Earth on the Rocks

Shelby: 00:07

Hi, folks, and welcome to Earth on the Rocks, a show where we get to know the person behind the science over drinks. As always, I'm your host, Shelby Rader. And joining me today for our midseason finale is doctor Brian Yanites. Brian, welcome to the show.

Brian: 00:21

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

Shelby: 00:23

So, Brian, since we're getting to know you over drinks, what would be your drink of choice for today?

Brian: 00:27

Yeah. It's such a situational question.

Shelby: 00:29

It is. Right?

Brian: 00:30

Like, hot sunny day, I'm going for a cold beer around a campfire. I want, you know, a a rye maybe. Okay. Meat, so not on the rocks. That'd probably be my my my go to my go to choice.

Shelby: 00:46

Okay. Today, I feel like we're moving into the campfire weather a little bit. So so moving away from the beer. So, Brian, you're also in the department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, but do very different work than a lot of the folks that we've heard from this season. So if someone were to ask you, like, what sort of scientist are you?

Shelby: 01:04

How would you answer that?

Brian: 01:06

I am a geomorphologist, and I know that's not a term that everybody is is familiar with. So if you break it down, geo Earth, morph, shape, study of the shape of the Earth, and we're not thinking about scales of the entire Earth so that the Earth is round. We're talking about the the scales at which sort of humans interact with the Earth. So rivers, hillslopes, the shape of the topography of the landscape that that we sort of live at and and and work at every day.

Shelby: 01:32

And so with that sort of work, what are some of the the questions you're trying to answer? What are the things you're trying to get at as a geomorphologist?

Brian: 01:40

Yeah. So we we try to understand the rate at which the the the surface of the Earth changes. And so that can, you know, get to questions about how frequently processes that can be hazardous to humans, like landslides and floods happen, that that sort of shape and sculpt the surface of the Earth. We can go to longer timescales and think about the interaction of, you know, the tectonic geologic processes that uplift mountains and the climate processes that that erode them away and and how that leads to sort of the the evolving surface of of the Earth.

Shelby: 02:11

And so with with all of these different areas, the goal is to understand how the Earth is changing over time. And so through that, it's it feels like you have had a lot of of wide ranging applications of that. So you've looked at ore deposits, so metal deposits, which typically is like its own little field. I know recently you've been doing work on, sort of natural hazards and and these really strong storm systems like hurricanes that have come through. And so what's sort of the spectrum of of how you've applied this?

Brian: 02:45

I'm I view myself as very opportunistic scientist. So I love going to colloquiums and talks and asking questions like, okay, how would this apply to geomorphology? How could we use this to better understand the evolution of the Earth's surface? And so the example you gave of ore deposits that started when I was a post doc at Michigan and a famous economic geologist, Stephen Kessler, gave a talk about how these ore deposits form at a very specific depth beneath the Earth's surface. And it was like, oh, then they can be used as markers for how much erosion has occurred since they formed.

Brian: 03:17

And so we sort of went off on a a tangent and and looked at if there's a correlation between the rate at which these ore deposits come to the surface and climate patterns on Earth. And and we we sort of discovered that and and published that about a decade ago. I've interacted with, evolutionary biologists and paleontologists thinking about how topography changes the pathway of life on Earth. I've interacted with climate scientists to think about how when you change topography, how that might affect the atmosphere and interacted with geologists, tectonicists that, you know, are are are thinking about how deformation occurs on on individual faults and and how erosion above that might change the the stress state. And like you said, more recently, I've been getting more into hazards as as we've seen more and more impacts of extreme events on the landscape and and topography, thinking about how important those events are not only to the people in life living across those landscapes, but then also to shaping that sort of long term patterns that that we see in these in these landscapes.

Shelby: 04:22

And for folks that may be unfamiliar with the term, can you tell us a little bit about what topography is?

Brian: 04:27

Topo oh, that's a that's it. I could go on for a while on this. So topography, think of the pattern of elevation across Earth's surface. So your highest hill slope, your lowest valleys, and, you know, how steep the slopes are and how that sort of distributed spatially across Earth's surface. So we use topography in our science often to describe exactly what I said.

