matthew hughes

I was a volunteer Fire Fighter in the township of Lincoln, Canterbury, New Zealand. My duties consisted of general fire fighting including fire attack and pump operation, motor vehicle accident and other rescue, first aid and community education.

For several months, under the auspices of ICRISAT and an affiliated NGO (the M. Venkatarangaya Foundation), I conducted a baseline socio-economic survey of landholders in an agrarian village in Andhra Pradesh, India. The study was preliminary to introduction of improved soil and water conservation practises, new cropping techniques and introduction of new crop varieties, and provided a benchmark against which future economic and material improvements could be measured. The study was published in an internal ICRISAT document (see Publications below).

I am a volunteer Fire Fighter in the seaside village of Sumner, Christchurch, New Zealand. My duties consist of general fire fighting including fire attack and pump operation, motor vehicle accident and other rescue, first aid and community education.

I conducted research on the effects of the Canterbury earthquakes on the infrastructure of Christchurch City, and modelled liquefaction risk, investigated how ground movements such as liquefaction and lateral spreading have impacted the city's underground water networks, which will assist in disaster recovery and long-term urban planning. I also contribut to revised liquefaction hazard models for Christchurch, which will also inform hazard modelling throughout New Zealand.

In my time with Edanz Group Ltd I was mainly a scientific copyeditor, helping Chinese and Japanese scientists revise their manuscripts to an appropriate level of English for submission to journals. I also checked that responses to peer reviewers' comments were appropriate, and provided advice on figure and map presentation. In late 2010 I spent several weeks at the Beijing office, where in addition to editing I ran workshops and seminars for Chinese researchers on technical writing in English. Below are five blog posts from that time.

* At AECOM I conducted projects which involved: soil mapping and environmental impact assessments for mine expansion, coal seam gas pipeline infrastructure, and Defence Force range management * landscape analysis for determination of contamination origins * water balance modelling for mine management * aquatic ecosystem quality assessment in the context of ANZECC guidelines * production of soil resource information material for local government * reporting on petroleum land contamination * and community liaison for sustainable housing projects. I was also the Environment representative on the Research and Development Subcommittee within AECOM Australia's Innovation and Technology Council.

For one semester I was course coordinator of and lecturer in an undergraduate course entitled Global Environmental Issues, which addressed topics such as energy use, population growth, water and land use change issues, urbanisation and climate change. For the entire year I ran the undergraduate and postgraduate courses for Geographic Information Systems, which addressed issues of data management, spatial analysis, modelling and GIS project management.