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This June, our group had the opportunity to conduct fieldwork in Rwanda. During the weeks of research, we furthered our work on sand mining in the sub-Saharan African landscape, while also fostering meaningful international knowledge-sharing and collaboration with Rwandan scholars and locals.
Our lab participated in the December 2023 American Geophysical Union (AGU) annual meeting in San Francisco. At the conference, we had had the opportunity to share our research through workshops and poster presentations. You can find the abstracts for the lab’s presentations here.
Back in 2019, Lars and I wrote a column in Nature on ‘the two-body problem’. +3 years later, we spoke with Adam Levy in his podcast for Nature on how to navigate landing two jobs in academia. You can listen to our story here.
In this Column in Nature’s Career section, my good colleague Melissa Ward Jones (Assistant Research Professor at University of Alaska, Fairbanks) and I share our stories of juggling parenting and fieldwork. We argue that more should be done to help retain scientist-parents, particularly women, in academia.
This recently published Analysis in Nature Sustainability builds on our 2019- paper from the same journal, where colleagues and I discussed the promises and perils of sand mining in Greenland.
In this new paper, we’ve conducted a nationally representative survey Greenlanders’ views on sand extraction, finding that more than 8 in 10 support extracting and exporting sand but wants to keep this a local project and oppose foreign involvement.
Read the full paper HERE
Bendixen Lab is excited to welcome our new Postdoc Ke Huang, who will be working on the Villum Experiment project ‘Drawing a line in the sand: Mapping sand mining in Africa for future sustainable usage’.
Dr. Ke Huang holds a PhD in Ecology (2017) from University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), China and has a strong background in spatial analyses, remote sensing and deep learning. Prior to this position, she held a post doc position in the lab of Professor Rasmus Fensholt, University of Copenhagen.
The project is a high risk/high gain project, which seeks to investigate whether recent advances in satellite remote sensing technology and promising techniques in the use of deep learning algorithms rooted in AI (artificial intelligence) can be used to analyze geomorphic landscape changes to automatically detect present day sand mining activities in Africa.
The ultimate gain of the project will be to produce the first ever map of sand mining activities across the entire African continent.
I’m looking for a PhD candidate together with Dr. Iversen (Biology Department) to work on a project related to sand mining in Africa.
The project will combine a multitude of information resources to outline the interactions between local mining activities, landscape geography and urban development, with a specific focus on sub-saharan Africa. The project will also evaluate the global distribution of sand mining threats and pressures to biodiversity, how such threats are distributed across gradients in land use history and explore how protected areas mitigate sand mining impacts.
Please see the full add here and don’t hesitate to reach out with questions.
Deadline: May 27, 2022
I’m hiring a postdoc for 2 yrs with expertise in Geospatial Deep Learning Applications - The candidate will be working at @uni_copenhagen on the project ‘Drawing a line in the sand: Mapping sand mining in Africa for future sustainable usage’ together with Professor Rasmus Fensholt and Professor Niels Strange.
The project is a Villum Experiment funded by @VILLUMFONDEN and will focus on #sand #sandmining #sandscarcity #SDG
Please see the full add here: https://employment.ku.dk/faculty/?show=155493
Don’t hesitate to reach out with questions!
The Danish Villum Foundation has awarded my project ‘Drawing a line in the sand: Mapping sand mining in Africa for future sustainable usage’. The goal of this ‘high risk high gain’ project is to develop a data-driven method using machine learning and remote sensing imagery to provide a complete map of sand mining activities in Africa.
This review proces for the Villum Experiment projects are rather unique in the Danish funding system. During the selection process, the applicants are anonymised for the assessment panel. The 21 international assessors do not have the opportunity to peek at the applicants’ CVs and academic credentials, and have therefore “judged the research ideas solely on the basis of whether they challenge the norm and have the potential to change the world and our knowledge of it”.
The high risk in the project lies in investigating whether recent advances in satellite remote sensing technology and promising techniques in the use of deep learning algorithms rooted in AI (artificial intelligence) can be used to analyze geomorphic landscape changes to automatically detect present day sand mining activities in Africa. The ultimate gain of the project will be to produce the first ever map of sand mining activities across the entire African continent.