Brian: 04:50

But if you break the word down, topo and graphy, graph is, you know, you can think of a map or any sort of depiction. Topo just means place. So a topographic map is just a map of place. You could have a map that says there's this village here and this river here, you know, and a wetland over here, and that is a topographic map. We have come to use topography to indicate elevation in our disciplines, but I think that only emerged in the around the late 1800 when the US geological survey and the British geological survey started putting quantitative information on their topo map.

Brian: 05:29

So these surveys would go out and map places, figure out where the rivers are, the mountains are, things like that. In the late 1800, they had to start putting quantitative elevation data, and they did for a very practical reason, and that's because they had to figure out where they're gonna put rail lines. So they needed to know how slow how steep this the grades were across the landscape to figure out if the train can make it up or not. So when they started adding these contour lines of elevation, we started to associate topo maps with elevation, and now we've changed the way we've used the term topography.

Shelby: 06:01

Had no idea about any of this because my connotation even in this field with a topographic map is exactly as you described an an elevation map. But, yeah, to sort of reevaluate how we use that term is is kind of an interesting thought experiment for how wide ranging this could be. So you you mentioned some of the work you've done is looking at sort of how topography impacts different things like the evolution of life. Can you maybe give us some examples of that or takeaways from some of that work for how topography does actually impact those sorts of things?

Brian: 06:32

Yeah. Yeah. Very good question. So imagine you're in a community of mice, you know, and you interact over your various life spans of maybe some some of them only live for, like, 9 months or a year or 2. And you're, you know, reproducing offspring, and you have various communities, and you're interacting.

Brian: 06:51

And then, you sort of spread out over a region, and then all of a sudden, a mountain starts to build in between. All of a sudden, the communities on either side of the mountain can no longer interact, can no longer breed. And and so you you start to separate populations. Also, as you build the mountain, you're you're creating new environments. You're you're getting colder environments.

Brian: 07:13

And so some of those subpopulations might just start adapt to new environments. And so by adding topographic complexity, you're fragmenting the populations, you're providing new habitats. And so changing topography can allow new evolutionary pathways that didn't exist before you you change the the landscape.

Shelby: 07:32

That is very interesting. Have you actually worked with this idea with mass populations, or is that just a a nice example?

Brian: 07:39

It's a nice example. We often so I'm part of a a broader group, a research network that is focused around understanding small mammals, specifically rodents, because they are so reactive to topography and and the shapes and landscapes. And we we've had a project the last 4 years funded through the National Science Foundation in collaboration with Tara Smiley at Stony Brook, building models that where we can model dynamic landscapes as well as evolutionary sort of response. And so we have a paper that should be hopefully coming out soon in the in the next half year or so.

Shelby: 08:14

Alright. We'll we'll plug it whenever it comes out.

Brian: 08:16

Alright.

Shelby: 08:17

And so when you say dynamic landscape, can you elaborate a little bit on what that means?

Brian: 08:21

Yeah. It means your your your elevations are

Shelby: 08:23

changing over time

Brian: 08:23

in response to changes in, you know, response to changes in, you know, tectonic geologic processes that are, you know, maybe change the rate at which your mountains are building or you change your climate that might erode away, the elevations and and and essentially change that that topography term, that distribution of elevations in a time forward manner. And so it's it's not a static landscape. It's it's very much changing how deep the valleys are, how high the peaks are, and things like that in response to sort of physical drivers.

Shelby: 08:53

Right. And so I guess that's that's how this more recent work on these large scale hazards and storm systems has come into play because I would imagine those are are very quickly and very drastically changing the landscape and the topography. And so can you talk a little bit about that area of work?

Brian: 09:11

Yeah. Yeah. So I I my longest running sort of field area is is is Taiwan, which is, you know, a a place where the topography is is extremely, extremely dynamic and changes extremely rapidly. And so we have studied different events there. One of the more recent studies that we've finished up was in response to a typhoon in 2009 called Typhoon Morakot.

Brian: 09:33

And this was a typhoon that delivered there were rain gauges that detected over 3 meters of rain in 4 days. Wow. Right? So that's 10 feet of rain, a basketball hoop of rain falling over 4 days. That caused about 20,000 landslides in a graded rivers many, many meters.

