Volcanics, Magmatics and Mineral Deposits: ESE members present their research

Contents

Publications
Conferences, Lectures and Seminars
Impact and Media
Awards
Outreach
Research Activity
Departmental Activities
Announcements

Publications

Al-Menhali A.S, Krevor S. (2016). Capillary trapping of CO2 in oil reservoirs: Observations in a mixed-wet carbonate rock. Environmental Science & Technology. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b05925

Benson, R.B.J., Butler, R.J., Alroy, J., Mannion, P.D., Carrano, M.T., Lloyd, G. T. 2016. Near-stasis in the long-term diversification of Mesozoic tetrapods. PLoS Biology 14: e1002359 (doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002359).

Dean, C.D., Mannion, P.D., Butler, R.J. 2016. Preservational bias controls the fossil record of pterosaurs. Palaeontology (doi: 10.1111/pala.12225).

Goswami, A., Mannion, P.D., Benton, M.J. (2016). Radiation and Extinction: Investigating Clade Dynamics in Deep Time. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society (doi:10.1111/bij.12763).

Jackson, C.A-L, Lewis, M.M. (2016). Structural style and evolution of a salt-influenced rift basin margin: the impact of variations in salt composition and the role of polyphase extension; Basin Research 28, 81-102

Lambelet, M., van de Flierdt, T., Crocket, K., Rehkamper, M., Kreissig, K., Coles, B., Rijkenberg, M.J.A., Gerringa, L.J.A., de Baar, H.J.W., Steinfeldt, R. (2016). Neodymium isotopic composition and concentration in the western North Atlantic Ocean: Results from the GEOTRACES GA02 section. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 177, 1-29.

Myrgorodska, I., Meinert, C., Martins, Z., Le Sergeant d'Hendecourt, L., Meierhenrich, U. W. 2016. Quantitative enantioseparation of amino acids by comprehensive two dimensional gas chromatography applied to non-terrestrial samples; Journal of Chromatography A 1433, 131-136. doi:10.1016/j.chroma.2016.01.014

Petrescu, L., Bastow I. D., Darbyshire F. A., Gilligan A., Bodin T., Menke W., and Levin V. (2016), Three billion years of crustal evolution in eastern Canada: constraints from receiver functions, J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth, 121, doi:10.1002/2015JB012348.

Portenga, E.W., Rood, D.H., Bishop, P., and Bierman, P.R. (2016). A late Holocene onset of Aboriginal burning in southeastern Australia. Geology. DOI: 10.1130/G37257.1.

Salimzadeh, S. and Khalili, N. (2015). Fully Coupled XFEM Model for Flow and Deformation in Fractured Porous Media with Explicit Fracture Flow. International Journal of Geomechanics. doi: 10.1061/(ASCE)GM.1943-5622.0000623.

Conferences, Lectures and Seminars

PhD student Philipp Lang gave an invited talk entitled "Mechano-chemically mediated anisotropy of fluid flow in fractured rock" at the PMPM (Porous Media - Processes and Mathematics) / UK InterPore Joint Annual Meeting in Edinburgh, 15 January 2016. Philipp's PhD is supervised by Robert Zimmerman and Adriana Paluszny, and is funded by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

A sizeable delegation of Imperial College students and staff participated at this year’s VMSG (Volcanic and Magmatic Studies Group) conference, held from 6-8 January 2016 in Dublin. Craig Magee gave a talk about lateral magma flow in sill intrusions, and MSci student Amber Madden-Nadeau presented a poster about her work on the most recent large-scale explosive eruption at Popocatépetl volcano, Mexico. PhD student Martin Mangler had received a grant by the European Association of Geochemistry (EAG) to attend the conference. He, too, presented a poster about the characteristics of effusive volcanism at Popocatépetl, for which he received an honourable mention. Julie Prytulak also attended the conference.

On the 7-8 January, the Natural Magnetism Group hosted the annual Magnetic Interactions conference here at Imperial. The meeting is aimed at the UK Earth Science magnetic community. There were 47 attendees. Claire Nichols from Cambridge won the BGA-sponsored best student presentation, whilst ESE's Helena Bates won the BGA-sponsored best student poster prize.

Vamsi Ganti will be giving the departmental seminar in the Department of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago on Feb. 8th.

