• Expedition Blogs
    • Expedition Iceberg Alley
    • Expedition Aeolex II
    • Expedition Greenland
    • Expedition Colombia
    • Expedition Lake Challa
    • Expedition Baltic Sea 2016
    • Expedition Aeolex
    • Expedition Edgeøya
    • Expedition Arctic Ocean
    • Expedition Arctic Ocean (photos)
    • Expedition Baltic Sea (NL)
    • Expedition Baltic Sea
    • Expedition Black Sea 2015
    • Expedition Black Sea
    • Expedition Himalaya
    • Expedition Mexico (NL)
    • Expedition Spitsbergen
    • Expedition Spitsbergen (NL)
    • Expedition Winterswijk
    • Expedition Zandmotor
  • Sustainability Blog
  • PalaeoBlog
  • Doctor Bodemvocht
  • Student Blogs
    • Exchange Down Under
    • Expedition Cambodia (NL)
  • About this blog
    • Studying Geosciences
Volg ons
  The world of Geosciences

Press conference on resilience of past civilisations

6/1/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
by Brian Dermody

The European Geosciences Union conference takes place every year in Vienna. It hosts around 15,000 scientists on all topics to do with geoscience. This year I was invited to take part in one of the daily press conferences they organise. The topic of the press conference was Past civilisational resilience and collapse. 


Read More
0 Comments

Complex mysteries at ancient Sagalassos

11/15/2015

2 Comments

 
by Brian Dermody
Picture
The theatre at Sagalassos
​Stefan Dekker and I recently attended a workshop at the ancient city of Sagalassos located high in the mountains in south-west Turkey. The idea of the meeting was to bring together researchers from a range of disciplines to understand the history of Sagalassos in the context of a complex socio-ecological system integrated within the wider Roman world. Studies of ancient societies can be extremely informative in a sustainability context as they can illustrate the long-term implications of short-term socio-ecological interactions. 

Read More
2 Comments

A macroscopic view on our planet

4/28/2015

1 Comment

 
PictureUsing millions of images and machine learning, Orbital Insight will be able to estimate global oil surpluses, weeks ahead of existing techniques, by analysing the shadows on the floating lids of oil tanks.
Blog post by Brian Dermody - Postdoc 

I read an article recently about a project called Orbital Insight. This is an idea to use recent, high resolution satellite imagery in addition with image recognition software to provide an up-to-date, global picture of everything from crop yields to oil surpluses (indicated by the shape of shadows on floating lids of oil tanks). The idea is that with the vast amounts of data now available and computing power to process it we can gain unprecedented insights about our planet. The founder of orbital insight, James Crawford, likened these advances to a “macroscope” that could impact our understanding of the world to a similar degree that the microscope did.

Much of these kinds of data are now openly available via the Google Earth Engine. This is a web-hosted GIS platform that exploits Googles’ ability to access pretty much any online datasets from Landsat imagery to sea surface temperature from NOAA. A high profile use of the tool recently was a paper in Science that showed global trends in deforestation and afforestation. I’d encourage anyone with an interest in these kind of datasets to go have a play. There are some nice examples of the kinds of analysis you can do on the homepage. Within the data catalog you can simply search for whichever dataset you wish to view. I searched for light and could view the DMSP-OLS Nighttime Lights Time Series. Interesting to see the big change in regions such as the Yangtze River delta! In order to have full access to all the functionality you need to apply for access as a developer. Have fun!


Read More
1 Comment

Science in the media

1/26/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
Blog entry by Brian Dermody - Postdoc

Most of the work we do as scientists remains within the scientific community but now and again certain topics, for whatever reason, seem to capture the public’s attention. This is happening more and more with platforms like IFLS, Radiolab and ‘celebrity’ scientists such as Neil deGrasse Tyson making a big contribution to that.   A recent paper I was an author of got a lot of media attention over the Christmas period. I was asked to write a short piece reflecting on why I think the media interest came about, how the work was interpreted and maybe some lessons learnt. The paper in question is entitled “A virtual water network of the Roman World” and was published in the journal Hydrological and Earth System Sciences.


Read More
1 Comment

Roman resilience to environmental change

5/28/2014

3 Comments

 
Picture
Blog entry by Brian Dermody - PhD student


What brought about the fall of the Roman Empire? That is a question that has occupied Roman scholars for centuries. An equally important question is what enabled the Roman civilisation to last so long in a region of highly variable climate and dynamic landscapes?

Environmental Setting

The heart of the Roman Empire was the Mediterranean and its surrounding ecosystems. Much of Mediterranean is marginal for agriculture with low rainfall and highly variable climate making droughts and famine a real and constant threat. Equally, proxy data show that climate in the Mediterranean underwent long-term changes during the lifetime of the Roman Empire (Fig. 1). Land degradation was also a serious problem in the Roman period, particularly with a shift to large-scale farming in the Late Republican period to feed a growing urban populous. The impact of land degradation in Italy was outlined in the writings of Lucretius dating from 99 – 55 BC:


Read More
3 Comments

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014

    Categories

    All
    Brian Dermody
    Climate Change
    Computer Model
    David Bijl
    David Gernaat
    Environmental Sciences
    Events
    Fieldwork
    Floodplain
    Floris Keizer
    Food
    Freshwater
    Honeybees
    Hugo De Boer
    Hydrology
    Iris Pit
    Jiefei Mao
    Koen Siteur
    Lab Work
    Lennard Pisa
    Marker Wadden
    Mart Verwijmeren
    Media
    Myrna De Hoop
    Oxbows
    Past Climate
    Resilience
    Sand Motor
    Semi-arid Environments
    Shuqiong Wang
    Soil Water Repellency
    Stomata
    Suspended Sediment
    Tools
    Vegan
    Vegetarian

    Environmental Sciences Blog

    Written by the junior researchers, PhD-students and post-docs of the Environmental Sciences group.

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.