Geoscientisthttp://www.geolsoc.org.uk/feeds/geosciGeoscientist MagazineenGSL1GSL Sochttp://www.geolsoc.org.uk/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/letters/COOK%20clean%20energy%20climate%20%20carbon.JPG?h=329&w=250Geoscientisthttp://www.geolsoc.org.uk/feeds/geosci{1BCB0DD9-0878-4FF2-9C78-C5A2AAD69E86}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Geoscientist-copy-deadlinesCopy deadlines<h4>Geoscientist Online has moved to the new website <a href="https://geoscientist.online/">www.Geoscientist.Online</a><br /> <br /> For copy deadlines, please visit <a href="https://geoscientist.online/about/#copy_deadlines">https://geoscientist.online/about/#copy_deadlines</a></h4> <p>Geoscientist magazine is now published quarterly. All content to be included in Geoscientist magazine should be emailed to <a href="mailto:sarah.day@geolsoc.org.uk">geoscientist@geolsoc.org.uk</a> by the copy deadlines.&nbsp; </p> <p>Please note:</p> <ul> <li>The deadlines do NOT apply to Book Reviews or Obituaries.&nbsp; To discuss the submission of these items, please contact <a href="mailto:geoscientist@geolsoc.org.uk">geoscientist@geolsoc.org.uk</a>.</li> </ul> <ul> <li>If you've missed a deadline, the Society newsletter may be able to help. Please contact <a href="mailto:web.team@geolsoc.org.uk">web.team@geolsoc.org.uk</a> for more information.</li> </ul>Mon, 07 Mar 2022 15:52:44 Z{321E3FD9-4D98-4C31-880D-BB92B3D8D637}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archived-contentArchived content<img alt="old front covers of Geoscientist" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist Archive image.jpg?h=280&amp;w=710&la=en" style="height: 280px; width: 710px;" /> <h3><a href="/Geoscientist/Previous-Issues">Previous Issues</a></h3> <h3><a href="/Geoscientist/Search">Search Articles</a></h3> <h3><a href="/letters">Letters</a></h3> <h3><a href="/debates">Online Debates</a></h3> <h3><a href="/reviews">Books and Arts</a></h3> <hr /> <p> </p> <h3><img alt="homepage geoscientist online" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/geoscientist homepage.jpg?h=280&amp;w=710&la=en" style="height: 280px; width: 710px;" /></h3> <p > <h3><a href="https://geoscientist.online/" target="_blank" title="opens new window">Visit Geoscientist Online for all the latest content</a></h3> </br></p> <h3></h3>{ED4E1583-F37E-4952-9855-310D777DCDCE}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/covercompetitionGeoscientist cover competition<h3>Congratulations to Elizabeth Pickett, winner of our Geoscientist magazine cover competition!&nbsp;</h3> <p style="text-align: center;"><img height="714" alt="Geoscientist cover thumb May" width="500" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist Vol 29 2019/Geoscientist 29 4/Geoscientist-May-2019_Cover-thumb.jpg?la=en" /></p> <h4>The competition was held to mark the 100th anniversary of female Fellowship of the Geological Society, with the first eight women elected to Fellowship on 21 May 1919.&nbsp;</h4> <p>Elizabeth writes:&nbsp;</p> <p>'Although knowledge, understanding and technology have developed enormously since 1919, the rocks are still fundamentally the same, as are many aspects of geological fieldwork. Today's geologist is building on foundations, both geological and societal, laid down by her pioneering 1919 predecessor.&nbsp;</p> <p>Despite the differences in their situations, they can still reach across the time gap to discuss the geology of an area and share observations and ideas - I like to think they'd have a lot to discuss!'</p> <h3>Runners up</h3> <p>We received so many eye-catching entries, we wanted to highlight a few more of our favourites.&nbsp;</p> <p>Lauren Moore's illustration depicts the diversity of women in geology throughout time, and highlights the support that networks of female geoscientists have given each other.&nbsp;</p> <p><img alt="Lauren Moore entry to Geoscientist cover competition" src="/~/media/shared/images/outreach/100 years female fellows/Lauren Moore 2.jpg?h=421&amp;w=298&la=en" style="height: 421px; width: 298px;" /></p> <p>Nicola Dakin sent us a beautiful image depicting Mary Anning, one of the first recognised female palaeontologists of the 19th century.</p> <p><img alt="Nicola Dakin Geoscientist cover competition entry" src="/~/media/shared/images/outreach/100 years female fellows/Nicola Dakin.JPG?h=442&amp;w=324&la=en" style="height: 442px; width: 324px;" /></p> <h3>100 years of female Fellows</h3> <p><img height="235" alt="100 years of female fellows logo" width="488" src="/~/media/shared/images/outreach/100 years female fellows/100logo_contentbanner_488x235.jpg?la=en" /><br /> <br /> </p> <p>The first eight women to become Fellows of the Geological Society were elected on 21 May 1919. They included pioneering graptolite research Gertrude Elles, eminent palaeontologist and politician Dame Maria Ogilvie and stratigrapher and palaeontologist Ethel Skeat.&nbsp;</p> <p>Their admission followed decades of campaigning, and was finally achieved following a curiously mundane amendment to the Society&rsquo;s bye-laws:</p> <p><em> &lsquo;Article XXIII. Interpretation &ndash; In the interpretation of these Bye-Laws words in the masculine gender only, shall include the feminine gender also.&rsquo;</em></p> <p>It was a major victory in a long campaign by female geologists to be recognised by their peers.&nbsp;</p> <p><a href="/Page-Not-Found?item=web%3a%7b4E0C0799-8C94-4B2A-AD44-B2C99733A495%7d%40en">Find out how we're marking the anniversary.</a></p> <h4></h4> <h4></h4>Mon, 07 Mar 2022 15:20:51 Z{9E183D61-AFEF-4565-8C3B-5571F0627F2A}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/advertisingAdvertisement and subscription rates<div> <h4 class="basicContentUnitBody">Geoscientist Online has moved to the new website <a href="https://geoscientist.online/">www.Geoscientist.Online</a><br /> <br /> For advertising information and rates, please visit <a href="https://geoscientist.online/about/#advertising_information_and_rates ">https://geoscientist.online/about/#advertising_information_and_rates </a><br /> <br /> To subscribe, please visit <a href="https://geoscientist.online/subscribe/ ">https://geoscientist.online/subscribe/ </a></h4> <p class="basicContentUnitBody"><br /> <br /> </p> <br /> </div>Thu, 08 Apr 2021 10:37:58 Z{430BC5CC-B9EA-461D-938E-BB638A45A97A}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/reviewsBooks and Arts<p><em></em></p> <p><em></em></p> <em></em> <h4> </h4> <h4>Geoscientist Online has moved to the new website <a href="https://geoscientist.online/">www.Geoscientist.Online</a></h4> <h4><span style="font-weight: normal;">To read the latest reviews or view the list of titles available for review, please visit <a href="https://geoscientist.online/section/books-and-arts/">https://geoscientist.online/section/books-and-arts/</a></span></h4> <em> <div></div> </em> <p><em>Geoscientist </em>publishes book reviews as soon as they are received, and publishes a selection in the print magazine - usually four to six each month, depending on space. </p> <p>We hope that publishing 'online-first' will address our otherwise long lead-times for book reviews awaiting publication.</p> <blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; border: medium none;"> <h4><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews">Reviews received in 2020</a></h4> <h4><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2019-reviews">Reviews received in 2019</a></h4> <h4><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2018-reviews">Reviews received in 2018</a></h4> <h4><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2017-reviews">Reviews received in 2017</a></h4> <h4><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2016-reviews">Reviews received in 2016</a></h4> <h4><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2015-reviews">Reviews received in 2015</a></h4> <h4><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2014-reviews">Reviews received from August 2014</a></h4> </blockquote>{2CD0E89A-1D32-4525-AE7E-BCD9AE9973A7}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/About-GeoscientistAbout Geoscientist<h4>Geoscientist is the monthly Fellowship magazine of the Geological Society of London</h4> <p> </p> <h4>Geoscientist Online has moved to the new website <a href="https://geoscientist.online/">www.Geoscientist.Online </a></h4> <p>To learn more about Geoscientist and the editorial team, please visit <a href="https://geoscientist.online/about/">https://geoscientist.online/about/</a></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <em><img alt="Geoscientist June 2019" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/About Geoscientist/June-2019_Cover-thumb_smallered.jpg?h=357&amp;w=250&la=en" style="height: 357px; width: 250px;" class="tcpImageleft" width="250" height="357" /></em> <p><em></em></p> <p><em></em></p> <p><em>Geoscientist </em>is the main means of communication between the Society and its Fellows, but is also editorially independent of Council and the Secretariat. </p> The Editors, Dr Amy Whitchurch and Ms Sarah Day, are responsible to an independent Editor-in-Chief, Dr Andy Fleet (Dorset County Museum), and Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Mr David Shilston (Atkins), and have an Editorial Advisory Panel available for consultation over scientific content of feature articles (see below).<br /> <h4>Distribution</h4> <em>Geoscientist </em>has a print run of ~13,000 and is distributed free to all Society Fellows, with backgrounds across academia and industry, in 84 different countries. The magazine is freely available (open access) online and is widely promoted on social media (in particular, on the <a href="https://twitter.com/geoscientistmag?lang=en">@geoscientistmag</a> twitter account, which has &gt;15.5K followers). The magazine is also freely available to visitors to The Geological Society at Burlington House in London, and is distributed at careers fairs across the UK, as well as at major conferences (in the UK and internationally), including the EGU, AGU, AAPG and GSA annual assemblies.<br /> <br /> As part of the Society&rsquo;s outreach and education programme, <em>Geoscientist </em>is sent to schools and colleges across the UK, as well as numerous national and international university departments, including the Institution of Geoscientists at the University of Sierra Leone in Freetown.<br /> <br /> <em>Geoscientist </em>is distributed to journalists/press officers/representatives at various institutions, including the GSA, PalAss, Science journals, Nature journals, AGU, AAPG, EGU, Natural History Museum, BGS, BBC, British Science Association, Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, Royal Geographical Society, Royal Astronomical Society, Financial Times, Daily Mail, as well as to several geoscience-related companies and the Society&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/patrons">Corporate Patrons</a>. <br /> <br /> If you are a journalist and would like to receive a copy, please <a href="mailto:sarah.day@geolsoc.org.uk">email the Editor</a>.<br /> <h4>What's in <em>Geoscientist</em>?<img alt="Geoscientist November 2018" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/About Geoscientist/Novmber-2018_Cover-thumb_smallered.jpg?h=357&amp;w=250&la=en" style="height: 357px; width: 250px;" class="tcpImageright" width="250" height="357" /></h4> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Editorial &ndash; Topical opinion piece from the Editor<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Society News &ndash; What the Geological Society is doing at home and abroad<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Soapbox &ndash; Opinion piece submitted by a Fellow of the Society<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; First Feature &ndash; An illustrated article that provides in-depth coverage of a topical geoscientific subject (informally peer-reviewed by the Editorial Advisory Panel)<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Second Feature &ndash; An illustrated article that provides brief, creative and thought-provoking discussion of a topical geoscience-related issue <br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Meeting Reports &ndash; A broadly accessible review of the main upshots from a geoscience conference, meeting or workshop<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Careers &ndash; A forum for geoscientists to share their professional experiences and advice <br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; People News &ndash; Geoscientists in the news and on the move<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Distant Thunder &ndash; An entertaining report on a historical geoscientist by science writer Nina Morgan<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="/reviews">Books &amp; Arts</a> &ndash; Reviews of recent books, theatre events and exhibitions <br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="/obituaries">Obituaries</a> &ndash; Tributes to Fellows lately deceased<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="/letters">Letters</a> &ndash; To facilitate rapid and timely interchange of opinion<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/events">Events calendar</a> &ndash; A forward listing of Society activities (including Specialist Groups, Joint Associations and Regional Groups), as well as activities going on in the broader geoscience community<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; '<a href="http://www.stonechatproductions.co.uk/">Sticks &amp; Stones</a>' - The misadventures of Dalston and Gibbet, two geologists described by one commentator as "a few taxa short of an assemblage". By cartoonist Dave Hughes.