The department was awarded an Athena Silver SWAN Department Award and welcomes four new post-doctoral research asssociates this month.

Publications

van de Flierdt, T., Pahnke, K., and GEOTRACES intercalibration participants: H. Amakawa, P.Andersson, C. Basak, B. Coles, C. Colin, K. Crocket, M. Frank, N. Frank, S. L. Goldstein, V. Goswami, B.A. Haley, E.C. Hathorne, S.R. Hemming, G M.Henderson, C. Jeandel, K. Jones, K. Kreissig, F. Lacan, M. Lambelet, E.E. Martin, D.R. Newkirk, H. Obata, L. Pena, A.M. Piotrowski, C. Pradoux, H.D. Scher, H. Schöberg, S. Kumar Singh,T. Stichel, H. Tazoe, D.Vance, and J. Yang (2012), GEOTRACES intercalibration of neodymium isotopes and rare earth element concentrations in seawater and suspended particulates – Part 1: international intercomparison. Limnology and Oceanography, Methods. doi: 10.4319/lom.2012.10.234. Article available online.

Pahnke, K., van de Flierdt, T., Jones, K., Lambelet, M., Hemming, S., Goldstein, S. (2012), GEOTRACES intercalibration of neodymium isotopes and rare earth element concentrations in seawater and suspended particulates – Part 2: systematic tests and baseline profiles. Limnology and Oceanography, Methods. doi: 10.4319/lom.2012.10.252. Article available online.

Tauxe, L., Stickley, C., Sugisaki, S., Bijl, P., Bohaty, S., Brinkhuis, H., Escutia, C., Flores, J.-A., Iwai, M. Jiménez-Espejo, F., McKay, R., Passchier, S., Pross, J. Riesselman, C., Roehl, U., Sangiorini, F., Welsh, K., Klaus, A., Fehr, A., Bendle, J., Dunbar, R., Gonzalez, J., Hayden, T., Olney, M., Pekar, S., Shrivastava, P., van de Flierdt, T., Williams, T., Yamane, M. (2012), Chronostratigraphic framework for the IODP Expedition 318 cores from the Wilkes Land Margin: constraints for paleoceanographic reconstruction. Paleoceanography. doi:10.1029/2012PA002308.Article available online.

Pross, J., Contreras, L., Bijl, P.K., Greenwood, D.R., Bohaty, S.M., Bendle, J.A., Röhl, U., Tauxe, L., Raine, J.I., Huck, C.E., van de Flierdt, T., Jamieson, S.S.R., Stickley, C.E., van de Schootbrugge, B., Schouten, S., Escutia, C., Brinkhuis, H., and IODP Expedition 318 Scientists (2012), Persistent near-tropical warmth on the Antarctic continent during the early Eocene epoch. Nature, doi:10.1038/nature11300. Article available online.

Tanino, Y. (2012)  Water exchange between littoral zone and open lake water, In: Encyclopedia of Lakes and Reservoirs. Editors: Bengtsson, Herschy, Fairbridge. Springer. Abstract and TOC available online.

Avanzinelli, R., Prytulak, J., Skora, S., Heumann, A., Koetsier, G., Elliott, T. 2012. Combined 238U-230Th and 235U-231Pa constraints on the transport of slab-derived material beneath the Mariana Islands.  Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. doi: 10.1016/j.gca.2012.06.020. Article available online.

Almeida, T. P., Fay, M. W., Zhu, Y., Hansen, T. W., Dunin-Borkowski, R., Brown, P. D. (2012) Environmental TEM investigation of the reduction of ?-Fe2O3 nanorods under H2 atmosphere
Journal of Physics: Conference Series. doi:10.1088/1742-6596/371/1/012049. Article availabloe online.

Almeida, T. P., Fay, M. W., Zhu, Y., Brown, P. D. (2012) Hydrothermal synthesis of mixed cobalt-nickel ferrite nanoparticles. Journal of Physics: Conference Series. doi:10.1088/1742-6596/371/1/012074. Article available online.

Schofield, N., Heaton, L., Holford, S.P., Archer, S.G., Jackson, C.A-L., Jolley, D. (2012) Seismic imaging of 'broken-bridges': linking seismic to outcrop-scale investigations of intrusive magma lobes. Journal of the Geological Society. doi: 10.1144/0016-76492011-150. Article available online.

