51³Ô¹ÏÍø

From Away Days to Korean volcanoes...

Contents

Publications
Conferences, Lectures and Seminars
Awards
Research Grants
Workshops and Courses
Impact and Media
ESE Away Day
Outreach
Fieldwork
PhD vivas
New Staff

Publications

Al-Hadhrami, M.M., Alkindi, A. S., and Muggeridge, A. H. (2014). Experimental and numerical investigations into the effects of heterogeneities on the recovery of heavy oil by VAPour EXtraction (VAPEX). Fuel , 135, 413-426. DOI: 10.1016/j.fuel.2014.06.065

Almeida, T.P., Kasama, T., Muxworthy, A.R., Williams, W., Nagy, L. and Dunin-Borkowski, R.E. (2014). Observing thermomagnetic stability of non-ideal magnetite particles: Good paleomagnetic recorders? Geophysical Research Letters. DOI: 10.1002/2014GL061432

Booth, A.D., Szpakowska, K., Pischikova, E. and Griffin, K. (in press). Structure of an Ancient Egyptian tomb inferred from GPR imaging of deflected overburden horizons. Archaeological Prospection.

Borgomeo, E., Hebditch, K.V., Whittaker, A.C., and Lonergan, L. (2014). Characterising the spatial distribution, frequency and geomorphic controls on landslide occurrence, Molise, Italy. Geomorphology, 226, 148-161.

[N.B. Edoardo Borgomeo and Katy Hebditch completed this work as part of their mapping project in the Summer of 2011. Both students did MSci Environmental Geoscience degrees.  Lidia supervised the field and DEM mapping of the landslides, and Alex the statistical treatment of the data. Edoardo is now doing a PhD in hydrology at Oxford and Katy works for AMEC, an engineering consultancy. Needless to say Alex and Lidia are very proud of their achievements!]

Court R.W., Sims M.R., Cullen D.C. and Sephton M.A. (2014). Searching for life on Mars: degradation of surfactant solutions used in organic extraction experiments. Astrobiology, 14, 1-20. DOI: 10.1089/ast.2013.1105

Court R.W. and Sephton M.A. (in press). New estimates of the production of volatile gases from ablating carbonaceous micrometeoroids at Earth and Mars during an E-belt-type Late Heavy Bombardment. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. DOI: 10.1016/j.gca.2014.09.010

Czarnota, K., Roberts, G.G., White, N. J. and Fishwick, S. (2014). Cretaceous-Recent Dynamic Support of Australia. Journal of Geophysical Research, DOI: 10.1002/2013JB010436

Flood, Y.S. and Hampson, G.J. (2014). Facies and architectural analysis to interpret avulsion style and variability: Upper Cretaceous Blackhawk Formation, Wasatch Plateau, Central Utah, USA. Journal of Sedimentary Research, 84, 743-762. DOI: 10.2110/jsr.2014.59

Hamlyn, J., Keir, D., Wright, T. J., Neuberg, J. W., Goitom, B., Hammond, J.O.S., Pagli, C., Oppenheimer, C. and Kendall, J-M. (2014). Seismicity and Subsidence following the 2011 Nabro eruption, Eritrea: Insights into the plumbing system of an off-rift volcano. Journal of Geophysical Research. DOI: 10.1002/2014JB011395

Jackson, C.A-L., Rodriguez, C.R., Rotevatn, A. and Bell, R.E. (2014). Geological and geophysical expression of a primary salt weld; an example from the Santos Basin, Brazil. Interpretation. DOI: 10.1190/INT-2014-0066.1

Lang, P.S., Paluszny, A., Zimmerman, R.W. (2014). Permeability tensor of three-dimensional fractured porous rock and a comparison to trace map predictions.  Journal of Geophysical Research Solid Earth.

