ESSI Newsletter Issue one

Issue one

October 2015

Earth Surface Science Institute

SCHOOL OF EARTH AND ENVIRONMENT

ESSI Newsletter Issue 5 Winter 2017

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

PUBLICATIONS Read about some of our recent top publications Pages 2-6 LATEST FUNDING SUCCESS Find out about one of our new research ventures Page 5 NEW STARTERS Welcoming our new starters Pages 8-9

A new Institute Director

The effects of ESSI’s considerable recent funding success are starting to show as new Post Docs

arrive to take up their positions, their project work ramps up in the laboratories and a new

cohort of PhD students have arrived who are starting to get to grips with their projects. I would

like to extend a warm welcome to all our new staff and students! Our grant success has

continued with Cris Little being awarded a new NERC standard grant to investigate the

colonisation of hydrothermal vents and a new Leverhulme grant entitled ‘Macroevolution in

Boreal Ocean Jurassic-Cretaceous methane seep communities’. We have been maintaining our

investment in substantial new equipment capabilities with the installation of a stable isotope

mass spectrometer and associated preparation system for the analysis of very small carbonate

samples (such as foraminifera). Work is also progressing on a cross Faculty initiative to

transform the University of Leeds farm into a new ‘critical zone observatory,’ led by ESSI

member Steve Banwart. I look forward to seeing the fruition of these many strands of exciting

ESSI activity in the coming year!

Dr Rob Newton, Director of ESSI

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SEE scientists set sail to explore the

changing Arctic Ocean

Dr Christian März-

A new £10 million research programme to investigate how the Arctic Ocean is changing has launched its first cruise to the Barents Sea.

The Changing Arctic Oceans research programme aims to generate a better understanding of the Arctic so models can more accurately predict future change to the environment and the ecosystem.

Over 20 scientists from 16 UK research institutes, including the University of Leeds, have joined forces to understand the knock on effects of rapid warming and sea ice loss in the Arctic region.

Dr Christian März, from the Earth Surface Science Institute is the leader of the Changing Artic Ocean Seafloor (ChAOS) project — one of four projects covering different aspects of the research programme’s goals. He said: “Our ChAOS project will focus on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, the seafloor, which is by no means the boring, dark environment it might be perceived as.

“It is, in fact, a complex ecosystem teeming with life, and it plays an extremely important role in Arctic biodiversity,

Selected recent publications

McCann CM; Peacock CL; Hudson-Edwards KA; Shrimpton T; Gray ND; Johnson KL (2018) In situ arsenic

oxidation and sorption by a Fe-Mn binary oxide waste in soil, Journal of Hazardous Materials, 342, pp.724-731,

doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2017.08.066

Gomes HI; Rogerson M; Burke IT; Stewart DI; Mayes WM (2017) Hydraulic and biotic impacts on

neutralisation of high-pH waters, Science of the Total Environment, 601-602, pp.1271-1279, doi: 10.1016/

j.scitotenv.2017.05.248

Zhu, Y.-G.; Gillings M; Simonet P; Stekel D; Banwart S; Penuelas J (2017). Microbial mass movements.

Science 357(6356): 1099.

Barlow NLM; Long AJ; Gehrels WR; Saher MH; Scaife RG; Davies HJ; Penkman KEH; Bridgland DR;

Sparkes A; Smart CW; Taylor S (2017) Relative sea-level variability during the late Middle Pleistocene: New

evidence from eastern England, Quaternary Science Reviews, 173, pp.20-39, doi: 10.1016/

j.quascirev.2017.08.017

Matero ISO; Gregoire LJ; Ivanovic RF; Tindall JC; Haywood AM (2017) The 8.2 ka cooling event caused by

Laurentide ice saddle collapse, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 473, pp.205-214, doi: 10.1016/

j.epsl.2017.06.011

Mills BJW; Scotese CR; Walding NG; Shields GA; Lenton TM (2017) Elevated CO2 degassing rates

prevented the return of Snowball Earth during the Phanerozoic, Nature Communications, 8, doi: 10.1038/

s41467-017-01456-w

Song H; Jiang G; Poulton SW; Wignall PB; Tong J; An Z; Chu D; Tian L; She Z, et al. The onset of

widespread marine red beds and the evolution of ferruginous oceans, Nature Communications, 8, doi:10.1038/

s41467-017-00502-x

Faggetter LE; Wignall PB; Pruss SB; Newton RJ; Sun Y; Crowley SF (Published) Trilobite extinctions, facies

changes and the ROECE carbon isotope excursion at the Cambrian Series 2-3 boundary, Great Basin,

western USA, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 478, pp.53-66, doi: 10.1016/

j.palaeo.2017.04.009

Williscroft K; Grasby SE; Beauchamp B; Little CTS; Dewing K; Birgel D; Poulton T; Hryniewicz K (2017)

Extensive Early Cretaceous (Albian) methane seepage on Ellef Ringnes Island, Canadian High Arctic, Bulletin

of the Geological Society of America, 129, pp.788-805, doi: 10.1130/B31601.1

Button DJ; Lloyd GT; Ezcurra MD; Butler RJ (2017) Mass extinctions drove increased global faunal

cosmopolitanism on the supercontinent Pangaea, Nature Communications, 8, doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-00827

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food webs, the recycling of nutrients back into the overlying water, and the long-term burial of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide as dead organic material. Our ChAOS team will, without doubt, have the muddiest job on the expedition, but someone needs to do it — and we love it.”

Some of the clearest signs of change are the thinning and retreat of sea ice and the migration of species into the Arctic that normally live at lower latitudes. As the fastest warming oceanic region in the world, the Arctic could be free of sea ice in summer within a few decades. These changes are likely to have an unprecedented impact on how the Arctic ecosystem operates.

Robotic underwater vehicles will also be deployed to collect data near the edge of the sea ice. Hundreds of litres of seawater will be filtered to capture phytoplankton, and special plankton nets will capture zooplankton, small animals that are an essential food source in the Arctic.

Dr Jo Hopkins, from the National Oceanography Centre and Principal Scientific Officer on the ship, said: “This is an exciting and ambitious first cruise that will collect a vast amount of information about Arctic water and sediments and the life that they support. Improving our understanding of how the Arctic ecosystem functions today will help us better predict and manage how it may change in the future.”

The lead investigators for the Changing Arctic Oceans research programme are the University of Leeds, the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) and Liverpool.

The four projects covering different aspects of the programme’s goals are:

the way change in the Arctic is affecting the food

chain, from small organisms at the bottom to large predators at the top (ARISE),

how warming influences the single main food source

at the bottom of the food chain (DIAPOD),

the effect of retreating and thinning sea ice on

nutrients and sea life in the surface ocean (Arctic

PRIZE)

and on the ecosystem at the seafloor (ChAOS).

The UK scientists will contribute to international efforts to build a comprehensive picture of the constantly changing Arctic environment. They will look at a wide range of complex interactions between different organisms in the ocean and at the seafloor.

http://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/news/news-inner/see-scientists-set-sail-to-explore-the-changing-arctic-ocean/

The millions of species we ignore at our

peril

Professor Steve Banwart-

The mass movement of humans and animals is significantly affecting the distribution of essential microorganisms, scientists warn. A study, published in Science, highlights how wastewater, tourism, and trade are moving microbes around the globe on an unprecedented scale. As humans and animals are transported across the world, billions of bacteria are left at every stop. As a consequence there are substantial ongoing changes to the distribution of microbes on the planet. This has the potential to change ecosystem services and biogeochemistry in unpredictable ways.

Study co-author Professor Steven Banwart, from the School of Earth and Environment at University of Leeds, said: “Microbes perform their essential ecosystem services invisibly but the evidence suggests that human activity is having the same effects on the microbial world as it is on the world of larger organisms.

