Fieldwork: A Geologist's Memoir of the Kalahari

by Christopher Scholz

Book Overview

Christopher Scholz, an internationally recognized expert in the geological fields of seismology and tectonics, here offers a captivating memoir of a three-month-long field expedition to northern Botswana. Fieldwork tracks the adventures of a group of American scientists trying to gather critical data in some of the wildest and most inhospitable parts of Africa. Scholz effectively captures the unique challenges and obstacles faced in this...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691600856
• ISBN13: 9780691600857
• Release Date: July 2014
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 198 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 7.0" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

Entertaining memoir of a field season in the Kalahari

_____________________________________________Christopher Scholz, a geophysicist at Lamont-Doherty, went to Botswana in 1974 to lay out a seismic net to map microearthquakes. He encountered the typical obstacles of fieldwork in remote areas - poor maps, poor roads, lost luggage, obtuse bureaucrats - and site-specific challenges, such as charging elephants and hostile Bushmen. With perseverance, good humor, ingenuity - and lots of beer - he got the job done."Teddy & I were sitting about 20 yards apart. We had been like that for more than an hour, hunched up against the trunks of a couple of mopani trees as we waited for the herd of elephants to leave the grove we were in... By the time we had noticed them we had lost any chance of retreating back to the Land Rover... Climbing a tree was no refuge in this situation. That offers protection from Cape buffalo, but not from elephant, which can reach the upper branches of trees with their trunks..."One thing I can say about you, Scholz, " said Teddy. "You sure can pick the places to go to study earthquakes."Anyone who's spent much time doing fieldwork - or wants to confirm how wisely they picked office/lab work instead - will enjoy Scholz's stories. His genial style reminds me of tales (and lies) traded by old hands in a bar in Butte or Battle Mountain. Highly recommended.Cheers -- Pete TillmanConsulting Geologist, Tucson & Santa Fe (USA)

my bedtime stories

I am actually the author's daughter. And although he and I have not always gotten along, I was delighted to hear that my dad had finally decided to write and publish this story. As I was only six years old when he went on this particular field trip, his recounts of all the wacky and wild mishaps, misadventures, and downright silliness he encountered in Africa became favourite bedtime stories for my brother and I for years afterwards. His book preserves the tongue-in-cheek feeling of the early retellings that so delighted us as kids... and also his own personal joy at confronting both the scientific and physical challenges of this type of fieldwork. I can totally recommend this book not only for a glimpse into the life of an earth scientist, but also as a source of inspiration (or amusing tales) for younger readers. You wouldn't think geophysics could be so much fun!

Science and Adventure rolled into one exciting trip

Once I started this book, I could not put it down. I finished it in just one evening. The other reviews posted here explain the content of the story, so I will just comment on the readability of the book. And thoroughly readable it is; the author writes a personal story in a manner that makes you feel like you were there. After finishing the book I felt depressed, because I knew I would never get to personally experience an adventure such as this one.

New Scientist Review by Rob Butler

Half of the excitement of embarking on an earth sciences degree is the opportunity to do hands-on science. The vast majority of new students relish the chance to find it all out for themselves-make their own observations and measurements, test their own hypotheses-in the best of all work environments, the field. Even those who lack motivation in the classroom often find new levels of determination when faced with the reality of a particularly gripping outcrop. There is a downside to all this delirium. Budding geologists must learn to put up with harsh conditions during the many field classes that are run in the vacations outside the summer months. In Britain, they receive precious little support from their local education authorities, despite losing valuable opportunities to earn money during holidays and terms with part-time jobs. And they also have to equip themselves for the field by buying expensive weatherproof clothing and tools. All in all, though, the experience of fieldwork is not just enjoyable and an excellent foundation in scientific experimental design. It is also good for a students future career. "Hardly any universities support the concept of fieldwork nowadays." Even if only a very few go on to become professional geologists, the benefits for students of learning to think on their feet, both literally and metaphorically, and of operating in harsh conditions while developing self-motivation and teamwork, make good highlights on CVs. Certainly, my students fare well in the graduate employment cattle market. The trouble is that, although many explorers seem increasingly to realize the benefits of a strong field experience, the whole exercise is under more and more pressure. I'm sure that this arises largely from a deep misunderstanding of what fieldwork actually involves. And the misunderstanding also extends deep into the scientific community-even within those disciplines that have, like the earth sciences, a strong traditional fieldwork. What triggers this odd perception? In a word, image. Fieldwork is often portrayed as an exercise in random data collection- a chance to potter about on your own, just looking around. The geological community hasn't helped itself much here: modern role models and good, clear presentations of excellence in fieldwork are few and far between. Curiously, other sciences have greatly benefited from fieldwork. Take astronomy, for example. How much of the interest in this science in the latter part of the 20th century was launched with the NASA lunar landing, the most expensive fieldwork ever undertaken? Indeed, the solution to the recent hot potato of life on Mars can only really be addressed through another batch of fieldwork-on the Red Planet itself. Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, a new book by Christopher Scholz offers a number of important insights into earth sciences fieldwork. It is true that Fieldwork: A Geologist's Memoir of the Kalahari hardly touches on scienti

Review from Nature Magazine

In 1974 Christopher Scholz and his team carried out a survey of seismicity in the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa, at the request of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. They achieved some decent scientific results, but also had a whale of a time, with experiences varying from the comic through the awe-inspiring to the downright frightening. Few Earth scientists write anything in the style of their life's memoirs, so this book is doubly welcome. It should appeal to a wide variety of readers, whether fieldworkers or not. The science is accessibly laid out and richly embroidered with tales of the bush. The scientific problem that the team tackled was to discover whether there is an active extension of the East African rift system into Botswana. Is this the tip of the systems propagating itself southward? The question is potentially important because when a fault, such as that forming the edge of a rift, moves and generates an earthquake, there is a change of elevation along the line where the fault-plane reaches the surface. The Kalahari is very flat and the drainage system is in a delicate balance, around the Okavango delta, for example. A large change in the drainage pattern could easily be induced by only a minor movement, and lead to profound ecological consequences. Botswana is not noted for big earthquakes, but any seismically active area produces many small earthquakes. So the survey had to deal with micro-earthquakes which, predictably, would turn up in sufficient number during the few months spent in the field. The technique is to install an array of three or more seismometers with recording devices, leave them for a day or several days, and then see what you have caught. Then the array is moved somewhere else, and so on. But much of the Kalahari is covered with more-or-less unconsolidated sand, about the worst possible material through which to try to detect micro-earthquakes. As a result, much time had to be devoted to the search for areas of solid bedrock. This traveling about, setting up camp, overcoming obstacles, coping with the wildlife and, not least confronting officialdom, forms the substance of the book. It is rich in accounts of the incidents that such a mode of life throws up. It was necessary, for example, to set up camp in a thick bush half a mile from the only watering hole for miles. The only clear strip of bush to camp on turned out to be the main route used by elephants at night on their way to have a drink. Add a few thousand nearby antelopes, lions, hyenas and so on, and the night becomes alarmingly noisy. In the end, the party managed to observe a sufficient number of micro-earthquakes to confirm their hypothesis. The author comments that when the work was published, it did not cause a great stir, but he regards it as an honest and useful job well done. Although much of the book is devoted to the sheer joy of life in the bush (and its perils), and is written