Sarah McKnight

Hei Sarah,

I’m so sorry about the circumstances of your departure–that you had to leave early in the first place, and that coming back was such a rushed and harrowing experience. But I’m so glad you did share that story–it’s an important story to tell, and it reminded me of a lot of the things I’ve been taking for granted during my research experience in Norway. It’s been amazing to follow your journey to the Middle East and back, and I wish it hadn’t been cut so short. But I know you made the most of the time you had there, and it sounds like you made a lot of really meaningful connections with people in all sorts of spheres. I hope you’ll be able to keep cultivating those connections wherever you are, and that you can return to Israel/Palestine to continue the really fascinating and valuable work you started there!

Norway certainly hasn’t been unaffected by COVID-19, but we seem to have been one of the luckier countries. Most of that can be attributed to the swiftness of the response–everything was shut down before the end of February, and remained that way well into May. Even the common areas of my 5-person apartment building were deemed off-limits. The hardest part for me was the space restriction; work, sleep, exercise, eating…everything was confined to my ~25 sq. m apartment. Thanks to the swiftness and strictness of the lockdown, things have been gradually returning to the way they were when I arrived in January. Some of it was luck, some of it was geography, but the main reasons the Norwegian response could be so effective were that people still received salaries during the lockdown, there was excellent communication from the government, and the cost of healthcare is minimal. I’m very thankful that I was able to stay in Norway, but being so far away from family and friends has taken on a new level of stress during this time.

My research was actually fairly unimpeded though, despite not being able to access the department facilities. There’s always more writing to do, and once lectures began to transition to online platforms I was able to attend all kinds of talks at University of Bergen, UMass, and other schools/societies. I was even able to run an outreach program through Girls, Inc. of Holyoke with some other UMass grad students to teach kids about sediment motion in water! But I spent most of my time modeling, which I’m guessing you did as well. For anyone else reading this thinking “what’s the fashion industry got to do with geologic research?”, scientific models are representations of processes found in nature, usually on the computer or with rescaled physical components. Often, the things geologists study are too slow, too big, too deep, or too dangerous to test in a controlled experiment. Instead, we might write a model that can make predictions based on robust physical laws, see if they match observations from natural systems, and then adjust the parameters of the model. They can be really nice to watch though, like this one my labmate made to depict particles settling in still water for our outreach project. 

So I’ve been spending most of my days on the computer trying to model what happens when the lake I’m studying, Glacial Lake Sitas, drains. I’ve been running different versions of this scenario where the lake drains rapidly after the ice dam holding it back breaks up. I can adjust things like the position of the ice dam, the starting depth of the lake, and even the land surface to test lots of possible configurations of what actually happened there. When we go to the field (in a few days!!) we’re going to look at the spots that my model says were in the flood zone, and look for things like sediment deposits and scoured bedrock to see how closely the model reflects reality. If they match, we can use the model to calculate other things, like how fast the water was going or how much sediment can be carried by these floods. If there are big differences we might need to adjust some of our assumptions, like the position of the ice margin, and those are useful things to learn too.

Models like this make a great complement to fieldwork, since you can test things with models you’d never be able to mess with in nature, but they’re also useful in their own right. I’ve been learning and reflecting a lot over the past few months about issues of accessibility in geoscience. It’s important to acknowledge that fieldwork isn’t always safe or physically possible for everyone, and while lots of folks are working hard to try to change that, we can do a better job of appreciating the non-fieldwork aspects of geoscience too. 

I’ll be in the field for the next 3 weeks, but I’ll take lots of pictures and notes to report back! In the mean time, good luck with research, and stay safe and healthy with your adorable new fluffy housemates!

Mvh,

Karin

p.s. I found a ton of mesmerizing animations of terrestrial geology models on the CSDMS website, if you’re looking for a really satisfying way to spend a few minutes!

Hi Karin!

It’s been a little while since I’ve written to you / on this blog. A lot has happened since I last wrote, and I’ll try to cover it as efficiently and comprehensively as possible. When I last wrote, I was really excited and had many plans: I was going to be productive and engaging with the world around me, but also focusing on self-care and inner peace. Since then, these general goals have not changed, but the circumstances surrounding them obviously have.

