Growing Environmental Engineers | Ursula Salmon | TEDxFulbrightPerth

Work with lakes, soils, forests, groundwater, ecosystems! - Come on a journey through the excruciating, exhilarating, and empowering bits of being an environmental engineer. Environmental science is increasingly being translated into computer models, which are then used to predict environmental impacts and guide management decisions. However, no model is perfect! - we need to convince as many brains as possible to choose to OWN the mathematics, to be able to both help make better models and rigorously assess them. Along the way there will be stories of nerdy joy at the little things. Ursula is working towards “creating an army”, particularly around environmental water quality and quantity. After a Chemical Engineering undergrad exchange to Sweden, Ursula stayed on to do a PhD on the environmental impact of mining, and has worked on environmental systems ever since. Projects have included the drought-driven acidification of coastal lakes,
how "new" lakes will evolve, and how reactions in soils can impact groundwater and buried infrastructure. Her Fulbright project involved modelling environmental isotopes (e.g., 14C) in groundwater, including the effect of sea level change by ~120m over the last 40,000 y, to assess paleoclimate and improve water resource management tools. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx