China field work 2017
I’m heading off tomorrow for my third summer field campaign in China. That also means that I’ve completed three years of my PhD.
I always seem to act a bit introspective around this time of the year, reevaluating decisions, remembering achievements, and reliving failures. This year hasn’t been especially easy for me; I’ve lost two important people in my life, and I’ve struggled to get my research moving at a pace that I feel is fast enough. Nonetheless, I’ve done a lot of good things this year too; I will be an author on (at least) two papers coming out this year, I won a service award for my department, and I am starting a new series of symposia at Rice that I’m especially excited about.
Our field campaign marks another journey halfway around the world to collect data on one of the most exceptional rivers in the world. My research goals for this year are to collect water column data during a flood. My analysis of the last two years’ data suggests that at high discharges, the concentrations of sediment become sufficiently high to dampen turbulence in the flow and introduce “density stratification”. I’m hoping to constrain the development of the density stratification in the lower Yellow River during this field campaign.
I’ll be working with some of the best people on our field campaign. Our campaign will be led by myself, Brandee Carlson, my advisor Jeff Nittrouer, and Hongbo Ma, and we will be helped (immensely) by Tian Dong, Chenliang Wu, Eric Barefoot, Dan Parsons, and Austin Chadwick.
Cheers for another year! Wish us luck!
