Austral Weeks

I am deep in the process of determining how I will use the next 8 months most efficiently in a way that will honor a number of different research priorities. The purpose of this post is to document these priorities in a way that will hopefully organize my own thoughts, and communicate to folks what exactly I'm doing down here in Aysén ! As both a Fulbright scholar and a human, I feel the need to do as much listening, observing, and learning as possible to understand what types of environmental problems exist in the Chilean Patagonia, so that our modeling can provide some useful or impactful information. This post is organized by: 1. past/current work in Colorado 2. future work in Colorado 3. work in Aysén  4. personal to-do list Where I've been:  So far, my academic research has focused on  aspect controls on hill slope hydrology.  What does this mean? The Boulder Creek Critical Zone Observatory's field site at Gordon Gulch, CO, USA is characterized by a ...

As the Fulbright project begins to take shape, I've been doing as much listening, observing, and learning as possible to understand what types of environmental problems exist in the Chilean Patagonia, so that our modeling can provide some useful or impactful information. (Maybe not a great way to do 'science' but I can't seem to separate myself from the emotional attachment to nature).  The most obvious issue in Coyhaique, Chile is air pollution , as the World Health Organization has identified .  As I speak to more Chileans, I have come to realize that this is not an isolated problem. The poor air quality is a symptom of a much larger political/economic dynamic: in neoliberal Chile, energy from diesel, gas, and electricity is 4, 5, and 6 times as expensive as energy from wood, respectively (Schueftan & Gonzalez, 2013), whereas in generally leftist Argentina, heavy subsidies make natural gas 10–20, 5-10, and 10-20 times cheaper than diesel, firewood, and electri...

Needle ice forms when the ground is warmer than the air: the temperature gradient creates a pressure gradient, which draws water out of the soil in needle-like formations. As a Coyhaique resident pointed out to me, the formation of needle ice is highly-dependent on soil texture: they observed needle ice on organic, porous, saturated soils. This aligns with our technical understanding: in order for ice to form at the surface, a steady supply of liquid water is required from below, which involves two factors: 1. Capillarity: In order to prevent downward flow by gravity, water must be retained by the force of capillary action . Soils with the greatest 'capillary pressure' are those with small grain sizes. Clays have the smallest grain size, sand the largest, and silt somewhere in between. 2. Permeability: In order for water to move quickly through the soil to the surface, the soil must be permeable, that is to say, the pores must be well-connected. Clays are the least perme...

The first week of the Fulbright was mostly spent traveling!  I left Boulder, CO on the morning of Monday, March 5, and arrived in Santiago Tuesday. On Wednesday, I presented my project plan along with other Fulbright students at the commission. Thursday,  we met with folks from the U.S. Embassy, and then toured a lovely winery outside of the city. I flew out that evening to Puerto Montt, arrived in Balmaceda the next morning, and then took a bus to Coyhaique, arriving midday on Friday, March 9. I spent the weekend resting and arranging my living space, which is equipped with excellent wi-fi!  Some project highlights:  My advisor is out of town through March 20, and I've felt pretty aimless thus far. He left me a few contacts so I've met with a couple folks to toss around ideas. We've scheduled a day in April where I'll give a talk about my previous research (in Spanish...), a visiting scholar from Italy will talk about watershed restoration, and a representative...

Welcome to my semi-professional Fulbright blog, where I discuss topics relating to research! Today I'm setting myself up to work remotely. I've long been a Windows user, but because the Mac terminal is functionally equivalent to the Linux terminal, I recently purchased a refurbished MacBook pro to run my simulations remotely. Anywhere I have internet access, I can simply ssh onto a University of Colorado Boulder server, give myself permission via my phone, and run all my jobs from my MacBook.  Since my simulations generally produce large files (20GB per simulation), I have an external hard drive where I store my results, from which I can generate plots and such. I recently ran into an issue with my external hard drive: since it was formatted on Windows, it has an NTFS file system. I recently opened the drive on my Mac and found I only had 'read' access! Luckily, I found Paragon, a software package that allows one to use NTFS on a Mac! So now I can use my externa...