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Wildfires are no longer natural events. Throughout most of the world, fires are being set by humans to clear land for farming or hunting. As a scientist I’m really interested in this because these fires are another form of pollution. The smoke from these fires contains greenhouse gases and lots of other nasty gases that can cause people to have breathing difficulties, or in the worst cases, it can cause people to die. My job is to measure these gases so that we can understand their impacts on our climate and our health.

My days are split between the office (a bit boring but essential), the lecture theatre (where I teach), the lab (where I burn stuff), and the great outdoors (where I also burn stuff).

The most exciting days are spent doing fieldwork. My work has taken me to the Rocky Mountains in Canada, to the outback of Australia and to the rainforests of Borneo. A typical day in the field might be spent setting up equipment, making measurements of the weather, packing up equipment, and occasionally we will actually burn a small patch of forest or bushland. The fires are well controlled and a lot of effort is made to ensure that the fires do not get out of control and burn more than a small patch of land. In the next two photos, you can see what a typical day in the field might look like:

A typical day in the lab is usually spent setting up equipment, and then setting fire to some soil (peat) and waiting a long time for it to finish burning! Whilst the soil is burning, we suck the smoke into a scientific instrument that can tell us what gases are in the smoke. In this photo you can see me trying to ignite some soil using a blow torch!

Whilst the fieldtrips and lab days can be fun, I do spend a lot of my time in my office. This time might be spent analysing data collected in the field and in the lab, but also writing reports about my findings. It’s very important to write about your work, so that others can learn and build on your findings.