I remember a sunny Saturday in March, a day when I felt like I firmly understood my role in my science and local communities. I joined an anti-occupation organization to help a farmer reclaim a part of his land in the occupied Palestinian territory. We helped him weed a field and prepare manure for fertilizing his crops while we learned from him about the adjacent settlers who had claimed his land for their own and were now growing date plantations all around him. I asked the farmer about the groundwater wells around his property, and he explained that the water had recently become saline. I explained to him about the project I was working on with a NGO trying to find the source of salinity in adjacent farmland, and we excitedly discussed the different analysis I could arrange for water samples from his wells. At home that night, as I cooked dinner and my cat Fatin wound around my legs, my mind buzzed with how the farmer’s wells could be a perfect addition to that groundwater monitoring project, and I couldn’t wait to e-mail my contact at the NGO. But as I sat down with a plate and eagerly opened my laptop, I was greeted with a message from the Boren program: due to the global pandemic, I was required to end my program and return home, immediately.

The heart-breaking news triggered a flip of both my personal goals and an understanding of my place in these communities, as well as a week-long whirlwind of preparing to travel under pandemic conditions. I set aside my thoughts and feelings to focus on the necessary tasks. For example, in order to travel with Fatin, I had to get signatures from the Ministry of Agriculture, and their office was open for only three hours a week, with the next open time slot being the next day! By the time I had packed up, said my goodbyes, and arrived to the airport with Fatin in her very pink carrier, I was so sleep-deprived that I had forgotten the most important thing: to hide absolutely anything with Arabic or might possibly suggest pro-Palestinian sentiment. I had at least remembered a tip from a friend to hide anti-occupation literature in the lining of my luggage, but the airport security was already suspicious of my passport full of stamps from throughout the Middle East, plus my cat’s name was Arabic. So when they found my Arabic homework, that triggered an intensive search of each individual item in all of my bags, including my bras and underwear. After a red-faced man yelled that I was lying about being a geologist, they strip searched me, forcing me to remove all my clothes except for my underwear and rubbing some kind of explosive detector device over my genitals. An hour later, I sat on a plane to America, trying to process what exactly had just happened to me, all because of my Arabic homework.

Self-quarantining in Boston was lonely and depressing, but it gave me time to process what had happened in the past week, what I had lost by leaving my research abroad program, and how to rebuild a framework for my own place in my communities that were also experiencing so much change and uncertainty. My work with the NGO was put on hold. My colleagues at the Geological Survey had been supportive hosts, and I had just made some useful progress on modeling laboratory experiments, but I was worried about our future collaboration and how much progress I could make without daily in-person interactions. I also mourned the loss of the community in my neighborhood, with so many amazing people who embraced my presence and invested a lot of time and energy getting to know me. The Boren program gave me an option for returning to Palestine/Israel in the Spring of 2021 to complete my program, but should I return a year later? Among a number of concerns about the timeline for degree completion and progress on other projects, I now also need to consider what it means to be a scientist, and more specifically a woman scientist, in an area where doing science could be perceived as a threat. What I experienced at the airport was terrible. But Palestinians face far worse and incomparable prejudice, abuse, and denial of human and civil rights daily. If I want to engage in fieldwork in an area where people are being marginalized, I also want to use my white privilege as a scientist to produce research that will help those people. Knowledge is power. Can I help by working with Palestinians and learning more about the land that has been illegally taken from them? At the same time, it’s also important to consider how, or if, I can effectively do that work in the face of possible safety risks, and that’s something I’m still thinking about as I consider whether to return.

While this is mainly a research abroad blog, it’s also important to recognize that there are two sides to the research abroad story. The second side is coming home. Always, though especially in this present moment, allyship as a scientist and more specifically as a geoscientist is particularly important. With the death of George Floyd unfortunately proceeding many others at the hands of police, all Americans need to engage in the Black Lives Matter movement and precipitate change so that we as a country can say that Black lives do actually matter. Science, and particularly the geosciences, has historically been white, and the field of Geosciences remains predominantly white. It’s important to acknowledge the history behind that lack of access for People of Color. The Geosciences emerged from a long history of colonialization via mining and exploration of stolen lands. There is a lot that geoscientists, and specifically white scientists, can do to make the field more supportive of Black scientists and other People of Color, and there are also a lot of broader impacts via the Geosciences that could support the change we need as a society.

Acting locally, but thinking globally, it’s also important to note the connection between the discrimination of Black Americans and the occupation of Palestine: they are both rooted in oppression at the hands of people who benefit from that oppression. The occupation affects all facets of life for Palestinians, and least among them is access to drinking water. Israeli policy makes it difficult for Palestinians to drill their own wells, so Palestinians are forced to buy their own drinking water through the national water system. Discrimination against Black Americans and People of Color is similarly multi-faceted, and water systems in America have also been means for harming the health and livelihoods of Black Americans, as we have seen in Flint, Michigan and New Orleans.