<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Crossword &ndash; Contributed by Bindweed<br /> <br /> For more details on each of these content types, please see our <a href="/Geoscientist/About-Geoscientist/Guide-for-Authors">Guide for Authors</a> page<br /> <h4>Editorial Advisory Panel</h4> <img alt="Geoscientist August 2018" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/About Geoscientist/August-2018_Cover-thumb_smallered.jpg?h=357&amp;w=250&la=en" style="height: 357px; width: 250px;" class="tcpImageleft" width="250" height="357" />The Editorial Advisory Panel is chaired by the Editor-in-Chief and composed of a number of professional geoscientists. It currently (2019) consists of:<br /> <br /> Prof. Andy Fleet (Editor-in-Chief)<br /> Mr David Shilston (Deputy Editor-in-Chief)<br /> Ms Sarah Day (Editor)<br /> Dr Amy Whitchurch (Editor, currently on maternity leave)<br /> Mrs Natalyn Ala<br /> Mr Steve Branch<br /> Dr Robin Cocks<br /> Dr Howard Falcon-Lang<br /> Prof. Tony Harris (former EIC)<br /> Mr Edmund Nickless<br /> Dr Alan Roberts<br /> Prof. Peter Styles (former EIC)<br /> Dr Colin Summerhayes<br /> Dr Jan Zalasiewicz<br /> <br /> Board members have no fixed terms of office, receive no payment and make themselves available for consultation by the Editors over the scientific content of feature articles.&nbsp; Their work is carried out almost entirely by email, but they do meet once a year face-to-face, to review the magazine and brainstorm new ideas.<br /> <br /> <p>Please also read the <em>Geoscientist </em>Terms of Reference <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/Geoscientist Terms of Reference AGREED Council Sept 2017.pdf?la=en" target="_blank">document here</a></p>{E4E713DC-B0DE-44C0-8A9F-2D1706CAC734}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews2020 &amp; 2021 book reviews online<h4>The following reviews were received in 2020 and 2021, and are published here while awaiting publication in print.</h4> <blockquote> <p>Please note, not all reviews may receive print publication.</p> </blockquote> <h3>Reviews</h3> <a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Stephens_Sweden"> <h3></h3> <h3></h3> <h3></h3> </a> <ul><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Stephens_Sweden"> </a> <li><a href="/Page-Not-Found?item=web%3a%7b5EF8F237-0FD6-4333-B5E9-7CCFC6B199CE%7d%40en">Notes from Deep Time: A Journey Through our Past and Future Worlds</a>, reviewed by Gordon Neighbour</li> <li><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Giles-UK-Geohazards">Geological Hazards in the UK: Their Occurrence, Monitoring and Mitigation</a>, reviewed by Colin J. Serridge</li> <li><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Rose_German-military-geology">German Military Geology and Fortification of the British Channel Islands During World War II</a>, reviewed by Judy Ehlen</li> <li><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Basu-Plant-Flow-Measurement">Plant Flow Measurement and Control Handbook: Fluid, Solid, Slurry and Multiphase Flow</a>, reviewed by Stephan Jefferis</li> <li><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Leake-Granites">Post-Archean Granitic Rocks: Petrogenetic Processes and Tectonic Environments</a>, reviewed by Bernard Elgey Leake</li> <li><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Ballantyne_Scotlands-mountain-landscapes">Scotland's Mountain Landscapes</a>, reviewed by Chris Jack</li> <li><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Leeder_measure-for-measure">Measure for Measure: Geology and the Industrial Revolution</a>, reviewed by Leigh Sharpe</li> <li><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Haysom_Purbeck-Stone">Purbeck Stone</a>, reviewed by Patrick Corbett</li> <li><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Gupta_large-rivers">Introducing Large Rivers</a>, reviewed by Jeremy Joseph</li> <li><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Casey-museum-building">The Museum Building of Trinity College Dublin - A Model of Victorian Craftsmanship</a>, reviewed by Julian Ingram</li> <li><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/McClay_passive-margins">Passive Margins: Tectonics, Sedimentation and Magmatism</a>, reviewed by Gavin Elliott</li> <li><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Davis_beaches-and-coasts">Beaches and Coasts</a>, reviewed by Brent Wilson</li> <li><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Hydrogeology">Introducing Hydrogeology</a>, reviewed by Rob Bowell</li> <li><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/New-Caledonia">New Caledonia: Geology, Geodynamic Evolution and Mineral Resources</a>, reviewed by Rob Bowell</li> <li><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Alkaline-rocks-and-carbonatites">Alkaline Rocks and Carbonatites of the World, Part 4: Antarctica, Asia and Europe (excluding the former USSR), Australasia and Oceanic Islands</a>, reviewed by Rob Bowell</li> <li><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Maltman-wine-and-geology">Vineyards, Rocks, and Soils &ndash; The Wine Lover&rsquo;s Guide to Geology</a>, reviewed by Ted Nield</li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Armstrong_maps-and-territories">Maps and Territories: Global Positioning in the Contemporary French Novel</a>, reviewed by Lars Backstrom</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Ericdotes">Ericdotes</a>, reviewed by Susan Brown</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Knight_glacier">Glacier: Nature and Culture</a>, reviewed by James Montgomery</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Stephens_Sweden">Sweden: Lithotectonic Framework, Tectonic Evolution and Mineral Resources</a>, reviewed by Sarah Pipkin&nbsp;</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Wilson_wilson-cycle">50 Years of the Wilson Cycle Concept in Plate Tectonics</a>, reviewed by Mark Griffin</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Prager_dangerous-Earth">Dangerous Earth: What We Wish We Knew about Volcanoes, Hurricanes, Climate Change, Earthquakes and More</a>, reviewed by Lars Backstrom</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Lorenz_applied-concepts">Applied Concepts in Fractured Reservoirs</a>, reviewed by Tim Needham&nbsp;</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Retallack_soils-of-the-past">Soils of the Past: An Introduction to Palaeopedology (Third Edition)</a>, reviewed by Catherine Kenny&nbsp;</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Berger-Geological-Map-of-the-Aar-Massif">Geological Map of the Aar Massif, Tavetsche and Gotthard Nappes</a>, reviewed by David Nowell</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Sharma_crustal-architecture">Crustal Architecture and Evolution of the Himalaya-Karakoram-Tibet Orogen</a>, reviewed by R. Arun Prasath</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Adams_modern-management">Modern Management in the Global Mining Industry</a>, reviewed by John Sykes</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Scott-At-the-crossroads-of-time">At the Crossroads of Time: How a small Scottish village changed history</a>, reviewed by Gordon Neighbour</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Kelman-Disaster-by-Choice">Disaster by Choice</a>, reviewed by Brent Wilson&nbsp;</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Jelley-Renewable-Energy">Renewable Energy: A Very Short Introduction</a>, reviewed by Richard Dawe</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Corbett-River-to-Reservoir">River to Reservoir</a>, reviewed by Jeremy Joseph</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Boudreau-Hydromagmatic-Processes">Hydromagmatic Processes and Platinum-Group Element Deposits in Layered Intrusions</a>, reviewed by Chris Hawkesworth</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Pant-Himalaya-Cryosphere">The Himalayan Cryosphere: Past and Present</a>, reviewed by Colin Serridge</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Thomas-Delving-along-the-Derwent">Delving along the Derwent: A history of 200 quarries and the people who worked them</a>, reviewed by Peter Gutteridge</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Cowen-History-of-Life">Cowen's History of Life: Sixth Edition</a>, reviewed by Gordon Neighbour</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Bond-folding-fracturing">Folding and Fracturing of Rocks: 50 Years since the Seminal Textbook of J. G. Ramsay</a>, reviewed by Arthur Tingley</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Treloar-Himalayan-Tectonics">Himalayan Tectonics: A Modern Synthesis</a>, reviewed by Bernard Elgey Leake</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/King-Exploring-Geoscience">Exploring Geoscience Across the Globe</a>, reviewed by Richard Dawe</p> </li> </ul> <br />Mon, 22 Feb 2021 15:10:14 Z{256A0129-F546-4D83-AB8A-C6F975CADCCA}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/books-arts/available-for-reviewGeoscientist Online has moved to a new website<p>To view the latest titles available for review by Fellows, please visit: <a href="https://geoscientist.online/section/books-and-arts/">https://geoscientist.online/section/books-and-arts/</a><br /> <br /> <em>Please note, due to the current closure of Burlington House, there may be delays with providing books for review. Please contact <a href="mailto:geoscientist@geolsoc.org.uk">geoscientist@geolsoc.org.uk</a> for information.</em></p>{70EE451B-A9DE-4683-9BB6-5145FCE4F532}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Giles-UK-GeohazardsGeological Hazards in the UK: Their Occurrence, Monitoring and Mitigation<img alt="Giles geohazards" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/001 Book review thumbs/Book review thumbs 2021/Giles_Geohazards SP29.jpg?h=435&amp;w=304&la=en" style="height: 435px; width: 304px;" class="tcpImageleft" width="304" height="435" />The aim of this publication is to assist geoscientists to communicate the interaction of geological hazards (geohazards) with society. The main objectives are based around improving awareness and understanding of geohazards to aid the identification, management and mitigation of such hazards in the UK. This is in the context of the range, variety and geographical distribution of geohazards, identified as a consequence of a varied geology and geomorphology, and the impact and legacy of anthropogenic activity, including mining and land management. <br /> <br /> Chapter one provides a useful introduction to the concept of a geological hazard, followed in turn, by an overview of the history of significant geohazards in the UK; terms of reference of the working party group; and an overview of the five main sections (A-E) into which the 18 subsequent chapters have been grouped.