Day: January 25, 2010

GIS-based Trajectory Statistical Analysis to Identify Potential Sources from Long-term Air Pollution Measurement Data

/ Matt Artz / 1 Comment

Environmental Modelling & Software, Volume 24, Issue 8, August 2009, Pages 938-939

Y.Q. Wang, X.Y. Zhang, and Roland R. Draxler

“Statistical analysis of air mass back trajectories combined with long-term ambient air pollution measurements are useful tools for source identification. Using these methods, the geographic information system (GIS) based software, TrajStat, was developed to view, query, and cluster the trajectories and compute the potential source contribution function (PSCF) and concentration weighted trajectory (CWT) analyses when measurement data are included.”

Climate Adaptation Coordinator Position at the Wildlife Conservation Society

/ Matt Artz / 2 Comments

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) seeks a strategic, analytical conservationist to build adaptation to climate change into our global field programs and to represent WCS on this issue in global policy forums. This full-time position, based at WCS’s headquarters, the Bronx Zoo in New York City, offers the opportunity to join an extraordinary team of committed conservationists, to influence conservation practice in over fifty countries, and to build a reputation in one of conservation’s fastest growing fields.

WCS saves wildlife and wild places through a global program of landscape, seascape, and species conservation projects employing over 3,000 in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the world’s oceans. In global policy forums, we are listened to as scientists and conservationists with unrivalled field experience and success.

The Climate Adaptation Coordinator will have three main areas of responsibility:

  • Working with our regional, country, landscape, seascape, and species programs to ensure that each incorporates planning for adaptation to climate change and to promote cross-program learning;
  • Representing WCS at global policy forums to promote successful approaches to climate adaptation and the central role of biodiversity conservation in this endeavor;
  • Spearhead the development of an organization-wide climate adaptation strategy and help fundraise to implement this strategy.

The successful candidate will have: an advanced degree in landscape ecology, climate change ecology, modeling climate impacts on natural systems, conservation biology, or a related field; GIS skills; experience implementing strategic initiatives across a global organization; demonstrated ability to thrive in an organization characterized by a highly educated and mission-driven workforce; and strong interpersonal and communications skills including the ability to summarize concisely scientific findings.

Managing Water Across Borders

/ Matt Artz

…from The New Nation…

“Several key analytical tools are being developed that enable sharper analysis of transboundary water interaction. These include great improvements in data gathering and through increased use of GIS; the Transboundary Water Interaction NexuS (TWINS) that allows us to work with the dual nature of co-existing conflict and cooperation; continued improvement and expansion of education and capacity-building; and the Transboundary Water Opportunity (TWO) analytical method. Through methodological consideration of crucial areas of interaction, the application of the TWO analysis to the Nile, Jordan and SADC rivers points to potential opportunities that few had previously thought possible.”

Bill Davenhall at TEDMED: Your Health Depends on Where You Live

/ Matt Artz / 1 Comment

About this talk
Where you live: It impacts your health as much as diet and genes do, but it’s not part of your medical records. At TEDMED, Bill Davenhall shows how overlooked government geo-data (from local heart-attack rates to toxic dumpsite info) can mesh with mobile GPS apps to keep doctors in the loop. Call it “geo-medicine.”

About Bill Davenhall
Bill Davenhall wants to improve physicians’ diagnostic techniques by collecting each patient’s geographic and environmental data, and merging it with their medical records

Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Non-Recoverable Strain Geometry as Documented by the Inversion of Earthquake Focal Mechanisms in West-Central Taiwan

/ Matt Artz

Geological Society of America, Northeastern Section (45th Annual) and Southeastern Section (59th Annual) Joint Meeting (13-16 March 2010)

LAMONT, Ellen Ari, LEWIS, Jon C., BYRNE, Timothy, CRESPI, Jean M., and RAU, Ruey-Juin

“The geologically young (<4Ma) Taiwan Orogen reflects ongoing, rapid (~80mm/yr) arc-continent collision. The collision of the northeast-trending Chinese passive continental margin with the north-trending Luzon volcanic arc on the Philippine Sea plate has caused extensive deformation within the orogen as the collision has propagated from north to south. Additionally, magnetic anomaly patterns in western Taiwan suggest that mountain building in this region is occurring above a relict fracture zone in the lower plate. The relative motion between the Eurasian and Philippine Sea plates here has resulted in numerous large thrust earthquakes. One such earthquake was the 1999 shallow, moment magnitude 7.6, Chi-Chi earthquake in west-central Taiwan. The main shock ruptured the Chelungpu fault horizontally over 80km. Earthquake ruptures such as these reflect non-recoverable strain in the crust related to tectonic forces. By modeling pooled earthquake focal mechanism data from the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake and related events, using an adaptation of the micropolar continuum model, we were able to solve for best-fitting, partial strain tensors and thus examine the 3-Dimensional geometry of non-recoverable strain. Our results indicate that the dominant mode of deformation in the orogen southeast of the fracture zone is orogen subparallel stretching accommodated by both normal and strike-slip faulting.”

USA Science & Engineering Festival

/ Matt Artz / 1 Comment

Festival Dates: 10/10/10 – 10/24/10
Expo on the National Mall: October 23 & 24, 2010

“The Inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival will be the country’s first national science festival and will descend on the Washington, D.C. area in the Fall of 2010. The Festival promises to be the ultimate multi-cultural, multi-generational and multi-disciplinary celebration of science in the United States. The culmination of the Festival will be a two-day Expo in the nation’s capital that will give over 500 science & engineering organizations from all over the United States the opportunity to present themselves with a hands-on, fun science activity to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers.

“Get involved now: join the over 300 organizations that have already signed up to host an Expo exhibit, become an official Festival Partner, organize a Satellite Event in your community, host a Festival Event, check out our cool school programs like Nifty Fifty and Lunch with a Laureate, volunteer, donate, become a sponsor, participate in one of several contests, and stay on top of it all by signing up for our bi-weekly e-newsletter. Will you be there when science takes over the National Mall?”