Category: DEI

NASA SnowEX: Science Below Zero Degree C

Bareera Mirza (A first-year Geography Ph.D. student)

To Learn More About NASA SnowEx, visit https://snow.nasa.gov/

I am Bareera Mirza, a Pakistani Muslim woman who lived all her life near the coast, far from the mountains. Despite that, I developed my love for snow/glaciers when I first visited Skardu (a city in the Himalayas of Pakistan) in April 2018; and that was my first time seeing snow and glaciers. After the initial exposure, I revisited the Himalayas multiple times to gain a deeper understanding of the lifestyles of the local populace. It was a life-changing experience to talk to local people, learning about their struggles living near the mountains and their dependency on changing nature and climate. It was the combination of these visits, the exposure gained in classes, and the lessons learned from my professors that inspired me to pursue my current trajectory. 


Right hand side picture is in Jaglot (a town located in the Gilgit District of Gilgit−Baltistan), Pakistan and the left-hand side features Passu Glacier (a Glacier in Gilgit Baltistan)

Pre-Field Trip:

In October 2022, I participated in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) SnowEx 2023 Tundra and Boreal Forest campaign in Fairbanks, Alaska, a multi-year field campaign to observe snow and come up with the best remote sensing technologies to accurately predict snow throughout the season in various environments. SnowEx is part of an effort of NASA’s upcoming special snow satellite, which can help predict the amount of water available in snowpack for better water management use.

NASA SnowEx was nothing less than a dream come true. However, I could feel the nervousness among my family and loved ones (out of safety concerns) because it is unusual for Pakistani women to do such kind of fieldwork in the extreme weather of Fairbanks, Alaska. Not to mention an unfamiliar territory (I didn’t even know the types of gear I would need – like what on earth is gaiter?). I am incredibly thankful to my advisor Dr. Mark Raleigh and the team at NASA Goddard, who helped me with field trip preparation and made the process manageable and easy to navigate.

Science Talk:

My collaborative team, consisting of 40 scientists from NASA and different institutions, reached Fairbanks, Alaska, to observe five different test sites. I was assigned a Boreal Forest test site, Bonanza Creek – one of the largest forested biomes on Earth, covering 17 million km2 of the Northern Hemisphere and accounting for approximately one-third of Earth’s total forest area. 

Photo: Team of Bonanza Creek
Photo Credit: Carrie Vuyovich

I spent a couple of days at Farmer’s Loop site, a site in the town which can be a good analog testbed to compare snow measurements in wetlands, ponds, and swamp forest environments. We processed different measurements (Snow Water Equivalent (SWE), snow depth, temperature, stratigraphy, and soil samples) by digging snow pits in a 5x5m plot. 

Top Left to Right: Stratigraphy (snow through a microscope), snow depth, Bottom Left to Right: SWE measurement and Soil Measurement Photo Credit: Bareera Mirza and Megan Mason.

Along with the ground samples, the team of NASA was doing airborne LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) surveys as an eventual goal of the ground surveys to validate data of airborne surveys. The campaign was 12 days long, with 7 days in the field and 5 days of training  (including travel). 

Let’s not forget the fun moments!

The trip was mostly for snow science, but science is fun, isn’t it? Firstly, it was breathtakingly beautiful, deep in the forest, as a 5’2” tall individual, surrounded by tussocks 10 inches tall. Walking in unknown terrain is an adventurous experience; our group was unaware of what was beneath us because it was all snow-covered. It can be a lake, pond, or a tall tussock (literally every 10m or less). Branches of trees are hitting our faces as we migrate through a dense forest, wearing snow gear and holding our measurement tools.

Photo Credit: Bareera Mirza and Megan Mason

But none of it felt overwhelming because snow is beautiful to gaze upon, and whenever I felt tired, I just looked around me to admire the peaceful visage. Among some of the more exciting experiences, I saw moose for the first time and ate my cold salad sandwich in the forest. Not to brag, but being a newbie, a team that included me, Kelly Elder, and Wyatt Reis, we ended up doing 7 snow pits in a day (our usual was 3 to 4). Working with experienced people who had been doing this for years, learning from them, and testing my thresholds was one of the most memorable experiences. Moreover, on the last day, we went to see the Permafrost tunnel. I would equate it to time traveling as some of the features were 40,000 years old. Most importantly, trying some local foods especially waffles with Carrie Vuyovich, Megan Mason, and Joachim Meyer were so much fun. Finally, talking to people about the Himalayas and my experience as the first Pakistani woman to work in SnowEx campaigns was spectacular.

Overall, I loved this 12-day trip where I worked as a snow scientist. I made many connections, learned a lot, and experienced a whole different life. I plan to continue pursuing snow science and exploring new frontiers. The snow community is very new, and there are few women of color who are aware of the efforts, so with my experience and knowledge, I would love to inspire more women to be part of this community.