“Human activity is decreasing microbe diversity, with potential for extinctions of certain microbes, and preferential selection of others, all of which could have a huge impact on day to day life.”

Microbes– credit: Wikipedia Commons

The Royal Research Ship (RRS) James Clark Ross– credit: British Antarctic Survey

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Lead author Professor Michael Gillings, from Macquarie University in Sydney, said: “The oxygen we breathe is largely made by photosynthetic bacteria in the oceans — and not by rainforests, as is commonly believed.” “Over 95 per cent of the poo in the world comes from humans and the animals we farm. And our poo is travelling around the world with a billion tourists, spreading microbes and antibiotic resistance genes.” “Until 100 years ago all the nitrogen in our food came from bacteria we nurtured in our crops. Now more than half comes from artificial fertilisers.” “And we’re moving trillions of ocean microbes around the world in ballast water in ships. Some 100 million tonnes of ballast water are dumped in US waters each year. We know they’re introducing foreign starfish, sea snails, and seaweed. But we don’t know what invisible changes they’re making to ocean microbes.” The study calls for urgent action to monitor and model the changes being made to the microbial world and to improve waste water and manure treatments to reduce the spread of microbes and resistance genes. Professor Banwart said: “There is an urgent need to model the dispersal of microbes and bacteria and the interactions between physical, chemical, geological, and human processes to help predict future changes in our ecosystems.

“Current models cannot predict these activities, which are centrally important to biogeochemistry and human health.”

http://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/news/news-inner/the-millions-of-species-we-ignore-at-our-peril/

Mass extinctions helped to shape animal

evolution

Dr Graeme Lloyd-

Past mass extinctions may have the potential to guide modern conservation efforts, according to a new study. An international team of scientists including ESSI’s Dr Graeme Lloyd, has found that the diversification of certain animal species after a mass extinction follows chartable patterns. Their findings, published in October in amongst other publications, Nature Communications, indicate that mass extinctions may have predictable consequences on the evolution of animal species. This provides new insight into how biological communities may change in the future as a result of current high extinction rates. Study co-author Dr Lloyd said: “Human activity is having a huge impact on the diversity of animal species. By charting the effects of past mass extinctions we may better understand the future biological repercussions of our current actions.” “The common trends we’ve observed in the fossil record following mass extinctions could help us predict what is in store for modern species experiencing a biodiversity crisis.” Mass extinctions are thought to produce “disaster faunas” — communities dominated by a small number of widespread animal species, such as the mammalian precursor Lystrosaurus following the Late Permian extinction 252 million years ago. However, studies to test

this theory have been rare and limited in scope, often only focused on small regions. The research team assessed long-term changes in biodiversity on the supercontinent Pangaea by analysing changes in nearly 900 animal species between approximately 260 million and 175 million years ago. This period, which spans the late Permian to Early Jurassic, witnessed the origins of dinosaurs and mammals as well as two mass extinctions.

Their results show that, after both mass extinctions, biological communities not only lost a large number of species, but also became dominated by a few, newly-evolved and widely-distributed species. The research partners included the University of Birmingham, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, North Carolina State University and CONICET−Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales. https://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/4114/mass_extinctions_helped_to_shape_animal_evolution

Life goes on for marine ecosystems after

cataclysmic mass extinction

Dr Alex Dunhill-

One of the largest global mass extinctions did not fundamentally change marine ecosystems, scientists have found. An international team of scientists, including Dr Alex Dunhill, has found that although the mass extinction in the Late Triassic period wiped out the vast proportion of species, there appears to have been no drastic changes to the way marine ecosystems functioned. Lead author Dr Dunhill said: “While the Late Triassic mass extinction had a big impact on the overall number of marine species, there was still enough diversity among the remaining species that the marine ecosystem was able to function in the same way it had before.” “We’re not saying nothing happened,” said co-author Dr William Foster, a palaeontologist from the Jackson

Flynn Reef Cathedral, Great Barrier Reef, Australia-

Credit: Andrea Clark

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School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin. “Rather, global oceans in the extinction’s aftermath were a bit like a ship manned by a skeleton crew – all stations were operational, but manned by relatively few species.”

