Department of Earth Science and Engineering hosts the Palaeontological Association Annual Meeting 2017

Contents

Publications
Conferences, Lectures and Seminars
Awards
Departmental Activities
Research Grants

Publications

Bhavik Harish Lodhia, Gareth G. Roberts, Alastair J. Fraser, Saskia Goes, Stewart Fishwick and Jerry Jarvis (2018). Continental Margin Subsidence form Shallow Mantle Convection: Example from West Africa. Earth Plan. Sci. Lett., v. 281 pp. 350-361.

Giarola, S., Forte, O., Lanzini, A., Gandiglio M., Santarelli M., and Hawkes A. (2018). “Techno-economic assessment of biogas-fed solid oxide fuel cell combined heat and power system at industrial scale”, Applied Energy, Volume 211.

Corti, G., Molin, P., Sembroni, A., Bastow, I. D. and Keir, D. (2018). Control of pre-rift lithospheric structure on the architecture and evolution of continental rifts: insights from the Main Ethiopian Rift, East Africa. Tectonics, 37. 

Durcan, J.A., Thomas, D.S., Gupta, S., Pawar, V., Singh, R.N., and Petrie, C.A. (2017), Holocene landscape dynamics in the Ghaggar-Hakra palaeochannel region at the northern edge of the Thar Desert, northwest India. Quaternary International, ISSN: 1040-6182.

Ebinger, C.J., Keir, D., Bastow, I.D., Whaler, K., Hammond, J., Ayele, A., Miller, M., and Hautot, S. (2017). Crustal structure of active deformation zones in Africa: Implications for global crustal processes. Tectonics, 36. 

Ewing, R.C., Lapotre, M.G.A., Lewis, K.W., Day, M, Stein, N., Rubin, D.M., Sullivan, R., Banham, S., Lamb, M.P., Bridges, N.T., Gupta, S., and Fischer, W. W., (2017). Sedimentary processes of the Bagnold Dunes: Implications for the eolian rock record of Mars. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, ISSN:2169-9097

Grindrod P, Warner N, Hobley D, Schwartz C, Gupta S., (2017). Stepped fans and facies-equivalent phyllosilicates in Coprates Catena, Mars, Icarus, ISSN: 0019-1035

Liddell, M.V. Bastow, I.D., Darbyshire, F., Gilligan, A., and Pugh, S. (2017). The formation of Laurentia: Evidence from shear wave splitting, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 479, 170-178, doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2017.09.030

Mark, C., Chew, D, and Gupta, S. (2017). Does slab-window opening cause uplift of the overriding plate? A case study from the Gulf of California. Tectonophysics, 719-720, 162-175. 

Morgan, L. E., Munk, M., Davidheiser-Kroll, B., Warner, N. H., Gupta, S., Slaybaugh, R, Harkness, P., and Mark, D. F. (2017). Instrumentation Development for In Situ Ar-40/Ar-39 Planetary Geochronology, Geostandards and Geoanalytical Research, Vol:41, ISSN:1639-4488, Pages:381-396 2017, 

Royle, S.H., Montgomery, W., Kounaves, S.P. and Sephton, M.A. (2017). Effect of Hydration State of Martian Perchlorate Salts on Their Decomposition Temperatures during Thermal Extraction, Journal of Geophysical Research - Planets. DOI:10.1002/2017JE005381. 

Siegert, M. J., Jamieson, S.S. and White, D., 2018. Exploration of subsurface Antarctica: uncovering past changes and modern processes. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 461(1), 

Singh, A., Thomsen, K.J., Sinha, R., Buylaert, J.P., Carter, A., Mark, D.F., Mason, P.J., Densmore, A.L., Murray, A.S., Jain, M., Paul, D. and Gupta, S. (2017). Counter-intuitive influence of Himalayan river morphodynamics on Indus Civilisation urban settlements.  Nature Communications    8. 1617. 

Yang, L. (2018), One-fluid formulation for fluid-structure interaction, Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, Vol: 332, Pages: 102-135. DOI: 10.1016/j.cma.2017.12.016

Yu, C., Day, E. A., de Hoop, M. V., Campillo, M., and van der Hilst, R. D. (2017). Mapping mantle transition zone discontinuities beneath the Central Pacific with array processing of SS precursors. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 122.

Conferences, Lectures and Seminars

Daniel Collins attended the British Sedimentological Research Group Annual General Meeting 2017 at Newcastle University. Daniel gave two presentations, entitled "When the past isn’t present: Investigating palaeobathymetry, palaeotides and sedimentary preservation in the mid-Campanian Western Interior Seaway" and "Predicting Shoreline–Shelf Processes: Insights from Numerical Modelling of Ancient Tides" here.

