School of Earth & Environment
News from SEE 2011/12
Student Experience
Student success is partly influenced by how an
individual participates in educationally purposeful
activities; in SEE we have been working on initiaWelcome
tives and activities that combine social interaction
Welcome to the School of Earth and Environment with academic learning to enhance the overall
newsletter.
student experience and create a sense of belonging to the School community.
In this issue
Student Experience
More on this: Student Experience
Employability
Leeds Students in Vancouver
Schools Engagement & Widening Participation
PhD Profiles
Research News Bites
New Staff
Student Employability
In January 2012, the School appointed its first
Student Employability Officer, Linda Hartland.
Linda’s role is to undertake a range of initiatives
to enhance the employability of our students.
This work will include engaging with current and
past students, employers, academics and the Careers Centre.
More on this: Student Employability
Leeds Students in Vancouver
Undergraduate Open Days
We are in demand! An impressive 327 prospective
undergraduates and 662 total guests visited the
School of Earth and Environment from November
to March this year. They travelled from across the
country and further afield including Belgium and
Cyprus!
Undergraduate Team at Networking event in
Vancouver
A total of 22 current students of the School attended the Vancouver Exploration Roundup last
month. The meeting is one of the top 3 industryfacing events globally and attracted just short of
8,000 delegates from the mining and mineral exploration sector worldwide. The visit was set up by
the School’s Society of Exploration Geophysics
In the Palaeontology Laboratory
(SEG) Chapter who took advantage of strong research and industrial links between the Rob Chapman and UBC, Vancouver, and the Canadian ex- More on this: Open Days
ploration industry.
More on this: Leeds Students in Vancouver
Schools Engagement &
Widening Participation
Green Impact Initiative
School achieves Silver Award!
The School has a lively schools engagement programme, with both staff and students delivering
activities. Our contribution to the Leeds Festival of
Science provides a showcase for the range of activities we offer.
More on this: Schools Engagement
The School has recently taken part in the Green
impact Initiative achieving a Silver Award.
Green Impact encourages pro-environmental behaviours amongst staff within a university or college. It empowers sustainability champions within
their workplace, helping them gain recognition for
their environmental efforts, whilst playing on the
competitive spirit of staff working in teams.
Visitors dress in polar clothing in the Antarctic Zone
More on this: Green Impact
PhD Profiles
ESSI PhD Student – Hollie
IGT PhD Student – Sandra Karl Romain
PhD Title: Investigating the source mechanisms
of low-frequency seismic events in volcanoes
Read Sandra’s profile: Sandra Karl
Large-scale preserved dune sets of Navajo Sandstone, Poison Spider Trail, near Moab, Utah.
PhD Title – Reconstruction of 3D eolian-dune architecture from 1D core data through application
of outcrop analogue data
Read Hollie’s profile: Hollie Romain
Ash venting of Soufriere Hills volcano, March
2012
ICAS PhD Student – Amber
Leeson
PhD Title: The Evolution and Impact of
Supraglacial Lakes on the Greenland Ice Sheet
SRI PhD Student – Paola
Hernandez Montes De Oca
PhD Title – Assessing the vulnerability and resilience of SMEs to climate change: a developing
country perspective
Read Paola’s Profile: Paola Hernandez Montes
De Oca
Processing an ice core from the Larsen C ice
shelf at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge
Read Amber’s profile: Amber Leeson
Employees of a small business cleaning prawns.
Oil industry and prawn industry are the main
activities in Cd. del Carmen, Campeche, Mexico.
Research News Bites
Institute for Climate and
Research at the School of Earth and Environment
is within four institutes:
Atmospheric Science ICAS
Earth Surface Science Institute
ESSI
Violent storms provide testing conditions for
research scientists
Better forecasting of violent storms, such as those
Flumes and lasers test elite sportswear
battering the British Isles over December 2011,
Fabric used to make what is believed to be the
could be possible in the future.
fastest swimsuit to ever go on the market was tested by ESSI researchers who simulated conditions
close to those experienced by elite swimmers.
