Flaky weather

On Tuesday, temperatures were in the 80's Fahrenheit. It cooled off Wednesday, and today, it did this:



It started snowing on Wednesday in the high country, which may explain the hydrograph for the Animas River:



(Image source: USGS Water Watch)

I was talking to one of my colleagues about the daily peaks: notice that they were always before noon. (Compare it to the gage height graph from Ouray, posted at Geology Happens for this month's Accretionary Wedge.) And the peak discharge was on Wednesday, when it started cooling off.

My colleague reminded me that the Animas has a long way to go from the high country. Nobody rafts all the way from Silverton to Durango - there's an impossible-to-run section deep in the canyon, clogged with logs, certain death to even the most skilled kayaker - but he had a good sense of how long it takes to get through town at high water. It made sense that the water might take around 16 to 20 hours to make it down to Durango. That would explain the morning peaks, and also the highest discharge on the day it started to cool.

And the diurnal fluctuations have disappeared. The snow is currently accumulating again, up to a foot and a half of snow predicted in the high country this weekend. I hope for the sake of the soon-to-arrive field camps that it melts quickly. Though the water managers may have different wishes.

Job opportunity (MS/PhD): Field Program Coordinator

Normally this kind of info gets passed around by e-mail (or shows up in paid ads), but I don't have MS or PhD students myself, and I know there's a lot of competition for academic-related jobs these days, even if geology-related industries are booming. So... a job ad.

Got an MS or PhD? Enjoy field work, including handling logistics? Interested in pedagogy in the outdoors? Want to live in the Bay Area? Need a job? If that sounds like you, you might be interested in this job opportunity:

Position Description: Field Program Coordinator (Stanford University)

The School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University is seeking a Field Program Coordinator to support and grow our field program. The primary responsibility of the coordinator is to facilitate the development and execution of field-based courses both local to Stanford and abroad, primarily in California, the Rocky Mountains, Hawaii, and potentially Alaska and South America. The coordinator will work closely with faculty and graduate students to support existing field-based teaching, develop new field-based courses, and develop and test field labs, offering both logistical and pedagogical support. In addition, he or she will coordinate field opportunities throughout the school, providing assistance to existing courses as necessary. Courses cover a variety of subject areas, including geological field mapping, ecology and environmental science, remote sensing field campaigns, and interdisciplinary courses that include a strong cultural component. The primary role of the coordinator is to help develop and execute all components of the course, including logistics such as housing and transportation, making and maintaining connections to local agencies and landowners to receive permissions, scouting appropriate field data collection sites, and maintaining some equipment. This position reports to the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.

Specific tasks include:
• Work with individual faculty to help develop new field activities and courses
• Coordinate development and support the teaching of multi-faculty, interdisciplinary courses, including a quarter-long course in Hawaii and a 3-week Sophomore College course
• Collect and maintain logistical information for conducting field courses
• Work with coordinator of the shared Field Measurements Facility to schedule field equipment usage, train new users, and purchase new equipment as necessary
• Work with Undergraduate Program Coordinator to develop learning outcomes in field skills for undergraduate and graduate students and categorize field opportunities based on skills expected and skills achieved
• Work with Web Producer to develop and maintain a field trip database including location, skills, maps, background information, and field guides
• Update and maintain web pages advertising field opportunities and recording results of past field courses
• Work with Directors of Alumni Relations and Communications to communicate field program outcomes to alumni and report on use of funds
• Work with Health and Safety Coordinator to develop and offer field safety training courses
• Coordinate scheduling of field trips and field research courses in Earth Systems, Energy Resources Engineering, Environmental Earth System Science, Geological and Environmental Sciences, and Geophysics
• Provide logistical support for field trip planning, including the maintenance of camping equipment and scheduling the use of camping equipment, vehicles, and campgrounds
• When necessary, attend field trips and/or courses to act as on-site field camp manager

Qualifications:
Advanced degree (MS or PhD) in the Earth/environmental sciences with demonstrated excellence in field project management; 2+ years experience in managing field projects or coordinating and leading field trips is required. High degree of cultural sensitivity required; experience collaborating with a variety of cultures and/or communities desired. Familiarity with techniques of data collection in the field highly desirable; may include experience in geologic field mapping, surveying, environmental consulting/data collection, or other field research skills. Flexibility and willingness to learn new techniques, strong communication skills, and a comfort working with a variety of people are essential. Exceptional organizational skills are required. Writing and editorial skills are expected; web skills are desirable. Demonstrated ability to take initiative, to carry out responsibilities, and to exercise good judgment are critical. The application deadline is June 30, 2008.

To apply, go to http://jobs.stanford.edu/find_a_job.html and search for “Field Program Coordinator.”

Using blogs to advertise for jobs?

I've got a question, oh readers. I've been asked to pass word of a job opening on to anyone who may be interested. It's open to people with an MS or a PhD, and it's field-oriented and teaching-oriented without the pressures of a tenure-track academic job. It's the kind of thing that I suspect many exhausted geology post-docs or disillusioned MS students might be looking for (assuming they wanted to live in the Bay Area). So my first inclination was to describe it on the blog, figuring that there may well be people reading who would love the job.

