School of Geography, Geology and the Environment
Research seminars
Both external and internal speakers are invited to the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment to present the latest results of their research.
Everyone is invited, so please join us!
History of water on Mars
Wednesday 12 March 2025, 1.00pm-2.00pm, Attenborough 208 and via Teams
Dr Trishit Ruj, Associate Professor at Institute for Planetary Materials, Okayama University, Japan
Mars once had a thick atmosphere and a warm, humid environment conducive to liquid water, but by ~3.5 billion years ago, most of its water dissipated into space, leaving behind a cold, arid planet. However, water persists as ice in polar caps and subsurface layers, and briny water may exist seasonally in high-latitude regions, raising questions about potential extant habitability. I will summarize the recent works by my students exploring three key aspects of Martian water history: (1) Deltas (in the Noachian to Hesperian), where flume-tank experiments and crater counting indicate that sea-level regression around 3.5–3.4 Ga led to localized lakes; (2) Subsurface ice (in the Amazonian), where periglacial landforms in Mongolia serve as terrestrial analogs to map mid-latitude Martian ice; and (3) Liquid brine (at the present-day), where remote sensing suggests transient brine activity and is supported by field investigations in the White Sands bassanite (CaSO4· 1/2H2O ) formation from evaporative processes, suggesting similar phase transitions may occur on Mars. These studies contribute to understanding past climate transitions, potential habitability, and future exploration, including the Mars Ice Mapper (MIM) mission.
Modeling to Achieve Mechanistic Understanding and Develop Optimized Transformative Engineering Solutions
Thursday 13 March 2025, 1.00pm-2.00pm, Sir Bob Burgess Building, Room 2.07
Dr Joel Ducoste, Professor in the Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering Department and the Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Success in the College of Engineering, North Carolina State University
In the pursuit of innovative engineering solutions, the integration of advanced modeling techniques has become essential for enhancing our mechanistic understanding of complex multi-scale systems. In this presentation, I will provide an overview of the diverse computational fluid dynamics (CFD) research I have conducted over the past 26 years at North Carolina State University. Through a series of case studies, I will illustrate how CFD modeling can elucidate the underlying process phenomena in various engineering applications, from chemical mixing and particle aggregation transport to the optimization of UV disinfection systems. The presentation will emphasize the importance of a mechanistic understanding in driving innovation, highlighting examples where modelling has led to significant improvements in process design, performance optimization, and system resilience.
Dr Joel Ducoste is a Professor in the Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering Department and the Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Success in the College of Engineering and at North Carolina State University (NCSU). He holds a B.S. (1988) and M.Eng. (1989) in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering (1996) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr Ducoste has over 28 years of Environmental Engineering experience, is a board certified environmental engineering member with eminence through the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists, and is a recognized expert in multiscale multi-physics modeling of environmental processes that involve contaminant transport, transformation and spatial variations using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). His research interests include physico-chemical processes in water treatment, water/wastewater process optimization, wastewater sewer collection system sustainability and reducing fats, oils, and grease accumulation, renewable energy, solid waste process modeling, and disinfection of pathogenic aerosols. Dr Ducoste has received a number of awards including: an NSF Career Award, a Fulbright fellowship, Visiting Professorships at Ghent University, South East University, and Yangzhou University, NC State mentoring award, elected Fellow of both the Water Environment Federation (WEF) and the Association of the Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP), AEESP Distinguished service award, and the WEF Fair Distinguished Engineering Educator Medal.
Evidence for a highly dynamic East Antarctic Ice Sheet in the warm Early Miocene (20-17 Ma) from the southernmost volcanoes in the world (87°S)
Wednesday 26 March 2025, 1.00pm-2.00pm, Attenborough Film Theatre
Professor John Smellie, School of Geography, Geology and The Environment, University of Leicester
Glaciovolcanism, the study of volcanoes that interact with ice in all its forms, is a very young science but it has rapidly developed into an important sub-category of hydrovolcanism. It has also evolved concurrently into a major new proxy for terrestrial ice sheets that can be used to reconstruct palaeo-landscapes and ice configurations. As such, it provides an independent counterbalance to information inferred from marine sedimentary investigations and low-latitude compositional proxies.
This talk shall introduce glaciovolcanism and the rationale that underpins its exceptional ability to reconstruct past terrestrial ice masses. Glaciovolcanoes are common throughout Antarctica, and the bulk of this talk shall document the unique, and uniquely important, environmental evidence preserved in three small Antarctic volcanic centres situated far inland within the margins of the high polar plateau, not far from South Pole. The volcanoes erupted between 20 and 17 m.yr ago, during the warm Early Miocene, a period during which global mean temperatures were approximately 4° above modern. Similar temperatures are expected to occur within the next hundred years if global warming continues apace. The volcanic record indicates that the configuration of the terrestrial East Antarctic Ice Sheet changed radically, probably in response to astronomical forcing. However, the talk shall point to a climatic factor that may also have helped to drive the changes. Whilst it is implausible that the present-day ice sheet shall react in similar fashion to its Early Miocene counterpart, the prognosis is still worrisome and it is likely that current harmful environmental trends shall be exacerbated.
Professor John Smellie is volcanologist working on glaciovolcanism (eruptions beneath ice sheets) and palaeo-ice sheet reconstruction. Prior to moving to Leicester University John spent 35 years working for the British Antarctic Survey principally as Senior Volcanologist and Leader of many projects. He has worked mainly on volcanic and associated glacial sedimentary rocks right across Antarctica from the sub-Antarctic active volcanic South Sandwich Islands through the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctica to East Antarctica. A prolific author with > 200 publications (including the first textbook on glaciovolcanism) and editor or co-editor of 13 scientific volumes, he has successfully completed 26 field seasons in Antarctica including as Chief Scientist on two Antarctic cruises and 10 in Iceland.
TBC
Wednesday 14 May 2025, 1.00pm-2.00pm, Location TBC
Dr John Connolly, Assistant Professor in Physical Geography, Trinity College Dublin
Further details to follow.
TBC
Wednesday 4 June 2025, 1.00pm-2.00pm, Location TBC
Jack Wright, Spaceflight Project Officer, The Open University
Jack will be starting a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institute of Space in Leicester in mid 2025. In this seminar find out more about him and the research he proposes to do here.