This week, we are excited to bring you another Geoscience for the Future Interview- We were lucky to catch up with Professor Dan Parsons at the recent International Conference of Fluvial Sedimentology. Dan, a geoscientist by background, is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation at Loughborough University in the UK. He talks to us about his work on climate change and flood predictions, and how geoscience has changed during his journey from lecturer in Sedimentology to strategic academic leadership. Follow Dan and his team’s work on Twitter @bedform and @EVOflood
(Geoscience for the Future) Hi Dan, thank you so much for agreeing to sit down with us! Congratulations on the new job- How is it going?
(Dan Parsons) A big change! Previous to this I was the Director of Energy and Environment Research Institute at the University of Hull where I was working across the broad themes of sustainable energy and environmental resilience. Now I’m Pro Vice Chancellor of Research and Innovation at Loughborough University, working across the full university, which is a much larger institution than the University of Hull.
I have more responsibility, but less operational control; it is an interesting balance. Personally, I think the biggest differences are now deciding where the resources are allocated (money the goes) and who does what. In my previous role I was told how much resource (mostly money) I had and I could decide what to do with it; here I am allocating the resource but have far less control on exactly what that resource is used for. I think this is the best way to describe it.
You graduated from your PhD in 2004. In that time, how do you think geoscience has changed?
I went to the University of Sheffield for my undergraduate degree, reading both geography and geology. The geology side of the degree offered me so much knowledge, when I compared myself to my geography peers. Geology helps you understand the concept of time in a way that you don’t get the opportunity to understand with a straight geography programme in my view; understanding how landscapes have evolved over much longer time periods (other than perhaps a glacial timeframe). This has helped me understand how these concepts feed through into how society interacts with landscapes. This has definitely shaped a lot of my thinking, certainly in my career.
In terms of how geoscience has changed, I think the changing perception is where the reality is. Most geoscientists understand the role that geoscience has in a sustainable future. It’s then making sure that the broader society understands what geoscience is, what geology is, and how it can help society’s future and a transition to a green energy future. Geoscience is a central subject area for defining sustainability, but I don’t think we’ve cracked that perception with wider society yet.
Has it changed? There is a lot more around the understanding of processes and thinking more holistically around the subject for sure – I see some of that. Geoscience has modernised significantly in my career so fat- well that’s at least my take, both in terms of the complexities that we understand, the methods we employ, and the way in which we draw in even more disciplines – not just the traditional sciences to form geochemistry or geobiology – but also the social sciences and how society interacts with geology, even though they do not necessarily know that they are doing so!
“the skills that people obtain on a geology programme are vital skills that we need for the future”
So how do you think the decline in geology numbers at undergraduate level is going to affect the future of society?
I see this as a massive crisis. I think that the skills that people obtain on a geology programme are vital skills that we need for the future. If we’re properly going to transition to net zero in the relevant time frames, then the mineral resources that we need to mine and recover and the way in which we think about how the Earth functions as a system need to be taught to many. These skills are taught solely on geology programmes and they are vital skills.
Personally, I say there’s a marketing problem. People like my mum, for example, 70-year-old retired nurse, if you say geology to her, she thinks oil and gas. This is a clear perception problem that we need to move through. Until the public understand what geology is beyond a hydrocarbon resource, I’m not sure these problems will ease. There are some semblances of this happening in terms of sustainable geoscience, such as the language that is being used and the way the Geological Society of London is trying to promote the discipline- but we’re moving a very late so we are going to see this big dip in numbers continue for a while.
Ultimately though, there’s a big opportunity where there are jobs and skills and training that will be needed, therefore there will be a demand for university educators. So maybe we need to be thinking about conversion masters programmes, where we can bring people into the discipline that have perhaps done some other subject first. At the end of the day there is a job market and the relevant skills are required in our economy – it will drive demand eventually – we need perseverance.
As a community we need to start thinking about the longer-term needs of sustainability and geoscience, and how we broaden the curriculum for people coming in. As well as this, we need to think about how we retrain people already in a job, already qualified in geoscience, so their skills can be used more widely.
So then how do you expect geoscience to change going forward? So, over the next 20 years of your career?