Leung, C.T.O., Zimmerman, R.W. (2012) Estimating the Hydraulic Conductivity of Two-Dimensional Fracture Networks Using Network Geometric Properties. Transport in Porous Media. doi: 10.1007/s11242-012-9982-3. Article available online.

Go, J., Stegemann, J.A. (2012)  Modelling PAH distribution in aquatic sediments using CoReTranS. Journal of Soil and Sediments. doi: 10.1007/s11368-012-0553-6. Article available online.

Mijic, A., LaForce, T. (2012), Spatially varying fractional flow in radial CO2-brine displacement. Water Resources Research. doi:10.1029/2011WR010961. Article available online.

Kirchofer, A., Brandt, A., Krevor, S., Prigiobbe, V., Wilcox, J., (2012) Impact of alkalinity sources on the life-cycle energy efficiency of mineral carbonation technologies. Energy & Environmental Science. doi:10.1039/c2ee22180b. Article available online.

Awards

Matt Loader was awarded the ESE Graduate Teaching Assistant Award 2012.

Amandine Prelat was awarded the Arthur Holmes Award to give a seminar at the University of Bordeaux in France on her recent research in sedimentology.

The Department has been awarded an Athena Silver SWAN Department Award to recognise and celebrate our good practice in recruiting, retaining and promoting women. This award will be valid until April 2015.

Research Grants

Tina van de Flierdt, Mark Rehkamper and Dominik Weiss won a NERC standard grant of £437,958 to research the biogeochemical cycles of trace elements and their isotopes in seawater.

With Prof. Wyn Williams (University of Edinburgh), Adrian Muxworthy has been awarded a NERC standard grant entitled "Predicting the reliability with which the geomagnetic field can be recorded in igneous rocks". This grant will  enable Trevor Almeida to extend his post-doc position at ESE by a further 2 years.

PhD Vivas

Grace Cairns successfully passed her PhD viva on July 17th. Her supervisors were Lidia Lonergan, Ann Muggeridge and Helmut Jakubowicz. The external examiner was Professor Colin MacBeth of Heriot-Watt, and the internal examiner was Martin Blunt.

New Staff

Phil Mannion, a palaeontologist, joined the department as a PDRA working with Jo Morgan on the Cretaceous / Paleogene boundary.

The LODE research group welcomes Anna Morris who is a new RA working in the LODE laser ablation ICPMS laboratory at the Natural History Museum. The laser and ICPMS are now installed and are currently being tested.

Gareth Brown joined ESE and Life Sciences from the Centre for Environmental Policy on 1st July. He will be seated here in ESE and is working with Prof. Ann Muggeridge (ESE) and Dr. Rob Ewers (Life Sciences) on "A global framework for quantifying the ecosystem service impacts of oil and biofuel production" funded by UKERC and led by the University of Southampton.

Fanny Garel is now working as a post-doc in the department with Rhodri Davies and Saskia Goes on the dynamics of subducted plates as they arrive in the mantle transition zone. She is on secondment from Cardiff University at Imperial College for one year, where her supervisor is Huw Davies. Previously, Fanny did her PhD in Geophysics in IPGP (Paris, France) on the dynamics and cooling of lava flows.

Upcoming Events

The MAGIC group are hosting a workshop entitled:  ‘GEOTRACES workshop – stable isotopes of biologically important trace metals’. The workshop will take place on 13-14 September, 2012, in our department and about 40 international participants are expected. Please contact Tina van der Flierdt for more information. Draft agenda.

Research Activity

Ten members of the MAGIC group travelled to Montreal to present their science at the annual geochemistry conference Goldschmidt (24-29th June). They left a major footprint by convening five sessions, and giving 12 oral and 2 poster presentations. Highlights included the citation by Mark Rehkämper for the prestigious Urey medal awarded to Alex Halliday (Oxford), and a keynote presentation by Tina van de Flierdt.

Jamie Wilkinson attended the AMIRA P1060 project field meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah (10-13th July), and co-presented a workshop and two talks on the project theme "Enhanced geochemical targeting in magmatic-hydrothermal systems" as well as co-organising a field trip to the Wasatch Mountains and Bingham Canyon copper-gold mine.

William Brownscombe, Edward Spencer, Matthew Loader and Jacob Longridge from the LODE research group presented posters on their PhD research at the Gordon Research Conference on Geochemistry of Mineral Deposits in New Hampshire, USA, 15-19th July.

Adam Booth (left) and Prof Maurice Whitehead (right, Swansea University, School of Arts and Humanities).