Legler, B., Hampson, G.J., Jackson, C.A-L., Johnson, H.D., Massart, B.Y.G., Sarginson, M. and Ravnas, R. (2014). Facies relationships and stratigraphic architecture of distal, mixed tide-and-wave-influenced deltaic deposits: lower Sego Sandstone, western Colorado, USA. Journal of Sedimentary Research, 84, 605-625. DOI: 10.2110/jsr.2014.49

Lei, Q., Latham, J.-P., Xiang, J., Tsang, C.-F., Lang, P., and Guo, L. (2014) Effects of geomechanical changes on the validity of DFN representation of a realistic 2D fractured rock. International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijrmms.2014.06.001

Licht, A., van Cappelle, M., Abels, H.A., Ladant, J.-B., Trabucho-Alexandre, J., France-Lanord, C., Donnadieu, Y., Vandenberghe, J., Rigaudier, T., Lecuyer, C., Terry, D.O., Adriaens, R., Boura, A., Guo, Z., Aung Naing Soe, Dupont-Nivet, G. and Jaeger, J.-J., (2014). Asian monsoons in a late Eocene greenhouse world. Nature.

Maidment, S.C.R., Henderson, D. and Barrett, P.M. (In press). What drove reversions to quadrupedality in ornithischian dinosaurs? Testing hypothesis using centre of mass modelling. Naturwissenschaften. DOI: 10.1007/s00114-014-1239-2

Mannie, A.S., Jackson, C.A-L. and Hampson, G.J. (2014). Shallow marine reservoir development in extensional diapir collapse minibasins: an integrated subsurface case study from the Upper Jurassic of the Cod Terrace, Norwegian North Sea. American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, 98, 2019-2055. DOI: 10.1306/03201413161

Mannie, A.S., Jackson, C.A-L. and Hampson, G.J. (2014). Structural controls on the stratigraphic architecture of net-transgressive shallow-marine strata in a salt-influenced rift basin: Middle-to-Upper Jurassic Egersund Basin, Norwegian North Sea. Basin Research, 26, 675-700. DOI: 10.1111/bre.12058

Mazur, C., Contestabile, M., Offer, G.J. and Brandon, N.P. (2014) Assessing and comparing German and UK transition policies for electric mobility. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions,

Paul, J., Roberts, G.G. and White, N.J. (2014). The African Landscape Through Space and Time. Tectonics. DOI: 10.1002/2013TC003479

Petvipusit, K.R., El Sheikh, A.H., King, P.R. and Blunt, M.J. (2014). Robust Optimisation Using Spectral High-Dimensional Model Representation-An Application to CO₂ Sequestration Strategy. In .

Pierce, E.L., Hemming, S.R., Williams, T., van de Flierdt, T., Thomson, S.N., Reiners, P.W., Gehrels, G.E., Brachfeld, S.A., Goldstein, S.L. (2014). A comparison of detrital U-Pb zircon ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar biotite ages in marine sediments off East Antarctica: implications for the geology of subglacial terrains and provenance studies. Earth Science Reviews, 138, 156-178.

Poole, W., Muller, J-P., Gupta, S., and Grindrod, P.M. (2014). Calibrating Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter pulse widths at Mars Science Laboratory candidate landing sites. Planetary and Space Science, 99, 118-127. ISSN:0032-0633.

Prélat, A., Hodgson, D.M., Hall, M., Jackson, C.A-L., Baunack, C. and Tveiten, B. (2014). Constraining sub-seismic deep-water stratal elements with electrofacies analysis; a case study from the Upper Cretaceous of the Måløy Slope, offshore Norway. Marine and Petroleum Geology. DOI: 10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2014.07.018

Ryan, A., Bridges, J.C., Williams, A. Edgard, L., Ollila, A., Williams, J., Nachon, M., Mangold, N., Fisk, M., Schieber, J., Gupta, S., Dromart, G., Wiens, R., Le Mouélic, S., Forni, O., Lanza, N., Mezzacappa, A., Sautter, V., Blaney, D., Vlark, B, and Clegg, S. (2014) ChemCam results from the Shaler outcrop in Gale Crater, Mars. Icarus. .

Singh, G., Kermode, J.R., De Vita, A., and Zimmerman, R.W. (2014). Validity of linear elasticity in the crack-tip region of ideal brittle solids. International Journal of Fracture.