The Late Triassic mass extinction occurred 201 million years ago. Nearly 50 per cent of life on Earth died out as a result of huge volcanic eruptions. The volcanic activity created high levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which led to rapid global warming. The eruptions are also associated with the break-up of the super-continent Pangaea and the opening of the Atlantic Ocean.

The team compared marine ecosystems across the late Triassic mass extinction event by examining fossils from the Middle Triassic to Middle Jurassic —a 70 million-year span. They classified the lifestyle of different ocean-dwelling animals by how they moved, where they lived and how they fed. They were then able to determine that none of these lifestyles had completely disappeared due to the extinction event, which preserved the marine ecosystem. Their results, published today in Palaeontology, showed that while the extinction did not result in a global marine ecological shift, it had profound regional and environmental effects and had an extreme impact on specific ocean ecosystems.

Dr Dunhill said: “One of the great marine casualties of the Late Triassic were stationary reef-dwelling animals, such as corals. When we examined the fossil record we saw that while the marine ecosystem continued to function as a whole, it took over 20 million years for tropical reef ecosystems to recover from this environmental cataclysm.

“Reef ecosystems are the most vulnerable to rapid environmental change. The effect of the Late Triassic greenhouse gases on marine ecosystems is not so different from what you see happening to coral reefs suffering from increasing ocean temperatures today.”

Co-author, Professor Richard Twitchett, from the Natural History Museum in London said: “Understanding the extent of reef collapse during past extinctions may help us predict what is in store for our modern marine ecosystems. “Tropical ecosystems suffered widespread devastation each time that greenhouse gases rose rapidly in the past, despite differences in the rates of change and species involved. When you see similar responses occurring time and time again in the past, despite different starting conditions, it follows that similar responses will likely occur again in the future.”

https://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/4121/life_goes_on_for_marine_ecosystems_after_cataclysmic_mass_extinction

NEW RESEARCH FUNDING

Cris Little- Dr. Crispin Little is the co-investigator of a new NERC standard grant with colleagues at the Natural History Museum, London and the University of Southampton titled ‘The colonisation of hydrothermal vents by complex life: a natural experiment in macroevolution’. This grant is worth £524k and includes funding for a PDRA at the NHM. It started in September 2017 and is due to run for three years. The aim of the grant is to undertake the first comprehensive study into when and how animal life colonised hydrothermal vent environments. The grant will integrate new data on volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) deposits containing some of the oldest known vent animal fossils with state-of-the-art Next-Generation Sequencing techniques to uncover the earliest vent animals, the drivers behind repeated vent faunal turnover over geological time, and the processes through which animals adapt to the conditions presented by hydrothermal vents. The research is of major cross-disciplinary interest and will provide vital insights into the role of unstable and productive environments in driving the evolution and diversification of metazoans, as well as data fundamental for the evaluation of deep-sea mining impact and the interpretation of future astrobiological samples collected from extra-terrestrial vent environments.

The study will involve a considerable amount of fieldwork in Australia, Russia and Canada searching for Palaeozoic era vent fossil in rock cores and waste material from active and abandoned copper and zinc mines. The research team will also visit a fjord in Northern Iceland where there is an active, shallow water hydrothermal vent, where they will sample animals living close to and away from the vent, to study incipient adaptation to the vent environment.

This element of the research is particularly exciting for Dr Little, who is a keen SCUBA diver. He says ‘it will be an intriguing exercise to see how animals normally at home in the frigid waters of Iceland are able to cope with water gushing out of the vents at more than 100 degrees centigrade. This element of the work will contrast greatly from the rest of research, which will involve a lot of bashing up of blocks of sulphide minerals with hammers to look for fossils’.