At the same meeting, Daniel was awarded the Harold Reading Medal, an award in recognition of the best publication by a current or recent postgraduate student. Daniel was awarded the medal for his paper: "Tidal dynamics and mangrove carbon sequestration during the Oligo-Miocene in the South China Sea" published in Nature Communications in June 2017.

Many ESE staff and students attended the Fall AGU meeting in New Orleans this December. Attached is a picture of some members of the earthquake seismology group in their ICCratons T-shirts! From left to right: Chris Ogden, Mitch Liddell, Ian Bastow, Alistair Boyce, and Amy Gilligan (former post-doc with Ian’s group, now at the University of Aberdeen). Ian Bastow presented a new tomographic inversion for African mantle structure, imaging the African Superplume from the core mantle boundary to the surface. Co-authors on this work included ESE undergraduates Rita Kounoudis, Juliette Guilloud de Courbeville, Ed Caunt, and Sneha Desai, who did a fabulous job working on some of the data during their summer UROP projects.

In November and early December, David Wilson completed the main leg of his lecture tour as the Early Career Researcher Prominent Lecturer for the Geochemistry Group of the Geological Society. Following an earlier trip to the University of Cardiff, he gave talks on "Lead isotopes tracing earth system processes: from human pollution to continental weathering" at the Open University and the University of Leeds, and on "Deglacial climate variability through the window of deep-sea coral geochemistry" at the University of East Anglia and also to the London Palaeoclimate Network. Thanks to these departments for hosting him and to Agilent Technologies for sponsoring the tour!

PhD student Lewis Jones from the Palaeobiology Research Group attended the European Coral Reef Symposium from 13–15 December 2017 at Oxford University, presenting a poster on the transitional distributional changes of reef corals.

The Palaeobiology Research Group hosted the annual meeting of the Palaeontological Association at Imperial College from 17–19 December. Organised by Mark Sutton, Phil Mannion, Alan Spencer, several PhD students (Ale Chiarenza, Lewis Jones and Jonathan Rio), former undergraduate Tom Raven, and current undergraduate Cecily Nicholl, the conference was a great success (aided by a team of undergraduate helpers), and had the largest ever attendance (330 delegates) in its 60 year history. Both Lewis (ecological niche modelling of fossil corals) and Cecily (early tetrapod burrows from the Triassic of Sardinia) also presented posters, with Cecily's poster highly commended during the awards ceremony.

PhD student Ale Chiarenza led the annual fieldtrip, to the Isle of Sheppey for a day of fossil collecting.

Awards

Bhavik Harish Lodhia won the award for best PhD student presentation in the 16th PESGB Annual African Exploration & Production conference, London, September 2017.

Undergraduate Joe Witchalls was in the winning team at Barrick Innovation 48 hour hackathon in November. Teams chose to solve one of three challenges: 1) Implementation of robot-enabled maintenance; 2) Use of blockchain technology for artisanal miners; and 3) Development of cooperative mineral exploration strategies with rural communities. For this hackathon, Joe's team decided to focus on the topic of ‘symbiotic development’, and created an app which would allow artisanal miners to map out the geology of their local area to allow Barrick to predict the location of potential gold ore bodies. This is much faster than the conventional approach of deploying a few field geologists and benefits Barrick as they can significantly increase the rate of gold discoveries. In return, the locals are paid and are provided with the opportunity to do safe, effective artisanal mining which does not involve the use of mercury. Joe says of the experience "I was able to join a very intelligent, professional team who needed someone with geological knowledge to explain what was logistically possible for the process, so my limited programming skills were not really an issue. It was an incredibly fun experience (even if it was a bit of a brain-melt!) and I would definitely recommend anyone to get involved in future Hackathons because I now have the opportunity to develop a solution which could be used globally."

Departmental Activities

Many staff members and students donated to the S-cube toy drive this Christmas. S-Cube delivered the Christmas presents on 14 December, to a local Trust – Rugby Portobello Trust in Notting Hill that supports young people in the community. The toys were distributed to those affected by the Grenfell Tower fire as well as other children in need in the local area. S-Cube would like to thank everyone who donated to the cause for their generosity and they aim to make this an annual fundraising event.

Research Grants

Phil Mannion has received a Royal Society Research Fellows Enhancement Award (£101,000) to investigate how climate has affected the distribution of terrestrial mammal diversity through time. This will fully fund both a PhD student and summer studentship for four years.

Congratulations also extend to Anna Korre who successfully secured a grant worth £299,414 from the British Geological Survey for her project "Accelerating Low carbon Industrial Growth through CCUS: ALIGN-CCUS" and Yanghua Wang who secured a grant worth £300,000 from the China Petrochemical Technology Company Ltd (SINOPEC) for his Centre for Reservoir Geophysics Research Programme.

PhD student Jonathan Rio secured a grant from the Palaeontological Association worth £1500 to study the anatomy and palaeoecology of a group of extinct, endemic Australian crocodiles at the Queensland Museum, Brisbane, Australia.