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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
Geology & Geophysics PhD student, Chiara Marieni, attended the IEA GHG International CCS Summer School hosted by The University of Texas at Austin (USA), from July 6th to 11th, 2014. Chiara is a third year PhD student working on the off-shore basalts as unconventional reservoirs where permanently store the atmospheric CO2. The IEA GHG Carbon… Read More IEA GHG International CCS Summer School 2014, Austin (Texas)
Last week Dr Charlie Thompson and PhD student Sam Griffith from Geology & Geophysics began a fieldwork project investigating the survivability of DNA in submerged bone. Cow femur bones, acting as human analogues, are being submerged at four sites in estuarine, riverine and marine areas in Hampshire. In the environment a number of physicochemical and… Read More G & G team begin fieldwork looking at DNA degradation in submerged bone.
Karen Weitemeyer and the Marine Electromagnetics Laboratory (Marine EM Lab) is part of an international European consortium of 19 large industry and research organisations with various maritime fields of expertise that will develop solutions that bring deep sea mining closer to reality. The “Blue Mining” project will address all aspects of the value chain in… Read More EU grant awarded to Dr Karen Weitemeyer for project: “Breakthrough Solutions for Mineral Extraction and Processing in Extreme Environments – Blue Mining”.
In recent years extensive geotechnical and environmental sampling survey programs have been conducted in support of numerous coastal and marine development projects. The data generated from these surveys can play a key role in understanding the historic marine environment. However, to properly engage with this resource, it is important that the data collected, the types… Read More Marine Geo-Archaeological Skills Shortage Assessment
Tim Minshull from G&G has just been awarded a grant to analyse seismic data from the Porcupine Basin west of Ireland, a region where the continental crust has been highly extended but not quite enough to form an ocean basin. The project is in collaboration with the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies (DIAS), the University… Read More Understanding the Porcupine Basin west of Ireland
Helen Miller and Jon Bull (from Ocean and Earth Science) recently organised a successful workshop in Windermere, which aimed to increase the impact recent research on Windermere as part of a NERC Impact Acceleration Account to the University of Southampton. The workshop was well attended, with 30 delegates from 12 different organisations including the Centre… Read More Windermere Workshop
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.