Brian: 09:50

So tens of feet. So towns that were on river terraces never had to deal with flooding to the river, all of a sudden had 2 meters of sediment covering their town. And so these extreme events can change landscapes on rates that are not what we're used to living upon. And so when that happens, when you're changing that solid earth topography on those types of of magnitude, it becomes very, very hazardous.

Shelby: 10:15

So so you won't go to the field. What sorts of samples are you collecting? What sorts of measurements are you taking? So what does your field work look like when you won't go to Taiwan, for example?

Brian: 10:26

Yeah. So there's a couple of things that we often do, especially, you know, when we're thinking about the hazards, we're thinking about the sediment that starts in landslides, works its way into river systems, integrates these rivers, that become very important in terms of constraining for our ability to both understand as well as predict the fate of of these events. One is the grain size. So we have to figure out how big are the particles that these rivers have to move. So we have to go out there and measure grain size.

Brian: 10:52

We also wanna get really high resolution maps of how the earth is is changing. And so to do that, we turn to drone technology and we fly cameras. Other project, we we also have a drone lidar, so it shoots a bunch of lasers and measures a really precise and accurate three-dimensional map of of the Earth's surface.

Shelby: 11:11

So just as a a quick side note, Brian also teaches at our field camp, which has been mentioned a couple of times on this podcast. And he teaches a week long concentration course. So it's one that is focused on a specific area that is informally referred to as drones and lasers, which I think is a big pool for students. So when you all go out and do sediment size measurements, is that done manually? Like, is that something that you and students have to look at sediment grains and determine their distribution and how big they are?

Shelby: 11:40

Or are there ways to sort of automate that?

Brian: 11:42

Yeah. So we're kind of at a a transition in our discipline right now. The gold standard and the traditional way is to do it manually, and you literally run a tape measure out. You picked some sort of sequence to make it as randomized as possible and you go out. I train my students, like, you want this to be random because your brain is gonna wanna pick the biggest grain, but we want an unbiased sample.

Brian: 12:05

And so you sort of turn your head and you put your finger and and you lower your finger to that point in the tape, but you can't look and then the first rock your your finger touches, you pick that up and then you measure its its diameter. So that is the traditional gold standard called the Wollman point count named after Reg Wollman, a famous geomorphologist. Obviously, we can do that with technology today. And so we've been using, actually so if you get an iPad Pro, it comes with lidar, so it shoots lasers itself. And we can take those out, and we can make 3 d scans of these gravel bars.

Brian: 12:41

And, you know, what took us, you know, 30 minutes to measure a 100 grains, we can do a 1000 grains in about 5 minutes.

Shelby: 12:48

Wow.

Brian: 12:49

And so we can really but we have to prove to the rest of the discipline that we're meeting that gold standard of the sort of manual point count. And so we're sort of stuck in this transition zone of doing both still.

Shelby: 13:00

Right. And can you talk a little bit about why grain size and grain size distribution could be impacted by these big hazard events and what the implications of that are?

Brian: 13:12

Yeah. And so, you know, the the vents themselves are made from Earth materials. Right? Different rock types will produce different grain size, different sort of tectonic and climate histories. And so the likelihood of having event depends on how course are the grains on the hillslopes, what are the makeup of them, and then how that material moves down slope through the river channels and and can a grade depends on how hard it is for a river to move a particular grain.

Brian: 13:39

So you can imagine a tiny little sand grain versus a big boulder. You need a lot more water flowing through that river channel to move the boulder than the tiny sand grain. And so understanding the different sizes that the river must move is critical in order to understanding how fast this material will actually transit across the landscape.

Shelby: 13:57

And what do you mean by the term a grade?

Brian: 13:59

A grade means to build up over time. So you have sediment deposition, you know, you're layering sediment starting at the river bottom, and you're adding more and more sediment over time, taking up room in the river channel that used to, you know, have the water flow through it, and now you have a bunch of sediment.

Shelby: 14:15

And so I'm assuming for something like a typhoon, you see so much more sediment build up and much larger particles or sediment grain sizes than you would naturally or or through sort of common day to day river flow events. And so that's what you're trying to capture through some of these measurements.

Brian: 14:32

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Shelby: 14:34

And then you said you've been going to Taiwan for quite a while now. So what do you do? I mean, you've measured right after this event. So what are you doing from then until now?

Brian: 14:44

So we we continue to take grain size measurements to see how it changes. So the smaller of typhoon events that occur there will still move sediment, but maybe not the really coarse grains, maybe some of the finer grains. We put our drones up in the sky to see how the river has changed since the last time we were there. We have a a new project that started this past spring. There was an earthquake in eastern Taiwan that kicked off about over a 1000 landslides.

Brian: 15:08

And so we've been have a collaborators in Taiwan at National Taiwan University going out after each big rainstorm with a drone. And so we're getting a very high resolution sort of change map of these of these river systems as they respond to all these landslides that were kicked off by by an earthquake.

Shelby: 15:24

Wow. That's pretty interesting. And have you ever gotten pushback when you all have used the drone, or have you ever had some interesting experiences with people being curious what you're up to?

Brian: 15:35

Yeah. Certainly, often it's it's curiosity and excitement. There was one instance in Montana, where we were flying the drone, on National Force ground, which is completely legal. We have our drone pilot that's, you know, FAA certified, but these couple of locals were not too happy about it and came up and started assaulting the drone pilot while he is operating a vehicle in the sky, which is a federal offense. And, so I had to go over, intervene, get in between and be like, if you wanna talk, talk to me.

Brian: 16:06

And so there was lots of shouting at me. I was trying to stay very calm, and, the one started to threaten me and started to pat his chest, and he says, you're about to see what a 120 grain hollow point can do to that piece of beep. And I was like, sir, I urge you not to do that because that would be illegal. That is, you know, the property of Indiana University. You can't shoot the drone out of a sky.

Brian: 16:32

It'd also be, you know, another federal offense. And they kept they were adamant. They they they tried to play an analogy game to me, and they're like, if that was, a a a goose in the sky, I would be perfectly you know, it's perfectly legal for me to shoot it. I have a hunting permit. I was like, it's not a goose.

Brian: 16:51

I was like, it's also legal for you to shoot a a deer, but I can't shoot your car. Like eventually and so this this is the one of the the best parts of this is, like so finally, I calmed them down. They, you know, got a little aggressive a few other times, but they finally walked away. And they they were fishing on a nearby creek, which is one of the reasons why they were upset. I could see that, like, it's not, you know, sort of interrupts the pristine ness of of the environment.

Brian: 17:15

But we we are there. And and when you're flying the drone, you have to be very, very aware of anything else in the sky because it's your job as a drone pilot to get the drone out of the way if there's another aircraft. In about 15 minutes after our incident, we hear off in the distance, like, that's a helicopter. So we get the drone down, and in about 2 minutes later, a massive Blackhawk military helicopter comes flying up the valley pretty, like, just, like, maybe 3, 400 feet off off the deck, super loud right over where these guys are fishing.

Shelby: 17:50

Did they did they claim that they were gonna try to shoot that down?

Brian: 17:52

I know. I wanted to yell, so you're gonna shoot that

Shelby: 17:55

out, sir?

Brian: 17:56

And 5 minutes later, they left.

Shelby: 17:58

Yeah. And they

Brian: 17:58

were so we were just laughing.

Shelby: 18:01

So I didn't realize this. Did drone pilots have to be FAA certified?

Brian: 18:05

If you are flying commercially or for research, like, for university, activities, yes. You have to have a part 103 b license.

Shelby: 18:13

So are you FAA certified?

Brian: 18:14

I was. It lapsed. I I just have to redo it. Yeah. But we have a drone pilot, and so I could just we just rely on him.

Shelby: 18:21

Yeah. Yeah. That's very interesting. And so, yeah, I could imagine that that most people are probably just, oh, hey, what are you up to with this sort of thing? But that's that's a really different aspect of of, I think, geoscience work that a lot of people don't necessarily think of when you say, oh, I'm a geomorphologist or I'm a geologist, is having the sort of, you know, high-tech equipment that that you get to take out and that students get to interact with.

Brian: 18:46

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a it's a, you know, in order to shoot lasers for something moving through the sky and measure them and put them back in three-dimensional space at, you know, a few inches accurate and precision takes an incredible amount of technology. And one of the technology pieces are IMUs, inertial monitoring units, and they put defense grade. So these are the things that submarines use to figure out where they are because you can't use GPS or GNSS when you're under the ocean.

Brian: 19:15

You have to just add up your vector motions. So how fast you're moving in one direction, oh, we change direction slightly. We need to add that up so we know where we're at when we're under under the ocean. Well, we put these on the drones so that we can get every little wiggle and movement of the drone while we're while we're flying around.

Shelby: 19:33

That is pretty wild. And so what sort of got you into this field? Like, was there a point early on? Was it something that happened sort of later in your high school or undergraduate career? How did you decide, oh, I think I might wanna go into the geosciences?

Shelby: 19:49

Yeah.

Brian: 19:49

It's a it's a really good question. You know, there's hindsight, you know Yeah. Hindsight is 2020. My mom always likes to say, she like, I should have known you're gonna be a geologist because you're the only kid that would go swimming in the lake and come out dirtier than when you were. Because I would just be just scooping at the bottom of the lake, seeing what's down there, like, what's what's underneath my feet and and and things like that.

Brian: 20:13

And, yeah, and I would get all dirty going going to the lake. And I I always growing up, I always had an interest in the sciences. You know, I I liked, you know, fossils and things like that, but I didn't really know what geology was. I'm a 1st generation college student. I just I knew I wanted to go into science, and science, you know, was something cool to do and study.

Brian: 20:35

And so I went to college. Like I said, I had liked sort of the, you know, natural sciences, And I got involved in an environmental science freshman program where there is, you know, the science part, anthropology part, environmental ethics, and we sort of had took different classes, different types of students, science students, humanity students, and sort of had these sort of, you know, extra classes where we discuss these topics. And so I sort of started down the environmental science path. As part of that, I took an intro geology class, really enjoyed it. The teacher reached out to me and was like, hey, you're really good at this.

Brian: 21:09

Do you wanna start doing research? I was like, sure. I don't know what that means. But

Shelby: 21:14

Sure. Sign me up.

Brian: 21:15

It felt really good to have our professor, like, reach out to me and say say that I'm doing well at something. And then the spring semester was the biology part of the environmental science. And I went to Washington University of St. Louis, which is, like, 50% pre med students. So it's just chock full of pre med students.

Brian: 21:32

And that means there's no ecology or evolutionary biology, and it's uber competitive. Like, when you go to lab, you don't leave to go to the bathroom because somebody's gonna sabotage your experiments type competitiveness in the premed culture. And so I just got annoyed. I was like, I know. I don't wanna take any more biology classes.

Brian: 21:52

And so I I sort of went in the at WashU, it's Earth and Planetary Sciences.

Shelby: 21:57

Yeah. And so you also were an athlete for a big portion of your life. Right? And so was that what initially drew you to to where you started for undergrad, or how did that play out?

Brian: 22:08

Yeah. It was definitely a factor. I mean, I played football when I was at WashU, and deciding where to go to college, part of that played into the decision. I knew I wanted you know, I had, you know, been successful academically in high school. You know, I hold that rare title of captain of the football team and captain of the Scholastic Bowl team.

Brian: 22:27

So I wanted something academically challenging, but I also wanted to continue playing sports because I I I I loved it. And so, WashU has a had a great football program, and so got to go there and play. And

Shelby: 22:39

And what what position were you while you were there?

Brian: 22:41

So, they recruited me as a linebacker. I was my freshman year and and through the start of camp in my sophomore year, I was, on the linebacker core. I was the backup middle linebacker going into my sophomore season, but then they recruited this really, really good linebacker behind me. And the coaches are like, we really like you. You should be on the field, but he's gonna jump over you in the depth of charts.

Brian: 23:04

They're like, what do you think about fullback, which is a, you know, not really used anymore very much in football, but back then was, you know, one of the 2 running backs. So so I moved over to the offensive side and played fullback for the rest of my college career.

Shelby: 23:16

Now I'm I'm, like, thinking back to your story about the people in Montana, them knowing that that or maybe not knowing, but us knowing now that they were going up against a former collegiate athlete and thinking that they were, you know, gonna gonna walk you down. So was there ever a point where you thought, you know, like like sports is something that you might be interested in long term? Or did you sort of know early on, now I wanna stick with with the sciences?

Brian: 23:41

Yeah. I mean, it was always sort of the backup option for me. So I can go teach high school science and coach football and baseball and be perfectly happy in life. And probably, you know, if I wasn't motivated to go do a school like like WashU that really sort of kicked in that the sort of academic afterburners to me, and and opened up a lot of opportunities in terms of research from my freshman year. You know, maybe I would have gone into teaching and the sports and, I mean, I still think about it.

Brian: 24:10

It's like, you know, watching games like, oh, man. I wonder if a professor could ever become a coach.

Shelby: 24:15

Yeah. Yeah. You could do that. I'm I'm not usually one to toot my own horn, but I was part of a championship coed intramural wiffle ball team when I was in graduate school. So, I mean, I know a thing or 2 about high performance elite athleticism.

Brian: 24:34

You were a basketball player too.

Shelby: 24:36

Right? Yeah. But not not not anything like that. I'm assuming since you said you could coach baseball, you also were a were a baseball player?

Brian: 24:42

Yeah. I played all the way through high school. Yeah. I played, catcher was my position.

Shelby: 24:47

We we should do, like, a a department viewing of an IU game sometime and let you the football games and let you sort of have commentate for us and give us the inside scoop on on how things are going. You probably have a totally different level of understanding and appreciation than the rest of us would.

Brian: 25:03

Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, though, I'm not I might not be the best teacher at it because my wife that, you know, we've been together since 2006 still doesn't really understand lots of things of football even though it's on all the time and I'm talking about it. So but yeah. No.

Brian: 25:22

I would I would love to. Like, it's it's one of those games that there's so many levels of of understanding that go into it and sort of build and and grow and continue to learn, throughout your your whole time watching the watching the sport.

Shelby: 25:35

Yeah. Maybe we'll we'll see you on the sidelines at some point. So so after you sort of had decided, you know, this is what I I wanna do career wise, then from undergrad, you knew you wanted to go to grad school, or was that something that sort of took some some encouraging?

Brian: 25:52

Yeah. I think, you know, so I that that freshman year, that environmental science program, part of it included a trip to the Mojave Desert, and that was one of my first times outside of the Midwest. I grew up in Central Illinois. And first time certainly seeing mountains like that where there's no vegetation and you can actually see the landscape. And so I was just, like, hiking around with the professor there just asking so many questions, and really curious.

Brian: 26:21

And and I got back from that and I started, you know, taking classes again, like, looking at the professors and being like, oh, man, like, this is their job. Like, they get to do this every year as their job. And so it sort of kicked the idea to me of, like, okay, maybe that's the career path I wanna go down then. And and and that was that was it.

Shelby: 26:41

And then on to grad school. And so what was what was your sort of focus there and where were you for grad school?

Brian: 26:47

So I started I went to University of Arizona, and I got hooked up with the USGS there, research scientist named Bob Webb. My academic advisor was Vic Baker, and we worked in, the Grand Canyon working on debris fans and how they have changed since they built Glen Canyon Dam, which was built in 1963, and which changed the flow of the main Colorado River. And so all these tributaries of the Colorado were still dumping sediment into the the Colorado River, but the river wasn't having its annual flood to rework that cement. So we were doing a long term study on how that material is is sort of changing the the nature and character of the Colorado River. And so that was, my my master's research project.

Brian: 27:29

And and from there, I I loved it. I was was like, but I was also starting to get into numerical modeling a little bit. And so I wanted a project that sort of integrated modeling and field work. And so I went to the University of Colorado Boulder for my PhD and started working in Taiwan on river systems in Taiwan as they crossover active faults.

Shelby: 27:48

A couple of really beautiful places to be for graduate school for anyone in in this field. I mean, Colorado and Southern Arizona would be hard to beat geologically.

Brian: 27:58

Yeah. Yeah. Whenever you know, sometimes all these popular sort of articles about, you know, the top 25 most beautiful campuses across the country, and they almost always include Washington University in St. Louis where I did my undergrad, University of Arizona, University of Colorado Boulder, and, of course, Indiana Yeah. University of Bloomington.

Brian: 28:16

Like, all 4 of those are on every top 25 list. My mom's always sends it to me, and she's like, oh, look at you. You're just going to picking places based off of that

Shelby: 28:23

beautiful campus. Maybe maybe it's you. Maybe you're, like, bringing the extra draw to the campuses for folks. So you've done a lot of field work. Do you have any any sort of standout field experiences?

Shelby: 28:36

I mean, I would think mostly for good reasons, but maybe for some not not so good reasons, like really poor weather that just made it super memorable.

Brian: 28:43

Yeah. I mean, lots of good standout reason. You know, starting my master's, Grand Canyon food work, 17 days rafting the Canyon. Wow. That Pretty amazing experience.

Brian: 28:56

My PhD work and since then, I go to Taiwan. It's one of the most amazing countries in the world. The people are so nice. It's, you know, every city is super safe. Everybody is just interested in you as a person and what you're doing even if they can't talk to you because I tried to learn Mandarin, but my mouth doesn't move in the ways to make the tones.

Brian: 29:18

And it's an amazing amazing place. And then my post doc, I did helicopter supported field work in the British coast mountains. We're looking at glaciers. So we were flying around, landing on glaciers, taking samples of the sediment that our glaciers are eroding and and stuff like that. And, yeah, it's an endless number of sort of good positive experiences.

Brian: 29:39

And I I shared one negative experience with you with, the Montana, fishermen, but, you know, you you run into that here and there, but you usually just forget it right away because the the goods always outrun the bad.

Shelby: 29:53

Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like not just are you going to the most beautiful campuses across the country, but you're going to probably some of the most breathtaking field locations, especially for folks in the field, like, going from the Grand Canyon, which is so iconic, to glaciers, which are also iconic, but for very different reasons. I think a lot of people probably don't get both ends of that spectrum, and you've been able to to manage to hit all the high points, which is is gonna be pretty nice.

Brian: 30:20

That's the great thing about geomorphology is it's like, you can wherever you wanna go, there's a surface and it's changing, and you can come up with a project to figure out how that how it all works. Yeah. So yeah. Can kind of pick them, choose your your your favorite answer.

Shelby: 30:35

Yeah. Pick your own adventure. Yeah. Very cool. Do you have advice if there were students who might be listening to this that are thinking of they might be interested in geosciences at large or geomorphology, advice for them, or advice you could have gone back to tell yourself when you were at that stage?

Brian: 30:52

Yeah. I think, you know, those of us that are sort of inclined towards the sciences have that sort of scientific framework already. The parts that a lot of times, you know, you get this, impression or this bias that, oh, you don't have necessarily have to be a great writer to be a good scientist. And that's not true at all. I would go back and tell my self, learn how to read and specifically write very, very well early on.

Brian: 31:17

That is gonna pay off enormously for you in your career. I always struggled as a writer. It just just didn't come naturally to me. Actually, I had my freshman year English composition professor at WashU say, well, Brian, maybe you have to choose between football and academics. It's like, oof.

Brian: 31:35

Yeah. So so it's a rough one. I didn't. I was I did both, and I think I was successful at both. But that would be definitely the the thing that I would point out is, like, don't don't, you know, think those classes don't matter in your career.

Brian: 31:48

Those all these sort of broader liberal arts classes are gonna pay off immensely for your your science career.

Shelby: 31:55

Yeah. I think sometimes people feel like STEM fields have you know, they're all analytics. They're all data driven, and there's no creativity involved in that, which I think is so inaccurate because writing, I think, is a very creative process and being able to write effectively so that someone can read about your science and actually find it compelling is a a really useful but difficult skill to hone. I think making figures, there's so much design and and that creative component that goes into making really compelling figures, you know, color theory, layout, how things are composed, all of that that plays some role. And I think depending on your own interest, you can really run with that or you can just sort of develop that skill to the point that you need to.

Shelby: 32:42

But I think there's a lot of of overlap between the hard sciences and the sort of creative arts of things that that to me makes us feel really a lot of fun to be in.

