Hi everyone! Update for the landslide group, since beginning our virtual research in the first week in July we decided to organize the zoom meetings as a lecture based topic on Tuesdays, and a hands on active learning on Fridays. We started off with Paulo giving an update on the progress the last cohort left off at, and what his research assistants Joan and Natalia have been helping him with in Costa Rica. This included a slide presentation of topographic data from Costa Rica and they showed us how to use the SNIT Database using different contour line settings. Paulo also taught us about all the different types of landslides, the impacts of them, and specifically we learned more about landslides triggered by earthquakes this week. He showed us the graphing and data logging used for profiling the depths of earthquakes.
Anna, Dylan and Michael from Indiana University are also joining us on this project and have been sharing information from their own studies. Anna made a very useful landslide presentation for us, then got into the details of how their models work. Using data from past landslides and earthquakes around the world, they have created a model to predict landslide probability from earthquakes. Some factors that contribute to the probability of landslides include: land cover, soil wetness, slope, and lithology.
Overall, in just 2 weeks I have learned so much and can’t wait to see what we do next. We are still discussing the objective and timeline of what tasks need to be done, but as of now we are all still trying to get on the same page. So my work days include playing around on QGIS in the mornings on Tuesdays and Fridays before our meetings, and usually reading over some resources they have given us after the meeting. It is definitely a different work pace than what I am used to, but I feel like I have the time to really learn and ask questions rather than rush for an answer or to finish the task at hand.
Well- enjoy these pictures I took this week, and hopefully next week I will have something cool to show you all from QGIS!
Lea
