February 2016 ESE Newsletter

Fossilized femurs and MSc fieldwork: February in ESE

Contents

Publications
Conferences, Lectures and Seminars
Awards
Research Grants
Research Activity
Impact and Media
Outreach
Fieldwork
Announcements

Publications

Calderón Agudo, O., Caprioli, P., van Manen, D. (2016). A spatially compact source designature filter. Geophysics, 81(2), V39-V-53, doi:10.1190/geo2015-0259.1. 

Lei, Q., and Wang, X. (2016). Tectonic interpretation of the connectivity of a multiscale fracture system in limestone. Geophysical Research Letters 43, doi:10.1002/2015GL067277. 

Krevor, S., Reynolds, C., Al-Menhali, A., Niu, B. (2016) The Impact of Reservoir Conditions and Rock Heterogeneity on CO2-Brine Multiphase Flow in Permeable Sandstone. Petrophyics, 57, 1, 12-18

Krumina, L., Kenney, J. P. L.,  Loring, J. S.,  Persson, P., (2016). Desorption mechanisms of phosphate from ferrihydrite and goethite surfaces. Chemical Geology, in press.

Little, S. H., Vance, D., McManus, J., & Severmann, S. (2016). Key role of continental margin sediments in the oceanic mass balance of Zn and Zn isotopes. Geology, G37493-1.

Tennant, J.P., Mannion, P.D., Upchurch, P., Sutton, M.D., Price, G.D. (2016). Biotic and environmental dynamics across the Late Jurassic–Early Cretaceous transition: evidence for a protracted period of faunal and ecological turnover. Biological Reviews (doi: 10.1111/brv.12255)

Xiao D., Yang P., Fang F., Xiang J., Pain C.C., Navon I.M. (2016). Non-intrusive reduced order modeling of fluid-structure interactions, Computer Method in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 303, 35-54.

After the successful first edition of the textbook of image processing and GIS for remote sensing authored by Jian Guo Liu and Philippa J. Mason, the second edition of the book “Image processing and GIS for Remote Sensing – Techniques and Applications”, has been published by Willey – Blackwell in January 2016.

Conferences, Lectures and Seminars

Chris Jackson gave an invited talk at the University of Birmingham as part of the Lapworth Lecture Series (15 February). His talk was entitled ‘Geology of the 5/22-1 exploration well, Rockall Trough, offshore NW Ireland: the role of break-up magmatism on trap development and reservoir quality’, drawing on work conducted with Craig Magee and Carl Jacquemyn. 

Chris Jackson gave an invited talk at the ‘Herdman Symposium’, hosted by the Herdman Society at the University of Liverpool (27 February). His talk was entitled ‘Terra Infirma; What Is Salt and Why Should We Care?’. Combining, amongst other things, a live experiment, live online voting, music and video, it was a talk in which everything could go wrong. Luckily, only two things did.

Ian Bastow delivered a seminar at the University of Aberdeen entitled "The development of continent-ocean transition: understanding the final stretch in Ethiopia”.

Phil Mannion gave the departmental seminar in the School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Science at The University of Manchester on 24 February. His talk was entitled “Why the long face? 250 million years of decline on the crocodile line”.

Awards

Craig Magee has been awarded the Murchison Fund by the Geological Society for 2016. The fund is awarded to early career geoscientists under the age of 40 who have contributed substantially to the study of hard rock and tectonic geology. 

Chris Jackson has received the 2016 Geological Society of America (GSA) Thompson International Distinguished Lecturer Award. This award is given to distinguished geologists to tour academic and related institutions within North America. Award details and information on last year’s winners are here. Chris will be presented with the award in September at the 2016 GSA Annual Meeting in Denver and next year he will embark on two two-week lecture tours. 

Congratulations to Laura Petrescu and Rachel Bertram, winners of Gradsocs’ ESE 3 Minute Thesis Competition first round. The competition, judged by Peter Allison, Mark Sephton, Janice Kenney and Craig Magee Laura and Rachel will now go on to Compete in the Graduate schools’ Final on Thursday 21 April.