Eleven members of the LODE research group attended the Mineral Deposits Studies Group (MDSG) annual conference, held this year in the new campus of University College Dublin, Ireland, on the 4-6th January. Despite the parlous state of the mining industry, there were still 170 attendees with good representation from industry, academia and students. Talks and posters co-authored by ESE staff and PhD students were: Epidote Chemistry in Contrasting Hydrothermal and Metamorphic Environments, Element mobility during propylitic alteration in porphyry ore systems: a case study of the Oyu Tolgoi deposits, Mongolia, Propylitic Alteration and Metal Mobility in Porphyry Systems: A Case Study of the Northparkes Cu-Au Deposits, NSW, Australia, Diffusion and partition coefficients of minor and trace elements in magnetite at 1150°C as a function of oxygen fugacity: Implications for understanding the petrogenesis of porphyry ore-forming magmas, Chlorite chemistry as a new exploration tool in the propylitic halo of porphyry-epithermal systems: A case study of the Batu Hijau porphyry Cu-Au system and The Giant Navan Carbonate-Hosted Zn-Pb Deposit: Exploration and Geology: 1970-2015.

Impact and Media

Dylan Rood's 2016 research A late Holocene onset of Aboriginal burning in southeastern Australia was reported on as a feature story on Imperial's engineering news webpage in article “Ancient Aboriginals’ use of fire had little effect on erosion."

Awards

Maartje Boon was awarded an Outstanding Student Paper Award for her presentation at the AGU Fall Meeting: 3D Observations of Dispersion, Mixing and Reaction in Heterogeneous Rocks 

Sam Krevor, Catriona Reynolds, Ali Al-Menhali, and Ben Niu were awarded the Best Paper of the 2015 Annual Symposium of the Society of Core Analysts for the paper: The impact of reservoir conditions on multiphase flow in the CO2-brine system in permeable sandstone, SCA2015-019 

Myriam Lambelet was awarded the postdoctoral medal from Geochemistry Group of the Geological Society for her paper Neodymium isotopic composition and concentration in the western North Atlantic Ocean: Results from the GEOTRACES GA02 section. The award goes to to an outstanding peer-reviewed scientific geochemical paper, published by a UK and Ireland-based post-doctoral researcher.

Joanna Morgan was awarded a new research grant for £228k from the Leverhulme Trust, on "Imaging magma storage beneath the Santorini volcano". Joanna has an article in the Awards in Focus, research project grants section on the Leverhulme website which will be published this month. 

Congratulations to Adam Pacey who won the Rio Tinto student talk prize for his presentation at the Mineral Deposits Studies Group Annual Conference at University College Dublin, Ireland at the start of January. His presentation was a summary of his PhD research entitled "Propylitic Alteration and Metal Mobility in Porphyry Systems: A Case Study of the Northparkes Cu-Au Deposits, NSW, Australia".

Tina van de Flierdt has been awarded felowship of the HEA. 

Outreach

Dick Selley gave a lecture '"Wealden petroleum exploration: Past, present & prospective" to the Mole Valley Geological Society. 

Research Activity

Chris Jackson visited Mary Ford and Guillaume Caumon at the Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France (7th-8th January, 2016) to discuss a collaborative research project focused on stochastic model of near-fault deformation patterns. It transpires that geologists and numerical modellers speak very, very different languages…as part of this trip, Chris gave an invited talk entitled ‘Hot Rocks Under Our Feet; Seismic Reflection Imaging of Igneous Rocks’, focusing on the how 3D seismic reflection data provide new insights into the processes and products of magma intrusive in the Earth’s crust, and the plumbing systems of ancient volcanoes. 

Members of the Basins Research Group (BRG) decamped to Oslo, Norway to visit seismic acquisition, processing and interpretation company CGG to view some of their new, state-of-the-art, broadband 3D seismic reflection data. These data, collected over large parts of the North Sea Basin, reveal, in exquisite detail, intra-crystalline basement structure and the geometry of overlying rift basins. They will now be used as part of the Norsk Forskningsrad-funded (Research Council of Norway), Statoil-supported, MultiRift project.

Departmental Activities

PhD students and staff gathered together on 29 January at Guanabara, Central London for the popular Graduate Society departmental dinner. Kindly organised by PhD student Kat Roole the dinner and dancing was enjoyed by all. A resounding success! 

Announcements

ESE welcomes Prof. Stephane Rondennay from the University of Bergen this month. Stephane is on sabbatical for six months and will be working with Ian Bastow and Saskia Goes on a variety of seismological and geodynamic research problems.

Jenny Collier and Sanjeev Gupta will be returning to your TV screens this Saturday at 8pm, on Channel 4. They will appear on the show “Walking Through Time” and be discussing the effect of Pleistocene ice-age megafloods on Western Europe’s drainage system.