Stormflod i Limfjorden 11. januar 2015

Stormen Egon har ført til massive oversvømmelser i Limfjorden og vandstanden i Lemvig har 1,95 meter over normalen: http://politiken.dk/indland/ECE2508199/oversvoemmelser-i-lemvig-er-en-100-aars-haendelse/

Storkflodskort på www.dingeo.dk

Kortet ovenfor viser Stormflodskort på http://www.dingeo.dk med de blå/grønne områder der viser hvilke dele af byen der er oversvømmet ved en vandstand på 2.00 meter over normalen. Se også her:
Dingeo-Google+

Dingeo

Check out: http://www.dingeo.dk/

The application delivers geodata that are relevant for home buyers and home owners.

From simple drop-down lists you can find all addresses in Denmark; Hit the search button, and you get a list of data for the selected address, that are of importance for the home owner/buyer:

• Risk of radon in the house
• Risk of flooding
• Soil pollution
• Dangerous factories in the near vicinity
• Traffic noise.

New paleomagnetic observations from Iceland - Strong geomagnetic field 2300 years ago

In the summer of 2004 Dr. Mads Knudsen and I drove around Iceland sampling lava flows for paleomagnetic studies. The first results are now published in a scientific paper: New palaeointensity data from Holocene Icelandic lavas. The paper is part of Tania Stanton's Ph.d. thesis.

Sampling sites for Holocene lavas 

A main motivation for the study is to extend the GEOMAGIA50 database, especially for the earliest parts of the Holocene were few data exists. Iceland is an ideal location for these kinda studies given the large amounts of well-dated lavas. As can be seen from the map above, we sampled quite a few lava flows.

An interesting aspect of the study is the finding of very high paleointensities in a 2300 year old lava. Our study suggest that the geomagnetic field was roughly twice as strong at that time as it is today. A lot more paleomagnetic work could be done on Iceland - What we show is that it is possible to sample the Holocene Icelandic lavas (see photo below), and that the lavas are well suited for paleointensity experiments.

Drilling a Holocene lava flow close to Myvatn (Myvatn fires)

Drilling another Holocene lava (Burfellsrhaun)

Dr. Mads Knudsen in search of the Jamaica geomagnetic polarity event on Hlodufell 

The GEOMAGIA50 database

GEOMAGIA50 is a web application designed to give easy access to all peer-review-published paleomagnetic data for the past 50 000 years. At present, the underlying database contains c. 8000 determinations of geomagnetic field directions and intensities.

It is quite easy to use the application to get access to the data and at the same time generate plots showing different representations of the data. Please try it out for yourself: http://geomagia.ucsd.edu/geomagia/

I worked on GEOMAGIA50 together with Fabio Donadini and Kimmo Korhonen back in 2006-2007. It is very pleasing to see that these guys continue to maintain and update the database and web application. At the time of writing GEOMAGIA50 has a monthly count of more than 200 unique users querying the database.

GEOMAGIA50 represent my first experience to make scientific data available on the internet. It was fun and interesting. Unfortunately there is little or no encouragement for scientists to share their data, so it is not something a young scientist can afford to spend a lot of time doing if he wants to build a scientific career. It is a shame that the scientific communities does not support these kinda efforts.

Self-citations and the case of Milena Penkowa

Milena Penkowa represents an interesting case of a young scientist making a fantastic career in Danish science, strongly supported by some heavy players, among them the former Minister of Science and the Rector of Copenhagen University. At every possible occasion Milena Penkowa was but forward as a role model for young scientists. Now, to the embarassement of the Danish scientific establishment, it turns out that Milena Penkowa was cheating not only with her grant money but also with her scientific works.
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110107/full/news.2011.703.html


The central question is why did Milena Penkowa make it so far? The answer is that she published a lot and was heavily cited. So on almost all bibliometric measures she was an excellent scientist. However, looking at her citations one feature is very noticeable, namely the extent to which she cited herself. Out of a total of 2,401 citations listed in the Web of Science database, 1296 are self-citations. A lot has been written on scientific self-citations, and although I read only a very small part of this literature, I would think that red lights should be flashing for scientist that cites themselves so often that more than 50% of their citations are self-citations. I wonder why the percentage of self-citations is not generally accepted as a bibliometric parameter for funding agencies and employers, not to continue to promote self-glorifying scientist obsessed with (self-)citations. Apparently Milena Penkowa was so focussed on her citations that her PC would show her citation-index whenever started up. I know a lot of scientists have the same obsession, and it seems unhealthy both for the individuals as well as science as a whole.


I checked out a few scientists within my own area of expertise and actually found the percentage of self-citations very much reflected what I thought it would. I completely agree with the definition that good guys have self-citations < 50% of total cites, and the bad guys have > 50% self-citations - See http://blogs.nature.com/u24d269fc/2008/04/25/h-factors-research-metrics-and-self-citation.

Postscriptum: The blog was picked up by University Post and Universitetsavisen (in danish)

Where are the good geology internet-sites for children?

I recently visited a couple of year-3 school classes to tell them about geology. It was nice to experience their interest and eager to learn - Geology is such an easy subject to teach kids because it is all around, and the applications of geology is so easy for children to understand. Besides, children love stones. At the same time geology is a fantastic entrance to other natural sciences, talking about gravity, evolution, magnetism, other planets, etc.

Then, why are there so few good geological internet-sites for kids? At least, I had a very hard time finding sites I thought were interesting. A lot of money is spent on geological teaching materials and museums making excellent geology expositions - Why are some of these efforts not guided towards the internet?

I spent a long time searching, and the best geology site for children I found was the one developed under the OneGeology project: http://www.onegeology.org/extra/kids/home.html
It is hard to understand that there are not some internet-sites with more interactivity. Or am I missing something?

Web GIS applications at GEUS

We have several Web-GIS projects starting at GEUS, that aims to put geological maps and georeferenced data on the internet. Yesterday, I presented some of the already implemented Web GIS applications. The presentation was for the weekly GEUS seminars:

WebGISRiiisager