Workshops, Mentoring, and Peer Review Services

Duration: 2 hours, with discussion

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this workshop, you will be able to:

• Identify common pitfalls and practices in reporting that impede readability or clear understanding

• Evaluate different alternatives for presenting information and data

• Consider the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches, and the situations in which each might be most appropriate, and

• Identify changes you can implement to make your own reports clearer and more readable

Synopsis

Presenting data and information can be challenging, but there are some relatively simple changes you can make to your reports today, to make them more readable, clearer, and easier to understand. You can learn to reflect on and constructively critique the clarity of your own work, too, , so that report writing becomes a process of continuous improvement. In this workshop, we will discuss common pitfalls in reporting that make contaminated land reports and monitoring reports more difficult to read and interpret. Then, we will consider alternative strategies for presenting data and information. Along the way, you will get small but effective tips and tricks for making better graphs and visuals, and for decreasing ambiguity in your writing.

The most important part of the workshop, though, is the time we will spend constructively critiquing your own reports, so you come out of the workshop with concrete ideas that can have immediate positive impacts on your work.

(NOTE: Prior to the workshop, please provide example reports you would like to discuss. The more complicated, the better—we will work through the examples together!)

Duration:4 hours, with discussion (2 hour version available, with content delivery focus)

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this workshop, you will be able to:

• Describe different classes of contaminants, and the processes that control the mobility of each type of contaminant

• Contrast different contaminant retention processes and their environmental significance

• Identify the most important factors controlling retention processes and contaminant mobility, and

• Interpret data in light of your understanding of the dominant processes likely to be causing the observed behaviour

Synopsis

Most people are taught that “opposites attract”—for example, that negatively-charged soil particles attract positively-charged ions in water. While this does occur, and can be important, much of the time the environmental reality is that positively-charged contaminants bind to positively-charged surfaces, and negatively-charged contaminants can even bind to negatively-charged surfaces! It turns out, the “opposites attract” concept is much too simplistic to explain the behaviour we observe at the soil-water interface. And what about precipitation of solids from solution, or dissolution of solids into solution?

In this workshop, we will discuss sorption mechanisms (adsorption/desorption and precipitation/dissolution) for different classes of contaminants, such as priority trace elements (arsenic, chromium, lead) and organic contaminants (poycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, PFAS). Along the way we will touch on other common contaminants like nutrients (nitrate, ammonia) and other elements (sodium, calcium, aluminium). We will discuss sorption processes from a molecular-scale perspective, and what the implications of those molecular-scale processes are for field-scale observations.

If you have specific reports or draft reports you would like to discuss in the workshop, we can incorporate them into the discussion. That way, you can come out of the workshop with specific, actionable insights to aid you in data interpretation.

Duration:4 hours, with case studies and practice (2-3 hour version available)

NOTE: You will need to install Visual MINTEQ (it’s free) on your computer for this workshop

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this workshop, you will be able to:

• Consider chemical equilibria in the context of soil and water interactions, using Visual MINTEQ

• Explain the importance of solution speciation in contaminant mobility

• Demonstrate the effects of processes such as dissolution and solution complexation on contaminant speciation and mobility, and

• Understand some of the limitations of chemical equilibrium modeling with programs such as Visual MINTEQ

Synopsis

One powerful and often overlooked tool in the contaminated land practitioner’s toolbox is software that calculates chemical equilibria, such as Visual MINTEQ. Chemical equilibrium modeling can help to explain the prevalence of different contaminant species in solution, which is useful because contaminant speciation plays a crucial role in determining the mobility of contaminants. Chemical equilibrium modeling can also help to quantify the effects of processes like complexation and dissolution (which can increase contaminant mobility) or precipitation (which can decrease mobility). In this course, we will cover the theoretical concepts behind chemical equilibrium, and how it applies to the processes of precipitation, dissolution, and complexation. Then, we will use the Visual MINTEQ software to explore and discuss several practical scenarios, based on real examples. And finally, we will discuss the limitations of chemical equilibrium modeling—when you can use it as a line of evidence, and when you probably shouldn’t.

And, if you have specific reports or draft reports you would like to discuss in the workshop, and they are illustrations of good use cases for Visual MINTEQ, I would be happy to incorporate them. In that case, you can come out of the workshop with tangible results to aid you in interpreting and explaining the observations in your report.

Duration:4 hours, with case studies and discussion (2 hour version available)

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this workshop, you will be able to:

• Describe the ways in which low-oxygen environments alter the processes that control the mobility of different contaminants

• Contrast the changes that occur in dynamic systems when oxygen low-oxygen conditions develop, or when oxygen becomes available

• Identify the main contaminants that are impacted by changes in oxygen availability, and

• Consider the implications of redox processes on all aspects of your practice, from site assessment to sampling

Synopsis

Oxygen availability is one of the most important factors affecting the mobility of some very common and important contaminants in Aotearoa New Zealand—and one of the most overlooked. Manganese, arsenic, and chromium are three of the priority contaminants whose mobility in groundwater is profoundly affected by oxygen availability. But those aren’t the only ones! A host of other priority contaminants can be released in low-oxygen environments (and some, like chromium, are actually less mobile).

The trouble is, even many experienced practitioners are not aware of the biogeochemical changes that are driven by redox shifts in the subsurface, and so they don’t know what to look for, or when to look for it. Junior staff who are out sampling might also not know what to watch for.

This workshop is about raising awareness: awareness of how common it is to have low-oxygen conditions in groundwater, awareness around what to watch for when in the field, awareness of what contaminants are mobilised, and awareness of what can happen when a plume of low-oxygen groundwater is oxygenated (like when it drains into a stream!) You will almost assuredly start to see signs of low-oxygen conditions in your work, and your new awareness just might change how you interpret your data.

Duration: 2-3 hours, intended as a follow-on from Redox Processes

Learning Objectives

Still in development, more information coming soon!

Synopsis

Still in development, more information coming soon!

Duration: variable, as needed or as scheduled

About Peer Mentoring and Peer Review

Do you have junior staff who could benefit from an outside perspective? Are you a sole practitioner who could benefit from a colleague to discuss your ideas with, or to review your work? I would be happy to help.

What I Can Offer

• Decades of experience in mentoring

• Strong theoretical and practical grounding in contaminant fate and transport, chemistry, and environmental statistics

• Hundreds of reports reviewed (probably over a thousand, but it’s hard to say exactly)

• Flexible scheduling

• Favourable pricing—whether I’m mentoring your junior staff, discussing things with you, or peer reviewing your work, the cost will be lower than your hourly rate for higher-value tasks, increasing your return on investment

• Strict confidentiality