Now back in the States, acting locally at home versus abroad, I’m interested in being a responsible geoscientist as well as a responsible citizen with goals towards allyship. What does that look like? Activism can take many forms, including advocating through social media, attending rallies and protests, donating to advocacy groups like bail funds, immersing in art and literature from Black Americans, calling representatives, and listening. Listening. And some more listening. And, as a member of the LGBTQ community and especially since it’s Pride Month, donating to organizations that support queer and trans people of color.

What might allyship look like as a scientist, and specifically as a geoscientist? What is my role in my community? There are many answers: going beyond diversity and inclusion. Being involved with my science communities in the conversation of what to improve in order to be a better space for Black scientists and other People of Color. Teaching myself how to be a supportive colleague and, in the future, mentor. And taking on research projects from a perspective of how the broader impacts will impact local communities, and specifically how they might impact marginalized groups of people.

I’ll also add: there are not enough words to hold my many thoughts about my time in Jerusalem, and I’m still very happy to continue this correspondence through the summer.

Also, a quick update on Fatin: turns out she was pregnant pre-travel, and she gave birth to two beautiful kittens. We have named them Fairouz and Khalil.

Much love to you and our shared community,

Sarah

NOTE: Karin originally wrote this post in early March. Since then, a lot has changed around the world due to the COVID-19 virus, and we’ve had to adjust to that. We are both safe and doing well, and continuing with our research as best we can. Unfortunately, Sarah’s Boren program in Israel/Palestine was terminated and she was required to return to the US. Karin is remaining in Norway. Despite the new circumstances, both of us wanted to continue updating the blog, and hope you will continue reading it!  

 

Dear Sarah,

Jerusalem sounds like a fascinating place to live, and from your pictures and descriptions I get the sense that it’s a really vibrant and exciting place to be. I’m really intrigued by the differences in the day-to-day interactions you describe; it’s wonderful to hear how warm and welcoming people have been. Everyone has been incredibly kind and helpful in Norway, and although it takes a little extra effort to break the ice with people than I’m used to, I’ve made some great friendships so far. A kitty would be awesome though, Fatin is so lucky to have you!! 

Now that I’m pretty much settled in, I’ve had time to do some exploring. On the rare sunny days everyone drops everything and goes “trekking”, which is whatever combination of hiking/skiing/snowshoeing/etc. suits your mood. I’m seeing all sorts of things I read about as an undergrad but never really had an intuitive understanding for. I think it would be really hard, perhaps impossible, to live in Norway and not develop a love of geology on some level. It’s fascinating how geology permeates everyday life around the world, and how it’s shaped cultures in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. I’ll say more about that later, but first, here’s the rapid summary of Norway’s geologic history.

About 600 million years ago, two continental plates began to separate in the spot that’s now Norway, forming an ocean. Then 400 million years ago, the plates began to close up again, squishing together all the sediments that had built up on the ocean floor. Eventually, Greenland on the North American plate collided with the Eurasian plate, and everything got compressed, generating a lot of heat and pressure to form really weird rocks, and pushing the land up to form huge mountains. The Atlantic Ocean started to form as the plates changed direction and started spreading apart again, but a bit of Greenland got stuck to Eurasia, along with all those squished sediments.

The mountains were worn down by erosion to expose all the cool metamorphic rocks like marble and schist that formed at great depths. And since Norway is so far north, its current topography has been shaped by many cycles of ice ages where glaciers have carved deep valleys as they flow to the coast (the famous fjords).

So, Norway had a front-row seat to a lot of exciting things, which is evident today in the spectacular mountains and coastlines. But it’s also worked its way into the more subtle parts of everyday life, so here are a few of my favorite ways Norway’s geologic history has popped up in ways you might not expect.

• Pretty colors!: there are buildings made out of rocks I haven’t seen outside of my Intro to Mineralogy class. The larvikite-covered buildings at University of Oslo are mind-blowing. And people must think I’m nuts because I’ve been taking so many pictures of the sidewalks. Seriously, these are some of the most gorgeous folds I’ve ever seen, cracked and wrinkled from continents colliding, and they’re just chilling in front of the concert hall. @PavementGeology on Twitter has lots more examples (and not just in Norway)!    