Tennant, J.P. and Mannion, P.D. (2014) Revision of the Late Jurassic crocodyliform Alligatorellus, and evidence for allopatric speciation driving high diversity in western European atoposaurids. PeerJ. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.599

Vandeginste, V., John, C.M., Cosgrove, J.W. and Manning, C. (2014). Dimensions, texture-distribution, and geochemical heterogeneities of fracture-related dolomite geobodies hosted in Ediacaran limestones, northern Oman. AAPG Bulletin, 98 (9), 1789-1809. DOI: 10.1306/05121413127

Wilson, D.J., Crocket, K.C., van de Flierdt, T., Robinson, L.F., Adkins, J.F. (2014), Dynamic intermediate ocean circulation in the North Atlantic during Heinrich Stadial 1: a radiocarbon and neodymium isotope perspective. Paleoceanography. DOI: 10.1002/2014PA002674

Wilson, J., Roberts, G.G., Hoggard, M. and White, N. J. (2014). Cenozoic Epeirogeny of Arabian Peninsula from Drainage Modeling. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems. DOI: 10.1002/2014GC005283

Conferences, Lectures and Seminars

James Hammond was invited to present at an international workshop on Changbaishan Volcano in Beijing and Changbaishan, China. He presented, ‘Geophysical Research on Mt. Paektu/Changbaishan - a review’.

Christopher Jackson gave an invited talk at the University of Edinburgh as part of their departmental seminar series (25 September). His talk, which was entitled, ‘Hot Rocks Beneath Our Feet; Seismic Reflection Imaging of Igneous Geology’, presented a summary of igneous geology-related research undertaken in the BRG over the last four years. Christopher would like to thank Craig Magee who was the PDRA on the related project and who, along with a number of MSci students, generated much of the material that was presented. Nick Schofield (University of Aberdeen) and Simon Holford (University of Adelaide) are also thanked for their input.

Phil Mannion and PhD student Jon Tennant are currently attending the International Palaeontological Congress (28 September – 3 October) in Mendoza, Argentina. Phil is giving an invited symposium talk, entitled “New phylogenetic character set sheds light on the Late Jurassic to mid-Cretaceous evolution of Gondwanan sauropod dinosaurs”, and Jon is presenting a poster expanding on their new publication on atoposaurid crocodyliforms. Phil will also be studying dinosaur material in several Argentinean museum collections before and after the conference.

Adrian Muxworthy gave an invited talk at the 14^th Castle Meeting on New Trends on Paleo, Rock and Environmental Magnetism, Evora, Portugal.

David Cronan gave a paper entitled, ‘Regional and Environmental controls on Manganese Nodules in the central South Pacific’, at the 43^rd annual Underwater Mining Conference of the International Marine Minerals Society, in Lisbon, 22 September.

Trevor Almeida was awarded an Early Career Researcher Scholarship to attend the International Microscopy Congress 2014 in Prague, Czech Republic, where he gave a talk, ‘Visualisation of chemical remanent magnetisation in pseudo-single-domain Fe₃O₄ particles examined by environmental TEM and off-axis electron holography’.

Christoph Mazur, Marcello Contestabile, Gregory Offer and Nigel Brandon presented their paper, ‘The role of regime incumbents for transformation pathways: insights on micro level dynamics in the automotive industry’, at the 5^th International Sustainability Transitions Conference, 26-29 August in the Netherlands.

Philip Allen co-convened the 2014 William Smith Meeting of the Geological Society entitled 'The Future of Sequence Stratigraphy: Evolution or Revolution?' on 22-23 September 2014. Gary Hampson and recent 51³Ô¹ÏÍø PhD Nikolaos Michael presented papers at the same meeting. Philip will co-edit a Special Publication based on the meeting.

Awards

Shashi Luther is to be awarded the “Mahatma Gandhi Pravasi Samman 2014” at the House of Lords on Thursday 9 October. A small number of these awards are presented every year by the government of India and the Non-Resident Indians (NRI) Welfare Society of India for outstanding services, achievements and contributions in their country of residence and also in the service of the wider global community. Shashi’s nomination cites her outstanding work in supporting students from around the world during their studies in the Department (principally on the Petroleum Geoscience and Petroleum Geophysics MSc courses) as “keeping the flag of India high”.

Research Grants

Jianguo Liu has received a ~£100,000 research grant from the Centre for Defence Enterprise, Ministry of Defence, for a 10 month research project to develop, ‘Phase Correlation Digital Optical Rangefinder/moving target detector (PCDOR)’, starting on 1 October 2014.

Ian Bastow has been awarded a grant of £3000 from the Royal Astronomical Society for “Support for three early career researchers to attend a seismological research workshop in Montreal in 2015”.

