• Question: What kind of jobs in geophysics involve travelling?

    Asked by anon-257599 to Gosia on 3 Jul 2020.
    • Photo: Malgorzata Drwila

      Malgorzata Drwila answered on 3 Jul 2020:

      Thanks for the question! In geophysics you can work in data acquisition (lots of traveling), data processing or data interpretation. In small companies or universities you can do all three, in more specialised companies the roles are specified and don’t mix. I work in a quite a big company and my job is data processing. Can be boring but it is stable 9-5 office job, which I need now.

      Those geophysicists who collect the data have to go to the field or the sea. For example in seismic exploration they go for few weeks to live on a ship and after the shift ends they usually have few weeks of holiday.
      See a story of my friend Petros here: https://www.shearwatergeo.com/214/resources/shearwater-blog/my-shearwater-journey-by-petros-karalis
      He has done loads of traveling.

      Some companies do near-surface geophysics usually for civil engineering purposes or archaeology. The crews are smaller and the equipment is light. They measure the data on construction sites to check for the stability of the soil or to make sure that the building/road is not being built on historical heritage site.

      Other companies or universities do geophysical measurements for environmental reasons. For example my professors from University of Leeds go to Greenland or Antarctica to measure the thickness and structure of the ice cap. As I remember there were opportunities to apply for PhD program, which included trip to Antarctica!. some details here if you are interested (scroll down for photos): https://panorama-dtp.ac.uk/research/fractures-and-fabrics-in-glacier-ice-sensitivity-of-seismic-anisotropy-for-antarctic-ice-masses/

      Let me know if you have more questions!

Comments

  • Photo: Paula

    Paula commented on :

    To add to this – it really depends on what you are doing and what you enjoy doing! Generally, someone doing lots of fieldwork and who needs to collect samples gets to travel more, like a volcanologist collecting lava samples. However, even when you do not do this in your research, you can travel within geophysics!

    Like Gosia, I am also primarily working behind a computer analysing and modelling data. However, I do get to travel to conferences to present my research and these are often in nice locations (e.g. Iceland, San Francisco, Slovakia, Japan), because as earth scientists we know what are cool places to visit! Then the other way to always be involved is through teaching on field trips. With undergraduates we go to several nice places and it is a way for me to travel too.

    Because I do miss being in the field, I do try to be involved in some field-based projects. So even though I mainly analyse seismic data, I did some instrument deployment in the Alps, and more recently in Kenya as well, which was very cool!