<br /> <br /> Section A - Tectonic hazards, covers seismic and tsunami hazard;&nbsp; Section B - Slope stability hazards, covers landslide and slope stability hazard, as well as debris flows; Section C - Problematic ground and geotechnical hazards, covers collapsible soils, quick clay behaviour in sensitive Quaternary marine clays, swelling and shrinking soils, peat hazards, and relict periglacial hazards; Section&nbsp; D - Mining and subsidence hazards, covers subsidence from coal, chalk and flint mining, hazards associated with mining and mineral exploration in Cornwall and Devon, geohazards&nbsp; associated with salt mining and brine extraction, carbonate dissolution, gypsum and anhydrite, mining-induced fault reactivation; Section E - Gas hazards, covers radon and methane gas hazards.<br /> <br /> It is probably the first time that such a comprehensive body of research and knowledge on geohazards in the UK has been brought together into one volume. The report achieves its aim and objectives very well, is overall well-structured and illustrated, supported by extensive case history information, and should prove an essential reference document for geohazards in the UK.<br /> <br /> It will appeal to a range of practitioners who may be involved with geohazards and their effects, including geoscientists, civil and geotechnical engineers, planning and risk managers among others. It will also appeal to undergraduates and postgraduates studying or researching geohazards, or looking to augment their knowledge and understanding, where they may not have specialised in a course with a geohazard content. &nbsp;<br /> <br /> <em>Reviewed by Dr Colin J. Serridge&nbsp;&nbsp;</em>&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;<br /> <br /> GEOLOGICAL HAZARDS IN THE UK: THEIR OCCURRENCE, MONITORING AND MITIGATION &ndash; ENGINEERING GROUP WORKING PARTY REPORT, by Giles, D.P. &amp; Griffiths, J.S. eds. (2020) Geological Society of London Engineering Geology Special Publication No 29. 490 pp. (hbk) ISBN 978-1-78620-461-5. ISSN 0267-9914.&nbsp; L<strong>ist Price:</strong> &pound;140.00 <strong>Fellow's price:</strong> &pound; 70.00 <strong>W:</strong> https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/SPE29<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />Fri, 05 Feb 2021 00:00:00 Z{2672E22C-308D-4AA6-837F-0B564B8C1D07}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Rose_German-military-geologyGerman Military Geology and Fortification of the British Channel Islands During World War II<p style="line-height: 150%;"><img height="376" alt="Rose_military geology" width="250" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/001 Book review thumbs/Book review thumbs 2021/Rose German military geology web.jpg?la=en" class="tcpImageleft" />The Channel Islands were the only part of Britain occupied by Germany during World War II. The islands, thought to be indefensible, were demilitarised by the British government in the summer of 1940, with some of the population evacuated to mainland Britain. German occupation began immediately thereafter. Because Germany feared recapture of the islands by Britain, protection against a potential invasion was crucial. German fortification concentrated on the three largest islands, Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney. Guernsey was the most heavily fortified, particularly on its north side, because of its nearness to mainland Britain. </p> <p style="line-height: 150%;">Military geologists were heavily involved in the fortification of the islands, with at least 14 employed. Unlike the UK and the US, Germany employed large numbers of trained geologists, about 400 by the end of the war. Military geologists on the Channel Islands served in the Army and Air Force (<em>Luftwaffe</em>). Work for the Navy, primarily coastal defense structures, was most likely done by Army military geology teams. Later in the Occupation, military geologists also provided support to <em>Organisation Todt</em>, the German construction agency.</p> <p style="line-height: 150%;">The geography, the geological knowledge available at the time, and the historical fortifications are described in the early chapters of this book. The work of military geologists on each island between 1941 and 1943 is then discussed. At least 51 written reports and at least 26 thematic maps were prepared; these are preserved in archives in the US, the UK and Germany. Detailed descriptions of the German fortifications on each island are provided.</p> <p style="line-height: 150%;">The main contribution of the military geologists dealt with ground water conditions and water supply for camps and batteries; they supervised drilling and mapped the locations of springs and wells. This was especially important because there is little surface water on the islands and the existing supply was unable to support the increased military population. In addition, new maps of the local geology, primarily Paleozoic metamorphic and igneous rocks, were made and thematic military geology maps were prepared. They also provided advice on quarrying; sources of raw materials, especially aggregate for concrete; tunnelling; fuel and ammunition storage; site characterization for batteries and other structures; anti-tank defences, especially on beaches; and airfield construction. </p> <p style="line-height: 150%;">The book is lavishly and beautifully illustrated with photographs of the fortifications, original drawings and sketch maps of the military works and historical military geology maps. Many examples of the German fortifications, particularly tunnels and observation posts, survive in the landscape today and some have been adapted for modern use, such as museums.</p> <p style="line-height: 150%;"><em>Reviewed by Judy Ehlen</em></p> <p> </p> <p>GERMAN MILITARY GEOLOGY AND FORTIFICATION OF THE BRITISH CHANNEL ISLANDS DURING WORLD WAR II, edited by EDWARD P.F. ROSE, 2020. Published by Springer Nature 406pp (hbk) ISBN: 978-3-319-22767-2 List Price &pound;89.99</p> <p> </p> <p>https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-22768-9</p> <p ><br /> </p> <br />Mon, 01 Feb 2021 00:00:00 Z{CA77B67B-C9A5-443E-B032-A6C4061FAB72}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/lettersLetters{67C451D4-870D-4597-8BBE-047FBE53AD3D}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Basu-Plant-Flow-MeasurementPlant Flow Measurement &amp; Control Handbook: Fluid, Solid, Slurry and Multiphase Flow<img height="321" alt="plant flow measurement cover" width="250" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/001 Book review thumbs/Book review thumbs 2021/plant flow measurement and control small.jpg?la=en" class="tcpImageleft" />On first lifting this substantial text on flow measurement (it weighs in at over 3.5 kilos) one is inclined to view it as a work of reference to be left on the shelf until required to resolve a particular flow measurement problem. However, it is much more; a practical guide to the theory and application of flow measurement coupled with outlines of individual techniques and their installation and operation, with advice on technique selection and potential problems.&nbsp; <p>The first chapter, which would make a book in itself, sets out the basics of flow measurement and introduces the principal processes/phenomena that can be exploited for flow measurement. Working through the multitude of techniques presented one is in awe at the variety of phenomena that have been exploited to derive flow measurements and the amazing ingenuity of those who developed them.&nbsp;</p> <p>Operational details of the measurement systems are then provided in succeeding chapters including those that exploit the measurement of head, velocity, impact, centripetal force, the Coriolis effect, and induced voltage in addition to positive displacement metering.&nbsp;</p> <p>Of course, not all flows are of simple gases, liquids or solids. The flow behaviour of slurries (solid-liquid systems) and multiphase gas-liquid systems (including gas-water-oil) are reviewed with illustrations of the flow regimes that can be expected in these systems.&nbsp;</p> <p>A further complication is that not all flows are in closed conduits and measurement systems are described for fluid flows in open channels and solid flows on conveyor belts.&nbsp;</p> <p>From a user&rsquo;s perspective there is useful advice on control and integration of measurement devices and flow conditioning to improve system performance. Alongside this there are data on the typical accuracy that can be expected for the different systems &ndash; one must be realistic about the accuracy of the devices we use. With details of so many procedures it is a pleasure to find that the author has provided selection tables and guidance on the flow measurement techniques that may be employed in a variety of industry sectors including cement, mining, metallurgy, nuclear, and oil and gas. A minor criticism is that despite the 1268 pages some of the process descriptions are rather brief. However, there are substantial lists of references including standards as well as published papers.&nbsp; </p> <p><em>Reviewed by Stephan Jefferis</em></p> <p>PLANT FLOW MEASUREMENT AND CONTROL HANDBOOK: FLUID, SOLID, SLURRY AND MULTIPHASE FLOW by SWAPAN BASU, 2019. Published by: Academic Press, 1268pp (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-12-812437-6 List Price: &pound;170.00. W: www.elsevier.com/books/plant-flow-measurement-and-control-handbook/basu/978-0-12-812437-6.</p>Mon, 18 Jan 2021 00:00:00 Z{9C0FBF8E-618F-4673-9D9F-DA69410EDA62}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Leake-GranitesPost-Archean Granitic Rocks: Petrogenetic Processes and Tectonic Environments<img alt="Janousek Granites" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/001 Book review thumbs/Book review thumbs 2021/Janousek_Granites.jpg?h=357&amp;w=250&la=en" style="height: 357px; width: 250px;" class="tcpImageleft" width="250" height="357" />In ten papers this volume summarises much of frontier thinking about the varied origins and tectonic settings of granites, from the anatexis of metasediments (S-type) to the dual origin I-type granites as either partial melts from lower-crustal igneous rocks or from fractionation of mantle-derived magmas, to the so-called anorogenic (A-type) granites occurring in a variety of tectonic settings.<br /> <br /> Granite classification and plotting schemes are reviewed with the serious inherent drawbacks of the commonly-used (even in this volume) Harker plots pointed out, but there is recognition of &lsquo;inertia&rsquo; and unwillingness to change from familiar to new, even if more useful, plots. The innovative (for granites) accounts and open access programs of Mayne et al enable the stable mineral phases and their Pressure-Temperature (P-T) stability fields to be calculated for variable P, T, and bulk compositions. This allows the determination of the compositions of melt batches generated by sequential melting of any pelite composition with other variables, such as limited porosity or water in excess. Water is crucial in determining melt and crystallisation temperatures and the vital role of muscovite breakdown in providing water in melting pelites is emphasised. The water-fluxed and dehydration melting origins of granites and trondhjemites of southernmost Italy further emphasises this, as does the different production of magmatic and metasomatic trondhjemites by water-fluxed melting and subsolidus hydrous metasomatic destruction of alkali feldspars in already crystallised granite.<br /> <br /> Accounts include the petrogenesis of leucogranites in collisional orogens; S-I-A granites in the Lachlan orogen and A-types in Nigeria; the dual (melt and fractionation) origin of I-types; granites and crustal heat; and laboratory experiments of fluid-fluxed melting, which after fractionation relates to Cordilleran batholiths above subduction zones.<br /> <br /> Long-lived episodically constructed plutons formed by sequential magma injections giving zoned granites are well illustrated by the described &lsquo;normally zoned&rsquo; mafic tonalitic-edged Sardinian Budduso body. This becomes more felsic inward but the quite common &lsquo;reversely zoned&rsquo; bodies, requiring different tectonic conditions of emplacement, are not considered. The important roles of isotopes in identifying melt sources and their ages, as well as the ages of consolidation are not overlooked.<br /> <br /> This is strongly recommended as a well-written and colour illustrated volume, replete with significant advances in detailing geochemical modelling of granite magma genesis and crystallisation that others can use. There is lesser tectonic detail. The authors and editors should be congratulated on a volume of wide interest.