continue monitoring after you drive away. Run some simple quality-control checks on the data before archiving. Use the data, so that you and your successors gain an understanding of how the groundwater system is behaving. Of course, groundwater monitoring is not without its pitfalls, and bad data can be worse than no data. If you’re unsure, get advice from an experienced hydrogeologist on where, what, how and when (how often) to monitor."

Richard has also recently authored a fascinating account of Richard Thornton, a geologist who accompanied David Livingstone on his explorations of Africa, which many of you may be interested in reading.

Guest Blog - Attachment with the Geological Survey of the Solomon Islands

This week we have a very interesting guest blog written by Laura Rose Wilson, a geologist at Leicester University, who spent time with another geologist from Leicester  working with the Geological Survey in the Solomon Islands.

"During the summer (2011) I worked in the Solomon Islands for 5 weeks with a friend, Sarah, as an attachment to the Solomon Islands Geological Survey.

The Survey, based in Honiara on Guadalcanal Island, is very basic, with intermittent electricity. The book cases and drawers full of maps and years of work on the Solomon Islands are very old, mixed up and poorly looked after. The rock sample store is falling down and many of the sample locations are missing. This is all a result of lack of staff, money and government input.

My work involved research on both Simbo volcano and the 2007 tsunami which affected the western province. Simbo volcano is in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands and is inhabited by approximately 1400 people. It is unknown whether this volcano is extinct or dormant and has had very little research carried out on it.  It was my job to research and collate as much data as possible in order to put together a hazard assessment of Simbo and bring the potential hazard to people’s attention. I found a lot of work had been started on hazard and disaster management, especially since the 2007 tsunami, however, this work does not progress fast, nor does a lot of it get finished. It is also very difficult to educate local people on potential disasters due to clashes with science and religion.

Sarah on the other hand did work towards establishing the uplift rate of the coral reefs on which Honiara is built and the surrounding hills. Sarah headed out into the field to examine the terraces and note their thickness and fossil content as well as bringing samples back to the office ready for sending to the UK for analysis.

The work ethic in the Solomon Islands is very laissez faire; when the electricity is on, computer games is often their pastime; when the electricity is off the staff head in to the run down, busy town centre. I therefore believe being there on an attachment was as beneficial to them as it was to us as it showed them a different work ethic; when we needed some information or a particular report, we made sure they would get it to us by the next day rather than 3 weeks later – this didn’t always work out though. We quickly developed patience as a key survival strategy.

Whilst working for the Survey we were allocated a member of staff to work with us as a counterpart. John Tuga from the island of Malaita (the most populous of the Solomon Islands) was assigned to help us out should we need it. This was very valuable to him as he was only an assistant geologist learning A-level standard Geology through a course with the Solomon Islands sector of the University of Papua New Guinea (PNG).  John hopes to go to the University of PNG in the next academic year to attain a degree in geology therefore our presence and knowledge gave him a head start. We taught him skills in the field such as rock recognition and description, recording and measuring key observations etc., as well as leaving him with geological books, dictionaries and charts which had been of use to us in the first few years of our degree and are not available to students out there. He showed a real interest and thirst for knowledge and was one of the few people there who was really dedicated to proving not all Solomon Islanders sit around day to day.

  

Throughout our stay in the Solomon’s we stayed with a local family in a small village outside of the town. This was a very interesting experience and we learnt about their way of life, which was much simpler than an average ‘Western’ household. The toilet and shower was outdoors and exposed and the kitchen was small with the food being cooked over hot stones. The daily meal was rice and cabbage with the rare treat of tuna or chicken. We were also very lucky being only one of two houses in the village to have electricity for a couple of hours each night. The family were very welcoming and the children were extremely excited and interested to see us.  They told us we were the first ever white people to come to their village. We learnt their traditions in exchange for helping some of the family members to improve their English.

Overall, as well as getting a lot from this trip for our own benefit and studies I feel we were also a great help to the staff at the Survey. We brought them new ways of thinking and an idea of how we work in England. The work we are doing will also give the Survey a head start on this research so that they can continue to develop and improve their knowledge in the future.

I believe attachments such as this are very important to share geological knowledge around the world and especially to the third world countries so that they can then continue the work themselves."