Wow, big, big, big, big question!! So much: Geoscience will continue to become more interdisciplinary. It’s already a very interdisciplinary subject, but we are learning lots from other disciplines and this will accelerate. There’s a massive demand as I’ve mentioned around sustainable geoscience for net zero, which will be big as we transition the global economy to a low carbon one.
Machine learning and AI (Artificial Intelligence) will also be massive in the geosciences as it will on society more broadly. We’re already seeing a thin wedge in terms of AI and it will move the discipline forward in ways that we can’t even imagine right now. In 10 to 15 years from now, the integration of AI into geoscience such as the tools and methodologies that we adopt; that will be front and centre. I heard a really great quote the other day: “your job is not going to be replaced by artificial intelligence, but you’ll be replaced if you aren’t using artificial intelligence in your job”. That is a real kind of cold call to action from lots of disciplines to really think how they utilise the opportunity that AI provides for their discipline and for their skillset. I see AI being a big part of the future for geoscience.
We are currently at the International Conference of Fluvial Sedimentology. You gave a keynote lecture on how rivers and flooding are going to change over the next 20 to 30 years due to the climate crisis. Could you tell us more about that?
My talk was about variability. How landscapes evolve in time and space and how that’s recorded in the rock record. Also how understanding how rivers have changed in the past can help shape how we as society interact with rivers and river systems now and into the future. This is going to change quite considerably over the next 20 to 30 years. Already, each and every year 300 million people are impacted by flooding globally- almost equivalent to the population of the United States of America. That number of people is going to at least double by 2050 due to people living in more flood prone areas, and migration alongside the changes in hydroclimate we will see.
Flood risk will be double by 2050, with significant impacts upon lives and livelihoods (Image provided by EvoFlood project)
Fundamentally the climate crisis is going to change the water cycle, rivers, infrastructure; everything associated with the way in which we live and interact with water in the landscape is going to change. The infrastructure we have – flood embankments, weirs, culverts, sewer systems- were built for a climate that no longer exists. Therefore, we absolutely must understand how these river systems are going to evolve in the future.
We’re really good at being able to predict the flooding of a river at short notice- for example, a week next Tuesday. We’ve got computer models that do that, and we’re very good at getting warnings out to help people protect their living spaces – most of the time. What we’re not so good at is predicting flooding 30 years from now. The tools we use for those predictions at the moment basically assume that rivers are static pipes in the landscape. They assume rivers don’t change. All our research tells us this is not right; rivers wiggle and move, they change size and shape, depending on how much water comes through them. If too much water comes in, rivers flood – but on longer timescales the change shape too.
The first part of our EVOflood programme is trying to understand how we quantify and predict how rivers will adapt to changing hydroclimate. We are attempting to understand how much it rains, where it rains, how much water is moving through a river, how quickly rivers respond to get wider or deeper as a result of that increased flow and can we build that into our predictions of flood hazard?
The second part is to understand what this means for flood risk, so where flood hazard interacts with people. We need to understand where people are going to be in 30 years time. There are population modellers that predict the growth of cities and where people live across the earth. We can map those predictions and intersect the flood hazard with the flood risk. By bringing those two things together we can really begin to understand vulnerability and exposure of populations to flooding decades from now.
“When we talk about a climate crisis, we are not talking about temperature or precipitation. It’s about how people live, where they live and their lives and livelihoods”
And how does this link to international issues like migration? People are already migrating due to war and flooding- it’s predicted that 300 million people are going to have to leave Africa by 2030.
We’re looking at very big migrations. If we carry on our current climate trajectory, many people will migrate and indeed migration is on the National Risk Register of many nations. For every increase by point one of a degree in temperature, more people will be migrating in a few years time. The Mekong Delta where I have spent many years investigating flood risk is a vast area home to 20 million people that is mostly at or just above sea level. Therefore, we need to understand how we can decarbonize the economy as fast as possible, to prevent the worst projections of sea level rise and curtail many of these big social changes.
When we talk about a climate crisis, we are not talking about temperature or precipitation. It’s about how people live, where they live and their lives and livelihoods. If we continue on the course we are presently on it’s scary in many ways, and that is why so many scientists are calling for action on climate- because of the profound implications of not doing so.
Feature image credit: Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash