June 2020 Newsflash

Hydrogeology SIG meeting

The geology in hydrogeology
Matt Dodson, Science Team Leader – Groundwater, Environment Canterbury
Thursday 25 June 2020
Talk: 5.30 pm to 6.30 pm

Participants attending in person are able to arrive from 5pm.
 
In this, the first presentation for the GSNZ Hydrogeology Special Interest Group, Matt Dodson will provide an overview of what hydrogeologists do and what they need from the wider geological community. Matt will use examples from current projects to highlight the importance of geological knowledge in understanding groundwater issues.
 
Matt has more than 10 years’ experience working in a regional council setting, as a hydrogeologist, technical lead, and team leader, predominantly in the Canterbury Region. Matt has proficient skills in communication, stakeholder engagement, technical hydrology, and project management. In particular, Matt has considerable experience in groundwater quality and quantity resources investigations and reporting.

Matt also manages the Canterbury Regional Council's bore installers programme which has developed user-friendly tools and processes for the drilling industry in Canterbury. The intention of tools and processes are to improve and standardise the quality of bore logs being submitted by well drillers, as well as to minimise the risk of contaminants entering the groundwater system.

This talk is taking place as both a physical event and live webinar (plus, a recording will be available after the event). 
Please use this link to register for either event and ensure you are sent the link.  The physical address is provided on the registration form.

Update from the Executive Committee

On the 5^th of June, the GSNZ committee convened digitally for one of our regular meetings. The goals, as always, are how best to serve the geoscience community. We discussed:

• implementation of communications channels. Hopefully you will have noticed an increase in GSNZ-related information lately – check us out on Twitter (@GeoscienceNZ) and Facebook to stay up to date. 
• The Christchurch branch-hosted GSNZ November conference. We are committed to undertaking physically if conditions permit, or digitally if conditions change. More information to come very soon.
• The upcoming release of the new GSNZ website. This will be available before the end of June. It will also allow access to the New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics to all members.
• Hochstetter Lecture tour by Dr. Phaedra Upton. This is being scheduled now and will run in the next 4 months. We are intending to have lectures recorded for posterity and available on a GSNZ Youtube channel.
• Ratification of the Hayward Geocommunication Award. This will be available later this year, with usual annual awards.
• The GSNZ photo-competition to be released to members shortly.

However, the majority of meeting was taken up with discussing and developing a GSNZ long-term strategic plan. We had a session with strategic planner earlier this year and now are formulating pathways to implementation. It’s a long process, but an important one.

There are more things in the pipeline, and one of these will be a completely reformatted newsletter – keep an eye out for a trial run of this in July.

Finally, I’d say that the online meetings are functioning reasonably well (the biggest complaint being the loss of the morning tea spreads for the physical meetings at NIWA…) and I hope that we keep doing this several times a year.  

James Scott
GSNZ President

Member photo competition

All members of the Geoscience Society of New Zealand are invited to show off their photographic talent! The competition is split into three categories to commemorate the centennial of Milutin Milanković’s astronomical theory: Théorie mathématique des phénomènes thermiques produits par la radiation solaire.

The categories are:

1. Milankovich: Geological Cyclicity
2. Macro and micro-scale geoscience
3. New Zealand Geoscience

Entrants may submit one photo per category. There will be one winner for each category.

Shortlisted photographs
The anonymised photographs will be shortlisted by our judging panel, and those shortlisted will be displayed on our social media for the membership’s viewing pleasure. Voting is restricted to active GSNZ members and will take place via an email poll.
Winners will be announced on Friday 24 July and will have their photos immortalised on a canvas, which we will mail to respective winners. Winning photographs will also adorn the cover of GSNZ’s soon to be refreshed Newsletter.

Submission
To enter, please send the following to geosocietynz@gmail.com by Friday 3 July:

• Contact details (full name, email address)
• Image details (category, title, location, year)
• Image caption (maximum 50 words)
• Your image (minimum 72 dpi, 3 MB)

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