How one man warmed to a career in geoscience

Profile by Andrew McBarnet of Prof John Reynolds, an acknowledged world authority on glacial hazard assessment and mitigation (see Special Topic p. 61), but also a vocal advocate of the value of geoscience with a remarkable career to prove it. If you’re searching for an example of how to make geoscience relevant to today’s generation of maths and science shy students, look no further than Prof John Reynolds. His career has been devoted to geoscience across a broad range of activities, but is now increasingly focused on affecting positive change for communities around the world through the application of environmental geoscience. In addition, he is a passionate advocate for his profession, as a public speaker, an educator, and indeed as author of the standard textbook on applied and environmental geophysics for university students. From his small consultancy base in Mold, North Wales he has sought the ear of governments and international agencies in an effort to alert them to the potentially catastrophic dangers posed by natural phenomena such as glacial hazards and earthquakes. For example, glacial lakes in the Himalayas in countries such as Nepal, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, China, Tibet, and Kyrgyzstan are expanding rapidly as a result of global warming. Some of the lakes are inherently unstable, because their dams can be ice cored and consist of unconsolidated rock debris. Just what can happen was shown in 1954 in Tibet when an uncontrolled rise in the water level led to the collapse of a dam which poured an estimated 300,000 m3 of rock and water without warning in a 40 m high flood surge into China. This so called glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) travelled over 120 km destroying the town of Gyanze and killing thousand of people. Reynolds points out that since the 1950s temperatures have risen significantly so that so that glaciers are retreating at an average of 20-50 m per year. (The science of glacial hazard assessment is discussed in Reynolds’ article in this issue on p. 61)