ERE
Energy, Resources and the Environment

Early Career Scientists

ERE Division Outstanding Young Scientist Award: who would you nominate?

Every year the EGU rewards outstanding young or early career scientists with the Arne Richter Outstanding Young Scientist Award (OYSA), or one of the Division Outstanding Young Scientist Awards. These awards are granted for an outstanding research contribution in the Earth, planetary and space sciences, and are intended to identify the awardees as role models for the next generation of young scientists.

If you know an outstanding YS, who has made a significant contribution to Energy, Resources and the Environment, please consider nominating them for the ERE Division OYSA! 🙂

For more information on the awards and medals awarded by EGU, check here. Please be aware that all nominations must be submitted online by the 15th of June! Go to the EGU website for a checklist on what to do before you submit.

Award Ceremony at the EGU GA 2015. Will you be on stage next year?

Award Ceremony at the EGU GA 2015. Will you be on stage next year?

What to see at EGU?: Young Scientist events

Within a week the EGU General Assembly will kick off! This year the topic will be A Voyage Through Scales. For those that will attend for the first time, the scale of EGU itself may be impressive enough already. So how do you decide where to go? Here we hope to point you to a few interesting sessions, in case you get completely lost.

To start with, there are a number of interesting events for Young Scientists. For you! 🙂

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Ice Breaker Reception

On Sunday evening the EGU General Assembly 2015 will be kicked off with the Ice Breaker Reception, at 18.30h in Foyer E. A gathering point for young scientists provides the opportunity to meet like-minded fellows, especially if it is your first time at the General Assembly or you are coming alone.

The Young Scientist Forum

The YS Forum takes place on Tuesday at 12.15 to 13.15h in room G8. Come along and meet your young scientist representatives, find out what the EGU does for young scientists and take the chance to become more involved in the Union. This forum is a great opportunity to let us know what you would like from the EGU, find out how you can get involved in the Assembly and meet other scientists in the EGU young scientist community.

Young Scientists’ Lounge

For the Young Scientists, on the Red Level of the conference centre you can find a place to take a break, grab a free coffee or soft drink and gather your thoughts away from the buzz of the Assembly. The lounge is also a great place to catch up with colleagues you haven’t seen in a while and perhaps strike up a new collaboration. On the notice boards you can find information about cultural activities on offer in Vienna. There is also the opportunity to provide feedback via suggestion boards.

Young Scientists Lounge

Young Scientists’ Lounge

Young Scientist Reception and Medallist Reception

To bring together Young Scientists and past EGU-medallists, there will be a reception with drinks and light snacks. The reception take place on Tuesday 14 April, from 19:00 to 20:30 in room Y1.

This networking reception will provide an informal setting in which scientists can establish links with outstanding early career researchers and established scientists; offering an opportunity for young scientists to find answers to specific questions, which often cannot be found in your usual textbook. It offers a great opportunity for medallists to share their experience with researchers embarking on their academic career. To attend the reception, you need to register for the event in advance via this online form. Places at the reception are limited and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. Your place is guaranteed only once you receive a confirmation email from the EGU Communications Officer, Laura Roberts.

Sessions for YS at the General Assembly

In addition to the above networking events, there are a number of other sessions catering the YS. A short list of these sessions with a strong YS focus can be found here. Of special interest are the two career workshops, focussing on: 1) Adding value to your research experience, and 2) Job applications and interviews. Note that you must register for the workshops in advance via the links provided!

What to see at EGU?: A Voyage Through Scales

Within a week the EGU General Assembly will kick off! This year the topic will be A Voyage Through Scales. For those that will attend for the first time, the scale of EGU itself may be impressive enough already. So how do you decide where to go? Here we hope to point you to a few interesting sessions, in case you get completely lost.

A number of events will take place concerned with this year’s theme: A Voyage Through Scales. Zoom into a cloud. Zoom out of a rock. Watch the volcano explode, the lightning strike, an aurora undulate. Imagine ice sheets expanding, retreating – pulsating – while continents continue their leisurely collisions. Everywhere there are structures within structures … within structures. A voyage through scales is an invitation to contemplate the earth’s extraordinary variability extending from milliseconds to its age, from microns to the size of the planet. The range of scales in space, in time – in space-time – is truly mindboggling. Their complexity challenges our ability to measure, to model to comprehend.

