Beverley Coldwell

Background

About Beverley Coldwell

I am a geologist by training and I´ve applied my knowledge and skills to several sectors including industrial, public and academic. I hold a PhD focussed on the geochemistry of volcanic products in the Andean mountain chain, then started with characterisation of hundreds of thin sections at the Natural History Museum for a minerals consortium. I´ve investigated source characteristics of magmas both through data manipulation and physical (HPHT) experiments, classified meteorites, and directed a small business in the Australian minerals industry incorporating multidisciplinary data synthesis, field geology, and managing client impact groups. I have also applied my analytical and research background to developing housing planning policy, and to forecast demand for specialist types of housing e.g. homeless persons, older persons, or to investigate the costs of implementing carbon neutral policies. My current role is in a government-funded environmental division in Tenerife, Canary Islands (Spain), performing geological science for direct public need. The recent eruption on La Palma demonstrated the importance of our regular scientific reporting, allowing public health and safety policies to be updated daily. I also run an isotope geochemistry facility with a TIMS and associated clean-lab, on a range of projects including wines, groundwaters, soils and rocks. Isotopic compositions are used for provenance, tracing inputs, and to combat fraud in the agricultural industry, as well as traditional geochemical studies on volcanological provinces. I regularly perform volcano-related fieldwork, from groundwater collection to fumerole gas collection, to soil sampling. Other ongoing research directions include palaeo-environmental problems of impacts events, and ash particle shape influences on pathologies.