Robin McKillop

I was a grade 11 student sitting in my highschool's counselling office, trying to determine what to do with my life. I knew I wanted to go to university, but I had no idea what I would like to study. So, there I was, flipping through university calendars, I guess hoping that all the courses and degrees that best suited me would be in bold print or something. Then I saw it: "Geography 408: Snow and Ice Processes." I read the description of the course several times. You can take a course on this kind of topic? Apparently you could. And from that day on, I was very enthusiastic about pursuing a degree in Physical Geography.

I completed my B.Sc. in Physical Geography at UBC in May 2001. Two weeks before even finishing my course work, I was hired at a consulting firm in North Vancouver called Northwest Hydraulic Consultants (nhc). For the past two and a half years, I have been working at nhc, assisting in a wide variety of projects. Within the first month, I was pleasantly surprised that many of the theoretical and practical skills I acquired through my undergraduate degree were actually useful, if not essential, in my new job. I carried out extensive air photo analyses of river channel change and sediment sources in mountain watersheds within BC; I performed regional hydrologic analyses for several proposed "small hydro" projects in the province; and I surveyed large agricultural drainage networks in the Fraser Valley, combining traditional survey methods with centimetre-accuracy GPS surveying.

After two years of work, I realized that my curiosity for geoscience was only growing stronger. I wanted to go back to school and pursue a Master's degree related somehow to mountain hazards. Since field school at UBC, debris flows have always been of particular interest to me. I carefully developed a project on the modes of sediment accumulation in recently torrented steep mountain channels. After submitting several scholarship applications, based on this proposed research, I began reconsidering my research interests.

Unlike in other regions such as the Himalaya and the Andes, I noticed no comprehensive study had been done on the distribution of moraine-dammed lakes in BC. Furthermore, I began noticing undocumented moraine-dammed lakes while hiking and mountaineering in the southern Coast Mountains. One evening, while watching the local news, I saw John Clague on television, with a caption below his name which read, "Simon Fraser University Professor". I didn't realize he was a prof! Shortly thereafter, I was happily registered as an M.Sc. student in Earth Sciences at SFU.

Over the next two years, I will be studying moraine-dammed lakes in the southern Coast Mountains of BC. Based on previously documented outburst flood events from moraine-dammed lakes, extensive air photo interpretation, and field observation, I will be creating an inventory of all moraine-dammed lakes between Vancouver and Bella Coola. In addition, I will develop a framework for more consistently assessing the failure potential of moraine-dammed lakes. In the end, I hope to assign a qualitative or semi-quantitative hazard rating to each of the identified lakes.

Education

B.Sc., Physical Geography 2001 University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C.

For more information, please send e.mail to: rmckillop@gartnerlee.com