AMS Food Banks Donation (November 14 - December 15)

As in previous years, EOAS will assist the AMS Food Bank. The AMS Food Bank supports UBC students who are in need of emergency food-relief; most of their clients are graduate students at UBC who pay international tuition, are supporting families, and struggle with rent, bills, and food costs. The donations received supply those who need access to food, household items, and personal hygiene products up to six times per term and the food bank relies heavily on the hard work of volunteers to keep their operations running smoothly.

A donation box will be stationed in the EOAS Main Office (2020-2207 Main Mall) between November 14 to December 15 (Monday to Friday 8:30am-4:30pm).

Most Wanted Items:
•    Canned beans, kidney, black bean, chickpeas, vegetables, soups, stews, chili, tuna, salmon, and chicken
•    Canned fruit, packed in its own juice or water
•    Pasta sauce
•    Pasta and rice
•    Mac and Cheese   
•    100% nut butters
•    Cereal
•    Granola bars
•    Snacks
•    Coffee & tea
Other Items:
•    Toothbrushes
•    Toothpaste
•    Dental Floss
•    Shampoo & Conditioner
•    Soap
•    Feminine Hygiene Products
Due to health and safety issues we cannot accept the following items:
•    Homemade items
•    Expired food
•    Products containing alcohol
•    Open packages of food

For anyone who may need to use the Food Bank, their hours of operation are Mondays and Wednesdays from 10:00am-4:00pm and appointments can be made directly with an AMS support staff.

Employment and Opportunities

Postdoctoral Positions at ETH Zurich in the Environmental Physics group of Prof. Nicolas Gruber

The Environmental Physics Group (www.up.ethz.ch) is a vibrant interdisciplinary team of researchers studying climate and oceans from regional to global scales. We currently have three postdoctoral positions open in the following areas, i.e., i) observational analyses of the ocean carbon cycle with a focus on the uptake of anthropogenic CO2, (ii) Southern Ocean modeling of heat and carbon uptake, and (iii) ocean-atmosphere interactions at the mesoscale. All three positions are guaranteed for two years, with the potential for an extension with a starting date in early 2020. The deadline for the applications is December 15, 2019, although we keep the posts open until filled.

Please follow these links for further details for each of the three positions and submit your applications online.

Postdoctoral Researcher in ocean carbon data/model analyses

Postdoctoral Researcher in (Southern) ocean modelling

Postdoctoral Researcher in ocean/atmosphere extreme weather events

PhD Student Opportunities at Northern Arizona University

The Paleoclimate Dynamics Laboratory at Northern Arizona University is recruiting PhD students for three funded research projects:

1. Holocene paleoclimate reanalysis. This project aims to optimally synthesize paleoclimate data and model simulations. Potential research foci include investigation of Holocene temperature evolution, and the climate dynamics underlying extreme state shifts in aridity.

2. Abrupt change in climate and ecosystems. Projects may include mapping abrupt change across timescales, investigating climate-forced, ecosystem-forced, and feedback-driven abrupt changes, and assessing the extent to which climate and ecosystem models can reproduce the types of abrupt shifts observed in past millennia.

3. Paleoclimate informatics. Projects include developing cyberinfrastructure for the paleogeosciences, contributing to the Throughput Annotation Engine, and developing and applying machine learning techniques to address paleoclimate dynamics questions.

For more information visit nau.edu/mckay , or write to < nick@nau.edu >

Programs and Events

Special Coffee Hour

The last coffee hour of the term is today at 3:00pm in the PME! Come out and celebrate the accomplishments of our most recent graduates who will get their degrees at the end of the week. There will be a cake and other tasty treats!

In addition to bringing your own mugs, please consider bringing a small plate and fork for the cake, to help us minimize the amount of waste we generate. Hope to see you there!

PhD Thesis Defense: Olenka Forde

Topic: Fugitive Gas Migration from Leaking Oil and Gas Wells

Time & Place: Wednesday, November 27th at 1:00pm in ESB 5106

IRES Seminar Series with Dr. Navin Ramankutty & Dr. Terre Satterfield

Topic: A broader view of academic integrity: doing the right thing for the right reaons

We often face many challenging situations in academia (e.g., co-authorship decisions, appropriate credit for work done) where the solutions of integrity are not obvious and for which we have little training. This workshop will provide you the opportunity to work through and discuss several such scenarios.

Standard discussions of academic integrity surround issues of plagiarism, falsifying results, etc. However, as academics, we often find ourselves in numerous challenging situations for which we have little training to navigate, and where ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are not clear or are interpreted differently by different people. There are also scant open discussions of such issues. In this workshop, we will give you several typical scenarios that we have encountered or have heard about. You will discuss them in smaller groups, after which we will invite comments from everyone on how to best navigate them.

Time & Place: Thursday, November 28th from 12:30 - 1:30pm in AERL 120

Pizza will be served at 12pm on the 4th floor of AERL!

Earth Sciences Seminar with Dr. Andrew La Croix: "Unraveling the Geological Complexity of the Lower Jurassic Series in the Surat Basin, Australia - Mitigating Risk Associated with Carbon Capture and Storage"

Abstract: Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an important technology to abate climate change (Metz et al., 2005; IEA, 2008), and is especially applicable for offsetting emissions from coal and gas fired power generation. Regional assessment of sedimentary basins in Australia has identified the Jura-Cretaceous Surat Basin for its considerable potential to store CO2 in the subsurface (Bradshaw et al., 2011; Hodgkinson & Grigorescu, 2013), with the Precipice Sandstone and Evergreen Formation as the most prospective reservoir-seal pair due to their appropriate pressure, depth, temperature gradient, pore space, and fluid flow properties. However, the Precipice– Evergreen interval constitutes the basal aquifer system of the Great Artesian Basin (Habermehl, 1980), and thus safe and secure storage of carbon is of the utmost importance from a socio-economic standpoint (Ashworth et al., 2015).  

One of the major challenges in assessing the viability of commercial-scale CCS in the Surat Basin is the poorly constrained geological context for the Precipice Sandstone and Evergreen Formation in terms of stratigraphy, facies characteristics, and palaeogeography. This is especially true at the basin centre where storage prospectively is the greatest. Data are sparse and incomplete, resulting in poor reservoir simulation and a rudimentary understanding of CO2 flow behaviour. Past studies have mostly applied lithostratigraphy for local correlation, and time-stratigraphic relationships across the basin are poorly understood. The problem is compounded by simplistic palaeodepositional models and an outdated view of the regional context of eastern Australia during the Mesozoic. To mitigate this and improve model-history match fidelity, existing data from core, seismic, wireline logs, and large-scale groundwater injection tests were integrated to unravel the geological complexity of the basin. This talk will present a new sequence stratigraphic framework that was developed, as well as new insights about the palaeodepositional environments and palaeogeography of the Precipice–Evergreen interval. A novel method for inferring the sedimentary characteristics of strata in data poor areas will be showcased. The results culminated in a series of static reservoir models that captured the range of geological uncertainty and produced more accurate dynamic simulations of notional carbon injection. This allowed the project to focus on more important risks to CCS deployment including leakage of faults, water-rock-CO2 reactions, and legacy infrastructure.

Time & Place: Monday, December 2nd at 3:30pm in SSB 7172 (SFU University)