Name of the proxy: Stable isotope ratios of carbonates in speleothems Type of proxy: Precipitation, atmospheric circulation, CO2 availability in soil, soil productivity Paleoenvironment: Continental environments Period of time investigated: Present day to 10 million years How does it work? Speleothems are inorganic carbonate deposits growing in caves that form from super-saturated cave waters (wit ...[Read More]
I hear you exclaiming: “Why merge day 4 and 5 together? What happened to the secret summary of day 4?” Well, I have to admit, apart from being your daily NetherMod reporter, I also needed to present my poster, so apologies for the delay and merge. Day 4 started with a keynote talk from Dave Stegman with a surprise topic (He had never handed in his abstract. Apparently this is a possibi ...[Read More]
Understanding the climate evolution of our planet is not an easy task, but it is essential to understand the past if we are to predict the future! Historic climate cycles provide us with a glimpse into a period of time when the Earth was warmer than it was today. Our image of the week looks at these warmer periods of time to see what they can tell us about the future! For example, during the Plioc ...[Read More]
Today is the fifth and final day of the XVth International Workshop on Modelling of Mantle and Lithosphere Dynamics, or “Nethermod”, here in Putten, The Netherlands. Despite the overcast conditions outside, the lively scientific program included keynotes by Paul Tackley and Carolina Lithgow-Bertelloni in the morning and Clint Conrad and Louise Kellogg in the afternoon. With over 120 at ...[Read More]
A large majority of igneous rocks on Earth are formed by a process known as fractional crystallization (summarized in the diagram below). To understand this process, start by imagining a large liquid magma (melt) body. As we cool the magma, mineral phases become stable and crystals start to form. The newly formed minerals are likely to have a very different density from the magma causing them to f ...[Read More]
Today, Ági Király, postdoc at CEED (Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics) at the University of Oslo, Norway, is sharing her experience of NetherMod. After the wine tasting and karaoke party of yesterday evening, this morning’s keynote speakers had quite a difficult job to shake up the sleepy audience. Dave Stegman even dropped in a promise of a free beer for the most awake student (won by René ...[Read More]
The third day of NetherMod promised to be a great day full of science, until it turned into a great day full of fun activities, such as windsurfing, wine tasting, and karaoke, thanks to the Dutch weather. This meant that only the morning was filled with science, which has already been summarised expertly in our previous post. What then, can this post add, I hear you thinking..? Well, let’s s ...[Read More]
Reporting live from the NetherMod karaoke bar, Manar Alsaif, PhD student at Université Montpellier, part of the Subitop ITN, summarises her experience with geodynamical karaoke (also see this post on the relationship between the two). Day 3 of NetherMod sizzled in a high of 29 °C, which meant the free afternoon just had to be that day. Of course, the day of the free afternoon had to round up with ...[Read More]
Let’s keep going with the programme: today’s talks dealt with the following topics: (1) Lower mantle rheology–what do we really know? (2) Modelling plasticity and fractures in porous media: everything goes wrong! (3) Complexities of subduction dynamics. The first keynote talk was on the rheology of the lower mantle, an important part of the Earth. John Hernlund spent his 45 min describing wh ...[Read More]
The first science day at Nethermod was kicked of by the crust & lithosphere modelling session, followed by the first talk in the methodological advances session. Thibault Duretz discussed how using lithospheric heterogeneities can help to form complex rifting styles without using an explicit strain weakening formulation. Switching to the subduction evolution of the Farallon plate, Claire Curri ...[Read More]
