Andy Baker

Screenshot of a statement from SVP that they find “no policy violations” in having members appear in the Epstein letters

Really SVP? You’re just going to ignore decades of sexual and academic misconduct, marrying a student AT one of your conferences, and every report I’ve filed (implying that’s what you do with reports) to defend famous Horner? You’d rather have pedophiles than students is your message?

10 am photo, unpacked but still boxed.

Lunchtime, everything unpacked and ready to assemble.

Home time, with the autosampler to assemble tomorrow.

We took delivery of a new ABB off axis water isotopes analyser today here at UNSW, to replace our 10 year old instrument.

It was a good day in lab with spanners and swagelocks. To be continued tomorrow....

Sharing these three-year early career fellowships at Durham University, UK. Open to all nationalities and disciplines. I was lucky to have a senior fellowship here many years ago and had a very positive experience. Details are below:

www.dur.ac.uk/research/ins...

Mega-journal Heliyon retracts hundreds of papers after internal audit Heliyon has published fewer papers and ramped up its retractions since a major indexing service put the journal on hold and the publisher launched an audit of all papers published in the journal si…

Heliyon has published fewer papers and ramped up its retractions since a major indexing service put the journal on hold and the publisher launched an audit of all papers published in the journal since its launch in 2016.

AQUA 2026 – Australasian Quaternary Association (AQUA)

A shout out for Quaternary researchers - registration and abstracts are open for the 2026 Australasian Quaternary Association conference. Come to UNSW Sydney in July. Details are here:
aqua.org.au/conference/a...

Abstract deadline: 28 Feb.

Guest post: Forget pickles and ice cream. I published a fake paper on pregnancy cravings for prime numbers Image generated by Google Gemini I had grown weary of the constant stream and abuse of spam invitations to submit manuscripts to journals and to attend fake conferences on the other side of the wor…

Forget pickles and ice cream. I published a fake paper on pregnancy cravings for prime numbers.

A reminder, American Geophysical Union honours nominations are open at the moment! The @agu.org Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology section have three Honours available, for all career stages. Please share...

2026 — Bay To Bay Running Festival 2026 — Race Roster — Registration, Marketing, Fundraising Bay To Bay Running Festival 2026 Central Coast, NSW - Woy Woy to Gosford - EventsMarathonGosford to Woy Woy to GosfordStarts at 6:20… - June 14, 2026

Registration is open for one of the friendliest running festivals, 42k to family fun run options, great coastal views, stadium finish, free 👕, free bib postage. Sydney region.
I'm in.
raceroster.com/events/2026/...
#running

2026 — Bay To Bay Running Festival 2026 — Race Roster — Registration, Marketing, Fundraising Bay To Bay Running Festival 2026 Central Coast, NSW - Woy Woy to Gosford - EventsMarathonGosford to Woy Woy to GosfordStarts at 6:20… - June 14, 2026

Registration is open for one of the friendliest running festivals, 42k to family fun run options, great coastal views, stadium finish, free 👕, free bib postage. Sydney region. I'm in.
raceroster.com/events/2026/...
#running

Very cute gray and white pit bull putting his paw on my arm

Grey and white pit bull

Gray and white pit bull booping the camera

Any NOLA peeps recognize this very sweet boy? Just found him running across Canal st in mid city. Followed a friend to The Station coffee where I snagged him (and many many many kisses)

Map of the GreenWay in Inner West Sydney. GreenWay to the left.

Geology art on the Greenway - local sandstone geology as seen using terracotta and more.

For Sydneysiders: I walked the GreenWay this week, and recommend it. Great art and interpretation, and easy access from L1 Light Rail stations. Good for walking and cycling - I have to go back on the bike and explore the connecting cycleways.

We Are "Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means," UN Report Warns - Eos Humanity has overspent and depleted freshwater in the world’s aquifers, glaciers, wetlands, and other natural reservoirs to an irreversible degree, according to a new United Nations report.

“Water bankruptcy” is the only apt term to describe the world’s freshwater supply, according to a new @ununiversity.bsky.social report. 🧪 🌎 🌊 eos.org/research-and...

Finance professor in Ireland loses 12 papers in journals he edited Brian Lucey Elsevier has pulled a dozen papers by a finance professor in Ireland who oversaw the review of the articles and made “the final decision” to publish them in three journals he edited, ac…

Elsevier has pulled a dozen papers by a finance professor in Ireland who oversaw the review of the articles and made “the final decision” to publish them in three journals he edited, according to the retraction notices.

AGU Honor Nominations Now Open for 2026

It is that time of year again, when you can nominate a colleague for an AGU Honour. The AGU is a global community supporting more than half a million advocates and professionals in the Earth and space sciences. Both nominator and nominee need to be AGU…

I should do some more statistics analyses, but yes, I think that is correct. In general I'm a weekend runner, but for the middle years I lived 20 km from Sydney and would run to work midweek.

It was for a practical reason. I didn't do the coding and I don't host the server, so this answer is vague. From memory, one year of data to explore was a compromise to allow interactive graphics while keeping the speed fast.

Imagine being a Doctor of Rockology! This certificate was presented to former University of Birmingham Head of Department Fred Shotton (1906–1990), clearly a #geologist with a good sense of humour!

#LapworthRocks #ThrowbackThursday #geologyrocks #geology #palaeontology #history #museum #archive

Updates on Cave Climate Data Collection in Australia

Back in 2020, in the depths of COVID lockdowns here in Australia, the Australasian Cave and Karst Management Association organised a cave climate ‘baseline monitoring’ project. The cave climate monitoring of Australasian caves continues. I last…

AGU Honor Nominations Now Open for 2026

It is that time of year again, when you can nominate a colleague for an AGU Honour. The AGU is a global community supporting more than half a million advocates and professionals in the Earth and space sciences. Both nominator and nominee need to be AGU…

A graph showing distance run in km from 2006 to 2026

Some New Year's data wrangling with a messy time series with skewed properties, missing and poor quality data at times, different recording techniques, human error, etc. x-axis is time in years, y axis is kilometers. The hashing is #running

Emma Johnston was a visionary scientist, environmentalist and leader, with an abiding hope for humanity The University of Melbourne Vice-Chancellor, who has died aged 52, was driven by a deep love of science and a desire to safeguard the planet’s future.

A sad and lovely piece co-authored by my UNSW colleague Rob Brooks on the recent passing of marine scientist and research leader Prof Emma Johnston AO.

theconversation.com/emma-johnsto...

Hydrology Paper of the Day @andy-baker.bsky.social on quantifying the drip of water underground as part of rainfall recharge: groundwater monitoring near the water table in Australia; why mines, tunnels and caves are essential monitoring locations; and relating rock aquifer response to rainfall.

We've made an offer. Thank you to all who shared.

Exploring Drip Water Dynamics for Groundwater Recharge

The end of the year is approaching, and the papers and pre-prints are still coming from the groundwater and climate research team here and our collaborators. Here is a summary of our outputs the last three months of the year. All are…

Soil Moisture and Vegetation are Key Predictors of Precipitation-driven Groundwater Recharge Occurrences in Southeastern Australia

Akhilesh Kumar has the first output from his PhD research available as a preprint here:
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Preprint servers don't stop for the holidays!

Strength in numbers has served us well at my institution. Earth Science is in a School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences. Lower student intake in any one subject can often be covered by another.

Thank you, I didn't know that.

Things are a bit different here in Australia. Earth Science student numbers cycle up and down over time, without a long term trend. However, the long term average is low, and increasingly below what university management consider viable.

Exploring Drip Water Dynamics for Groundwater Recharge

The end of the year is approaching, and the papers and pre-prints are still coming from the groundwater and climate research team here and our collaborators. Here is a summary of our outputs the last three months of the year. All are…

PhD opportunity: 3D mapping of caves – Andy Baker We have a PhD opportunity reopened now for someone interested in developing their 3D laser mapping skills. Specifically, the project aims to map cave ceilings at sites across Australia, to identify…

We have a PhD opportunity for someone interested in 3D mapping of Australian Caves to map water flow pathways from the surface to the groundwater. The PhD is based at UNSW in Sydney.

Details are below, please share!

andy-baker.org/2025/12/17/p...

Very nice! La Nina = wet here across much of Australia, but also highly seasonal. Would you plan to design global maps for seasons? That would be cool.