Team of NASA SnowEX Field Campaign October 2022
Bareera’s Research Lab at Oregon State University

twitter handle https://twitter.com/BareerahMirza 

research lab page: https://markraleigh.com 

github:https://github.com/mbareera

Of Chronologies and Chronic Illness

Olivia Williams, 3rd Year Geology PhD Student
Working in the ice core freezer during a trip to the University of Copenhagen in March 2022

One morning in August 2017 I woke up feeling sick. I was looking forward to the last week of my first-ever research internship in the Boston University Antarctic Research Group, where I was first introduced to paleoclimatology and was anticipating an opportunity for Antarctic fieldwork in a year or two. I was supposed to join a friend in Connecticut that weekend, but I thought I had food poisoning, so I canceled my plans and spent the weekend eating crackers in bed instead.

That “stomach bug” turned into five days of discomfort. Student Health and my doctor back home gave me some quick fixes—reduced stress and caffeine, antibiotics for a potential infection—but nothing helped. The weeks stretched into months and I completed the fall semester sick and miserable.

Holding a jar of Antarctic ash in the Boston University Antarctic research lab in September 2017, about a month after getting sick.

I wouldn’t receive a diagnosis until February: I had gastroparesis, or partial paralysis of the stomach muscles causing severe nausea. I began treating it with medication, which would eventually bring my symptoms down to a manageable level.

Because I got sick at the beginning of my career in geoscience, no part of my research experience can be separated from my chronic illness. I remember very little of my early Earth science classes; I was distracted by hunger when I couldn’t eat and nausea when I could, as well as headaches, dizziness, brain fog, shortness of breath, and fatigue. While my friends in the program were talking about exciting fieldwork opportunities and fun nearby hikes, I was so malnourished my hair was falling out.

My hopes of going to Antarctica—or of participating in any fieldwork at all—were dashed. Before I got sick I had been going to the gym five days a week to better my chances of being picked for the field team; now I could barely walk to class.

I had to turn down an offer to work in another lab at BU because I was still too ill to stand at a lab bench. Later, the medications I took to treat my stomach made me severely anemic, making data analysis a slow and frustrating slog.

While my health has improved dramatically over the past five years, I still deal with symptoms of my illness every day. I might be going about a normal week, eating well and even feeling good enough to hit the gym a few times, then suddenly be unable to leave the house due to nausea and painful stomach cramps. These episodes might last hours, days, or even weeks. I have to eat on a regular schedule and avoid certain foods to minimize my chances of a flare-up. All these things can make classes, lab work, and especially fieldwork challenging.

I was lucky to have the opportunity to complete an undergraduate thesis on biogeochemical cycling in marshes with samples that had already been collected. The lab work and data analysis were within my abilities at the time, so I was able to complete the project without major issue.

Sage Lot marsh, Cape Cod, MA in summer 2019. This marsh was the subject of my senior thesis project. The resulting paper, “Mechanisms and magnitude of dissolved silica release from a New England salt marsh,” has been published in Biogeochemistry.

My PhD project here in CEOAS also works with existing samples—one of the benefits of ice core science. Polar fieldwork may have a high barrier to access, but we have a long and varied archive of well-studied cores from both poles.

Although I still dream of doing fieldwork in Greenland or Antarctica, I have had the opportunity for lots of fun scientific experiences as part of my Ph.D. This spring I got to travel to Denmark to collect ice samples from the archive at the University of Copenhagen. Later in the spring, I helped an undergrad in our lab drill cave ice samples from Lava Beds National Monument.

Helping undergraduate Sebastian Miller (left) and professor Ed Brook (center) drill a cave ice sample at Lava Beds National Monument in May 2022.

This summer, I spent five weeks at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla learning some lab techniques for my project. This fall I attended the International Partnerships in Ice Core Science (IPICS) meeting in Crans Montana, Switzerland, with several members of my lab. While fun and educational, all these trips have presented their own challenges for my health.

The view from our rental house for the IPICS conference in Crans Montana, Switzerland, October 2022.

I’m used to living with my illness. I try not to let it get me down, and in general it doesn’t. I love the work I get to do in the ice core lab and my health rarely gets in the way these days. However, positive thinking can’t get you out of chronic illness. I can’t ignore the realities of my health out of a desire to do the same things as my colleagues.

Someone who has always been healthy and able to rely on their body to complete the tasks they ask of it can have a difficult time understanding the unpredictable rollercoaster of chronic illness. If you can hike three miles carrying field equipment one week, you can probably rely on being able to do it again the next week. A chronically ill person may find that hike easy one week and completely impossible the next due to changes in their health and energy. Both weeks may even look the same to an outside observer.

The next time you plan field work, a conference, or a lab celebration, consider that there may be members of your lab with invisible hurdles to participating in the same activities as you. Creating an environment where students and colleagues feel comfortable voicing their needs without judgment can go a long way. Reading up on things like spoon theory, which chronically ill people (or “spoonies”) use to describe their available energy, can also offer some insight.

As we all strive to improve equity and access in geoscience, it’s impossible to anticipate every possible need that will arise. What we all can do is interrogate our picture of what a geoscientist is and does and make room in the field for people with a wider array of experiences and abilities.

Website: oliviawilliamsgeo.com

Twitter: @olw_geo