  

• Weather: I expected Bergen to be snowy…boy was I wrong. It rains constantly. For one thing, it’s a coastal city surrounded by the seven mountains, so it gets a lot of precipitation as moisture from the Atlantic is blown onshore and rains out as the clouds are forced over the high topography. The coastal location gives it a more moderate temperature too, but mainly it’s warmer than the rest of the country because of its location along the Gulf Stream ocean current, which keeps temperatures warmer than they otherwise would be.
• Energy: all that seafloor sludge that got caught up in the mountain-building process led to the formation of large oil deposits around Norway, which the country has relied on for energy and export revenue. But lately, a lot of energy has been coming from tides and offshore wind farms, other things that work well in a country with a lot of coastlines. Norway’s granites also contain substantial deposits of thorium (named for Thor!), which has been generating lots of interest in the country for use in nuclear reactors. Not so much solar energy…hmm now why could that be… 
• Food: back in MA I lived on produce, because that’s what’s abundant, cheap, and fresh. Not so in Norway. The lack of soil and sun means that produce has to be shipped in or grown in greenhouses for most of the year, making it expensive and not so yummy. On the other hand, there’s an ocean of fish within easy access, and I could eat salmon three meals a day and not get sick of it. I also found out that it’s common to use the fjords as fish hatcheries–they’re nice and secluded, and the runoff from the glaciers provides a source of freshwater for some species. Clever!

  

And that’s just scratching the surface. As I learn more about Norwegian history I’m really becoming fascinated by the role of the country’s geology and geography in culture and history around the world, from Norse mythology and the Viking age to WWII. It’s probably the same for any other country, actually, but maybe I notice the geologic undercurrent of society more acutely here because with the mountains and the landscape being so prominent you just can’t escape it. But then again, it’s so incredible; why would you want to!

MVH,

Karin

Dear Sarah,

     I’ve only been in Norway for 2 weeks, but it’s amazing how fast you can adapt to a new place. Of course, it helps that my two collaborators at University of Bergen (UiB) have been extremely helpful and welcoming, and that everyone in Norway speaks perfect english. But honestly, moving to Bergen was easier than moving from DC to Amherst MA for grad school in many ways. It took all of half a day to get my student ID, my office key, set up internet and printer access, activate my university account, and figure out how to pay rent. The international stuff is a bit harder, like getting salary and tax stuff sorted out, but it looks like everything is coming together. Which is great, since I’d much rather think about geology than boring logistics.

     Three days after I landed (and not anywhere near beating the jet lag) I went with one of my advisors to Oslo for the Nordic Geological Winter meeting. I was a bit apprehensive about going to a conference so soon after my arrival, but it turned out to be an excellent move. I didn’t know too much about Norwegian geology and arctic research, so this was a great way to get a broad overview of the processes and landforms you find in the region. Some things were totally new to me–did you know there’s an active volcano in Norway?? I also got to meet a lot of really great people who are studying topics from glacial outburst floods to sea level impacts of melting glaciers, to glacial extents during the last ice age–okay, I mostly wound up talking to people who were studying glaciers in some capacity, but it’s just because glaciers have played such an important role in shaping the landscape around here that it’s just about impossible to find anything they haven’t impacted.

     So now I’m back in Bergen, working on drafts and edits for some other papers and starting to figure out fieldwork logistics. I’ve enjoyed a nice boost in productivity thanks to 1) unlimited hot chocolates 2) the giant, beautiful window in my office, and 3) a much-needed shake-up from my routine. It’s amazing what you can do when you find out you can do hard things, and I’m finding that my comfort zone is only as small as I make it. In Norwegian, Karin is a pretty common name but it’s pronounced “Kah-rin”, rather than “Kare-in” like in the US. And since moving to a new place is a great opportunity to embrace change, I came up with a few goals for myself as “Kah-rin”. 

