Debra Einstein's Internship Log
June 22- July 18
I have had an exciting time so far here at Legg Geophysical with Dr. Mark R. Legg. I have been learning so much about off shore earthquake faults, seismic stratigraphy, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), tsumanis, just to name a few. The major topic of our research is the restraining bend on the San Clemente fault in the California Continental Borderland and its effect on the seafloor.
Within this time period, I have computed navigation data and offshore bedding layer depths on the computer. The data is from a September, 1979 cruise that Dr. Legg participated in to find out the layering of the seafloor so that we can place into a GIS program to show contours and fault location I have also determined the location of bedding layers-top and bottom-and followed the layers throughout the cruise routes that crossed the restraining bend on the San Clemente Fault. After determining the layers (with the help of Dr. Legg's other intern Herman Wang who has done much of the layer bedding), I handmapped the layers to see if there was a consistency between all of the routes. These data points would later be contoured to see the location of the fault (even though we already know its location) and if any type of uplift has resulted.
Beyond those things (which has been a bulk of my time), I have also been doing some reading of journal articles. I figured that knowing as much as I can about offshore faults, the California Continental Borderlands, and earthquakes would great help me understand our research better (and I have). I have also studied maps to see earthquake locations and seafloor deformation near or on faults. Some of these maps have been on GIS programs such as MapInfo and AtlasGIS. I not only worked with these programs but I also read the training manuals in order to aquaint myself with them. I have also worked with ArcView, but since I have previous experience with them (I took two graduate courses in ArcView at UC Irvine), I just practiced what I knew to reaquaint myself with the program.
But some of the most fun I have had within this time period was attending meetings. The SCEC Summer Seminar was one of them. I really enjoyed seeing how different persons with different specialties interacted for the sole cause of earthquake response. I also attended the Southcoast Geological Society and American Association of Petroleum Geologists meetings, each with a different topic and both topics very interesting and educational.
I am enjoying the internship very much.
My only problem within this time period is that progress is slow,
but I know that it will pick up. Another problem is that the data
is so old that we have had a lot of trouble putting it together
on the computers. Other than that, our research is going well
and Dr. Legg is just a great supervisor. He is always there to
answer our questions and to talk with us about our research, guiding
us through it.
July 19-23
This week has been much of the same. I determined some more bedding layers and computed them. I also hand-mapped some more data points to see if they comply with other cruise routes. But this week, Herman and I actually started to write the journal article that we will coauthor with Dr. Legg. It has been difficult to write, though because both Herman and I feel unqualified to write such a scientific paper. This is why I have been reading more journal articles. I am reading them to (1) learn journal article lingo and writing style, and (2) to aquaint myself with the material. I read and reread an article on restraining bends in order to understand the bend on the San Clemente fault a little better. I have also read some other artlicles on the history of the California Continental Borderland and the faults within this area. I also began reading up on seismic stratigraphy so that I could understand the mechanics of soundings and the visuals it creates.
I also worked with ArcView GIS some more and created a bit of a presentation for the colloquim in early August. Dr. Legg didn't have powerpoint so I created some overheads. I also created a map of the location of the San Clemente fault and the restaining bend within the fault and made overheads of that. I am a bit fearfull of participating in the colloquim. I don't think that I could answer detailed questions about the faulting or restaining bend or even seafloor deformation. I am still new at this, but I will give it my best shot.
I attended another meeting this week. The meeting was for the Ammerican Association of Petroleum Geologists and the topic was on aquifers and its biological content. Quite interesting. I really enjoy learning as much as I can about everything in the field. These meetings can keep you up to date on all sorts of topics.
Other than that, the week was good. I am glad that we have increased the progression of the research by begining to write the introduction. That part has been difficult, but without Dr. Legg's assistance and the outline he has created for us, the assignment would be a lot harder.