But, on the other hand... there are lots of organizations that fund their publications, in part, with job ads. I'm a member of some of them (AWG, GSA). I think the friend who sent me the ad expected me to pass it on to former thesis students, not to advertise it to the world at large. (I don't think she knows I have a blog.)

So. Are job ads appropriate for a blog? (I would only post ads that I thought were unusual - not typical ads for faculty positions, which are usually in EOS and Geotimes, or for industry positions. But if I saw something interesting and out-of-the-ordinary, I might pass it on.)

NPR interview about aftershock prediction

NPR has an interview with Walter Mooney of the USGS about expectations for aftershocks of the Eastern Sichuan earthquake. It's a good explanation of what seismologists can predict (things like the size of aftershocks) and what they can't (the exact time of aftershocks). Mooney also talks about the stress changes that can trigger later earthquakes - science that's been developed in the nineteen years since I was in Loma Prieta (and heard Mooney, amongst other people, talk about what to expect).

All that knowledge doesn't help when villages are buried by landslides by the shaking, however. It sounds like the most difficult problem, as with natural hazards from California to Indonesia to New Orleans, is that there are a lot of people in the world, and most of them aren't able to choose a perfectly geologically stable place to live.

My response to high gas prices...

John Fleck from the Albuquerque Journal asked his readers whether the rising price of gasoline was changing their behavior, and got some interesting responses. A few days late, I'm going to answer here.

• I figured out how to use cruise control on my car. Yes, I realize it isn't rocket science, but I had an irrational fear of careening off the road while trying to figure out which buttons and levels and knobs controlled my speed. But I figured it out.


• I started keeping a little notebook to record gas purchases and mileage. My dad used to do this in the 70's, but my husband and I weren't organized enough to keep doing it once we had a car. But my car is a 2001 model, from the days of cheap gas, and it doesn't tell me what mileage I'm getting. (Plus the IRS now requires some kind of clearly synchronous record of business travel, and this seemed to be a good way to record it.) The results: my Subaru gets 28 to 30 mpg.


• And finally... I'm moving. Into town. To a house within walking distance of work. The decision was driven more by the realization that I'm going to be a soccer mom, and living outside of town means that every activity takes an extra forty minutes because of driving. If I could reduce the driving time, I could do more research, or exercise more, or spend even more time telling my son that he needs to put his shoes on, or read more stuff on the internet. (This will also allow me to eventually replace the Subaru with something that gets high gas mileage, but doesn't have all-wheel drive. And most of the time, I will replace the Subaru with my feet, a bike, and the town bus system.)
  

If my blogging seems light, it's because I'm spending my blogging time cleaning the house so that it looks nice for prospective buyers.

The Animas from above

The photo that I took yesterday didn't do justice to the Animas, so today I went for a run on Animas City Mountain, and took photos from about a thousand feet above the river.

Showing the meanders and oxbow lakes:


My campus is just on the high terrace across the valley, just off the right side of the image.

Looking northeast, showing the transition from a braided stream to a meandering stream. The valley bottom is flat because a lake formed as the glacier melted, and its water was trapped behind the end moraine:



The big rockfall is across the valley from this trail. I've got a zoomed-in photo of it, as well.

And the source of the water is still visible to the north, barely. The snow is going fast, but I'm glad I'm not trying to do field work above treeline yet.

Discharge when I took the picture was about 5500 cfs, according to the USGS. It dropped again this evening, but it's still above 5000 cfs. It's still supposed to be warm tomorrow, and then a storm system is coming through. Might snow on Thursday, and then rain through Sunday.

Signs of spring summer

• Hummingbirds (arrived two weeks ago).
• Flowering shrubs (first flowers last weekend).
• The Animas River at bankfull, with big brown waves and lots of kayakers. (There's a pool in town to predict the maximum spring flow. The winner will be announced June 1. Meanwhile, I'm going to hand out and watch people play on the river this Friday.

(This photo is upstream of the youngest moraine, in the meandering section of the Animas River. The boaters play further downstream. Flow was up to 4290 cfs today, for anyone considering dropping everything and heading for the river.)

(The photo is also taken from the parking lot of my son's daycare. Ron, this is just downstream of the United Campground.)

• Tourists standing in the middle of the street, taking a photo of a Victorian hotel. (And there wasn't even a stoplight there. I mean, Durango drivers are generally polite, but this was one of two intersections on Main Avenue that don't have lights. I try to avoid crossing at those two places - not everyone stops. And this guy was totally oblivious to anything but his photography!)
  
• Crowds of orange-vested twenty-somethings, scribbling on clipboards or field-hardened laptops, on the road that cuts through the moraine from the last glacial maximum. I expect to see vans beside the last outcrops of the Cretaceous seaway sometime this week.