Opinion A decadal vision, a decade later Research in the Earth Science faces an extremely uncertain future in Australian Universities. The financial shock of 2020 has turned into an existential crisis for Earth Science departments across the country.
Opinion Motivations 3: Earth system services The earth system provides many crucial services essential to the wealth and health of human society. It provides both the climate and the platform on which we live, the mineral, energy and groundwater resources on which we depend and increasingly a repository for our wastes. [1]
Opinion Motivations 2: Children of the revolution As the children of the plate tectonic revolution, today’s geoscientists have grown up with a zeal to understand the basic workings of our planet. There are many remarkable testimonies to the success of plate tectonics including declining discovery rates of large mineral resources. [1]
Opinion Motivations 1: Lessons for an uncertain future About 13,000 years ago, as their land was drowning, the last Vicmanians were confronted a terrible choice. Through human induced climate change we are now committing a similar fate. Unlike the Vicmanians, in foreseeing the future we can do something about it [1].
Seismology Imaging the full lithosphere with earthquake sources When the seismic waves from a distant earthquake arrive in the vicinity of a seismic recording station they interact with the local structure and produce a variety of minor contributions accompanying the main arrival of a seismic phase.
Publications Unusual geochemical signature in Arctic ocean floor basalts Earth’s tectonic plates are constantly moving. Over millions of years new plates form at oceanic ridges, while others form mountains or even sink back in the mantle and disappear from the surface. The unique geochemical signature of sunken plates can be preserved and reappear in newly formed crust.
Seismology Probing the Australian-Pacific Plate Boundary (Pt 8: Sailing Home) Unlike Sirens, who drew sailors to the rocks by their enchanted singing, causing their ships to sink, Nereids – the daughters of Doris and Nereus, the old man of the sea
Geophysics Probing the Australian-Pacific Plate Boundary (Pt 7: The hunt for MRO21) When you are pressed for time, the only thing you hope for is for things to go as smoothly as possible so that you can move on.
Geophysics Shallow earthquakes in Australia The Earth’s crust is made up of tectonic plates that are constantly in motion. Large, destructive earthquakes occur when accumulated energy at plate boundaries - where two plates are pushing against each other - is suddenly released.
Geodynamics How is 'social distancing' maintained between strike-slip faults? Haibin Yang, Louis Moresi and Mark Quigley provide a scaling relationship for the fault spacing in continental strike-slip shear zones.
Seismology Probing the Australian-Pacific Plate Boundary (Pt 6: A race against time in sub-Antarctic waters) ... probably the most challenging feature in the global ocean on which to deploy ocean bottom seismometers, which need to land onto a relatively flat surface ...
Geophysics Tweed Valley a ‘natural laboratory’ to model impacts of climate change and test carbon sequestration theory Kyle Manley, Tristan Salles Dietmar Müller Since roughly 1880 the Earth has warmed by 1 deg C, many times faster than any warming episode in the past 65 million years
Geophysics Probing the Australian-Pacific Plate Boundary (Pt 5: Underwater array observatory at the Macquarie Ridge) Three and a half days after our departure from Hobart, we arrived in just northeast of the Macquarie island and instantly proceeded with swathing – mapping the ocean floor in the north-eastern quadrant, in lines parallel to the Macquarie ridge.
Geodynamics On the destructive tendencies of cratons Katie Cooper, Rebecca Farrington and Meghan Miller explain how cratonic lithosphere can be sculpted by flow from a passing subducting slab.
Seismology Probing the Australian-Pacific Plate Boundary (Pt 4: What lies beneath ?) A violent earthquake roared and rumbled through the underworld of a distant corner of the planet covered by the restless ocean, far enough from any soul to be felt or heard.
Opinion Probing the Australian-Pacific Plate Boundary (Pt 3 — A voyage to the furious fifties) “Below 40 degrees south there is no law, and below 50 degrees south there is no God."
Seismology Probing the Australian-Pacific Plate Boundary (Pt 2 — On the Deck) We (the team of 9 scientists and technicians from the Australian National University’s Research School of Earth Sciences) are out of strict 2-week quarantine and ready for a pre-voyage
Tectonics How Earth's continents became twisted and contorted over millions of years Figure: Photographed on Kangaroo Island, this rock – called a ‘zebra schist’ – deformed from flat-lying marine sediments through being stressed by a continental collision over 500 million years ago. Dietmar Muller
Geophysics Rocky icebergs and deep anchors – new research on how planetary forces shape the Earth’s surface A recent article in The Conversation by Simon Lamb from Victoria University of Wellington "uncovers the fundamental forces that control the Earth’s surface". They use Crust 1.0, ETOPO1, and the McKenzie and Priestley lithosphere model to compute their "Whole Layer Isostasy" model.
Geodynamics Advanced geodynamic models of giant earthquakes Though giant earthquakes are disastrous, they provide essential information to investigate earthquake physics. Thyagarajulu Gollapalli, a PhD student jointly from Monash University and the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, discusses our present understanding of such big earthquakes.
AuScope Testing AuScope’s next-gen seismometers at Mt Stromlo Recently, AuScope invested in a suite of Large-N or nodal seismometers, which are capable of recording seismic noise at local-, rather than regional-, scale, allowing seismologists to focus on imaging geological features like faults and aquifers.
Opinion Probing the Australian-Pacific Plate Boundary: Macquarie Ridge in 3D (Part 1 - Quarantine ?) I am locked in a small hotel in Hobart turned into a quarantine, tempted to write a story named “Tasmanian quarantine”, but, honestly, I can’t. I could lament how
Seismology Patchy Weather at the Core-Mantle Boundary I decided to simplify the title of our new paper (Muir & Tkalčić), significantly, for the purposes of presenting it to a general audience. It has just been published online
Enigmatic C’ shear bands: their evolution and demise C' shear bands and S-C fabric in naturally deformed rocks in thin section (left) and outcrop (right). Images are from the Zanskar Shear Zone, NW Himalaya (St = staurolite, Bt = biotite,
Publications From Antarctica to Australia: Mighty River’s Story Revealed A group of researchers have traced a mighty Gondwana river back to its distant source - in the mountains of East Antarctica. They’ve been able to show that this colossal river flowed for over 200 million years, making it a candidate for one of the top ten longest-lived rivers in Earth’s history.