View from FAAM research aircraft (Knippertz)
Full story: Stormy weather
Full story: Swimming technology
Unravelling the Causes of the Ice Age Megafauna Extinctions
Was it humans or climate change that caused the
extinctions of the iconic Ice Age mammals
(megafauna) such as the woolly rhinoceros and
woolly mammoth?
Full story: woolly mammoths
Deforestation in the rainforests of West Africa
reduces rainfall over the rest of the forest
Deforestation in the rainforests of West Africa reduces rainfall over the rest of the forest, according
to new ICAS research published in Geophysical
Research Letters.
Full story: Deforestation
Institute of Geophysics and
Sustainability Research
Tectonics IGT
Institute SRI
Volcanic plumbing exposed
Low carbon, moderate income and long life
Two new studies into the “plumbing systems” that
lie under volcanoes could bring scientists closer to
predicting large eruptions.
Full story: Eruptions
A new study shows that countries with high incomes and high carbon emissions do not achieve
higher life expectancies than those with moderate
incomes and lower carbon emissions.
Full story: Live long
Major new project targets earthquake dynamics in Turkey
IGT Scientists Dr David Cornwell, Professor Greg
Houseman, Dr Geoffrey Lloyd, Dr Richard Phillips,
Dr Sebastian Rost, Dr Tim Wright, and Dr Tadashi
Yamasakihave secured £1m from the Natural Environment Research Council to study one of the
most active faults on Earth – the North Anatolian
Fault.
The UN Climate Change Conference in Durban
Looks to Leeds for Lessons on Decarbonising
Full story: Tectonic Plates
Cities at Zero Net Cost
Investing 2% of a modern city's GDP in low carbon
and energy efficient opportunities for ten years
would reduce that city's carbon emission levels by
40% at no net cost, according to research by the
Centre for Low Carbon Futures (CLCF) presented
at the United
Full story: Low carbon
New Staff
Professor Suraje Dessai has joined the School as Chair in Climate Change Adaptation. He was based at University of Exeter as Lecturer (Assistant Professor)
in Geography. His research focuses on the intersection between climate science
and decision-making under uncertainty. His research focuses on the intersection
between climate science and decision-making under uncertainty. Suraje trained
as an interdisciplinary environmental scientist at UEA and has worked on climate
change research in the UK, US, Portugal, Australia, East Timor and The Netherlands.
Professor Paul Glover will be joining the School in June 2012 as Professor of
Petrophysics. Currently based at the University of Laval, Paul has had 11 years oil
industry experience and 19 years research experience. His research interests include; fluid-flow in porous and fractured reservoirs by experiment, modelling and
field measurements, the use of electro-kinetic behaviour of rocks and surface conduction to predict reservoir quality, sub-surface sequestration of carbon dioxide and
development of new laboratory petrophysical and downhole logging techniques.
Dr David Hodgson will be joining the School in August 2012 as Reader in
Applied Sedimentology. He is currently based a Liverpool as a Lecturer in
Sedimentology and Stratigraphy and works on the current Slpoe2 and Lobe
projects for the Strat Group. His research interests include the architecture
of deep-water systems in complex and contained settings, and the use of
turbidite bed thickness statistics in the identification of submarine environments and basin settings.
Dr Taija Torvela also joins Leeds in August 2012 as Lecturer in Structural Geology. She comes from University of Helsinki, Taija’s research interests include; 4D
behaviour of shear zones during orogenesis; mid-crustal flow and associated processes within orogenies; filtering and processing seismic reflection data for structural geology research; interpretation of geological data and the application of structural geology methods in soft-sediment deformation.
Dr Paul Upham has joined the School as Senior University Research Fellow (CIER &
SRI) from Manchester Business School. His research interests include: the interface
of non-state actors and energy technologies, drawing on psychological, sociological
(STS) and environmental management and science literatures. As much of his work
has been funded by EPSRC, there has been a strong empirical theme to it, but at
Leeds he is keen to deepen the theoretical side of his research and to investigate potential points of integration across the sub-disciplines.
Full profiles: New Staff 2012