Early Career Spotlight

Odin Marc


Tell us about yourself:

My name is Odin Marc, I am a 31 year-old geoscientist, mountain and outdoor lover, with a (not so) secret passion for anticapitalism. My undergraduate was done in France, with visiting periods at the National Taiwan University, in Taipei, and Caltech, in California. Then I zig-zagged across European borders for a few years, with a PhD in Germany at the GFZ-Potsdam first, then a post-doc in Strasbourg, back in France and a second one in Switzerland at the ETH-Zurich before I eventually nested in a permanent position as a junior researcher at CNRS, in Toulouse.

What is your research about?

My main focus is on landslide processes and their consequences for natural hazard and geomorphology. For example I am trying to understand how many landslides (and to some extent where and when) will occur in a landscape affected by an earthquake or a large storm. In practice I am trying to combine remote-sensing data to constrain the characteristics of landslide populations (sometimes tens of thousands), and relate them to topographic characteristics of the landscape and seismological or meteorological constraints on the trigger. Then I strive to integrate this understanding to longer timescales to understand how erosion and sediment flux will respond to different scenario of seismic or climatic event. More recently I also started to focus on how landslide and debris-flow were involved in the formation and carving of the upstream part of bedrock channels, with implications for landscape evolution and tectonic geomorphology.

What excites you about your research?

I think what I like the most about research is the effort of theoretical development, when you try to find a consistent way to explain a number of observations, with some physical framework that should hold for future data and could then be applied for some predictions. There is nothing better than realizing, after having thought for a while about why some data points were not following a theoretical predictions, that these outliers needed some corrections (from a typo in the data table, to a physical discrepancy relative to the rest of the dataset), and that in the end the physical model was correct. In addition, I also love the fact that, as a geomorphologist, many physical questions are at the interface of various (geo-)physical fields, meteorology, seismology, fluid and solid mechanics. That means we can (or must?) be interdisciplinary throughout our work, while still having the chance to work on natural objects and processes that we can observe with naked eyes and also describe easily to non-scientist.

What broader importance does your research have for society?

A lot of my work is trying to improve how we understand landslide and how we can more robustly forecast them, at least in a statistic and probabilistic sense. Therefore, better relating landslides to intense rainfall event or earthquakes has direct and obvious implications for forecasting and managing a hazard, that is an omnipresent issues for countries such as Taiwan, Nepal and Japan but also in various regions of the US or Italy.

What inspired you to pursue a career in Earth Science?

Surprisingly, it was originally a strong childhood fascination for paleontology that pushed me to a scientific high school and then to studies in Geoscience. However, throughout my studies I was still uncertain on which aspect of the Earth Science to focus, and it is actually my time at Caltech as a visiting student, doing a research internship with Mike Lamb and his group that made me sure I wanted to stick to Earth surface processes.

What are you looking to do after you complete your PhD?

Given I have recently accepted a permanent researcher position; I can’t say anymore that it is my plan and hope. So, now the plan is shifting to trying to keep doing some good science, while developing activity more related to political action in a broad sense. So I am interested to see what could be done in part through secondary scientific activity, like serving as an expert for decision or policy makers, participating in outreach projects with broad implications or collaborating with social scientists.

Given unlimited funding and access to resources, what is your dream project that you would pursue?

Tough questions! We have learned a lot from comparing surface processes before and after recent earthquakes, like the 1999 Chi-Chi and 2008 Wenchuan, but using only existing and sparse data. This motivated us and others to deploy instruments and do repeat measurements after the Nepal 2015 earthquake, but still many questions remain. One project could be to set up a sort of mobile observatory that could be deployed in medium scale catchments to measure and monitor changes in catchment behavior following large perturbation such as earthquakes, but also extreme rainfall events (and associated landslides and floods). After such event the idea would be to go and install a large number of seismometers (to monitor material property changes in the subsurface, and track river and debris flow activity), river and rain gauges (to constrain rainfall forcing, hydrological response and if possible chemical fluxes), and then do a number of field surveys on a regular basis to track landscape recovery after the perturbation (such as Lidar flight to see topographic changes, geotechnical testing of soil and rock, grain size characterization, ADCP).

What else do you do? Any hobbies or interests outside of work?

Sure, as said from the start I also love to be in the mountains, if possible in airy places, doing climbing or mountaineering but also hiking or backcountry skiing. When I am not outdoor, I like listening to Jazz (crazy Jazz according to some friends), and reading books, especially social science or political essays to help me think about alternative society models. With my permanent researcher position, I also really want to spend some more time and efforts on political (in a broad sense) actions toward a deep societal transition that I consider needed for many reasons (not only climate change). So in the last months I have been translating (from French to English) an original and inspiring essay, describing in detail institutions of a utopia, the Misarchy, a society in which a variety of institutions enhance freedom and limit power abuses. So keep posted, it will go online at some point next year!

 

Find out more about Odin’s research at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Odin_Marc

 

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In the picture, Odin is standing on a recent landslide deposit in Taiwan, preparing to perform a grain-size count to understand what controls the grain-size distribution of landslides. Photo credit: A Schöpa.