Picture right- Kick off meeting group photo for NERC

Vents project– from left: Dr Adrian Glover, NHM; Prof

Richard Herrington, NHM; Dr Crispin Little, Leeds; Dr

Ana Riesgo, NHM; Dr Jon Copley, Southampton; Dr

Magdalena Georgieva, NHM.

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How fungi helped create life as we know it

Dr Benjamin Mills- Today our world is visually dominated by animals and plants, but this world would not have been possible with-out fungi, say University of Leeds scientists.

Researchers have carried out experiments where plants and fungi are grown in atmospheres resembling the an-cient Earth and, by incorporating their results into com-puter models, have shown that fungi were essential in the creation of an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Humans and other mammals require high levels of oxy-gen to function, and it is generally thought that the planet developed an oxygen-rich atmosphere around 500 to 400 million years ago, as carbon dioxide was gradually photo-synthesised by the first land plants. The research team: Dr Katie Field from the Centre for Plant Sciences, Dr Sarah Batterman from the School of Geography and Dr Benjamin Mills from the School of Earth and Environment, show that fungi played a critical part in establishing the breathable atmosphere on Earth by "mining" the nutrient phosphorus from rocks and trans-ferring it to plants to power photosynthesis.

The new research shows that the amount of phosphorus transferred could have been very large under the ancient atmospheric conditions, and, using an "Earth system" computer model, the team show that fungi had the power to dramatically alter the ancient atmosphere. While many modern plants can gather their nutrients di-rect from soils through their roots, the earliest forms of plant life faced an entirely different climate, did not have roots and were non-vascular, meaning they could not hold water or move it around their system. The "soil" they came into contact with was a mineral product lacking in organic matter, which is why their rela-tionships with fungi were so important. Fungi have the ability to extract minerals from the rocks they grow on through a process known as biological weathering. The fungi express organic acids which help to dissolve the rocks and mineral grains they grow across. By extracting these minerals and passing them on to plants to aid the plants’ growth, the fungi in return re-ceived the carbon the plants produced as they photosyn-

thesised carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Lab experiments undertaken by the Leeds team have shown that different ancient fungi, which still exist today, conducted these exchanges at different rates, which influ-enced the varied speeds at which plants produced oxy-gen. In turn this affected the speed at which the atmosphere changed from being much more rich in carbon dioxide to becoming similar to the air we breathe today. Dr Field said: “We used a computer model to simulate what might have happened to the climate throughout the Palaeozoic era if the different types of early plant-fungal symbioses were included in the global phosphorus and carbon cycles. “We found the effect was potentially dramatic, with the differences in plant-fungal carbon-for-nutrient exchange greatly altering Earth’s climate through plant-powered drawdown of CO2 for photosynthesis, substantially changing the timing of the rise of oxygen in the atmos-phere.” Dr Mills said: “Photosynthesis by land plants is ultimately responsible for about half of the oxygen generation on Earth, and requires phosphorus, but we currently have a poor understanding of how the global supply of this nutri-ent to plants works. “The results of including data on fungal interactions pre-sent a significant advance in our understanding of the Earth’s early development. Our work clearly shows the importance of fungi in the creation of an oxygenated at-mosphere.” Dr Batterman added: “Our study shows tiny organisms such as fungi can have major effects on the global envi-ronment. Our critical finding was that the nature of the relationship between fungi and plants could have trans-formed the atmospheric carbon dioxide, oxygen and ulti-mately global climate in very different ways, depending on the type of fungi present.” The full paper Nutrient acquisition by symbiotic fungi gov-erns Palaeozoic climate transition is published in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions B journal.