<br /> <br /> <em>Reviewed by Bernard Elgey Leake</em><br /> <br /> POST-ARCHEAN GRANITIC ROCKS: PETROGENETIC PROCESSES AND TECTONIC ENVIRONMENT by V. Janou&scaron;ek, B. Bonin, W. J. Collins, F. Farina &amp; P. Bowden (editors, 2020). Geological Society of London Special Publication No 491.298 pp. (hbk) ISBN 978-1-78620-448-6. 298 pp.<em> </em><strong>List Price:</strong><em><strong> </strong></em>&pound;100.00 <strong>W: </strong><a href="https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/SP491 ">https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/SP491 </a><br /> <br /> <br /> <br />Thu, 14 Jan 2021 00:00:00 Z{D6364E0C-2E9D-421C-9655-D62E177CD4A7}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Ballantyne_Scotlands-mountain-landscapesScotland&#39;s Mountain Landscapes<p><img height="325" alt="scotlands mountain landscapes cover" width="250" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/001 Book review thumbs/Book review thumbs 2021/ballantyne scotlands mountain landscapes web.jpg?la=en" class="tcpImageleft" />I was keen to get my teeth into this book by well-known expert Professor Colin Ballantyne of the University of St. Andrews, because as well as being a geologist I am an (aspirant) mountaineer. I am pleased to say that I was not disappointed!</p> <p>The book covers a wide range of topics in its 174 pages. Early on a general introduction to the geology of Scotland is provided and this is valuable, both as the beginning of the geomorphological story and as a starting point for the non-specialist reader. This is followed by a comprehensive overview of the relevant geomorphological topics, with chapters covering the preglacial landscape, the Ice Age in Scotland, glacial and periglacial landforms, landslides, aeolian and fluvial landforms and example key sites. The book is very well illustrated with excellent colour photographs throughout, which is particularly useful in a book that aims to explain geomorphological features (and it does no harm that Scotland's beautiful mountains form the backdrop).</p> <p>My favourite chapter was probably that on aeolian landforms, simply because this is a topic I know very little about and had never considered in the context of the Scottish mountains. However, thanks to this book I now have some idea of how to recognise deflation surfaces, wind-patterned ground, turf-banked terraces and ventifacts.</p> <p>The final chapter provides details of key sites that exemplify some of the features discussed in the book. For this reason alone I will be pleased to hold onto my review copy of the book, so I can take the opportunity to visit these sites.</p> <p>A couple of criticisms. Firstly, the blurb of the book states that it is written in clear, non-technical language. While, as a geologist, I found the book clear and accessible, I am not sure that a layperson would always find it so easy (although any difficulties would be overcome with reference to a geological dictionary). Secondly, some of the photographs would have benefitted from some mark-ups to assist non Earth scientists. However, these minor quibbles are easy to overlook, given that Professor Ballantyne's enthusiasm for the topic shines through the book.</p> <p>I can easily recommend this book to geomorphologists looking for an accessible introduction to the mountains of Scotland, Earth scientists who love the mountains and mountaineers who have a keen interest in how their playground came to be.</p> <p><em>Reviewed by Chris Jack</em></p> <p>SCOTLAND'S MOUNTAIN LANDSCAPES: A GEOMORPHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE, 2019. Published by: Dunedin 174pp (hbk) ISBN: 9781780460796 (also available in PDF, ePub &amp; Kindle formats) List Price: &pound;27.99. W: https://www.dunedinacademicpress.co.uk/.</p> <br />Mon, 04 Jan 2021 00:00:00 Z{DB02C63C-7F4B-471C-8A59-593346D872AA}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/December-2020/Mining-mannualDealing with the legacy of past mining in the United Kingdom<h4>Much of the UK has experienced some form of mining in the past. Laurance Donnelly and Martin Culshaw discuss <em>The new Abandoned Mine Workings Manual (C758D)</em>, a manual that provides a risk-based approach to the identification, evaluation, mitigation and remediation of mining hazards and their associated risks. </h4> <h4>Legacy of mining</h4> <img height="395" alt="Fig 2" width="251" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 11/F2 resized.jpg?la=en" class="tcpImageright" />Civilisation today could not function, as we know it without mineral commodities. Mineral resources are fundamental and impinge on the life of most people in one form or another. Mining, probably alongside agriculture, represents one of the earliest of human activities in the United Kingdom (UK) and globally. There is evidence for the mining of minerals in the UK during Neolithic times (some 5,000 years ago), for example, at Grime&rsquo;s Graves flint mine in Norfolk. The mining of metalliferous minerals, namely tin and copper, took place in parts of Devon and Cornwall in the early Bronze Age roughly 4,000 years ago. Coal mining is recorded as taking place in Northumberland in the middle of the Thirteenth Century and was probably being extracted as long ago as Roman times. However, it was the Industrial Revolution during the Eighteenth Century that led to the widespread mining of coal, iron and other minerals. This resulted in rapid urbanisation and the expansion of many of the UK&rsquo;s industrial towns. <p><em>Right:&nbsp;<span style="text-align: justify;">Collapse of an abandoned tin mine shaft, Gunnislake, Cornwall (</span><a href="mailto:BGS@UKRI" style="text-align: justify;">BGS@UKRI</a><span style="text-align: justify;">)</span></em><br /> <br /> There are very few parts of the UK that have not experienced some form of mining in the past. However, mining for coal and metalliferous minerals is now much reduced and new mines are rarely opened, although there are some notable exceptions such as the recent proposals to develop a huge new polyhalite (a form of potash) mine beneath the North Yorkshire Moors. There is, however, considerable extraction of industrial minerals for aggregate and civil engineering raw materials.<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /> </span><br /> New mineral extraction is strictly controlled by planning regulations to minimise the environmental effects of mining. However, the centuries of previous mineral extraction have left a legacy of abandoned quarries, pits and underground mines. One of the problems associated with mineral extraction is that while the location of quarries and pits is more obvious when extraction ceases (unless they are infilled) the locations of many of the underground mines and their access shafts and associated hazards are unknown. Indeed, it was only from 1872 that, legally, coal mine plans had to be provided when a mine became abandoned. <br /> <br /> <img height="343" alt="Fig 3" width="500" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 11/F3 resized.png?la=en" class="tcpImageleft" /><em>Left:&nbsp;Drilling rig being pulled form a collapsed mineshaft, Glasgow (<a href="mailto:BGS@UKRI" style="text-align: justify;">BGS@UKRI</a></em><em>)</em><br /> <br /> Mining in the UK has, in the past, generated vast wealth. However, notwithstanding the social impacts of mine closures, the subsequent reduction in mining and, in particular, underground mining, generated mining and environmental hazards. In extreme cases, mining disasters resulted, which have been prevalent in the past few hundreds of years. For example, the Pretoria mine explosion in 1910 killed 344 men and boys at Hulton Colliery, Westhoughton in Lancashire. The catastrophic failure of colliery spoil from Taff Merthyr Colliery at Aberfan, in South Wales, in 1966, generated a flow slide that killed 144 people including 28 adults and 116 children. In 1973, at Lofthouse Colliery, near Wakefield, Yorkshire, an inrush of water caused the deaths of seven miners. The River Fal in Cornwall suffered widespread and severe pollution in 1992, when a flooded tin mine became breached.</p> <p> <br /> In the UK, for land that is located within a mining area it is essential that mining hazards are identified and the potential risks evaluated before land is developed, construction takes place or engineering infrastructure projects are proposed. The failure to properly assess the hazards and associated risks from past mining can result in the sterilisation of land or financial and engineering losses and, in relatively rare cases, loss of lives.</p> <h4>Guidance on Abandoned Mine Workings (SP32), Published 1984</h4> <img height="351" alt="F1 2 resized" width="250" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 11/F1 2 resized.png?la=en" class="tcpImageleft" /> <p><em>Left:&nbsp;(Right) Construction over Abandoned Mine Workings (SP32), Healy &amp; Head (1984)</em></p> <p>To try to improve our knowledge of the hazards from abandoned mineworkings and reduce the risks, P. R. Healy and J. M. Head wrote a guidance document in 1984 called, &lsquo;</p> <em>Construction over abandoned mineworkings</em>&rsquo; for the Construction Industry Research and Information Association (CIRIA) and the Property Services Agency (PSA) (Healy &amp; Head 1984), also known as &lsquo;SP32&rsquo;. It was relatively short (94 pages), but it did provide the building and construction industries with some sort of a guide as to what to expect when abandoned mineworkings were encountered. It included discussion of the following:<br /> <br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Methods of mining for coal, metalliferous deposits, gypsum and anhydrite, calcareous deposits, sandstone and salt. <br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Surface stability in undermined areas covering abandoned bell pits, shafts and adits, pillar and stall workings and longwall workings. This was covered in only six pages. <br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Site investigation of abandoned mining sites, including planning the investigation and the methods used. The two sections were covered in only eleven pages. <br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Remediation and treatment of shallow abandoned mineworkings and the treatment of shafts.<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Foundations suitable for undermined areas.<br /> <br /> SP32 also included two useful appendices on sources of information (at the time of publication) and a discussion on contracts for the consolidation of old shallow mine workings.<br /> <br /> In the years that followed the publication of SP32 the nature of mining in the UK changed radically. SP32 alone, no longer provided a single reference document for abandoned mineworkings. There were new sources of data and information that had become available, for example, held by the Coal Authority and the British Geological Survey. There were also widespread abandoned mining hazards that occurred in the decades that followed, after the publication of SP32. These were largely attributed to the sudden demise of UK active mining, particularly coal. There was new research and cases available to document mining hazards not included in SP32. This included, for example, fault reactivation, the generation of fissures and the initiation or reactivation of landslides. Other hazards were directly attributed to the mine closures and abandonment of entire mining areas, such as mine water rebound. These were prevalent in both the former coalfields and metalliferous mining districts. <br /> <br /> <img alt="Mine drainage" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 11/Mine drainage.jpg?h=336&amp;w=250&la=en" style="height: 336px; width: 250px;" class="tcpImageright" width="250" height="336" /><em>Right, Acid mine drainage, The Delph, Bridgwater Canal, Worsley, Greater Manchester (Photo: Laurance Donnelly)</em><br /> <br /> The gradual decline and virtual demise of the UK mining industry in the past few decades resulted in an increase in the number of abandoned mines, urbanisation and the continuous redevelopment of land in former mining areas and there was a need to produce an updated version of SP32. In the early 2000s, one of the co-authors (Laurance Donnelly) asked CIRIA whether SP32 should be reviewed and updated to provide more accurate and relevant guidance on the investigation, management and mitigation of mining hazards in the UK. In the years that followed, &lsquo;<em>Mining and its impact on the environment</em>&rsquo; (Bell &amp; Donnelly 2006) was published, which provided an overview of the various environmental aspects of abandoned mines for development or redevelopment of former mining areas. In 2008, Laurance wrote to the Engineering Group of the Geological Society to ask, if CIRIA SP32 should be updated, something which was simultaneously being considered by The Coal Authority. The first phase and a scoping study included considerable dialogue and potential funders to support a full and comprehensive revision of CIRIA SP32.