RISeR during Covid-19

Like the rest of the world, the RISeR team has been impacted by the Covid-19 crisis.  Thankfully, all team members have remained safe and well over the last few months, which is absolutely our main priority.  UK lockdown started in late March, and the whole team has been working from home since.  We have continued to work with our partners to plan our offshore core collection, which will happen in the second half of 2020.  We had taken the decision that no scientists would join the cruise, which has made it feasible regardless of the circumstances.  The next challenges are to arrange the shipping, storage and scanning of the cores, in an appropriately socially distant manner.  We are very grateful to BOSCORF for the support they are providing to help deal with this.

Victor continues to work on the RVO open-access wind farm data, mapping the transgression of the Eemian North Sea, whilst developing the first project manuscript.  Ollie is coming towards the end of the first year of his PhD, and therefore is focusing on his progression report and viva, as well as pushing forward with a new Saalian ice sheet model.  Unfortunately, Ollie’s trip to Canada to spend time working with Natalya had to be postponed.  Natasha is working with project partner Kim Cohen, and colleague Rob Barnett, to develop a LIG sea level database for northwest Europe, which in turn is a contribution to a sister ERC project on LIG sea level, led by Alessio Rovere.  We are very lucky to be continue to be able to collaborate with international colleagues, despite the circumstances.  2020/21 is going to raise new challenges to manage socially distanced laboratory work on the new cores, but we are developing plans for this.  We will be back with an update once the cores arrive onshore…

Stay safe all.