New research has found that the Great Barrier Reef, as a whole, is a remarkably effective wave absorber, despite large gaps between the reefs. This means that landward of the reefs, waves are mostly related to local winds rather than offshore wave conditions. As waves break and reduce in height over reefs, this drives currents… Read More Great Barrier Reef is a remarkably efficient wave attenuator
Creating records of eruptive events through time is incredibly important; these records can give us a huge wealth of information about the history of a volcano. The knowledge we can gain from eruptive records is critical to understanding what hazards a volcano may pose in the future, including: how often the volcano erupts, the style… Read More Secrets of the sea: what can submarine sediments tell us about volcanoes?
Coastal regions under threat from climate change and sea-level rise need to tackle the more immediate threats of human-led and other non-climatic changes, according to a team of international scientists. The team of 27 scientists from five continents was led by Dr Sally Brown at the University of Southampton, and from Ocean and Earth Science… Read More Managing coasts under threat from climate change and sea-level rise
Dr Helen Miller, and colleagues from G&G, Geochemistry and the British Geological Survey have published a new research article in Environmental Science & Technology entitled “A 500 Year Sediment Lake Record of Anthropogenic and Natural Inputs to Windermere (English Lake District) Using Double-Spike Lead Isotopes, Radiochronology, and Sediment Microanalysis”. The paper combines nondestructive and high precision… Read More A 500 Year Sediment Lake Record of Anthropogenic and Natural Inputs to Windermere
Dr Michael Grant, COARS, is lead author on a new paper published in the international journal Environmental Archaeology, entitled “A palaeoenvironmental context for Terminal Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic activity in the Colne Valley: Offsite records contemporary with occupation at Three Ways Wharf, Uxbridge.” The paper documents multi-proxy analyses from floodplain deposits in the Colne Valley,… Read More Dr Michael Grant publishes article on the important Palaeolithic site of Three Ways Wharf, Uxbridge.
A summary of the excavations and analysis from the internationally important Late Upper Palaeolithic site of Farndon Fields has been published in the latest edition of the Prehistoric Society newsletter, PAST. The article is written by Dr Michael Grant, COARS, and Phil Harding, Wessex Archaeology and Channel 4’s Time Team. Recent excavations, as part of… Read More Farndon Fields Late Upper Palaeolithic Site
A few years ago I was lucky enough to witness the infamous summit eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in 2010. Despite all the hassle it caused, especially the financial losses incurred by the aviation industry, the eruption created more awareness of the importance of volcano research in the UK. Subsequent studies of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption have advanced… Read More The 4 year anniversary of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption: My eyewitness account
What is the fate of the volatiles that are stored in trench sediments, igneous crust and hydrated lithospheric mantle and that are transported into a subduction zone? G&G Marie Curie Research Fellow Jacob Geersen has been involved in recently published research, that constrains and compare the input and output fluxes of water, chlorine and sulfur into the Central Chilean… Read More What goes in must come out?
Dr Michael Grant, alongside colleagues from Geography and Environment, have published a new research article in the Journal of Quaternary Science entitled “Climatic influence upon early to mid-Holocene fire regimes within temperate woodlands: a multi-proxy reconstruction from the New Forest, southern England”. The article features combined pollen, charcoal and palaeoclimatic records from the site of Cranes… Read More Climatic influence upon early to mid-Holocene fire regimes
The question whether each megathrust earthquake necessarily and instantaneously triggers submarine mass-movement has been intensively discussed in the wake of the giant earthquakes that occurred over the last decade. Whereas the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake (Japan) caused failure of parts of the lowermost continental slope, no similar evidence was found after the 2010 Maule earthquake (Central… Read More Megathrust earthquakes and submarine landslides