Leigh Marsh is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Geology and Geophysics group in Southampton. Here, she tells us about her work with the EV Nautilus. Last year, I was working on behalf of the Ocean Exploration Trust on-board the EV Nautilus in the Caribbean. This year, I am fortunate to be joining the EV… Read More EV Nautilus: Galapagos Rift Exploration
Tim Minshull, with co-authors Rose Edwards from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton and Ernst Flueh from Geomar Helmoltz Centre for Ocean Research in Germany, has used seismic data collected on the ocean floor to study the nature and origin of the Murray Ridge, an enigmatic block of crust in the northwest Indian Ocean that… Read More Investigating an enigmatic crustal block in the northwest Indian Ocean
Former Southampton PhD student Hector Marín-Moreno with Southampton co-authors Tim Minshull, Graham Westbrook and Bablu Sinha have been studying how methane emissions from the seabed west of the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard might change in the future. Methane can be trapped beneath the seabed in the form of an ice-like substance called hydrate, which is… Read More Predicting Future Methane Emissions off Svalbard
Jointly funded by the Wolfson Foundation and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award aims to provide universities with additional support to enable them to attract science talent from overseas and retain respected UK scientists of outstanding achievement and potential. Professor Tim Minshull, a marine geophysicist who uses… Read More Professor Tim Minshull receives prestigious Wolfson Merit Award
Southampton Geologists and Geophysicists, along with colleagues in the UK, Greece, the rest of Europe and the US, have been working in the active Corinth rift in Greece for the last 10-15 years – this is one of the most seismically active areas of Europe and one of the most rapidly extending regions on Earth.… Read More Progress on Future Drilling in the Active Corinth Rift, Greece
Former Southampton PhD student Gemma Smith and Lisa McNeill, Tim Henstock and Jon Bull have been studying a poorly understood subduction zone in the western Indian Ocean – the Makran, offshore southern Iran and Pakistan. At a subduction zone, one plate slides beneath another creating compressional deformation. The resulting major fault zone generates the largest… Read More Understanding the earthquake and tsunami hazards of the western Indian Ocean
An ocean drilling expedition has been scheduled for 2016 offshore Sumatra – this will be the first time this subduction zone margin has been drilled for scientific purposes. The expedition will take place more than 10 years after the 2004 Boxing Day Earthquake and tsunami that ruptured more than 1200 km of the Indonesian-Indian margin,… Read More Ocean Drilling Scheduled for the Sumatran Subduction Margin – Source of the 2004 Earthquake and Tsunami
In the past few months there have been some changes to the G&G staff. We would like to congratulate Marianne Karplus, Casey Nixon and Mark Vardy on their new positions and we hope to stay working closely with them in their new roles. We would also like to welcome three new postdocs to the G&G… Read More Goodbyes and new faces in the G&G group
Last week, Kate Rychert had a news and views piece published in the journal Nature discussing the recent discovery of a sharp base to the lithosphere (<1km) beneath New Zealand (Nature Letter: A seismic reflection image for the base of a tectonic plate). Surprisingly, a 10 km thick low-seismic-velocity channel was also found at the base of… Read More Kate Rychert features in Nature on “The slippery base of a tectonic plate”
Starting September 2014, PhD student Chen Chen and post-docs Louise Watremez and Manel Prada (DIAS, Dublin) are working together to define the crustal structure across Porcupine Basin, which is located offshore SW Ireland. The degree of crustal thinning increases from North to South, allowing us to observe the structures of the crustal thinning at different… Read More The Porcupine Basin project