The research team is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. https://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/4156/how_fungi_helped_create_life_as_we_know_it

The picture to the left

shows the Rhynie

Chert in Scotland,

where many

prehistoric fungi still

survive today

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New PHD projects

Into the Deep. Do changes in ecology lead changes in

morphology in Neogene clavate planktonic

foraminifera? PI– Tracy Aze

Earth’s Oxygenation History: Insight from Nutrient

Cycling in Modern Anoxic Lakes. PI– Simon Poulton

Mechanisms of contaminant migration from buried

concrete structures. PI– Ian Burke

Is Atlantic Ocean circulation collapsing? PI– Ruza

Ivanovic

The early Toarcian (Early Jurassic) mass extinction

event in the eastern Tehthys: integrating

palaeontological and geochemical data from Bulgaria.

PI– Cris Little

How the polar ocean gets rid of CO2: blue carbon

burial in Arctic and Antarctic shelf seas.

PI– Christian März

For more information and to see these projects in full, visit http://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/

research/essi/

Scientists on-board the RRS James Clark Ross in the Barents Sea, summer 2017 (März sitting, Faust kneeling, Barne in

yellow coat; courtesy of J Faust)

Lake La Cruz, Spain

Recent news

Some of ESSI’s members of staff visited the AGU Fall

Meeting in New Orleans in December. Dr. Aisling Dolan,

Prof. Alan Haywood, Ilkka Matero, Jennifer Rodley and

Dr. Ruza Ivanovic delivered presentations and showed

posters of their research findings.

Jennifer’s poster was about the development of

Molybdenum speciation as a paleoredox tool , whilst

Ilkka’s talk was on the role of ice sheet dynamics in the

collapse of the early– Holocene Laurentide ice sheet.

Aisling Dolan and Damian Howells manning the

SEE stall at AGU

ESSI congratulations

Congratulations to Caroline Peacock who has been elected as a council member of the European Association of

Geochemistry. Councillors are elected for 3 years and help shape the society's decisions and initiatives across

Europe.

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Welcome to our new starters…

Post doc fellows

I am excited to be back at Leeds having studied on the Environmental Geology

BSc and Environmental Geochemistry MSc courses here, from 2007 to 2011. I

then worked as a research assistant within the Cohen Geochemistry group for a

time, as well as at Diamond Light Source. From this I went on to complete a PhD at

the University of Bristol, examining weathering within tropical watersheds and its

impact on the global carbon cycle. For the last year I have worked as a Post-Doc at

Bristol on numerous projects, one of which examined soil formation processes and

desertification of karst landscapes in SW China.

I am now working with Caroline Peacock as part of the MINORG project, examining

the partitioning of organic matter between solid and solution phases at the

molecular level. This is to test the hypothesis that minerals play a major role in the

preservation and burial of organic carbon in marine sediments and thus in

regulating Earth’s climate and oxygenation.

Ollie Moore

I am a geologist working on major climate and biological changes linked to the

eruption of large igneous provinces using a multidisciplinary approach that ranges

from geochemistry to stratigraphy and palaeontology.

I received my PhD in Earth Sciences at the University of Padova (Italy) in 2011 with

a thesis on “The Middle – Late Triassic d13

Cplant trend and the Carnian Pluvial Event

C-isotope signature”. I was awarded a UNESCO Dolomites Foundation prize for my

PhD thesis study.

I have a 6+ years of postdoctoral research experience. From 2011 to 2013 I was a

Research Fellow at the Department of Geosciences at the University of Padova and

in 2013 I was awarded a “Young Research Grant”. I joined the University of Leeds in

October 2017 to work as a Research Fellow with Dr. Rob Newton and Prof. Paul

Wignall to investigate the causes of the terrestrial mass extinction at the Permian–

Triassic boundary.

Jacopo Dal Corso

Bob Jamieson

I’m a Research Fellow in Stable Isotope Geochemistry, working under Simon

Bottrell to set up and run the new Dual Inlet Mass Spectrometer in the Cohen

labs. I recently completed my PhD at Durham University, looking at high-

resolution trace element variations in speleothems. This included developing a

new trace element proxy and looking at multi-element proxies for volcanic

eruptions.

