During October, new PhD student Ben Callow and Prof Jon Bull visited California to study field examples of sandstone injectites as part of two collaborative carbon sequestration projects STEMM-CCS (Horizon 2020) and CHIMNEY (NERC). California is home to some of the largest onshore examples of sandstone injectites in the world, providing Ben and Jon with… Read More Fieldwork investigation of Sandstone Injectites in California
This is a press-release for a new paper – Wave breaking patterns control rip current flow regimes and surf zone retention, published by members of the coastal group which can be accessed here. Research by the Universities of Southampton and Plymouth has found a new link between breaking waves and the hazard posed by rip currents. The… Read More New understanding of rip currents could help to save lives
Gaye Bayrakci, Tim Minshull, Jon Bull and Richard Davy from the G&G group, with colleagues from six other institutions, have published a paper in Nature Geoscience this week, entitled âFault-controlled hydration of the upper mantle during continental riftingâ. This paper is the first to document a direct link between the fault activity and the amount… Read More Faults control the flux of water into the Earth during continental breakup
As part of Southampton Science and Engineering Festival, a team from Geology&Geophysics research group put on a large, and largely popular display on Sediment Dynamics at the new Bolderwood Innovation Campus.  The University’s Science and Engineering Day 2016 took place on Saturday 12th March. This free event was part of British Science Week www.britishscienceweek.org and was previously awarded Best… Read More Sediment Dynamics from the beach to Mars – Science and Engineering Day 2016
By PhD students Aude Lavayssiere and Finn Illsley-Kemp. As part of the RiftVolc project aiming to understand magmatism and rifting in the East African Rift System, Dr Derek Keir and two PhD students, Finn Illsley-Kemp and Aude Lavayssiere, went to Ethiopia last month to deploy seismic stations. RiftVolc is a project that started in September… Read More Seismic deployment in the Main Ethiopian Rift
Dr Justin Dix has been awarded a grant from Historic England for a research project to search the River Hamble in Hampshire for traces of a significant wreck. The site may be the resting place of the Holigost, a ship built in 1414 and used by Henry V to fight the French during the Hundred… Read More Surveying the River Hamble in search of Henry Vâs warship
The Passive Imaging of the Lithosphere and Asthenosphere Boundary project aims at studying the interaction of the base of the rigid tectonic part (the lithosphere) with the softer layer underneath it â the asthenosphere. Understanding interaction between the two layers is essential in order to better understand what makes plates âplate-likeâ, and thus understanding the origin… Read More PILAB project sails through (cruise blog now live)
Back in November last year,12 months after its start in 2014, the NERC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Oil & Gas held its first annual conference at Heriot-Watt University. Â The morning of the conference gave the chance for a number of notable individuals such as Fergus Ewing (MSP for Business, Energy and… Read More NERC CDT in Oil & Gas Annual Conference 2015
Stretchy Slabs in Deep Earth A new paper out in Nature Geoscience, led by Caroline Eakin, suggests that subducting slabs may not be as strong as we think, but instead may be relatively weak and deform easily. When new oceanic plates form at mid-ocean ridges it is thought that they âfreeze-inâ a certain crystal fabric… Read More Stretchy Slabs in Deep Earth
Earthquakes and associated tsunamis can be exceptionally dangerous. In the last 12 years, earthquakes and tsunamis offshore Sumatra, Japan and Haiti have killed over 350,000 people. Despite this, many large and growing population centres are located close to plate boundaries worldwide, which is where most large earthquakes occur. It is therefore important to understand how… Read More âSkinnyâ landslides and big earthquakes