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Lectures for a general geoscience audience (GL)
Theme exhibition

To illustrate this year’s theme, there are four exhibitions interpreting ‘A voyage through scales:

  • The scales of the General Assembly: experience the evolution of the conference during the week; space, time, and volume – the EGU2015 in numbers.
  • The scales of peer review: experience a voyage through the interactive quality assurance of EGU’s journals; space, time, and volume – watch peer review from a different perspective.
  • The scales in EGU journals: experience the beauty of science through the lens of our publications; impressions from this year’s photo book.
  • The scales in art: experience the dialogue between science and art; watch the artistic interpretation of the theme developing over the week.
Cover of the photo book for A Voyage Through Scales

Cover of the photo book for A Voyage Through Scales

Photo book

A high-quality photo book has been compiled and will be presented at the Assembly. Through the lens of our journals, scientists write about scaling in their disciplines and visualize their work through beautiful photos. The book is published by EGU and Edition Lammerhuber and will be handed-out to the participants upon registration.

Words on Wednesday: Effects of temperature and CO2 on the frictional behavior of simulated anhydrite fault rock

Words on Wednesday aims at promoting interesting/fun/exciting publications on topics related to Energy, Resources and the Environment. If you would like to be featured on WoW, please send us a link of the paper, or your own post, at ERE.Matters@gmail.com.

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Pluymakers, A. M. H., J. E. Samuelson, A. R. Niemeijer, and C. J. Spiers (2014), Effects of temperature and CO2 on the frictional behavior of simulated anhydrite fault rock, J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth, 119, 8728–8747, doi:10.1002/2014JB011575

Depleted oil and gas reservoirs form attractive CO2-storage sites, where prerequisites to efficient and safe CO2-storage include no leakage and no (additional) seismicity. It is thus of importance to understand the possible effects of CO2 not only on the geomechanical behavior of the reservoir- and caprock, but also of the crosscutting faults. Many of these potential storage reservoirs are topped by anhydrite caprocks (CaSO4), and thus reservoir-bounding faults are likely to contain anhydrite-derived damage material, or ‘fault gouge’. To better understand the frictional properties of anhydrite fault gouges, we have performed friction experiments on simulated anhydrite fault gouges, including effects of short-term CO2 exposure. Our main research questions were:

  1. How easy or how difficult is it to initiate movement within anhydrite fault gouges, i.e. how strong are they? What is the effect of CO2?
  2. Does anhydrite fault gouge show the potential to nucleate earthquakes (‘seismogenic potential’) at CO2-storage conditions? What is the effect of CO2?

In these experiments the samples were under a pressure and temperature similar to those at 2-4 km depth. This means an effective normal stress of 25 MPa and temperatures between 80 and 150°C. We also used different pore fluids, namely lab air, water, CO2 and CO2-saturated water. For those experiments that contained a pore fluid, the fluid pressure was 15 MPa, so the CO2 was in its supercritical phase.

cover JGR v119

Our results indicate that at these conditions, anhydrite exhibits a friction coefficient of 0.5 to 0.7, i.e. a friction coefficient typical for most rocks. However, it is important to note that the weakest samples were those containing CO2-saturated water. To avoid fault reactivation, this small (up to 15%) weakening effect should be taken into account when determining the maximum allowable injection rates and pressures into a reservoir. Furthermore, with respect to the possibility of earthquake nucleation, these results show that the presence of supercritical CO2 does not influence seismogenic potential. Only dry gouges are capable of nucleating earthquakes, and at this pressure, this only occurs at temperatures exceeding 120°C. Such high temperatures are in most areas only expected at depths exceeding 4 km, i.e. deeper than most targeted CO2 storage reservoirs. Within the investigated temperature-range, gouges that contain water (with or without CO2) exhibit very little seismogenic potential.

This research has been performed at the HPT lab of Utrecht University, the Netherlands, within the framework of CATO-2, the Dutch research program of CO2 capture, transport and storage. It has been shown as a poster presentation at EGU 2013, in the ERE division, and has been published in December 2014 in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Solid Earth.