Matt Piggott (PI) and Gerard Gorman have been awarded an EPSRC Software for the Future grant entitled, ‘A new simulation and optimisation platform for  marine technology’. The project is led by ESE, joint with Computing at 51³Ô¹ÏÍø as well as Oxford and Edinburgh.  Total FEC value is ~£700,000, of which ~£550,000 is at 51³Ô¹ÏÍø.

Gerard Gorman (PI) and Matt Piggott have been awarded six months PDRA time for the project, ‘Disruptive modelling technologies for Formula One Racing’, as part of EPSRC's Pathways to Impact Funding Scheme.

Workshops and Courses

PhD student Thibaut Defoort, who is developing numerical models for rock-bit interactions under the supervision of Adriana Paluszny and Robert Zimmerman, attended a short course entitled, ‘Modeling of Localized Inelastic Deformation’, in Prague, from 15-19 September. The course, sponsored by RILEM and taught by Professor Milan Jirásek, was attended by twenty students from throughout Europe.

Tom Phillips, Antje Lenhart, Han Claringbould, Oliver Duffy and Rebecca Bell attended and gave a series of oral presentations at a MultiRift Project meeting jointly hosted by Statoil Bergen and the University of Bergen. The MultiRift project aims to develop a fundamental understanding of how pre-existing structures influence the evolution of normal faults and normal fault populations on rifted margins. The two-day meeting was attended by collaborators from the Universities of Oslo, Bergen and Manchester, as well Statoil representatives from London, Bergen and Trondheim.

Impact and Media

Second year Geophysics undergraduate Hadyn Orme was the lucky engineering student selected to sail aboard a tall ship with the Jubilee Sailing Trust, on its voyage from London to Dieppe, 20-26 September. The charity takes people of all abilities sailing on tall ships and they were approached by an engineering organisation who funded the place for an engineering student.

Rebecca Bell has become the new Earth Science columnist for the Observer, the Guardian’s Sunday magazine. Her first article, ‘’, was published on 7 September and her columns will be a regular feature every six weeks. If you have any exciting research about to be published or an idea for an article that you think would be of interest to the general public Becky would love to hear from you.

Christoph Mazur contributed to a study which has been presented in the United Nations HQ, ‘The global commission on the economy and climate, better growth better climate’, which featured in the New Climate Economy Report, September 2014.

James Hammond was in the field in North Korea servicing six seismometers and collecting more geological samples (and celebrating his 33^rd birthday!). His team were accompanied by a news crew from

Birthday breakfast in North Korea

Associated Press that created quite a bit of attention.  Their story was picked up by over 100 international news organisations including: Washington Post, ABC News, Fox, USA Today, Japan Times, The Scotsman and alas the Daily Mail.  See the and .

Following this Clive Oppenheimer (Cambridge) and James also did a piece for .

North Korean scientists downloading seismic data from one of the broadband seismic stations near Mt. Paektu Volcano.

ESE Away Day

ESE had its Away Day this month at the Millennium Hotel, Gloucester Road, organised by Ian Bastow and Ann Muggeridge. Opened by Dean of the faculty Jeff Magee, the event was attended by more than 130 members of the department. Permanent staff took a training session in unconscious bias, and heard feedback from the Human Resources department concerning the results of the most recent staff survey.  PhD students, post-docs, and research fellows enjoyed presentations by and an interactive discussion with a panel made up of ESE post-docs, alumni, and the 51³Ô¹ÏÍø Careers Service.  Speakers were selected specifically to represent both the blue skies and industrial career paths often encountered by Earth Science postgraduates, and to provide our young academics with some sage advice as they contemplate their future careers.  

Formal training sessions in the morning and early afternoon were followed by an afternoon of poster presentations, giving our broad-ranging department chance to discover in detail what goes on in different research groups. In a tightly fought contest, Mitch D’Arcy won the best student poster award.  Congratulations Mitch!

Many thanks to Liz Elvidge (Head of IC Postdoc Development Centre), Kani Kamara (IC Equality and Diversity Manager), Jenny Morris (Statoil), Sarmini Ghosh (Careers Service) and Louise Lindsay (IC Head of Human Resources) for taking the time to contribute to the Away Day through their stimulating presentations.

Poster session at the ESE Away Day