August ESE Newsletter

Two of our papers were covered in the press and we welcome four new members of staff.

Publications

Iglauer, S.,Muggeridge, A.H. (2012), Time dependence of free fall gravity drainage in unconsolidated sand. Journal of Porous Media. doi: 10.1615/JPorMedia.v15.i8.20. Article available online.

Rashid, B., Bal, A., Williams, G., Muggeridge, A.H. (2012), Quantifying the Impact of Permeability Heterogeneity on Secondary Recovery Performance. SPE Journal. doi: 10.2118/135125-PA. Article available online.

David, E.C., Zimmerman. R.W. (2012) Pore structure model for elastic wave velocities in fluid-saturated sandstones. Journal of Geophysical Research. doi:10.1029/2012JB009195. Article available online.

Booth, A.D., Clark, R.A. Kulessa, B., Murray, T., Carter, J., Doyle, S. and Hubbard, A. (2012) Thin-layer considerations in glaciological seisimc AVA analysis: implications for characterising a subglacial till unit, Russell Glacier, West Greenland. The Cryosphere. doi:10.5194/tc-6-909-2012. Article available online.

Go, J., Smalley, P.C., and Muggeridge, A. (2012) Using reservoir mixing to evaluate reservoir compartmentalization from appraisal data – validation using data from the Horn Mountain field, Gulf of Mexico. Petroleum Geoscience. doi: 10.1144/1354-079311-079 . Article available online.

Magee, C., Stevenson, C., O’Driscoll, B., Schofield, N., McDermott, K. (2012) An alternative emplacement model for the classic Ardnamurchan cone sheet swarm, NW Scotland, involving lateral magma supply via regional dykes. Journal of Structural Geology. doi.org/10.1016/j.jsg.2012.08.004. Article availble online.

Vandeginste, V., Swennen, R., Allaeys, M., Ellam, R.M., Roure, F. (2012) Challenges of structural diagenesis in foreland fold-and-thrust belts: A case study on paleofluid flow in the Canadian Rocky Mountains West of Calgary. Marine and Petroleum Geology. doi:10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2012.02.014. Article available online.

John, C.M., Banerjee, N.R., Longstaffe, F.J., Sica, C., Law, K.R., and Zachos, J.C., 2012, Clay assemblage and oxygen isotopic constraints on the weathering response to the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, east coast of North America. Geology. doi: 10.1130/G32785.1. Article available online.

Maidment, S. C. R. and Barrett, P. M. (2012). Does morphological convergence imply functional similarity? A test using the evolution of quadrupedalism in ornithischian dinosaurs. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2012.1040. Article available online.

Mannion, P.D., Benson, R.J.B., Upchurch, P., Butler, R.J., Carrano, M.T., Barrett, P.M. (2012) A temperate palaeodiversity peak in Mesozoic dinosaurs and evidence for Late Cretaceous geographical partitioning. Global Ecology and Biogeography. doi: 10.1111/j.1466-8238.2011.00735.x. Article available online.

Mannion, P.D., Upchurch, P., Mateus, O., Barnes, R.N., Jones, M.E.H. 2012. New information on the anatomy and systematic position of Dinheirosaurus lourinhanensis (Sauropoda: Diplodocoidea) from the Late Jurassic of Portugal, with a review of European diplodocoids. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. doi:10.1080/14772019.2011.595432. Article available online.

Emmerton, S., Muxworthy, A. R., Sephton, M. A, (2012) Magnetic characterization of oil sands at Osmington Mills and Mupe Bay, Wessex Basin, UK. Geological Society, London, Special Publications. doi: 10.1144/SP371.6. Article available online.

Tanino, Y. & M. J. Blunt (2012) Capillary trapping in sandstones and carbonates: dependence on pore structure. Water Resources Research. doi:10.1029/2011WR011712. Article available online.

Awards

Arne Døssing has been awarded a  Danish Science Foundation post-doctoral fellowsihp to work with Adrian Muxworthy. He will be examining Icelandic lavas from the last 5 million years, to test the Geocentric Axial Dipole hypothesis which is central to palaeomagnetic interpretation. He will start at Imperial in May 2013.

Aruna Mannie, working with Christopher Jackson and Gary Hampson on structural controls on the stratigraphic architecture of Middle-Upper Jurassic net-transgressive shallow-marine deposits in the Norwegian North Sea, has been awarded £2000 by the London Petrophysical Society (LPS)  for core studies at the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate in Norway.

The LODE group welcomes postdoctoral researcher Martina Bertini who will be working on the development of the laser ablation ICP-MS facility based at the Natural History Museum and collaborating on an AMIRA exploration mineral chemistry project with Jamie Wilkinson.

James Hammond is working with Berhe Goitom, an academic visitor from the Eritrea Institute of Technology.  He is here funded by a NERC urgency grant and is working on constraining pre-, syn- and post-eruption seismicity at Nabro Volcano, Eritrea.

Emma Passmore joined the Department as Senior Teaching Fellow on 1st August.  Emma previously worked as a Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the British Museum, Conservation and Scientific Research.  She did her PhD at Edinburgh and has a background in igneous petrology.

Mike Streule will join the Department on 10th September.  Mike has a background in Himalayan Tectonics and did his PhD at Oxford. He has been teaching Chemistry and introductory geology in Oxfordshire.

Mike and Emma will make a major contribution to the teaching, fieldwork, MSci and undergraduate independent project programme, in addition to a number of other areas.  With their skills in structural, tectonics, igneous and metamorphic processes, they will strengthen ESE’s undergraduate teaching programme.

Research Activity

A number of UROP students working with the Basins Research Group (BRG) have successfully completed and presented the results of their projects. Matthew Reeve (Geological significance of intra-crystalline basement reflections, offshore Norway) will present his research at an upcoming conference in Norway and will continue researching a similar topic for his MSci research project. Seshane Mahlo (Polygonal fault geometry and distribution as a tool to de-risk deep-water reservoir presence) is currently writing-up her work for publication. Khadeja Ramali (3D architecture of clinoforms, offshore Australia) also produced exciting results and these will form the foundation of a number of MSci projects.

Trevor Almeida gave an invited presentation at the IEEE NANO 2012 - 12th International Conference on Nanotechnology in Birmingham on ‘Hydrothermal synthesis and magnetic properties of homogeneous and core shell (cobalt/nickel) ferrite nanoparticles’ and chaired a session in the symposium ‘Nanomaterials / nanoparticles, characterisation and application’.

PhD Vivas

Saman Ilankoon from the Rio Tinto Centre for Advanced Mineral Recovery passed his viva on his thesis entitled "Hydrodynamics of unsaturated particle beds and heaps". His supervisor was Stephen Neethling, and was examined by Anne Korre and Sue Harrison from the University of Cape Town.

Impact, Outreach, Media

Cedric John's geology article was covered in Earth Magazine by Timothy Oleson: "PETM weathering got physical".

The next departmental outreach event Earthclass will be taking place on Friday 28th September. Invitations to host activities or volunteer on the day will be sent out shortly!

Tropical climate in the Antarctic: Palm trees once thrived on today's icy coasts 52 million years ago

Last month’s Nature paper by Tina van der Flierdt and Claire Huck on tropical climate in the Antarctic was widely covered and interpreted in the media, with articles on the BBC, the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian and the Independent. For more information see the article in the ESE News feed.