FEATURED FELLOW: DEREK FORD
Derek Ford has spent more than 40 years exploring caves. He is a physical geographer and environmental geologist specializing in geomorphology and hydrogeology, or the study of water flowing through rocks and soils. His specialty is karst, landforms such as sinkholes at the surface and systems of caves underground and their associated groundwater flow systems. Ford, a professor at Mcmaster University in Hamilton, Ont., from 1959 until 2009, has travelled across Canada and around the world to study such topography.
On his passion for cave exploration
It’s the thrill of wanting to know what’s ’round the next corner. When I was still a schoolboy, my companion and I went down a particular cave where you had to dive underwater, just a short distance at one point. We came up into a beautiful cave. I went into an area of white stalactites and stalagmites. I was up to my waist in cold water before I realized I had even stepped into water, it was so clear and still, absolutely beautiful.
On the evolution of hydrology during his career
It’s bittersweet. There are a lot more people studying caves. There’s a vastly improved understanding of the flow of water in soluble rocks. But still, the main hydrogeologist fields rely on explanations that can be fitted into equations with many functions. They build models for the physical flow of the water, for the chemical uptake of dissolved rock as the water flows through it. They do these beautiful models, but they are too dogmatic. Although I’ve worked all my life in karst, it’s still difficult to persuade the general public to worry about things that you cannot approach with simple mathematical models, simple sets of assumptions.
On his work today
I spend a lot of time helping people to get their research published. Every scientist, young or old, who wants to succeed has to publish in the English language — it’s the language of science today. So, I help people from all over the world publish their work in English. At the moment, I’m helping young Chinese and Iranian researchers.
On his career achievements
I’m very proud of my work with national parks. I helped create a number of them in Canada. It took 35 years to get Nahanni National Park Reserve expanded. I wrote a letter about expanding it to prime minister Pierre Trudeau in 1974 and the expansion took place in 2009, so you do the arithmetic. And I proposed a whole new one in the Mackenzie Mountains in the Northwest Territories that hasn’t happened yet. Contributing to the general theory of the way solution caves (the most frequently occurring type of cave, usually formed in soluble limestone) are created is another achievement I am very proud of. I’m the guy that the youngsters want to knock off his pedestal. But I don’t think they’ve done it yet.