Friday, 26 December 2014

Peat fires and carbon loss

Together with co-authors in Canada, US, UK and Netherlands, we have just published a progress article in Nature Geoscience (vol 8, 2014) on the carbon losses from peat fires: Global vulnerability of peatlands to fire and carbon loss.

Ssmouldering combustion of dry peat.Available at Imaggeo.

In the paper we review how fire is a threat to the naturally stored carbon in peatlands and has the potential to drastically disturb the carbon stocks. While dry peat is a very flammable substance because it is a porous and carbon-rich, the amount of carbon stored in peatlands exceeds that stored in vegetation globally. Peat fires are dominated by smouldering combustion, which is ignited more readily than flaming combustion but is more difficult to suppress. In fact smouldering fires can persist deeper and in much wetter conditions than flaming fires. In very wet or flooded peatlands, most of the carbon stock typically is protected from smouldering, and resistance to fire has led to a build-up of peat carbon storage in boreal and tropical regions over long timescales. But drying as a result of climate and human activity (eg, drainage) lowers the water table and increases the frequency, depth and extent of peat fires. The combustion of deep peat affects older soil carbon that has not been part of the carbon cycle for centuries to millennia, and thus dictates how fire emissions affect the carbon cycle and feedbacks to the climate.

Monday, 22 December 2014

Fin's and Candle's Creative Contests

Engineering can be the most creative profession, but we engineers are in general not the best communicators nor the best at appreciating arts. These are not really topics of interest in Engineering Schools around the world.
Sir John O'Reilly said it better during the 2014 Mountbatten Lecture at the Royal Institution, "Engineers should embrace the arts as being key to creativity and an important component of innovation, crucial to creating new products and boosting future competitiveness". Sir John is also proposing to change STEM to STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and maths) and he has my support.

I always want to build on this and encourage somehow my students' motivation on communications and the arts. So this year, again, I started the academic year with Creative Contests for each my courses at Imperial College: ME2 Heat Transfer and ME4 Combustion. The instructions to participate were the following: "I have three extra copies of the textbook to give away. If interested, send me a poem, comic, drawing, painting, song, video, or anything creative that explains why you are taking this course. Art, wit and humour are allowed, even encouraged". I show below the submissions; congratulations to the winners (I wish an extensive use your new awarded textbooks).

2014 Fin's Creative Contest in ME2 Heat Transfer:

I was the sole jury and found three winners (the first three shown here), each received a hard copy of Incropera's Foundations of Heat Transfer. These are the submissions:

Instrumental composition written and played by Daniel (note: the piano stands for convection in water, the mandolin for an insulator and the djembe for conductive material)

The Infamous Microwave problem drawn by Riyadh

Roses are red written by Daniel

Heat Transfer poem written by Sofie

The Phoenix painted by Johan

Cold hands and feet written by Rob

There was once a man called Guillermo written by Thomas

Who needs to learn Heat Transfer? drawn by Adrian

Heat Transfer Hits Volume 1 collected by Hisham

Letter to Incropera written by Anni

2014 Candle's Creative Contest in ME4 Combustion

I asked the class to be the jury via a Memtimeter survey and they found three winners (the first three shown here), who got a hardcopy of McAllister's Fundamentals of Combustion Processes. The three runners up (following three submission) got a copy of Faraday's Chemical History of a Candle. These are the submissions:

Tournament website created by Sven