<br /> <h4>The new Abandoned Mine Workings Manual (C758D), Published 2019 </h4> In early 2010, work began on a new document to replace SP32. This provides a more detailed guidance for the investigation and usage of land previously mined or undermined. Whereas SP32 was heavily focused on coal, the new guidance additionally includes industrial and metalliferous minerals and mining hazards. As a result, the new manual is considerably longer than its predecessor, covering the original topics more thoroughly and a whole range of new topics. It is 545 pages long and is presented in three parts, together with 44 short &lsquo;in chapter&rsquo; case studies and eleven appended detailed case studies. The research and writing of the project report was funded by the Coal Authority, CIRIA and other key stakeholders. It was researched, written and edited over a period of approximately ten years. A multi authorship team was established together with a project steering committee comprising a team of multi-disciplinary subject matter experts including; practising engineering geologists, mining geologists, mining engineers, surveyors and researchers from Government bodies, industry, consultancy and academia. <br /> <br /> <img alt="Mining manual" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 11/Book cover.jpg?h=362&amp;w=250&la=en" style="height: 362px; width: 250px;" class="tcpImageleft" width="250" height="362" /><em>Left, Abandoned Mine Workings Manual (C758D), Parry &amp; Chiverrell (2019)</em><br /> <br /> The new manual does not provide prescriptive solutions but, instead, gives information to inform and empower the professional user to make informed judgements. Generally, this provides a risk-based approach to the identification, evaluation, mitigation and remediation of mining hazards and their associated risks. <br /> <br /> The original manual was written particularly for geologists, mining engineers and civil engineers. Whilst the new manual is expected to be of interest to all these professionals, it has also been written to be of value to consultants, contractors, regulators, planners, developers, asset owners and operators, including those also engaged with or who have some responsibility for dealing with issues associated with the legacy impacts of abandoned mine workings.<br /> <br /> The main hazards and risks traditionally associated with abandoned mine workings are as follows:<br /> <br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Shallow mine workings and subsidence.<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Mine entries (shafts and adits).<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Mine gas emissions.<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Mine water discharges.<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Outbursts and groundwater contamination.<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Past methods of mine abandonment.<br /> <br /> There are new approaches in parts of the new manual, such as a better understanding of aspects of surface stability and a considerable amount of industry good practice in the chapters on the treatment of abandoned mine entries and mineworkings. The new manual discusses a number of other hazards that were not included in the original manual:<br /> <br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Mining-induced fault reactivation.<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Mine gas emissions, acid mine drainage and mine water rebound.<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Fissuring.<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Self-heating and spontaneous combustion.<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Mining-induced landslides and slope failures.<br /> <br /> <img height="330" alt="F5" width="501" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 11/F5 resized.png?la=en" class="tcpImageright" /> <p><em>Right:&nbsp;Shallow, abandoned room and pillar workings for coal, West Yorkshire (Source: Donnelly 1994)</em></p> <p> In addition, operational case examples are provided together with extensive references. The new manual contains most of the information from the original but significantly updated in the light of more recent industry experience and research over the last 30+ years, that is, post the publication of SP32. Following an introduction, the first part contains three chapters and provides an overview of past mining in the UK. Supported by regional maps, this part shows what minerals were mined, where the mining took place and how the minerals were mined. The second part comprises five chapters and provides details of the environmental impact of past mining and, in particular, how this affected the built environment. The third part of the manual has eight chapters and provides guidance on construction in mining areas and the management of land that has been, or might have been, subjected to past mining including:</p> <br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Practical guidance and good practice for the design and implementation of ground investigations.<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Methods of remediation, including new materials now available, such as geotextiles.<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Planning, legislation and regulatory aspects of land management; construction in former mining areas is also addressed to take account of major changes in planning legislation.<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Methods for the treatment of mine workings and mine entries.<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The design of foundations for infrastructure and new buildings in mining areas.<br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The importance of validation and completion (or feedback) reports for the treatment of mine workings or ground improvement measures.&nbsp; <br /> &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Alternative uses of abandoned mines that might, in some cases, provide an asset instead of a liability. <p><em>Below:&nbsp;<span style="text-align: justify;">Damage to houses caused by the mining-induced reactivation of the Hopton Fault, Oulton, Staffordshire, UK (Source: Donnelly 2006)</span></em><br /> <br /> </p> <div></div> <h4><img height="306" alt="Figure 6 resized" width="250" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 11/F6 resized.png?la=en" class="tcpImageright" />Authors</h4> Dr Laurance Donnelly<br /> Prof Martin Culshaw<br /> <h4>References</h4> Donnelly L. J. 1994.&nbsp; Predicting the reactivation of geological faults and rock mass discontinuities during mineral exploitation, mining subsidence and geotechnical engineering. PhD Thesis, University of Nottingham, Department of Mining Engineering.<br /> Donnelly. L. J. 2006. A review of coal mining-induced fault reactivation in Great Britain. Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology &amp; Hydrogeology, 39, 5-50.<br /> Donnelly, L. J. 2011. Ground Deformation in the Vicinity of Deep Seated Landslides in the South Wales Coalfield: Mining Induced or Geological? Geological Society of London, Engineering Group, Field Trip to South Wales, 2nd July 2011.<br /> Bell, F. G. &amp; Donnelly, L. J. 2006. Mining and its impact on the environment. Abingdon, UK: Taylor &amp; Francis.<br /> Parry, D.N. &amp; Chiverrell, C.P. (eds). 2019. Abandoned mine workings manual, C758D. London: Construction Industry Research and Information Association (ISBN 978-0-86017-765-4). <br /> Healy, P. R. &amp; Head, J. M. 1984. Construction over abandoned mine workings. Special Publication 32. London: Construction Industry Research and Information Association.<br /> <br /> <br />Thu, 17 Dec 2020 00:00:00 Z{E1EA1D8B-26DC-496F-BD65-873D2E02DC9E}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Leeder_measure-for-measureMeasure for Measure: Geology and the Industrial Revolution<p style="text-align: justify;"><img height="374" alt="Measure for measure cover" width="250" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/001 Book review thumbs/Book review thumbs 2020/Leeder_measure for measure web.jpg?la=en" class="tcpImageright" />As geologists, we understand that the Carboniferous rocks of the Coal Measures were essential to the first Industrial Revolution. They determined its location, pace and extent. This book explains not only this relationship but the profound consequences to our landscape, society, culture and economics that followed.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">An engaging narrative with cameos is used to frame the story, referencing the writings and eye witness accounts of contemporary individuals. The geological firsts attributed to George Sinclair, whose work involved predicting where mineral resources could be found and easy won, were particularly insightful. Abraham Darby with his technological knowhow sparked the revolutionary blueprint, but he relocated to Coalbrookdale for a reason!</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Professor Leeder&rsquo;s vast knowledge comes to the fore in explaining the <em>how</em>, <em>why</em> and <em>where.</em> The answers of course are in the rocks, from the rise of forests, palaeoclimate and diagenesis to the Rheic Ocean&rsquo;s demise and, finally, basin inversion. The richness of the geological story presented is like the creation of Pangaea itself - an impressive all-encompassing assemblage.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Contemporary artists&rsquo; depictions of industrialisation provoked much controversy. John Ruskin&rsquo;s critiques exemplified the so called &lsquo;crisis in the sublime&rsquo;- were these works degrading of the natural world and the objectivity of landscape painting? &nbsp;Certainly, the sometimes idyllic depictions of working life belied the dystopian reality. &nbsp;The social legacy was for me most poignantly expressed by the lyrics of the song <em>Trimdon Grange Explosion</em> - little explanation is perhaps necessary. As the redirection to a Youtube rendition demonstrates, a book can become greater than the sum of its words. We learn of stories that today strike us with their great irony, including French geochemist Eblemen&rsquo;s vital connections on the lifecycle of carbon which were published, but went unrecognised and lost to science for 140 years &ndash; a travesty, most probably. </p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Leeder&rsquo;s finale is a comprehensive tour across nine of the former coal based industrial regions to explain their individual geology and situational nuances. Interwoven with poetry, quotes and works of art, <em>Measure for Measure</em> will appeal to a wide readership. As the Black Country celebrates its recent UNESCO global geopark status, it is both complementary and timely. Whether a balance between narrative and textbook style is achieved, only the reader can decide. It is however an enjoyable and though provoking read and thoroughly recommended.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><em>Reviewed by Leigh Sharpe</em></p> <p>MEASURE FOR MEASURE: GEOLOGY AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, by Mike Leeder, 2020, 272pp. Published by Dunedin Academic Press. ISBN-13: 9781780460460819 (hardback), list price: &pound;24.99 www.dunedinacademicpress.co.uk.&nbsp;</p>Mon, 14 Dec 2020 00:00:00 Z{4C52D5ED-070C-4678-87E4-C42529B7BF8C}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/December-2020/Distant-ThunderDistant Thunder: All I want for Christmas...<h4>Geologist and science writer Nina Morgan examines some interesting ideas for educational Christmas presents</h4> <hr /> Morgan, N., All I want for Christmas. <em>Geoscientist </em><strong>30 (10)</strong>, 32, 2020<br /> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-126">https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-126</a>; <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/December 2020/Distant Thunder_DEC2020.