November ESE Newsletter

A bumper month in the department for outreach.

Publications

Di Leo, J. F., Wookey, J., Hammond, J. O. S., Kendall, J-M., Kaneshima, S., Inoue, H., Yamashina, T., Harjadi, P. (2012) Mantle flow in regions of complex tectonics: Insights from Indonesia. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems. doi:10.1029/2012GC004417. Article available online. 

Sinerchia, M., Field, A.J., Woods, J.D., Vallerga, S. & Hinsley, W.R. (2012). Using an individual-based model with four trophic levels to model the effect of predation and competition on squid recruitment. ICES Journal of Marine Science. doi: 10.1093/icesjms/fsr190. Article available online.

Hampson, G.J., Gani, M.R., Sahoo, H., Rittersbacher, A., Irfan, N., Ranson, A., Jewell, T.O, Gani, N.D.S., Howell, J.A., Buckley, S.J. & Bracken, B. (2012) Controls on large-scale patterns of fluvial sandbody distribution in alluvial-to-coastal plain strata: Upper Cretaceous Blackhawk Formation, Wasatch Plateau, central Utah, U.S.A. Sedimentology. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-3091.2012.01342.x. Article available online.

Benson, R. B. J., Mannion, P. D., Butler, R. J., Upchurch, P., Goswami, A., Evans, S. E. (2012) Cretaceous tetrapod fossil record sampling and faunal turnover: implications for biogeography and the rise of modern clades. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. doi: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2012.10.028. Article available online.

Elmore, R.D., Muxworthy, A. R., Aldana,, M. M. (2012) Remagnetization and chemical alteration of sedimentary rocks. Remagnetization and chemical alteration of sedimentary rocks, edited by Elmore, Muxworthy, Aldana, Mena, Geological Society of London, Special Publications. doi:10.1144/SP371.15. Article available online.

El-Maghraby, R. M, Blunt, M. J. (2012) Residual CO2 trapping in Indiana limestone. Environmental Science and Technology. doi: 10.1021/es304166u. Article available online.

Ilankoon, I.M.S.K., Cole, K.E., Neethling, S.J. (2012) Measuring hydrodynamic dispersion coefficients in unsaturated packed beds: Comparison of PEPT with conventional tracer tests. Chemical Engineering Science. doi: 10.1016/j.ces.2012.11.013. Article available online.

Awards

Craig Magee was awarded £1300 through the Arthur Holmes Centenary Research Grant to attend a conference specialising in the study of laccoliths, sills and dykes (LASI V) held in South Africa in October, 2012. A 3-day field workshop in the Karoo Basin in South Africa was also included within the conference and provided a great opportunity to see classic saucer-shaped sills.

Impact, Outreach and Media

John Woods was interviewed for the British Library Oral History of British Scientists "A changing planet". The 12 hours of recording will soon be available online. 

Thomas Hardye School, Dorchester, 15th November - Ian Bastow delivered his British Science Association Lord Kelvin Award Lecture, followed by a seismology workshop for 30 sixth form students in which the students learnt how to locate earthquakes using seismograms and blow-up globes.  He was ably assisted by Geophysics undergraduates Hamish Hay and Josh Lowe, and PhD student Chandra Taposeea. The event was extremely well-received – Ian has already been asked to return next year and will be seeking more volunteers to help with this event.

OPITO Petrochallenge, 8th – 9th November – ESE once again hosted the annual OPITO Petrochallenge event, which was assisted by Lucy Forman, Ellie Sansom and Tanya Chong from the undergrad admin team, Surinder Dio, and undergraduates Celia Hayes, Shivani Maharaj, Lewis Ryan, Simon Stephenson, Arka Sarkar, Stuart MacGowan, Yang Liu, Katarina Roele, Dominika Balikova, Ritwika Sengupta, Alex Ellwood, Michael Faggetter, Olivia Chant-Tuft, Hollie Taylor and Veronika Kustkova. ESE played host to 80 schoolchildren, aged 14-17, who competed in teams to run an oil and gas business, via a true-to-life online simulation. The department received very positive feedback, both from the participants and the event co-ordinators. ESE will host the international final of this event in January 2013.  

If you are interested in participating in future outreach events, or would like to know more about departmental outreach, please contact Emma Passmore.

Research Activity

David Cronan gave a paper on 'Recent Trends in Deep Sea Minerals R & D'at the First Norwegian Workshop on Ocean Floor Metal Deposits,Trondheim,Norway, November 20th -21st. Norway has recently acquired a sizeable chunk of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge as a result of its extended Continental Shelf application to the UN and is making plans on what to do with it.

Dick Selley gave a lecture 'Fluvial deposits as oil reservoirs' at the GA conference 'Rivers through time' at Exeter.

Julie Prytulak gave an invited Departmental seminar at University of Cambridge titled "Stable Vanadium Isotope Fractionation at High Temperature: A proxy for Oxygen Fugacity?".

Matthew Lewis and Chris Jackson undertook two-weeks of fieldwork in western Sinai, Egypt, focusing on the early syn-rift tectono-stratigraphic development of normal fault blocks. Please see below for some photos from Chris Jackson:

The early syn-rift succession (Oligo-Miocene) of the Abura Graben, western Sinai, Egypt. Brightly-coloured, fluvial deposits in the foreground are overlain by shallow- and deep-marine deposits; this records progressive deepening of this depocentre on response to fault-driven subsidence. 

Matt and Chris relaxing early in the morning at their fieldcamp in western Sinai, Egypt