Brian: 32:53

Yeah. Absolutely. The the creativity part, like you said, like, the sort of making figures, expressing yourself, and writing. And then just, you know, I mean, think about the definition of creativity. It's it's creating something new or a a new way to approach something that hasn't been done before.

Brian: 33:08

That's how you move science forward too. You have to be creative in your science because it's about doing things new ways, and that's what the arts are doing too. And, like, they're all they're all sort of connected.

Shelby: 33:19

Yeah. So that brings us to our last segment of the show, which is our yes, please segment where each of us get a minute to sort of get on our soapbox and talk passionately about something that we're excited about. You wanna go first? You want me to go first?

Brian: 33:31

I could go first. Okay.

Shelby: 33:33

So I will time you, and I will give you a verbal notice whenever you have 30 seconds 15 and 5 left. And so if you're ready, Brian?

Brian: 33:44

Sure.

Shelby: 33:44

Okay. This is Brian Yanites' yes, please.

Brian: 33:47

Yes. My yes, please has already been alluded to, and that is college football. I you know, as an academic, sometimes you sort of feel like you need to hide that you're a big college football fan. It's not on campus amongst the professor yet. It's kind of can be viewed negatively, but I think that's wrong.

Brian: 34:06

The culture of of college football is is amazing. Right? It does not matter who you voted for in early November. You come together on that Saturday. You have a shared experience.

Brian: 34:17

You have shared shared song, shared dance and movement, all rooting rooting for your team. And the great thing is you go to a different college town the next weekend. It's different songs. It's different cultures and traditions and things like that.

Shelby: 34:33

15.

Brian: 34:33

And they evolve. They're showing a replay of the Oregon, Wisconsin game from last weekend out out here in the 4th, quarter jump around House of Pain. Even the Oregon players at Wisconsin were jumping around partaking in that cultural experience. It's really truly a beautiful great thing.

Shelby: 34:52

That is, Tom. Excellent. And I I will say so I Brian and I were talking about this just before this recording. I have have very rarely been at a university while their football team was really good, And IU is having a breakout season this year, and the energy on campus is so different from any year I've been here before. And it is it's, like, infectious.

Shelby: 35:15

You know? Like, people are excited on Thursday and on Friday and getting ready for the game over the weekend. Like, it's an event now, and that is it just brings something different to a university setting that I think, like you said, brings people together.

Brian: 35:28

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's

Shelby: 35:29

been a lot of fun. Alright, Brian. If you don't mind to

Brian: 35:33

Sure.

Shelby: 35:33

To time me and just do the same. Let me know when I'm at at 30, 15, and and 5, and I'll try to wrap it up.

Brian: 35:40

Alrighty. Ready? Mhmm. Alright.

Shelby: 35:42

Yes. Please keep supporting independent podcasts like this, small podcasts. So, this is something that that I have never done before before this season and have sort of, like, flown by the seat of my pants a little bit for some of these things. Could not have done it without all of the help that I've had from the students who are involved to other folks who have been supportive of this, to the the folks from the department who agreed to come on. This definitely was a little bit of a gamble for them.

Shelby: 36:08

They had no idea what to expect and neither did I. But it has been so much fun. I have really enjoyed it. I hope that you all have enjoyed it as well. It's been great to get to know a little bit more about the people who are in our department and in the field in general because they are so interesting and have led such different lives and have gotten to the field in such different ways.

Shelby: 36:28

And so it's fun to see how that all came together. So I really hope that you all have have gotten something out of this and will join us next season or the second half of this season whenever we come back for the show.

Brian: 36:40

Great.

Shelby: 36:41

Thank you, Brian, for coming on.

Brian: 36:43

Thanks for having me. It was fun.

Shelby: 36:44

Yep. And thanks to you all, the listeners, for tuning in for these 8 weeks. We're gonna take a little bit of a midseason hiatus. We'll be back in the spring with 8 new folks to to chat with and get to know. In the meantime, if you have any feedback for things you'd like to hear from people, let me know and we'll try to incorporate it.

Shelby: 37:02

And we will see you in the spring. Earth on the Rocks is produced by Cari Metz with artwork provided by Connor Leimgruber, a technical recording managed by Kate Crum and Betsy Leija. Funding for this podcast was provided by the National Science Foundation Grant, EAR dash 2422824.