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a><br /> <hr />Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 Z{03ACF4C5-6586-4F35-B8FA-5A4E9C342913}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/December-2020/EditorialAll change, all change<h4>2021: Our Year of Space&hellip; and transformation</h4> <div></div> <div><hr /> Whitchurch, A., All change, all change. <em>Geoscientist </em><strong>30</strong> <strong>(11)</strong>, 5, 2020</div> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-119">https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-119</a>; <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/December 2020/Editorial_DEC2020.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a><br /> <hr />Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 Z{32250A51-2763-42D5-AF77-7EFCDC8D7A64}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/December-2020/Feature-1From wet planet to red planet<h4>Current and future exploration is shaping our understanding of how the climate of Mars changed. Joel Davis deciphers the planet&rsquo;s ancient, drying climate.</h4> <hr /> Davis, J., From wet planet to red planet. <em>Geoscientist </em><strong>30 (11)</strong>, 14-20, 2020<br /> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-121">https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-121</a>; <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/December 2020/Feature 1_DEC2020.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a><br /> <hr />Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 Z{804F60AA-9A51-4FE4-9056-DA672F9C9803}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/December-2020/Interview-1Missions to Mars<h4>&lsquo;It is pretty special to get new views of martian vistas&mdash;it truly feels like exploration.&rsquo;&nbsp;&nbsp; --Sanjeev Gupta</h4> <hr /> Day, S., Mission to Mars. <em>Geoscientist </em><strong>30 (11)</strong>, 22-23, 2020<br /> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-122">https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-122</a>; <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/December 2020/Interview 1_DEC2020.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a><br /> <hr />Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 Z{72458AB6-0B2A-47D0-8699-11DBEA8298C6}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/December-2020/Interview-2The building blocks of life<h4>&lsquo;As long as I can remember, I have loved space. I used to climb out on the roof to just stare at the stars.&rsquo;&nbsp;&nbsp; --Sara Motaghian</h4> <hr /> Day, S., The building blocks of life. <em>Geoscientist </em><strong>30 (11)</strong>, 24-25, 2020<br /> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-123">https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-123</a>; <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/December 2020/Interview 2_DEC2020.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a><br /> <hr /> <br /> <br />Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 Z{37A177CE-870F-462A-AE23-4C9F45735E55}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/December-2020/Interview-3Visualising another world<h4>&lsquo;Doing this kind of work is like watching movies of the surface of a different planet, it&rsquo;s cinematic and satisfying and really beautiful.&rsquo;&nbsp;&nbsp; --Divya Persaud</h4> <hr /> Day, S., Visualising another world. <em>Geoscientist <strong>30 </strong></em><strong>(11)</strong>, 26-27, 2020<br /> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-124">https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-124</a>; <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/December 2020/Interview 3_DEC2020.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a><br /> <hr /> <br /> <br />Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 Z{4E2457FF-7E93-4B5B-A1CB-D4B1D547E5C7}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/December-2020/Citizen-scienceCitizen science: Breathing fresh life into geoscience<h4 style="line-height: 150%;">Involving non-scientists in research has a long pedigree in other fields, but uptake is slow and cautious in the Earth sciences. It can be done, says Jonathan Paul: here&rsquo;s how (and why)</h4> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;"><em></em></p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;"><img height="347" alt="bird watchers" width="500" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 11/Young_Bird_Watchers-99.jpg?la=en" class="tcpImageright" />In December 1900, the American ornithologist Frank Chapman proposed an alternative to Christmas &lsquo;side hunts&rsquo; &ndash; a tradition in which Americans competed to kill the most birds, regardless of use, scarcity or beauty. What if, Chapman suggested, we count birds instead of killing them? On Christmas Day 1900, 27 observers participated, counting between them 18,500 birds belonging to 90 species. The count has since been held every winter &ndash; 2,615 &lsquo;counters&rsquo; took part in the 2018-19 event. The Christmas Bird Count was one of the first of what have since become known as &lsquo;citizen science projects.&rsquo; </p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;"><em>Right: Young bird watchers (wikipedia)</em></p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;">It&rsquo;s not surprising that citizen science has taken off in recent years. The explosion of new technology following the internet of the 1990s has enabled people to feel more interconnected. In the context of multiple global crises, of which the climate emergency and fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic are arguably the most important, this connectivity has helped us regain a sense of agency over events that perhaps seem frightening, inchoate and difficult to control. Since the term first emerged in the early 2000s, citizen science was immediately recognised as having the potential to mobilise people&rsquo;s involvement in social action and justice, as well as large-scale information gathering. </p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;"><em></em></p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;"><strong>Global geoscience</strong></p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;"><em><img height="279" alt="fig 1 web 2" width="500" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 11/fig1 web.png?h=279&amp;&amp;w=500&la=en" class="tcpImageleft" />Left: Figure 1. Map of western Nepal, showing the location of two secondary schools for our citizen science interventions (Sa = Saraswati; Su = Sunkuda School).</em><br /> <span style="text-align: left;"><br /> To what extent does citizen science feature in geoscience? New technology including increasingly sophisticated smartphone apps has enabled citizen scientists to record millions of observations of, for instance, the occurrence of seismic activity (via accelerometers), landslides (from photos and videos), or even air and water quality. Non-scientist engagement in geoscience has perhaps been most pronounced in resilience-building efforts to geohazards. Their motivation for taking part is clear: I will help you take additional measurements to patch up your data gaps, and in return you will provide me with expert advice and information on how to stay safe, whether my family is exposed or vulnerable, and which courses of action I could potentially take in an emergency.</span></p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;">It is important to recognise that our skills as geoscientists are not necessarily sufficient to render such engagement successful and useful. Citizen science is widely considered to be a sub-discipline, to use a clich&eacute;, that is very easy to do badly but much harder to do well. Getting it wrong has consequences; it can lead to a lack of trust in the community towards the government or professional scientists<em>. </em></p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;">These days, many large grants disbursed in geoscience by Research Councils assume an implicit high degree of transdisciplinarity. What is now a given &ndash; for instance, that geologists will work with social scientists to enhance research impact &ndash; was considered rather novel barely five or six years ago.&nbsp; </p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;">The challenges of setting up a successful citizen science monitoring programme are numerous. issues range from the need to provide incentives (often money) to participate, to the highly variable quality and fragmentary nature of citizen-collected datasets. The two greatest challenges for geoscientists are quite technical. First, we need to develop strict guidelines through which the uncertainty of data generated by non-scientists can be quantified. How can a lay person assess groundwater level or the clay content of a rock, for example? Such protocols could potentially address the second challenge: how do we convince decision makers (and indeed other geoscientists in academia and industry) of the viability and quality of these data, to the extent that citizen observations can have a real impact on our projects &ndash; such as a flood early-warning system or a hydrogeological groundwater model. </p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;">To date, relatively few of these projects have been conceived in developing countries, owing to a range of complex and interrelated hurdles including bureaucratic, financial and language barriers, hostile weather, and inaccessibility. There is rich potential in the geosciences to transcend a traditional view of the smartphone-equipped citizen passively feeding data to a central database. Working closely with groups of non-scientists throughout the duration of a research project requires more money, careful thought and intensive collaboration with social scientists. The potential rewards, though, are rich, and could include capturing hitherto hidden local knowledge, permanent reductions in risk against geohazards and improvements in community cohesion. <em></em></p> <p style="line-height: 150%;"><strong>Lessons from rural western Nepal</strong></p> <p style="line-height: 150%;"><strong></strong></p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;"><img height="344" alt="Fig 2 web " width="250" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 11/fig2 web.png?la=en" class="tcpImageright" /><em>Right:&nbsp;Figure 2. Lesson plan co-developed with local teachers, translated into local Nepali dialect, for our &lsquo;rainfall and rivers&rsquo; session.<br /> </em><br /> Over the past five years, I&rsquo;ve been involved in various citizen science research projects spanning seismology, flood and landslide risk reduction and irrigation management. In 2019, Scientists from Imperial College launched a new initiative that focused on two secondary schools in mountainous western Nepal (Figure 1). The goal was threefold: to enhance science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) teaching in a developing country context, to produce new geoscientific datasets and to build greater environmental awareness (of, for instance, landslides, rivers and earthquakes) in the new generation of students. </p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;">These activities were intended to move beyond any form of &lsquo;outreach.