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Earth Science News

IAPETUS2 Doctoral Training Programme

Available studentships for the 2023/24 cohort will be added here throughout September, October and November 2022. Applications will open early November 2022.
A mountain

Gender Equality Silver Award Success

The Department of Earth Sciences has recently been awarded an Athena SWAN Silver award.
Diversity Initiatives balloons

NERC's Ocean-Bottom Instrumentation Facility

The Facility has, funded by the NERC's URGENCY scheme, just deployed a set of six ocean-bottom seismographs around the islands of the Azores
OBS deployment

Scientists discover world’s longest underwater avalanche after rescue of lost data

We’ve discovered the world’s longest underwater avalanche – after recovering lost data swept away by the dramatic event.
A sensor is lowered from a boat into the ocean

Earth Sciences Professor named as Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellow

The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), Scotland’s National Academy has announced its 2022 intake of Fellows. We are pleased to share the news that Professor Bob Holdsworth from the Department of Earth Sciences has been named as one of the intake alongside a range of academic and artistic minds.

Mohammad Daud Hamidi Awarded UNESCO Silk Roads Youth Research Grant

With co-awardee Asma Bachich from Morocco, PhD student Mohammad Daud Hamidi has been awarded a prestigious UNESCO Silk Roads Youth Research Grant to study the “The Shared Heritage of Water Management and Allocation along the Silk Roads”. The project is just one of twelve selected out of a total of 800 proposals from around the world, from postgraduate researchers aged 35 and younger.
Water Distribution Systems

Mine water geothermal heat project funded

The department of Earth Sciences is the lead on the large, interdisciplinary research project entitled “The Geothermal Energy from Mines and Solar-Geothermal heat (GEMS)”, which will explore the geological, engineering, social, and economical aspects of extracting geothermal heat from water in abandoned coal mines.
Drilling for Geothermal energy at Louisa Centre Stanley

Taught postgraduate courses (MSc degrees)

The Department is now offering and participates in 2 taught postgraduate degree programmes:
Satellite image with nodes and edges

Coseismic fault lubrication by viscous deformation

New Nature Geoscience paper by our team in the Rock Mechanics Laboratory, including Giacomo Pozzi, Nicola De Paola, Stefan Nielsen, Bob Holdsworth and Telemaco Tesei, shows that viscous deformation is a potentially prevalent mechanism of fault lubrication during earthquakes.
Scanned images of different rock types

Overriding water table control on managed peatland greenhouse gas emissions

New Nature paper by a team including Fred Worrall, shows the dominant importance of controlling the water table in developing CO2 sinks on peatlands. 
Nature paper on peatland

Jeroen van Hunen EGU Geodynamics Division President

Jeroen van Hunen has been elected as President for the Geodynamics division of the European Geoscience Union Geodynamics.
Jeroen van Hunen EGU GD President

Jenny Jenkins Monitors Recent Iceland Volcanic Eruption

Jenny Jenkins one of new Assistant Professors sent several days in Iceland working with her husband collecting seismic data about the recent Fagradalsfjall volcano eruption.