Moving forward with landslides + video editing!
After a weekend at the Caribbean side of the country, this week Rosa and I went back to work at the Lanname Lab. Our long-term goals remain the same: creating a susceptibility map of the Talamanca region of Costa Rica based off several factors. Currently, Rosa is looking at aerial images of the area and picking out landslides that have already happened from above. This will help us prove our model’s results when our final map is created.
Going forward, Rosa and I will look to continue our landslide work at Rutgers next semester. Our landslide susceptibility model of the Talamancas is not yet complete. We have accounted for slope steepness and are in the process of finishing our maps for susceptibility based off lithology and soil saturation. Back at home, we will need to work on creating susceptibility maps due to earthquakes of specific criteria (we will use past earthquake data and potential future earthquakes as well). We will also need to find a way to combine all of these factors into one comprehensive map.
Also at the lab, I have spent some time recently producing a few videos for RSN-ICE. I made a video about lightning sprites and a video about changes to the lake in the crater of the Poas Volcano (they’re attached below if you want to see them!) This required me to read through papers, learn about the topics, and compile/condense the information into short 2-minute videos that you could see when scrolling through your Facebook feed. It was a nice change of pace from landslide research and helped me work of the ability to convey complex concepts into brief, understandable chunks of information.
I feel like one of my strengths in this project is being able to convey what I am doing to those who ask. I am excited to present and show our research to everybody once it is finished. Also, I feel this goes hand-in-hand with running the social media for the project. I still definitely need to work on not getting overwhelmed when not knowing exactly how to approach a topic that I know nothing about. A lot of research is getting thrown into a situation you know very little about and learning as you go along.