&rsquo; After working closely with local communities for several months, we found schools to be the most effective gateway to local people: teachers are often the most educated and respected community members, while students are enthusiastic receptors of new information, which is then transmitted to their parents. Also, schools offer ready-made organisation and a central forum to bring different local stakeholders together, which is comparatively rare, especially in developing countries. </p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;"><strong>Lesson plans</strong></p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;">We started by developing lesson plans (Figure 2) with schoolteachers a priori, whose content would complement the government-prescribed STEM curricula while also introducing new material tailored for local relevance (e.g. determining the degree of cambering on local rice paddies as a result of nearby rotational slumping, or measuring changes in river cross-sectional area and discharge through the Monsoon season). </p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;">We worked with graphic designers in Kathmandu to generate visually appealing material such as posters on the water cycle and causes and effects of mass movements (Figure 3). Teaching and question-and-answer sessions were delivered by a mixture of local schoolteachers, European and Nepali scientists, as well as student representatives (Figure 4). Each day included an outdoor practical component where students collected data: in one such experiment, students were trained to collect rainfall data using simple measuring cylinders, which would then be validated against an existing co-located automatic tipping-bucket rain gauge. This exercise, and the students&rsquo; data, were used to forge a local link to the broader context of changing patterns of Monsoon rainfall due to climate change (Figure 5). </p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;">Throughout our intervention, we sought to treat local stakeholders (mainly students and teachers) as equal partners, producing data of objective scientific value. In so doing we were able to address to question of project sustainability, which is often a major problem in citizen science research. The typically fixed-term funding model in the UK places a constraint on the tractability of scientific questions that can be answered, which can only really be solved by ensuring that community-level monitoring and analysis continues after the funding runs out. In this instance, we attempted to secure this sustainability via weekly meetings with the teachers, and offering community ownership of the automatic rain gauges, new smartphones, and other scientific equipment.</p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;"><strong>Lessons learned</strong></p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;"><img height="346" alt="Fig 3 web" width="500" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 11/fig3 web.png?h=346&amp;&amp;w=500&la=en" class="tcpImageleft" style="height: 346px; width: 500px;" /><em>Left: Figure 3.&nbsp;Poster displayed at secondary school in west Nepal used to stimulate discussion about the water cycle and geohazards.<br /> </em><br /> Of course, we learnt many lessons during our series of community interventions in western Nepal; many things that did not go exactly as foreseen or planned. We discovered the importance of being as humble as possible when liaising with local community members. For many this is not a trivial thing to do: academics in geoscience (and other fields) are increasingly accustomed to the necessity of sprinkling CVs with a dusting of h-values, impact factors, and citation metrics. In this instance, &lsquo;humble&rsquo; translated to keeping one&rsquo;s mind open regarding local geological conditions: it should not be so much a case of turning up with pre-conceived and concrete ideas of local environmental challenges (as we did: &ldquo;you&rsquo;re having all these landslides because of over-zealous road building&rdquo;); rather, local knowledge should carefully be incorporated wherever possible. </p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;">We were presented with shortlists of impossible-to-satisfy problems, such as a locally pressing need to monitor river water quality every 10 cm along a 50 km river (due to contaminant discharge of uncertain origin). We found a good compromise was to present very broad research aims, and scientific possibilities, at the very beginning; for instance, &ldquo;we would like to understand how much of this river&rsquo;s flow is fed by an aquifer. Using a lidar sensor is one way of measuring river level &ndash; like this &ndash; which can then be converted into discharge &ndash; like this.&rdquo; (Figure 6).&nbsp; </p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;"><strong>Local relevance </strong></p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;"><img height="375" alt="Fig 4" width="500" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 11/fig4 web.jpg?la=en" class="tcpImageright" /><em>Right: Figure 4. Teaching 45 Nepali secondary school students about groundwater flow.<br /> </em><br /> After the preliminaries and introductions, the next critical step was to understand the motivation of non-scientist participants: why should they care? How would &lsquo;our geoscience&rsquo; affect their livelihoods? In geohazard research, the idea that a local community would somehow, vaguely, just &lsquo;be grateful&rsquo; for the presence of professional scientists, is a misconception. In many areas that suffer multiple hazards like western Nepal, local people rated their effects very low on the list of priorities; well below more pressing livelihood needs such as ensuring good harvests or raising children. In this sense, we strove to make our research as locally relevant as possible. </p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;">In practice, this was not a straightforward proposition, since our main scientific goal of generating new, spatially dense environmental datasets (e.g. of precipitation, which could then be used to benchmark satellite estimates) was largely irrelevant in the field. Nevertheless, we discovered multiple possibilities. As far as possible, our project team sought to become embedded in the local community: this took the form of using local suppliers or craftsmen to make certain pieces of geophysical survey equipment (Figure 7), having a PhD researcher living in the local community for several months, and even eating communally with the school students and teachers (and sleeping in the school hall). We then began to develop simple-to-operate, low-cost sensors that also had a practical, tangible use, such as river level sensors that reported in real-time to a centrally positioned LED display board. Moreover, in more remote regions where manual data collection was not feasible, we found that engaging local people with a monthly stipend to maintain equipment and/or download and transmit data was an acceptable compromise.</p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;">However, our intention was not passive data collection: multiple studies have demonstrated the benefits of involving citizen scientists throughout the entire lifecycle of a research project (i.e. from problem conception to the dissemination of results) in terms of retaining participants and boosting the sustainability of the science. We found that the schoolteachers in particular wanted to become fully invested in our research (to the extent of multiple unsolicited offers to write journal articles summarising our results!) How could it be possible to accommodate this level of engagement? </p> <p style="line-height: 150%; border: none; text-align: justify;"><img height="259" alt="Fig 5" width="500" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 11/fig5 web.png?la=en" class="tcpImageleft" /><em>Left: Figure 5. Gauge and student rainfall data for 2019 Monsoon season in west Nepal, versus satellite estimates. The students&rsquo; data provides a superior spatiotemporal fit to automatic rain gauge data.</em><br /> <br /> Geoscientists are physical scientists for whom the answer might seem rather imprecise or &lsquo;fuzzy&rsquo;. Identifying who makes decisions locally, or where local power lies (&ldquo;institutional mapping&rdquo;) is a good place to start, involving close and intensive collaboration with social scientists. At each of our study sites, we identified one or two significant people &ndash; often a headteacher, community or political leader, who acted as useful conduits to the broader community (often called &ldquo;social mobilisers&rdquo; or &ldquo;community champions&rdquo; in social science literature). By channelling our interactions through these people, and involving them in all our school activities, we were able to focus discussion on the specific needs and interests of disparate groups of other stakeholders like farmers, local government, or industry.</p> <p style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><strong>The future of participation</strong></p> <p style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><strong></strong></p> <p style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">Delays in the growth of citizen science in the geosciences can be explained by the inaccessibility and complexity of many geological and geophysical datasets (e.g. seismic sections, gravity anomaly maps, borehole logs), as well as the relatively recent development of new technology such as internet connected smartphones. As we found in Nepal, the active involvement of citizen scientists through all stages of a project (rather than just data collection or passive &lsquo;citizens-as-sensors&rsquo;) can enhance local interest and uptake, therefore increasing the sustainability of the project and reducing its chances of collapse upon the (often inevitable and funding-constrained) withdrawal of professional scientific support.</p> <p style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">However, relative to other disciplines like ecology or medicine, the uptake of citizen science has so far been rather limited in geoscience, largely restricted to the monitoring of geohazards like landslides and volcanoes. Geophysical data are often difficult to interpret intuitively, while measurements tend to be expensive (e.g. using proprietorial software), complex, spatially sparse and temporally dense (for instance, long time series of groundwater flow). </p> <p style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">For these reasons, intensive scientific training and specialisation is still normally a prerequisite for data analysis and manipulation. However, new technological developments can, to some extent, circumvent these limitations, paving the way for the more rapid uptake of citizen science. On the other hand, geoscientists should recognise that the introduction of new smartphone apps is not a universal panacea: encouraging uptake of these apps is challenging, and many app-based projects have fared poorly as there are often few material incentives for participating.</p> <p style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><strong>Equal partners</strong></p> <p style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><img height="375" alt="Fig 6" width="500" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 11/fig6 web.jpg?la=en" class="tcpImageright" /><em>Right: Figure 6. Demonstrating a low-cost real-time water level sensor to village farmers, Chisapani, west Nepal.</em><br /> <br /> While the exact form that citizen science takes varies widely &ndash; and there is some debate over whether all projects that include non-scientists in scientific work constitute citizen science<sup> </sup>&ndash; timely and accurate information can greatly assist geoscientists in completing research projects. Especially in developing countries like Nepal, the future of citizen science lies in moving away from monitoring campaigns for geohazards towards a new model, in which non-scientists are equal research partners who identify and help to solve local objects of research interest. These could involve observational campaigns (e.g. finding and documenting new springs, ore-bearing rock, or mass movements), community-level risk reduction and resilience building, or education (e.g. learning how to code while analysing locally collected seismological data). </p> <p style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">The participatory approach has been shown to work best when there is active interest from the local community. That is, the benefits to local people must be highlighted. In our case in Nepal, this included enriched STEM teaching for local students, improved real-time monitoring of rivers and rainfall and the potential for predictive models that could decrease risk to landslides and flooding in the future. The best projects have their aims and objectives defined at the outset; project members have appropriate expertise (not just scientifically, but also in publicity and communication); and there must be a clear willingness to listen and adapt as necessary. </p> <p style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><strong>Author</strong></p> <p style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">Dr Jonathan D. Paul (FGS) is a Lecturer in Geoscience at the Department of Earth Sciences, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK (email: <a href="mailto:jonathan.paul@rhul.ac.uk">jonathan.paul@rhul.ac.uk</a>) </p> <p style="line-height: 150%;"><strong>Acknowledgements</strong></p> <p style="line-height: 150%;">Funding is acknowledged from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and Department for International Development (DfID) under contracts NE/P000452/1 (Landslide EVO project) and NE/P016952/1 (CARISMA project).