President’s note
Welcome to our latest WOMEESA Newsletter! After a bit of a break in 2020, we’re back and with a team of newsletters editors! Melanie Finch, Amber Jarret and I will be bringing you the latest WOMEESA news and highlights every month.
WOMEESA welcome new Team Members, Mardi McNeil at QUT who is our new Treasurer and Melanie Finch at Monash University, who is Newsletter Co-Editor and WOMEESA Seminar Series Co-ordinator, and Melanie is also leading the WOMEESA Women in Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences Database initiative.
It is hard to believe that its now been three years since the network launched but what a fitting way to celebrate our birthday this year on International Women’s Day with a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, more member spotlights released and social events. Thanks very much to Sandra McLaren for leading the Wikipedia initiative and thanks to everyone that joined the event, as you can see below, we’re already raising the visibility of women in earth and environmental science. This year WOMEESA will be focusing on finalising our legal and financial set up, assessing our impact over the last three years and developing our strategy for the next three years, as well as running some great initiatives and events!
Heather Handley
WOMEESA News
Wikipedia Edit-a-thon
Wikipedia is the 5th most visited website globally, yet few women scientists have a stand-alone Wikipedia profile page. Less than 20% of all Wikipedia profile pages are of women and only 15-20% of Wikipedia editors are women. On International Women’s Day 2021 WOMEESA and the Geological Society of Australia (GSA) came together to improve this and increase the visibility of our incredible Earth Science women in Australasia!
We started off with a training session led by Wikimedian Caddie Brain to become Wikipedia editors and learn how to edit and create new pages. Thanks so much to everyone that got involved and just take a look at what we’ve achieved so far to create new and update existing pages for current women professors and past trailblazers in Australasia! 12 new articles created, 24 articles added to with over 22,000 words added and over 4,000 article views!
Massive thanks to the Franklin Women Team for sharing their past experience of running a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon and resources and for connecting us with the fantastic Australian Wikimedians.
This will be an ongoing project and stay tuned for future Edit-a-thon events!
We’ll be sharing a new page in each newsletter: Here’s a new Wikipedia page created for Diane Seward, a low temperature thermochronologist and Teaching Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington, also affiliated with GNS Science. Check out her new Wikipedia page here.
Online Seminar Series
On the first Wednesday of each month we host a seminar via zoom from a WOMEESA member. Our seminar series aims to increase the visibility of women in science and provide inspiring role models. All are welcome even non-members. Details of upcoming seminars on posted the seminar webpage here, and past seminars are posted on our YouTube channel here. We’re also compiling a list of talks by women in earth and environmental sciences in the region which you can find on the seminars webpage.
Wednesday 5 May 2021, 2pm AEST (Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne time)
Dr. Lorna Strachan, The University of Auckland
“The invisible woman, 20 years in geoscience. My journey so far”
Wednesday 2 June 2021, 2pm AEST (Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne time)
Dr. Rachelle Kernen, The University of Adelaide
“Creating and Promoting Gender Equity and Diversity in Professional Geological Societies”
Wednesday 7 July 2021, 2pm AEST (Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne time)
Dr. Teagan Blaikie, CSIRO
“Aeromagnetic interpretation of the Tanami Region and northwest Aileron Province”
Wednesday 4 August, 2pm AEST (Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne time)
Dr. Jacqueline Halpin, University of Tasmania
Shut Up And Write #SUAW
On the last Friday of the month we hold an online Shut Up and Write #SUAW session via zoom. We get together and talk briefly about what we want to achieve in the session, then write for about 50 minutes. It’s a great opportunity to connect with other members and get some uninterrupted writing done. Even if you don’t have anything to write, you can just come along and say hi. Next event Friday 30th April, 12 pm (Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane time) see below in the upcoming events section for the zoom link.
International Women’s Day 2021
In addition to our Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, we marked WOMEESA’s 3rd birthday with a number of events in the region. Here’s a picture from the IWD Morning Tea event in Brisbane at QUT, with an impressive WOMEESA birthday cake!
We also featured more profiles through our member spotlight page of some of our incredible women members. Thanks to Jess Hillman for co-ordinating. If you would like to feature on a member spotlight page or write an article for our blog page please get in touch with Jess (j.hillman@gns.cri.nz)
Take a look at the most recent spotlights here
Other News
We were thrilled that our WOMEESA research collaboration poster at the Australian Earth Science Convention in February ‘In Australasia, gender is still on the agenda in geosciences’ won the People’s Choice Best Poster Award!
Huge congratulations to WOMEESA member Kate Robertson, recently announced as the new President of the Australian Society of Exploration Geophysicists (ASEG). We know that Kate will do an incredible job of steering the society forward and WOMEESA really look forward to working with Kate and the ASEG.
WOMEESA member Vanessa Wong was recently announced as the new President of Soil Science Australia. Big congratulations Vanessa, we know you are going to do wonderful work in that role.
Congratulations to WOMEESA Team Member Sandra McLaren awarded Fellowship of the Geological Society of Australia.
WOMEESA member Shari Gallop was recently announced as the new Co-Lead of the Resilience to Nature Coastal Program
WOMEESA Team Member Caroline Tiddy won the Garry Davidson Medal at AESC 2021.
Our President, Heather Handley was elected by GSA members as a General Governing Councillor of the Geological Society of Australia and was awarded with the inaugural GSA Beryl Nashar Award at AESC 2021.
WOMEESA Team members Melanie Finch and Heather Handley were selected as 2021-2022 Science and Technology Australia Superstars of STEM joining other Earth and Environmental Scientists Marissa Betts, Hannah Power and Emily Finch. Congratulations to all!
