Khumbu Glaciers facebook page

While on fieldwork in the Khumbu Himal (full disclosure: in fact while sitting in the excellent Danphe bar in Namche), Costanza and I were chatting to local residents (the barman Jack and his friends) about the best way to disseminate information about the research of the numerous glacier scientists working in the area.

I was talking about the website I set up to try and create a shared archive of the ongoing and past projects in the region (which I blogged about before), and I was basically laughed at, and told no one looks at boring websites anymore, and it all has to be on Facebook.

Well, it would be rude to have this conversation and not do anything in response, so I then went ahead and made a Facebook page for any scientist working on glaciers in the Khumbu Himal to use. Basically, everyone on our shared khumbuglaciers@gmail.com account was given access to the Facebook password and can upload their own outreach material there.

For example here is a post by Sarah Thompson:

fb_post_Ngozumpa

The website and Facebook page are actually dual purpose:  (1) Now that so many scientists are working on glaciers in this region, its not uncommon for multiple groups to be carrying out overlapping research without knowing it, so by posting project on the website and activities and results on the Facebook page, scientists can see what each other are up to and minimise unnecessary overlap while maximising added value that can be generated through collaboration and data sharing. I love this stuff as I think executors of publicly funded science have a duty to use the money as efficiently as possible to reap maximum output and benefit. (2) The Facebook page can serve as a single dissemination stream that can be used by all the glaciologists working in the area, so interested residents or visitors need only check out one, collectively controlled, source for the latest information.

The current participants are those listed on the twin website and we would be delighted to accept new participants – just send an email to khumbuglaciers@gmail.com, or a message to the Facebook page!

About lindsey

Environmental scientist. I am glaciologist specialising in glacier-climate interactions to better understand the climate system. The point of this is to understand how glaciated envionments might change in the future - how the glaciers will respond and what the impact on associated water resources and hazard potential will be.
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