Research Grants

Sam Krevor has been award £160,000 from Statoil for experimental research investigating enhanced oil recovery strategies applied to residual oil zones of the North Sea. 

Janice Kenney was awarded the Arthur Holmes Centenary Research Grant to conduct independent research on the how biochars could be used to remediate Cr-contaminated waters. Biochars are the product of the pyrolysis of various organic substrates and have shown promise for the removal of organic and metals contamination from water. Janice and co-workers will focus on the uptake and reduction of hexavalent chromium, Cr(VI) by biochars in aqueous solution.

Research Activity

As part of his Visiting Scientist role, Chris Jackson spent two weeks (1-12 November) at the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG), University of Texas at Austin, working with members of the Applied Geodynamic Laboratory (AGL). Together they: (i) worked on a series of papers documenting their work on the salt tectonics of the Precaspian Basin, Kazakhstan; (ii) analysed the outputs of a suite of numerical models designed to explore the initiation and growth of salt minibasins; and (iii) commenced a physical modelling series designed to explore the structural style and evolution of ‘isolated’ minibasins subjected to basin-scale shortening. Together with John Snedden (UTIG) and Brad Prather (University of Kansas), Chris also began planning this summer’s research effort, which will focus on the kinematics of minibasin subsidence and controls on deep-water sediment dispersal in the Gulf of Mexico.

Impact and Media

PhD student Alessandro Chiarenza’s publication after finding a fossilized femur bone of a large abelisaurid in the Muesum of Geology and Paleontology, Palermo was recently featured in the Imperial College News, the Express and Daily Mail online. The estimated body size of the individual from which the femur was derived is up to 9 meters in length and 2 tonnes in body mass. 

Dick Selley was interviewed and quoted by 'The Economist' concerning the test result on the Horse Hill shale oil well, AKA 'The Gatwick Gusher'.

Outreach

Gary Hampson is midway through his two week tour of Africa(!) as the AAPG Allan P. Bennison Distinguished Lecturer. This is the first time that AAPG have organised a Distinguished Lecturer tour of their African region. The tour takes in lectures at the University of Western Cape, PetroSA, University of Stellenbosch, University of the Witwatersrand (jointly with University of Pretoria, University of Johannesburg, Geological Society of South Africa) (South Africa), University of Tunis (Tunisia), University of Nairobi, Geological Survey of Kenya (Kenya) and a training course for various local oil companies in Lagos (Nigeria). Gary's lectures are on use of outcrop geology to constrain models of oil and gas reservoirs, and the incorporation of alternative controls to sea-level in making sequence stratigraphic interpretations.

Fieldwork

51 brave MSc Petroleum Geoscience students battled high winds and stinging February rain to study Upper Carboniferous deposits in North Derbyshire as part of the ‘Deep-Water Sedimentology, Stratigraphy and Petroleum Systems’ field course (20-21 February). Led by Al Fraser, Chris Jackson, Carl Jacquemyn, Howard Johnson and Susie Maidment, the students studied the sedimentology, stratigraphy and petroleum significance of fluvial-dominated deltas, slope channel-complexes and the distal fringes of basin-floor lobes. A classroom-based session on Saturday evening focused on deep-water process and product, and the seismic expression of deep-water systems, thus supplementing the field-based learning. 

On the 5-8 February Metals and Energy Finance students attended the Wessex Basin Field Excursion led by Peter Fitch. Thinking in the context of petroleum systems, students visited sites along the Dorset coast including Charmouth, West bay, Lulworth Cove and Kimmeridge Bay. In spite of the challenging weather thrown at them by storm Isobel, the trip was a great success. 

Announcements

The symposium “Unearthed and Back Again: A Uranium Atom’s Tale” will take place in room G39 on Monday 7 March from 1:45pm to 6pm. There will be a range of presentations from mining of Uranium in Europe, to the crystal chemistry of uranium and how that may affect nuclear waste storage, to a discussion on how radioactive waste will be disposed of in the subsurface. A drinks reception will follow the talks.