My general research interests are in the application of proxy measurements to

palaeoclimatic reconstruction. I am particularly interested in high-resolution

archives and the development of novel techniques and applications. I hope to

use high-resolution data to look at seasonality of proxy records and examine

some of our assumptions about what proxies are actually recording.

Tianchen He My research focuses on isotope stratigraphy and palaeoenvironmental

reconstruction at key bioradiation interval and mass extinction events during the

Paleozoic and Mesozoic Era. Factors of interest include both long-term and short-

term changes in marine redox conditions, biogeochemical cycling of elements and

their interaction with the biosphere. I’m also particularly interested in tracing the

secular variation of seawater sulphate concentration in the geological history.

My current research targets on the oxygenation history and nutrient cycling in the

Early Jurassic ocean. I am also involved with the Integrated Understanding of

Early Jurassic Earth System and Timescale project (JET).

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Welcome to our new starters…

I am a new NERC funded PhD student under the primary supervision of Dr Tracy

Aze. Previous work involves my Undergraduate Master’s in Geological Sciences

here at the University of Leeds and a Master’s in Applied and Petroleum

Micropalaeontology from the University of Birmingham.

My project involves direct sampling of a series of cores, donated to the National

Oceanographic Centre, taken off of the Uruguayan Margin. I aim to answer a

series of questions comparing past climates to present conditions in the region

through use of foraminifera. Research interests include using planktonic

foraminifera to determine past sea surface temperatures and produce

assemblage/ecology records to determine if there is variability in the region both

spatially and temporally. The time period is dependent on forams recovered from

cores but will hopefully encompass the Last Glacial Maximum. My work will

involve geochemistry on microfossils and as such I will be working in both the

Cohen Geochemistry Laboratories and the Micropalaeontology Laboratory here

at the University of Leeds.

Andy Mair

...and a warm welcome to our new post graduate students Mengjia He, Bethany Allen and Adam Reider

I graduated in 2010 in Geological Sciences at the Sapienza University of Rome

(Italy). Here, I achieved in January 2013 an MSc in Exploration Geology. Then, I

joined in October 2013 the University of Leeds (UK). Here, I have achieved a

PhD in Hydrogeology in June 2017.

My PhD research aimed to quantify the impact on flow of both sedimentary and

tectonic heterogeneities in the satured zone of the UK Triassic Sherwood

Sandstone aquifer. The rational of the project was to study aquifers in

collaboration with the sponsor Total E&P aiming to a better understanding of the

hydraulic properties of siliciclastic reservoirs.

I am now Research Fellow at the University of Leeds working on the Spen Farm

project of the Faculty of Environment. I moved to the hydrogeology of fractured

and karstified carbonate aquifers developing a catchment-scale groundwater

flow model and analysing data from the boreholes of the Permian Magnesian

Limestone in Yorkshire.

Giacomo Medici

Tony Stockdale I have worked in ESSI since 2013 and have recently joined the SoS RARE project,

which is investigating recovering technologically important rare earth elements

from ion adsorption deposits. Such soils are found throughout the world and are

the result of primary mineral dissolution and subsequent adsorption by clay

minerals. I will investigate inorganic leaching of target elements from these

deposits using column and modelling approaches. I completed my PhD in

sediment geochemistry at Lancaster University in 2008, an investigation that

focussed on micro-scale heterogeneity of diagenetic processes.

Since 2008, I have worked at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, University of

Manchester and ESSI on a diverse range of projects including; predicting toxicity of

proton metal mixtures to biological species richness in field settings; investigating

the utility of chemical speciation model to be applied to brackish and marine

waters; examining the binding of radionuclides to organic matter under repository

type conditions; and investigations into the release of phosphorus from mineral

dusts due to anthropogenic acids in the atmosphere.

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School of Earth and Environment

Institute Director, Dr Rob Newton

School of Earth & Environment

Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

www.see.leeds.ac.uk/research/essi/

Twitter @ESSILeeds

Newsletter compiled by Elena Nannelli