I usually don’t like to brag, but everyone does it on the internet, so here is a list of things I am pretty good at.
Aside from all these geology related skills, my biggest strength and passion is solving problems. In fact I like solving problems so much, I will go out of my way to look for problems where other people are content as long as the problem doesn’t become too obvious. Through practice I’ve gotten quite efficient at solving problems as well.
Rock Mechanics
To me, rock mechanics is the perfect balance of work in the lab, in the field and at the computer. It is at the core of geology and relevant to many fields and industries, such as engineering or petroleum geology, or hazard assessment.
During my work as research assistant at the university of Freiburg I could gather a lot of experience in the field of rock mechanics: I am responsible for the rock press, where I conduct uniaxial, triaxial and tensile tests and evaluate the results. Before that, I worked at the Split-Hopkinson Pressure Bar, a special testing apparatus designed to test rock specimen at high strain rates.
Of course I am also familiar with the theory of rock mechanics and fracturing from the lectures during my bachelor and master studies, and rock mechanics are also at the core of my masters thesis.
Field Work
Geology without field work is like bread without butter. One of the core skills of any geologist is going out in the field and collecting lithological and structural data, and interpreting it. I obtained these essential skills during numerous university excursions, two mapping classes (in Hesse, Germany, and Elba, Italy) and the field work for my master’s thesis. Additionally I have training in geophysical measurements from an intership and two practical university classes. Finally, I took part in a scientific cruise off the shore of northern Norway, where we took cores from the seafloor.
Numerical methods
I always had an affinity for technology and during my studies I found numerical methods to be incredibly useful and fun. Commercially available software for analysing geological data often doesn’t work as well as it could and lacks customizability, and therefore developing ones own code for data analysis is often easier and more efficient. Coding goes hand in hand with my ability to solve problems, since that’s basically what it is. I am an expert level MATLAB user, which I prefer over most programming languages since it is taylored to data analysis. Additionally, I can use Python and C# and plan to learn C, C++, CUDA and TensorFlow
I use my numerical / programming skills from basic evaluations of experiments such as from the rock press or SHPB, statistical analysis of datasets, image or landscape analysis to simulations of geological scenarios such as landslides.
GIS & Remote sensing
Another indispensable skill for geologists: GIS and remote sensing. During my bachelor and master studies I had a total of three classes focusing mostly on ArcMap by ESRI, the industry standard for GIS. My GIS competence includes producing true- and falsecolor satellite images, georeferencing external datasets, mapping field data and analysing DEMs in various ways.
Electronics
Not a geological skill, but nonetheless it comes in handy quite often: during my work as research assistant I had to tinker with electronics several times, for example we built a laser-barrier from scratch to measure the velocity of projectiles. I understand basic circuitry, I can use a soldering iron, and program micro-processors like the Arduino. During my free time I sometimes experiment with Rasperry Pis and use them for all sorts of more or less useful projects.
Even if it isn’t required for anything else I can at least try to repair broken equipment with a bit of solder and a multimeter.
Microscopy
Back to geological skills, here’s another important one: microscopy. I don’t think I’m lying when I say that our professors made sure we know what we are doing at the microscope and know how to identify minerals, reactions and deformations in the thinsection. Again, this is another important part of my master’s thesis.
Sediment logging
Yet another core skill of geologists! While sedimentology always was an important part of my bachelors and masters studies, I really got to learn the practical aspects of sediment logging on two ocassions. During my semester in Tromsø, a whole class (“Reconstrucing quaternary marine climate and environments”) focused on logging and interpreting marine sediments, including a ship cruise, where we cored the seafloor ourselves. Back in Freiburg we went on a field trip to Jura mountains were the professors focused on the logging of glacial, fluvioglacial and carbonate marine sediments.
And some exotic stuff
Finally, there are two more exotic fields of expertise, which fall pretty much exclusively into the academic realm.
- Analogue modeling: Granular materials such as sand are used to mimic geological processes on the laboratory scale. I used this during my bachelor’s thesis (“Peak-ring formation in large impact craters: insights from analogue modeling”).
- Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV): A computational method to analyse the movement of particles from a series of (mostly high-speed) images. This goes hand in hand with analogue modeling.
- White Light Interferometry (WLI): A white light interferometer essentially creates digital elevation models of micrometer small structures. I used this to analyse fracture surfaces in my geological project (“Characterization of fracture surfaces in basalt using white light interferometry”)
- Laser diffraction particle size analysis: Another machine I use during my work as research assistant: It measures the grain size distribution of material, that is to fine to be sieved.