Rare recordings of ancient magnetic field reversals revealed in tassie lake sediment
A cool study by Dr Agathe Lise-Pronovost at the University of Melbourne came out recently, which used a 5.5 m sediment core from the bottom of Lake Selina in Tasmania to effectively go back in time to see when the last magnetic field reversal occurred. She and her team found that it was 41,000 years ago and during this time there was increased bombardment by high energy particles and a very weak magnetic field. In an article in the Conversation about her work, Agathe talks about the implications of her findings for us if that were to happen again today and the cool methods she and her team used to work all this out.
Lake Selina is a small sub-alpine lake located near the west coast of Tasmania. Sediment from the lake was sampled in the form of 2x2cm cubes, each containing a few hundred years’ worth of magnetic field history. Michael-Shawn Fletcher, Author provided. Source: The Conversation
Photo: Care flights
NSW floods and climate change
The recent floods in NSW were the result of a relatively rare combination of heavy and sustained rainfall in some places, and extremely heavy rainfall in others. Following so soon after bushfires, it led many to wonder whether these typically rare events are happening more often because of climate change. Dr Joelle Gergis is a climate scientist and senior lecturer at ANU and is currently working on a chapter about water cycle changes in the forthcoming report from the UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She wrote an interesting article in the Conversation about how the water cycle is affected by climate change, and what this means for flood events in the future.
Photo: AP news
Volcanic eruption in Iceland
The eruption of a volcano in Iceland has been all over social media for the last few weeks. The fissure is near Mount Fagradalsfjall, which is just 40 km from the capital Reykjavik, so there have been hoards of people hiking up to the crater to see the eruption occurring in real life. It is a particularly safe eruption - even though the lava is about 1,190°C, it is relatively low in poisonous gases and the eruption is effusive, not explosive. People have been flying drones over the volcano getting some spectacular footage (also watch this one, which melted the drone). Here is the live feed so you can nerd out on this 24/7.
Australian STEM podcast
Avid Research is the podcast Amelia Travers has been trying to make for 8 years. Amelia is a STEM educator and park ranger who loves talking to people about their STEM careers. She has interviewed marine and reptile biologists, psychologists, engineers, soil scientists, health researchers and heaps more. Have you ever wondered how glacier movement and the age of the Antarctic continental shelf both affect marine ecosystem diversity? Or the ways in which the Arctic and Antarctic are different? If your answer is yes, then this is the podcast for you.
The founders of modern geoscience: Mary Anning
Over the last few years there has been a dramatic increase in the recognition of the women founders of geoscience. Recently British palaeontologist Mary Anning has taken centre stage, whose work in the 1800s changed scientific thinking about the history of Earth. You probably don't need me to tell you that the life of a woman scientist in the 1800s was not one of fame and fortune. In order to support herself and her mother she searched for fossils in the nearby cliffs each morning and sold them to tourists and collectors. Her discoveries are finally being recognised and celebrated in a number of different ways including a commemorative 50p coin collection in the UK and a wildly successful crowd funding campaign to erect a statue in her honour in her home town of Lyme Regis. Her story was also recently made into a film, which came out in January. It's called Ammonite and while it focuses a bit on her palaeontology work, it is really more about the human aspect and an interpretation of her relationship with Charlotte Murchison, who was also a real person and a geologist. It was a lovely film and it's great to see Mary Anning becoming more of a household name. If you want to take a deep dive on this head over to @trowelblazers on twitter - they live tweeted as they watched this movie and then tweeted many more thoughts afterwards (they’re huge Anning enthusiasts).
Online seminar series’
One of the best things to come out of 2020 was a stack of new, online seminar series’, including our very own WOMEESA seminar series, of course. GeoHUG (humans united with geology) is another newish seminar series, hosted by Jessica Keast from Coresafe and Prospectors. A few WOMEESA have already presented in the seminar series, including Marina Costelloe, Anna Petts, Helen Degeling, Carmen Krapf, Suzy Urbaniak and Jill Terry. Past seminars are available here, and you can register for notifications about upcoming seminars here.
Another new seminar series is the monthly Women Advancing River Research seminar series. The list of upcoming seminar topics looks very interesting, covering everything from sediment transport to river geomorphology. The seminars are live at 11am New York time (2am here) but they are also recorded and the February and March seminars are available to watch here. The date of the seminar changes from month to month, so check out the list here to see what's coming up.
Opportunities
The Australian Museum Eureka Prizes : https://australian.museum/get-involved/eureka-prizes/enter/
Homeward Bound is looking for a new CEO: https://fisherleadership.com/opportunities/chief-executive-officer-69/
Australian Science Policy Fellowship Program: https://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/australian-science-policy-fellowship-program
Have an opportunity you’d like to share then let us know!
Upcoming Events
The WOMEESA shut up and write April session
This month it is Friday 30 April at 12 pm AEST (Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Melbourne time), here is the zoom link (password: 810058)
WOMEESA virtual seminar series
Seminar #5 in our monthly series will be by Dr. Lorna Strachan from the University of Auckland on Wednesday May 5 at 2pm (AEST, Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney time). To find out more and register to attend head over to our website. WOMEESA seminars are on the first Wednesday of every month at 2pm (Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney time). If you want to catch up on past WOMEESA seminars you can check them out on our YouTube channel.
WOMEESA local face-to-face bimonthly catch-ups
Looking forward to re-starting local bimonthly catch-ups. They are a great opportunity to connect with WOMEESA members in our area. For those in Sydney/NSW we’ll be having a an event in May. Details coming soon.
Dorothy Hill Women in Earth Science Symposium 2021
Save the date: 3rd Dorothy Hill Women in Earth Science Symposium, 15-17th November 2021 starting with an ice-breaker on the late afternoon/evening of the 15th and then two full days of action packed in-person meeting.