SandClub - Journal club at McGill

SandClub is a transdisciplinary journal and discussion club at McGill focusing on global sand resources and how they shape the world we are living in. On this page you can find an overview of past meetings and upcoming events.

We discuss both new and classic research papers related to aggregate resources, including (but not limited to) global sand scarcity, health and environmental impacts of sand mining activities and the future for urban development. We review research papers and proposals, and we hear from students working on sand-related topics.

SandClub is an open forum held as a discussion club where  everybody is welcome to participate. It is co-hosted by the Bendixen lab (Department of Geography) and the Iversen lab (Department of Biology).

If you have questions related to the journal club, please reach out to Assistant Professor Lars Iversen.

We meet 4:00 pm triweekly on Thursdays in Burnside Hall, Room 429 - next is April 4, 2024

Please email me and I’ll send you the link to the sign up sheet for registering your attendance.

Upcoming SandClubs:

April 4: We will be brainstorming the upcoming GEOG438/BIOL438 course in 2025 taught by Prof Bendixen and Prof Iversen and students will give inputs to the syllabus

Examples of previous SandClub topics:

2024

SandClub #22: Workathon - Sand and NLP project led by PhD student Nakiya Noorbhai

SandClub #21: We will be reviewing a manuscript submitted to Nature Sustainability

2023

SandClub #19: Students will present preliminary posters for upcoming conferences

SandClub #17: We will be reviewing a research proposal by Prof. Bendixen & Prof. Iversen which will be submitted in December

SandClub #16: We will be seeing pictures and hearing stories from the field from the students working on sand mining

SandClub #15: We will be reviewing a manuscript submitted to Nature Geoscience

SandClub #14: Full day workathon on Canadian Arctic Deltas

SandClub #13: Students working on sand will present their work (honors students and 'Independent Research Students'

SandClub #12: We will be reviewing a manuscript submitted to Extractive Industries and Society

2022

SandClub #9: We will read Moser, S., & Avery, E. (2021). The multi-scalar politics of urban greening in Forest City, Malaysia. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 60, 127068 and Prof. Moser will come present the article and her work

SandClub #8: We will read Sengupta et al. 2020 Gaining or losing ground? Tracking Asia's hunger for ‘new’coastal land in the era of sea level rise. Science of the Total Environment.

SandClub #7: We will read Nienhuis, J. H., Ashton, A. D., Edmonds, D. A., Hoitink, A. J. F., Kettner, A. J., Rowland, J. C., & Törnqvist, T. E. (2020). Global-scale human impact on delta morphology has led to net land area gain. Nature, 577(7791), 514-518. pdf

SandClub #6: We will read Causes and effects of coastal sand mining in Ghana. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 18(1), 69-88. pdf and discuss a conceptual figure proposed by PhD student Nakiya Noorbhai.

SandClub #1: Introduction to SandClub. (Background reading: Bendixen, M., Iversen, L. L. Et al. (2021): Sand, gravel, and UN Sustainable Development Goals: Conflicts, synergies, and pathways forward. One Earth, 4(8), 1095-1111. pdf)