As postgraduate researchers at the Open University with an interest in communication and engagement, Frazer Bird and I are looking for your support. We’ve entered a video competition and we've been selected as finalists.
To win the prize - a trip for four people to the biggest geosciences conference in the world - our videos must receive the most likes on You Tube so we need all the help we can get.
If you’d like to know more about the type of research we do as paleoecologists, and to help one of our dreams come true, please follow the links in our post and like and share the videos. Read on for further details…
The American Geophysical Union (AGU) with 62,000 members in 144 countries is one of the most prestigious academic organisations in the world. Their annual conference in San Francisco is the largest gathering of geoscientist with over 20,000 delegates. There is always a good turn-out from Open University staff and students and this year will be no exception.
A recent new comer to the conference programme is the student video competition. Integral to AGU’s mission statement is the dissemination of science. This year students have been encouraged to submit short videos that capture a particular area of their research. The videos must present the science in a fun, easy to understand engaging manner.
This year three videos have been shortlisted, two of which have been created by Open University PhD students Frazer Bird and myself.
Frazer’s video is a bite-size introduction to his research, looking at climate change in tropical South America and how insects can help us understand this change.
My piece is video diary of my exploits in the field whilst working out in the Ecuadorian Andes , illustrating the exciting and challenging side of being a field scientist.
This year’s prize is free attendance to the annual conference for four people. To win our videos must receive the most likes on You Tube so we need all the help we can get.
Please follow the links below, like and share the videos, and ensure more high-quality OU research can be a part of the biggest geoscience conference of the year.
About the authors...
Hayley Keen
Hayley is a final year PhD student, researching within the Environment, Earth and Ecosystems Department of the Science Faculty at the Open University. Her research involves investigating the past environmental change of the Amazon basin, in particular near a small town (Mera) located in Ecuador on the eastern side of the Andes mountain range. The eastern flank of the Andes is a biodiversity hotspot and a conservation priority.
In order to understand the past environmental change of this region, Hayley uses a range of proxies to investigate how the environment was changing. She uses changing sediment type (organic to volcanic to fluvial) to investigate what type of drivers were impacting the environment, and pollen grains preserved in sediments to investigate how the vegetation was responding to these environmental changes.
Frazer Matthews-Bird
Frazer has an M.Sc. in Environment and Climate Change and is a doctoral student working in the field of tropical Palaeoecology with The Open University and Natural History Museum, London.
Based in the Environment, Earth and Ecosystems Department of the Science Faculty his research interests include palaeolimnology and palaeoecology with an emphasis on understanding long-term climate and environmental change in tropical South America. His PhD research focuses on the development of proxy data sets in order to reconstruct environmental conditions back beyond the time of instrumental records.