• Watch less TV: it’s so tempting to just come back to my apartment after work and spin up Netflix. But lately it’s started to take the place of some of my other hobbies, like sketching and writing, so I’ve been trying to spend more time doing more engaging activities. Plus I know that I won’t make any friends unless I make a conscious effort to be around people, which leads me to…
• Be less scared of people: thanks to the “stranger danger” brainwashing of elementary school combined with my natural tendency towards introversion I’ve always been a pretty shy person. But overcoming this fear almost always leads to fantastic friendships and overwhelmingly positive interactions. So I’m making an effort to quiet my inhibitions about what people may think about my broken Norwegian and general cluelessness as I try to navigate a new place, and assume that people will be understanding and patient.
• Talk more deliberately: speaking a language I’m still in the process of learning has made me much more aware of what I say, and forces me to be direct in a way that I not always am when speaking english. And when I do have to revert to english, I need to keep it simple and to the point so I’ll be understood. So goodbye to um’s y’know’s, and like’s!
• Drink less: this has been a pretty easy one, since I don’t typically drink much anyway. The thing is, alcohol is VERY expensive in Norway, so the motivation for this one was mostly budget-related. But it’s a good start of the more general goal to:
• Eat healthier: I’ve had mixed results for this one so far as well. The high costs mean I’ve been eating a lot of pasta and frozen pizza (which is really popular in Norway, especially among students) and there’s just a general lack of fresh veggies. Since I don’t eat meat, I’m finding it somewhat difficult to find satisfying non-meat options, but I think it’s just a question of creativity and trying lots of different grocery stores. But at the same time, I’m spending a whole lot less on desserts…my office is so nice that I can get lots done there whereas back home I’d usually work in coffee shops, which is impossible to do without also getting a treat.
• Work-life balance: the Norwegians have this down. People take their weekends and holidays, but they still manage to be incredibly productive during the times when they’re working. One of my Norwegian advisors told me “you can get more done in 8 hours than you can in 9”, meaning that enabling yourself to take care of the other important aspects of your life leaves you mentally able to focus on work when it’s time to do so. There will always be times when you have to push whatever your default limit is, but having some time each day when I’m not working and also not exhausted has really helped me break some procrastination habits that I’ve developed.
• Try new things: while coming to Norway for 8 months is one big new thing for me, it would be a lost opportunity if I just stuck to activities I already know I like. But I don’t want to overload myself, so I’ve made it my goal to do one new thing every day. So far I’ve been able to do that easily, since basic things like getting groceries or walking to another part of town have all been new. But I’m going to keep trying to expand my horizons, in little ways like taking the bus, but maybe some bigger ways like learning a new winter sport or traveling to a new city as well. Doing hard things is the best way to grow, and if the past 2 weeks have been any indication, it does wonders to your confidence.

     I hope you’re starting to settle into your new place and finding your way around in Jerusalem! I’m so excited that we’re embarking on such cool and different experiences, and that we can share them with each other! Miss you lots, and I hope to hear from you soon!!

Med vennlig hilsen,

Karin

My favorite part of doing geology is the travel. Fieldwork is a different sort of travel than the more vacation-y trips I’ve taken (which I also enjoy very much). But odds are, you’d never find the destinations of most field geologists in a travel guide. You sleep on the ground or in cheap motels. You go to the local grocery store, the local pub, and get to know the people who live and work nearby. I’ve been extremely fortunate to have seen so much of this beautiful and diverse country through fieldwork in college and grad school, and with each new place I go, I gain a greater appreciation and deeper understanding of the processes that have shaped it. So far though, my field experience has been limited to the US. But that’s about to change.

This summer, I was fortunate enough to be awarded a Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide (GROW) grant from NSF to spend 8 months in Bergen, Norway between January and August 2020. There, I will work with researchers in the geography department of the University of Bergen to study canyons carved by glacial lake outburst floods. I am incredibly excited about this opportunity to explore new scientific questions and to broaden my personal and professional horizons. But wait, it gets even better!

My friend, hydrogeology badass, and fellow UMass PhD student Sarah McKnight (link to http://geoarabica.blogspot.com/), applied for and was awarded a prestigious Boren fellowship, which will send her to Israel for the same 8 months. There, she will be working with the Israeli Geological Survey to map and model flows of the highly saline groundwater in the arid country. Sarah and I started as MS/PhD students at the same time, and she’s become one of my closest friends as we’ve celebrated the high points and kept each other going during the low points of our graduate experiences. Once we found out we would both be doing international research at the same time we started scheming about ways to stay in touch while we were away and, inspired the Letters to a Prescientist outreach program, came up with a plan to correspond with each other and practice our scientific communication skills at the same time.

Sarah and I will be writing letters to each other during our time abroad, and posting them on our blogs for all to read. We’re shooting for a total of 8 letters, 4 apiece, spaced more-or-less evenly over the 8 months we’ll be away. We want to share the messy, fun, sometimes-frustrating process of geologic research from our own perspectives as two women challenging ourselves to do science out of our comfort zones. And yeah, there will be lots of desert and fjord photos. So keep checking back–I leave next week, so the first letter will be posted soon! You can also follow us on twitter–I’m at @KarinInACanyon and Sarah’s at @sarahvmcknight. Now I’ve got to get back to packing.