I will soon be looking for people to join the project!
In August, colleagues and I published a comprehensive review article ‘Sand, gravel, and UN Sustainable Development Goals: Conflicts, synergies, and pathways forward’.
A short summary of the work we present:
Sand, gravel and crushed stone, collectively referred to as aggregates, are the most mined materials on Earth and constitute the foundation for modern civilization. Aggregates are essential for providing shelter (concrete-buildings), movement (transport infrastructure) and communication (silica-based electronic devices). We review the interconnections between the impacts of aggregate mining and the services they provide and show that the conflicting impacts on the environment and humankind disrupts the net positive effects of aggregate mining on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
The article is available for download HERE
I am very honoured and excited to receive a ‘Re-integration fellowship’ from the Danish Carlsbergfoundation. The project will focus on ‘Conflicts and synergies of sand mining on the increasingly populated African continent’.
From March 2021 I will be employed at the Department of Food and Resource Economics (IFRO), University of Copenhagen to carry out the project.
In essence, the project aims to understand the implications sand mining has on ecosystems, human health and societies while also acknowledging the value of this critical commodity for economies and communities around the world.
We currently have little knowledge of the links between sand mining and disease prevention, nor do we have sufficient insight into the relationship between mining activities and urbanization, population growth and bio-sensitive areas. This project will gain new insights into these complex relationships that exist to sustainably manage and govern this essential natural resource while sustainably develop and improve the livelihood for people in Africa.
Are you an MSc student or otherwise interested in working on a short project focusing on obtaining insight into the Greenland population’s perspectives and opinions on creating a sand industry in Greenland?
You will be working with an international team with researchers based in Denmark, Greenland and the US.
Please read the add and contact me for further information.
The project is supported by the Danish Carlsbergfoundation.
I am deeply humbled and honoured to receive the AGU’s Science for Solutions Award 2020!
I am grateful to my colleague Irina Overeem for leading the nomination, and to my PhD supervisor Aart Kroon, who has always supported and believed in me. I also want to thank Peter Schlosser for establishing this award to recognize the application of Earth and space science in solving societal challenges.
As the AGU Fall Meeting is virtual this year, the recognition will take place on Wednesday, 9 December at 3 pm PT/6pm ET/22:00 UTC. I’ll be attending late in the evening in Copenhagen and plan to celebrate with some bubbles and in good company.
Together with my colleagues in DANWISE I have written a column in Nature’s Career section.
During the COVID-19 situation, everyone working from home – men and women - are trying to balance work duties with household and care duties. But, with women classically devoting significantly more time to these duties, the increased responsibilities are likely to exacerbate the gender inequality we see in female funding success rates in academia.
DANWISE wanted to learn if the lockdown really had a greater impact on female researchers than on their male counterparts and distributed a survey at University of Copenhagen. Our results seem to support what we initially thought, that childcare obligations are threatening the recent advances we’ve seen towards gender equality for female researchers in Denmark.
In the column, we argue that now, more than ever, it is important to make sure that female academics’ careers are not impeded by the long-term cumulative impacts of childcare, caregiving and service-related work. We present a number of initiatives that could be implemented by Universities and funding agencies to create a better gender balance, ensuring that the leaky pipeline for female researchers does not turn into a firehose.
Obviously, everyone is impacted by the covid-19 situation. It’s a challenging time for all, and many people are suffering and are impacted much more, than we are. But we decided three weeks ago, that the wisest decision was to move from Boulder, CO back to Denmark. Our son’s school would likely remain closed throughout the school year. So, 10 days ago - late March, we landed in Copenhagen. We had to pack our entire house down and say bye to dear friends and colleagues in such a short time. It was a hard decision, but we realized after having spoken to the Danish Foreign Ministry, that it was wisest of us to move back.
So, now we’re self-isolating in wonderful calm surroundings in a summer house outside of Copenhagen. Looking forward to seeing friends and all of our family again, once things calm down a bit more.
And so starts a new chapter…
Photo: David H. Ottosen
I’m very excited to announce that I’ve received a ‘Research Infrastructure’ grant from the Carlsbergfoundation for the project InSAND.
