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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
In the past it was thought that the boundary between continental and oceanic crust at the edge of the ocean basins was close to the edge of the flat “abyssal plains”, but over the past 20 years it has been revealed that true oceanic crust is often not present until much further out into the… Read More Searching for the limits of the continents
Scientists and engineers have fought to save the beautiful World Heritage site of Venice from flooding since the 10th century. Now, with 22 million tourists visiting the city every year and the threat of sea levels rising with climate change, the problem of habitat destruction in the lagoon is more acute than ever. University of… Read More Management of the coastal development of Venice lagoon
It has just been announced that Shari Gallop has been awarded a Laurie Prandolini Fellowship Award by the ANZSPAC Division of the Institute of Marine Engineering Science and Technology (www.imarest.org). Only one Fellowship is awarded every year to a selected candidate judged to be of outstanding potential to enable a significant piece of work to be… Read More Shari Gallop awarded a Laurie Prandolini Fellowship Award
Applications are open for the Engineering in the Coastal Environment MSc 2014/2015 programme at the University of Southampton. The coastal zone is now widely recognised as important at national, European and global levels. Skilled engineers who can understand environmental issues in such sensitive areas are in high demand. The accredited MSc Engineering in the Coastal… Read More Applications open for MSc Engineering in the Coastal Environment
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the England football team and trophies, UKIP and meteorology, are just some examples of things that don’t seem to work together, but I believe science and the arts do not belong in this category. Instead, the principles and practices used in these two dis ciplines, when mixed well, can benefit… Read More Science and the arts: Can opposites attract?
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?
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
Acquiring physical properties of the seabed is important for understanding sediment transport and resuspension processes and for monitoring the changing health of benthic ecosystems. Increasingly sediment profile imagery (SPI), a rapid, in-situ technique is used in conjunction with grabs and cores to obtain these properties. SPI is an inverted periscope that penetrates the seabed and… Read More An automated tool for grain size analysis from sediment profile imagery