After Costa Rica, I spent 2 days in Seattle then promptly went to Minneapolis for the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics (NCED)'s Summer Institute on Earth-surface Dynamics (SIESD). It was completely fluvially-geared, but it did feel good to know that I still know a thing or two about rivers and not just ice. I also learned more about ecology than I ever thought I would. There is a lab there, the St. Anthony Fall's Lab, which has a billion flumes and an outdoor stream lab, so a lot of work on sediment transport, ecology, dam removal, and so on takes place. The sediment transport stuff was really interesting because that's what I thought I'd go into when I was an undergrad working in the granular physics lab. So, that was cool to see what people were doing with it.
I didn't take any pictures here, as I didn't have my camera, but it was a cool experience. Minneapolis was much less flat than I expected (I had Chicago-like expectations), and the thunderstorms were amazing. Apparently, there was a possible tornado downtown while we were there, but I didn't see it. The other participants in the course were great people, and it was a much more diverse mix of people and interests than I'm used to at workshops and things, as there were engineers, straight-up fluvial geomorphologists, ecologists, and the random glaciologist. This was a good, if not intense (8:30-5:30/6 of lectures for about 8/10 days and no off days!), short course, and I really do like to keep myself grounded in the world of geomorphology, as glaciology can get really model/theory heavy, and this was just so darn practical.
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