July 26-30
There was much discussion this week on the San Clemente fault and relevant earthquake clarification. There is so much that I need to learn. My major (Environmental Analysis and Design) at UC Irvine requires very little science. The few science courses I took, I took for my minor (Global Sustainability) or for fun. This week, I finished the introduction to the journal article that Dr. Legg, Herman, and I are going to write on the restraining bend on the San Clemente fault. All three of us would discuss this in detail and try to predict what direction the restraining will go. We viewed our maps, looked at our data, and had our discussions. We are getting closer to writing this and sending it out. Of course, we need to get our bathimetry data from 1979 and convert it to Geographic Information System (GIS). Dr. Legg has been working on this the most. I put in the navigation data and cleaned it up for importation into GIS, but Dr. Legg is making it all happen.
This was slow. Writing the introduction was the main task for the week. Other duties included reading journal articles. Since there is still so much to learn, the best way to do it is to read other person's research. I have been reading up on restraining bends, the San Clemente fault, plate tectonics, and the fault system in the California Continental Borderland. Not too exciting, but utterly necessary for submitting an article. I have also been searching for quotes and other supplemental information for the article.
These things I accomplished on Tuesday through Friday. On Monday, of course, I attended the Communication Workshop. That was one of the better workshops I have attended. It was very informative and a great reference to writing and communicating in a real world workplace. I think I was able to break a couple of my old writing habits and the workshop also increased my awareness level for catching mistakes in writing.
My biggest fear this week is being able to come up with a 20 minute presentation. I do not have Powerpoint on my computer at home and I do not think that Dr. Legg does either. I might have to improvise. Also, being able to talk for this long a time and to have that much to say might be difficult. There is much left to do and more analysis to complete. Wish me luck on creating a good presentation with what I have at my disposal.
August 2-8
From August 2-4, I spent much of my time preparing for both the SCEC intern colloquium and the 20 minute presentation. I took the time to learn Powerpoint and Corel Draw to make my presentation. I made maps of the area of my study and searched the internet for pictures to use as a part of my presentation. I got many hints from the communication workshop that USC held the week before. In order to prepare for the presentation, I really had to learn more about the earthquake fault I am and have been studying. I read some journal articles, my mentor's dissertation, and studied many maps so that I could answer any questions that might be asked of me. All of these took much of the first three days of the week. I put much too much effort into this project thinking that it would be delivered in a formal setting. Even though I put in more work than I needed, the experience was great. I have a small fear of public speaking and these types of assignments help me get over that fear.
The rest of the week was spent on the field trip or at USC. I had so much fun and learned so many things on this adventure. It was great to meet all of the interns and to discuss topics with researchers and other people in the field. The experience was not only fun, but a introspective look at the field. Visiting diverse types of environments was just an added bonus. Even though I have already seen Newport Beach and UC Irvine (my school), I learned more about the components that comprise these areas. From coastal areas to deserts, we viewed faults in many different types of locations-all beautiful (Thank you SCEC for the wonderful experiences).
August 10-13
This week, much work we accomplished was
directed toward writing and preparing to write our paper on the
San Clemente fault. I read some more articles and wrote more of
the introduction to the journal article we are hoping to get published.
I also did some contouring (or at least some preparation for the
contouring by putting the values on the map to contour later)
and data analysis of the seabeam data we are working with. I will
eventually be contouring the bottom hemapelagic layer values of
the sea floor. Herman has already mapped the top of the layer.
A few of the seabeam cruise line values were off and needed to
be recalculated for the contouring process. These tasks were very
time consuming. I even took some of this home with me to do. My
mentor Dr. Legg, Herman, and I also discussed our project a bit
more-this is something we do quite often. We all gather around
and discuss the fault and what it would do in the future. Other
than this, not much more was done this week. It was a bit of a
slow week (or at least it seemed slow), but we did manage to get
most of the introduction done and some of
August 16-19
This week was a bit of a short week for me. I took Friday off to go to Laughlin (it was a lot of fun). Much of this week was spent working on our data for the restraining bend on the San Clemente fault. I recalculated some lines. This is a time-consuming process. A few of the stratagraphic lines did not make sense with the rest of the lines and had to be redone. I spent some time analyzing the stratigraphy to see what top and bottom hemapelagic layers compare best with the rest of the lines on the map. This is a bit of a trial and error process, but I am sure that the right layers were chosen. After I finished calculating the lines on each on the lines, I put the values on the two maps-top and bottom layers. I erased the old and wrote in the new. This took most of my work time this week. Another task I accomplished consisted of fixing data. Since I had to redo some lines, I also had to delete old data to put in the new. This data will create our maps for us.
I also did some reading this week to brush up on my understanding of our research. I also wrote some more of our article. We also went on a small field trip to look at the Newport-Inglewood fault just for kicks. Herman and I hadn't really had a chance to check it out yet. That was fun.
Despite this fun, Herman had his last day
on Wednesday, August 18. He, Dr. Legg and I went out to lunch
together. It was a farewell meal. It was sad to see Dr. Legg's
other intern leave, but it was great working with him and getting
to know him. All of this just made me realize that the summer
is almost over and we much buckle down on our project. Time is
running out.
September 13-September 17
This has been another busy week (they usually are). Now that the poster session and the SCEC annual meeting are closely approaching , many loose ties need to be knotted. Time is a huge factor in the office. Dr. Legg and I spent so much time just discussing the things that we need to do and what our priorities are. What a week of work!
There are so many things that we not only need to do, but *have* to do. The main task I had was to continue contouring the top and bottom of the hemapelagic (PEL) layer. I added some more data points, which meant that I had to analyze a few more lines. I also added some character to the contours by adding the effects of anticlines and synclines on the PEL layer.
To add to this work, I also continued reading journal articles and books on how to contour. There was also a lot of data correction that needed to be done. We have a huge 20 or so page data file with all the PEL information as well as Line B13 and its three chosen layers on a separate file that needed to be imputed or corrected. All of this was extremely tedious but so very essential.
The most fun I had this week was attending
two meetings. The first was a geologist meeting at the Petroleum
Club, and the second was a special AGU meeting on the Turkey earthquake.
What a great meeting with fantastic visuals! I love going to all
of these meetings. I have learned an extraordinary amount of information
with just these meetings alone. Well, that was my week.
September 20-September 24
Wow! This is the busiest week that I have had. Monday started off busy. That was the day of the SCEC meeting. I woke up at 5:00 a.m. that day and didn't get home until 8:00 p.m. I didn't get a chance to work on my poster at all that day, leaving fewer days to finish it. I like attending these meetings, though. It makes me feel involved.
Everything else I did this week went toward putting together a poster presentation. I fixed the data that would eventually create an isopach map, I worked on charts for relative uplift, estimated age, etc., made labels for portions of the poster and pasted them, along with various other computer and grunt work. Despite this stuff, I worked on contouring and coloring the tp and bp that latter became part of the poster. I also worked on Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw and put in the contour amounts and names on the tp and bp. I even needed to finish up some last minute contouring on our large original to fix it up for final draft. For visual effect, I also needed to add color to parts of our poster. The coloring was mostly done by hand because of the time constraint that we had. If it wasn't for all of the times that the computers and printers decided to misbehave, we wouldn't have needed to work on the following weekend. Other coloring that I accomplished was for the profiles. I colored the hemipelagic layers and propagating fan sediments on the profiles, and cut them up for display.
In my spare time, I would write the report that the SCEC interns needed to submit (and I do mean "spare"). I had to do some reading for references and then the actual writing and revisions to create a finished product. That would have been done if my computer at home wasn't working against me. It was a Murphy's Law type of week, unfortunately!
I did a lot of small stuff to prepare for
the poster session, but these tasks were most important. I had
a wonderful internship and I just want to finish this off by saying
so. Thank you SCEC for the opportunity, and thank you Dr. Legg
for teaching me and for being a great support system.