Jeremy Bennett, Dr.rer.nat
  • Home
  • About
  • Research
  • Blog
  • Links
  • Contact

#WaiNZ and thoughts on rivers in New Zealand

9/11/2017

0 Comments

 
Great to read @DanHikuroa's introduction to the #WaiNZ discussion this week, especially the whakapapa of water. The idea of Te Taiao and interconnectedness is becoming more important in water science - e.g. in the Critical Zone. I have already long-form tweeted this (so ugly!) but perhaps this is a bit more readable...

A river is a indeed a living thing - one that sustains others and is also sustained by them. A river changes shape and form during its journey to the sea. It alters course, it speeds up, slows down, it may go underground for a while. Clear alpine headwaters become muddied when the river can spread out, eating into banks of flood sediments - its own whakapapa.

We try to contain and control our rivers, but they are "victoriously persistent" (Oswald Chambers). They buck the bridges and overtop the stopbanks that we build against them. We choke them with sediment from deforested hillslopes, yet they flood the streets that we pave for ourselves. Our effluent is carried away on the river's back, or sometimes buried in its depths forever, or at least until the next big flood event.

But the river, like so many others who are vulnerable, is disenfranchised in New Zealand society. Profit is more important that sustainability, growth is more important than protection. Yes, a river is ever-changing - but how do we make that a change for the better, for everyone? Can the river share not only in the costs of our agricultural economy, but also the rewards?

When I hear voices of individual farmers in New Zealand their passion for their whenua is evident. But they operate in a commercial environment that is driven by big players who seem quite disconnected from the land- people who swim in their own pools, not the rivers that they pollute. We need rules that protect our waterways - rules based on scientific evidence, and not written by those with the best hand.

Grateful for this first day of #WaiNZ conversation - looking forward to the coming days.
0 Comments

TTFN Canada!

6/12/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Today my family and I leave Canada after a 4.5 month exchange at the University of Waterloo. In my last week in KW I had the privilege of presenting the good folk at Aquanty. It was good to reconnect with the team there - thanks to Jason for inviting me.

My presentation included a short section on stochastic methods in hydrogeological modelling practice, largely inspired by the debates published recently in WRR. To boil it down to one sentence, better education and better applied tools are needed to improve the implementation of stochastic methods in practice. Ed also provided some excellent perspective on this issue and referred me to a similar set of papers that were published in Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment back in 2004. Ed said that about every ten years, stochastic hydrology researchers "stir up the pot" and wonder why many of their innovative methods do not carry over into practice. It was interesting to hear about this pattern, and I'm hoping that I can make my own contribution in this area as I would like to solve real problems - not just the numerical ones that I have been devising.

I also presented to the hard rockers from the UWaterloo geology group. I thought interesting work by Boon et al. would provide me with  rock credentials, but apparently anything younger than the Archean is considered soft rock - well, I tried. I introduced my talk with an online quiz via Kahoot.it and this was a very positive experience, particularly for a 1 hour long seminar to geoscientists from a wide range of research interests.

Canada has been fantastic, and I really want to come back. The quality of water research that is being conducted is amazing, and I particularly appreciate the strong linkage between theory and application that is prevalent here. Some particular areas of interest include:
  • Groundwater flow and solute transport in fractured rock from Beth Parker and team in UoGuelph,
  • All aspects of ecohydrology at UWaterloo, headed up by Philippe Van Cappellen,
  • Reactive transport modelling at UBC and UWaterloo,
  • Interesting environmental geomicrobiology and geochemistry studies at USask and Queens respectively.

There is so much fascinating research happening and it has sparked so many of my own research questions in my head, as well as thoughts about what life post-PhD might entail. Let's just say that at this point a post-doc in north North America is of strong interest to me. But for now, it is back to Tübingen with a lot of hard work ahead to even finish the 'doc', let alone thinking about adding a 'post'...

You can find my presentations here (Aquanty) and here (Hard Rock Café).

0 Comments

Compiling!

6/3/2017

34 Comments

 
 It has been a while since I last posted a blog, but this morning I was inspired by this blog post about blogging quickly, and this one about blogging more like a personal diary. Other benefits: I can fit more into a blog than on my twitter account; it will help me to improve my written output, as I will restrict myself to half an hour, and after that - well it gets posted and becomes a serial blog...
I have been sidetracked in the past few days by this nice bit of code from Nick Engdahl, David Benson and Diogo Bolster that they explain in this paper - basically it is particle tracking (something that I know how to do!) coupled with the PhreeqcRM geochemical modelling algorithm. I like their approach, and I would like to use it in the funky anisotropic porous media that I am simulating.
So, after spending some time deciding if I should start using git instead of mercurial (I decided to stick with mercurial through TortoiseHG BTW) I cloned the CRP repo and realised that PhreeqcRM would need to be compiled. Damn. I don't have experience in this. So I moved onto my next fun task, which is to simulate porous media using T-PROGS. I soon realised this would require me to compile some fortran code... It became clear that today was the day I learn to compile things!

Easier said than done, and I will spare you the details. Fortunately, I was able to download MS Visual Studio Enterprise 2015 through my institute's subscription to Microsoft Imagine, and then install the Intel Parallel Studio 2017, which includes C/C++ and fortran compilers. So I was ready... ready to compile!

Thankfully, mercifully, David Parkhurst and Laurin Wissmeier have provided this awesome step-by-step guide to installing PhreeqcRM, involving all sorts of exciting things like CMake, which I have no idea how to use, but I think I should. So I followed the steps, and managed to compile it all.
Picture
Bouyant from my compilation of PhreeqcRM, I then focused my attention on T-PROGS. This proved much easier, possibly because the fortran code is a little bit more readable to me, and it wasn't quite so complicated. After an initial 'hello world' trial, I was able to run gameas - the transitional probabilities module of T-PROGS, and I felt like a champion. I haven't had time to look at the data, to see if it makes sense, but I at least had the satisfaction of seeing text fly through the command window, indicating that something was happening...
34 Comments

Visit from Dr. Alessandro Comunian

9/22/2016

0 Comments

 
From 19-21 September it was my pleasure to have Dr Alessandro Comunian from the University of Milan as a guest of the research training group. Alessandro is a specialist in the use of multiple-point statistics (MPS) for a wide range of applications in geoscience. A brief description of his talk is provided below:

MPS is an emerging technique for the characterization of spatial and temporal heterogeneity. It is based on the concept of a training image, which contains the patterns of heterogeneity that are used for the simulation. MPS has been used with success to characterize geological heterogeneity. However, its flexibility allows to apply the technique in every field of science where there is a spatial/temporal variable to characterize and a corresponding training data-set. Alessandro  discussed the principles of MPS simulation and illustrated some applications in the field of geosciences. Moreover, he discusses the limitations of the technique and highlighted research opportunities and challenges.

It was a privilege to have such a knowledgeable researcher to help me with my work - we were able to discuss both 'big picture' ideas about my work as well as some of the nitty-gritty involved when you sit down and start to implement the ideas floating around your head. I hope to collaborate with Alessandro in the future.
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Author

    I am a hydrologist interested in environmental modelling as well as the application of water science in the 'real world'.

    Categories

    All
    Coding
    Conference
    General Science
    Groundwater
    IRTG
    Modelling
    Multiple-point Statistics
    New Zealand
    Sedimentology
    Tübingen
    Water

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.