The project 'InSAND: Including Indigenous Perspectives in Emerging Greenlandic Resource Exploration’ will obtain a unique dataset to provide valuable inputs and opinions from the Arctic people themselves about the new and potentially promising road to prosperity; by establishing a sand mining industry.
The proposed idea of Greenland as a sand-exporting country has gotten widespread attention, and the further process has happened fast, but no efforts to include the perspectives of Greenlanders on sand mining have been made as of yet.
With a ‘Research Infrastructure’ grant from the Carlsberg Foundation, I am able to give the Greenlanders an opportunity to share their perspectives on what may be a determining factor for their future and their country’s economy.
In a rapidly changing Arctic, where geopolitical interests are many and strong, it is essential to directly include and engage the local voices when discussing future ways to prosperity.
In September, I got an invitation to do an interview with Mayday magazine - a Copenhagen-based magazine focusing whos “experiment is to be words, visuals, sounds and software created by curious people pushing that state of mind. Our focus is to tell the stories of the great, unpredictable and, most of all, troublesome times we live in, hoping that doing so will help orient us in the midst of the changes wrought by the future.”
The issue launched on November 1, and the conversation is featured alongside some cool artists and creative thinkers.
Read the Q&A HERE
Published on Valentine’s Day earlier this year, what better date to share Lars’ and my experience of being a couple in academia.
We talked with Nature’s Career Editor David Payne about being parents and husband and wife while working together as colleagues. Our situation is also in some ways challenging, as Lars is affiliated with Arizona State and I work at University of Colorado, Boulder. We live in Boulder, Colorado with our five year old son. This means that Lars travels roughly once a month for a short week’s time to Tempe, Arizona.
I know quite a few people in Academia, who have partners in other states, sometimes even in other countries. It’s hard, and there are many ways to work around this - everyone’s different and there sure is no right way of dealing with this. In the article, we describe our situation and how we’ve chosen to balance everything.
You can read it HERE
Is excellence in Science a man’s domain?
My colleagues in DANWISE (Danish Society for Women in Science) and I have articulated the need for a better gender balance in academia in Nature as a response to a News Feature article in Nature ‘Science in Europe: by the numbers’
Denmark is among the world’s leading scientific countries in terms of output, citations and funding but its gender balance in science lags embarrassingly behind that in many other European Union countries.
Given the generally high level of equality in Denmark, and some of the best provisions in the world for parental leave and child-care it is alarming that Denmark is still so far behind other EU countries. Danish women constitute significantly less of the professor population, secure less of the larger grants, and constitute a smaller proportion of members of national academies. As an example, between 20-30% of money allocated by Danish funding bodies are received by women.
All these metrics and indices are highly influential in securing the move up the career ladder. Consequently, there is a clear waste of potential, especially since women make up +50% of the graduate student population but only 20% remain at the professor level.
Scientific excellence should not only be a matter of ranking high and having high citation impacts. Only by incorporating women at equal levels to men, true scientific excellence is created.
I am proud to have written this piece and to be a part of DANWISE.
On July 4th, Nature published our Comment ‘Time is running out for sand’.
I really like how this piece came to life; At AGU2018 in Washington, I met Chris Hackney, who is at the University of Hull. He presented his work on sand mining in the Mekong delta on a poster in a session, I hadn’t visited if he hadn’t tweeted about it (hint: twitter is an excellent source to communicate your work!).
I was so excited about his work and excited to see at least one other person among AGU’s 28.000 participants interested in the problem related to the global sand crisis. We met again a few days later as I presented a poster on ‘The promises and Perils of sand exploitation in Greenland’, and decided to stay in touch after AGU.
With Lars Lønsmann Iversen from Arizona State joining in on our brainstorm on how to go further with this work, we Skype’d a few times over Christmas and in the first weeks of January. We quickly realized that there was extremely little data on sand mining and that no global overview of actual numbers on sand dredging exists. So, what to do? We asked Jim Best from University of Illinios if he wanted to work with us on the project, and decided we had to write a call for action - this piece that’s now published as a Comment.
Our hope is, that it will spark interest and gain the attention from peers, this global problem so desperately needs.
Read more about our work on the global sandcrisis HERE