</p> <p style="line-height: 150%;"><strong>Suggestions for further reading</strong></p> <ol> <li>Paul J.D., D.M. Hannah and W. Liu. Editorial. Citizen science: Reducing risk and building resilience to natural hazards. <em>Frontiers in Earth Science</em>, 7, 320, 2019.</li> <li>Editorial, Rise of the citizen scientist. <em>Nature</em>, 524, 265, 2015.</li> <li>Paul J.D., W. Buytaert, S. Allen, J.A. Ballesteros-Canovas, J. Bhusal, et al. Citizen science for hydrological risk reduction and resilience building. <em>Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, </em>5,<em> </em>e1262, 2018.</li> <li>Irwin A., No PhDs needed: How citizen science is transforming research. <em>Nature</em>, 562, 480&ndash;482, 2018.<br /> <br /> </li> </ol> <em> Below: Figure 7. Community blacksmith making a tipping-bucket rain gauge stand. </em><br /> <br /> <img height="280" alt="Fig 7" width="500" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 11/fig7 web.jpg?h=280&amp;w=500&la=en" class="tcpImageleft" style="height: 280px; width: 500px;" /> <br />Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 Z{1A5D5437-5250-4E17-8B09-B952CEC2C24A}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/December-2020/Meeting-ReportThe myth of utopia<h4>Richard Norris calls for realism when addressing the challenges associated with the transition to green energy supply</h4> <hr /> Norris, R., The myth of utopia. <em>Geoscientist </em><strong>30 (11)</strong>, 30-31, 2020<br /> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-125">https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-125</a>; <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/December 2020/Meeting Report_DEC2020.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a><br /> <hr /> <div><br /> </div> <p>The full talk is available online: <a href="https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/expired/07-energy-in-society-2020">https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/expired/07-energy-in-society-2020</a><br /> <br /> </p>Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 Z{E967C30A-5AAA-487B-B5D7-C7AC825CF871}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/December-2020/People-NewsCelebrating fifty years of the Tectonic Studies Group<h4>Sue and Jack Treagus reminisce on the birth of TSG</h4> <hr /> Treagus, S. &amp; Treagus, J. Celebrating fifty years of the Tectonic Studies Group. <em>Geoscientist </em><strong>30 (10)</strong>, 33, 2020<br /> <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/December 2020/People News_DEC2020.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a>; <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/December 2020/TSG50.pdf?la=en">Read the full-length article here</a><br /> <hr />Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 Z{17790C77-9967-4BF4-B8B1-1FFD1C964201}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/December-2020/SoapboxGeological appropriation? <h4>Roger Dunshea questions whether manned missions to Mars are worth the cost, given technological capabilities</h4> <hr> Dunshea, R., Geological appropriation? <em>Geoscientist </em><strong>30 (11)</strong>, 12, 2020<br> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-120">https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-120</a>; <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/December 2020/Soapbox_DEC2020.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a><br> <hr>Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 Z{4B5CD4CB-9FEF-45D7-94A6-C78AE0C5883A}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/December-2020/Society-NewsNews from the Society<h4>What your Society is doing at home and abroad</h4> <div><hr /> Society News. <em>Geoscientist </em><strong>30 (11)</strong>, 6-10, 2020<br /> </div> <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/December 2020/Society News_DEC2020.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a><br /> <hr />Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 Z{EC29A012-1AF5-449D-82B6-3120B9720C89}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/December-2020/Society-News-Strategic-OptionsLooking to the Future: The Society&#39;s Strategic Options Review<h4>The Society&rsquo;s President, Mike Daly, recently reported that a &lsquo;Strategic Options Review&rsquo; was underway to &lsquo;consider our future direction and specifically the relevance of our science and membership programmes&rsquo; (<em>Geoscientist </em>30(7), 16-19, 2020). Megan O&rsquo;Donnell and Richard Hughes report on the outcomes of that review and the directions our Society will take.</h4> <hr /> O'Donnell, M. &amp; Hughes, R. Looking to the Future: The Society's Strategic Options Review. <em>Geoscientist </em><strong>30 (11)</strong>, 8-9,2020.<br /> <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/December 2020/StOp_DEC2020.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a><br /> <hr />Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 Z{627C9DDF-E31B-4926-A01A-A38197180F96}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Gupta_large-riversIntroducing Large Rivers<img height="359" alt="large rivers" width="250" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/001 Book review thumbs/Book review thumbs 2020/Gupta large rivers web.jpg?la=en" class="tcpImageleft" />Rivers are drains &ndash; lines connecting the topographic points of lowest potential in a catchment and, thus, along which water flows to get away.&nbsp; In doing so, they remove the weathering and erosion products. The basic model, followed by all rivers, large, medium and small, has three zones where sediments are generated, transferred and deposited, respectively. There really are no surprises: water flows downhill.<br /> <br /> <div> <p>The difference between large rivers and the others is that, because of their relative length and huge drainage areas, large rivers can function in more modes. The underlying geology is a major controller of mode changes. While these basic issues come through in the book, the presentation and development of the deeper detail in the text seem confusing. In part that might be because large rivers are, almost by definition, very diverse within themselves, and so inherently hard to deal with as a group. In this context it certainly helps that the large Arctic rivers are dealt with in their own separate chapter.<br /> <br /> The book is intended to help readers new to the field and, on that basis, covers a wide range of disciplines including geomorphology, hydrology, ecology and the anthropogenic environment. Each chapter, apart from those invited from Wolfgang Junk (large river floodplains) and Olav Slaymaker (Arctic rivers) respectively, ends with a set of questions that will help readers reflect on and take in the content of the chapter concerned.<br /> <br /> As might be expected in an introductory book, much of the information given is qualitative rather than quantitative. In the context of introductory ideas and information, however, it is unfortunate that assorted quantitative errors have got through the editing. The nominal capacity of Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam, is given numerical values that differ by three orders of magnitude &ndash; 98 million and billion m3, respectively. Many, if not most, readers will recognise and adjust for that slip. More concerning, though, is that the official (notional) capacity is actually around 32 billion m3, so the significand itself is wrong. There are similar issues elsewhere. It is unlikely, for instance, that the capacity of a reservoir on the Missouri or anywhere else approaches 29,500 km3, exceeding that of Lake Baikal. Apart from such corrections, the book needs a glossary, which should include the &ldquo;local&rdquo; names used at times in the text. While the Chinese name for the Yangtze transliterates as Chang Jiang, not all readers will know that.</p> <p><em>By Jeremy Joseph</em><br /> <br /> Introducing Large Rivers. A Gupta, 2020. Published by: John Wiley &amp; Sons, Chichester, UK.&nbsp; ISBN: 978-1-118-45140-3. Softback. 288 pp. List Price &pound;31.99 (ebook).&nbsp; www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell&nbsp;</p> <div><br /> </div> </div>Mon, 23 Nov 2020 00:00:00 Z{81024E25-8FB9-47D6-9238-6D0BE820C108}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Haysom_Purbeck-StonePurbeck Stone<p><img height="314" alt="purbeck stone web" width="250" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/001 Book review thumbs/Book review thumbs 2020/purbeck stone web.jpg?la=en" class="tcpImageleft" />This is a book on geology like no other. Treleven (Trev) Haysom is a tenth generation stone mason, who undoubtedly knows more about Purbeck Stone than any other living soul.&nbsp; With greatest respect to W.H.Auden, if ever there was a book to be called &ldquo;In Praise of Limestone&rdquo;, this must surely be it.</p> The title could be misleading as this is book is much more than a description of Purbeckian Limestone (s.s.).&nbsp; It includes marine Portland (Cliff Stone) and non-marine Purbeck (Inland Stone) without worrying too much where the Purbeckian-Portlandian stratigraphic boundary lies.&nbsp; The stones are introduced from the top down &ndash; unconventionally for geologists &ndash; which makes sense when you are digging from the surface.&nbsp; The stratigraphy is presented in such a bewildering array of masons&rsquo; names &ndash; Spangle, Thornback, Burr, New Vein - that for once the geologist is left floundering.&nbsp; The origins of these names are explained, when not lost to antiquity, and there is a logical order to their presentation.&nbsp;&nbsp; <p>For a geological specialist many things are not addressed as might be expected; no stratigraphic column, no cross section, no scale bars to the figures; but Trev knows his geology &ndash; to the extent of using &ldquo;geopetals&rdquo; in Salisbury Cathedral to address the way-up of the columns and cylinders used in the construction.&nbsp; His colleagues certainly have learned to know their ostracods.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>The quarrymen are the main characters &ndash; the many recurring family names, their trace &lsquo;fossils&rsquo; &ndash; the broaching, lettering, symbols, recorded in stone. It is amazing to think that 49 masons worked on Westminster Cathedral alone &ndash; and many more back in Purbeck itself &ndash; at the height of the industry.&nbsp; Trev knows their family lines and descendants personally and navigates through all the variants of their first (nick)names, and even who the individuals are in the old photographs (even those with their backs to the photographer).&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>The quarrymen know all about facies and diagenetic changes &ndash; as these aspects control the hardness and durability of the stone.&nbsp; The muddy rocks don&rsquo;t get much of a mention and the distribution of silicification and replacement would be very interesting to map out.&nbsp; One day perhaps this knowledge could also be captured, but for the moment geologists should welcome and be inspired by this very different view of a beloved &ndash; venerated &ndash; rock.</p> <p>The inexpensive volume is well produced with a lot of pictures &ndash; many from the author&rsquo;s own collection.&nbsp; The increasing appreciation of the importance of one&rsquo;s identity of place &ndash; geoidentity &ndash; make this a treasure trove &ndash; it explains so much that I didn&rsquo;t understand about the place I grew up in that has formed the bedrock of my life.&nbsp;</p> <p>By Patrick Corbett</p> <p>PURBEK STONE by Trevelen Haysom 2020 Dovecote Press&nbsp;ISBN: 978-0-9955463-6-4 List price: &pound;35 312pp hbk W: <a href="http://www.dovecotepress.com" target="_blank">www.dovecotepress.com</a>&nbsp;</p>Mon, 23 Nov 2020 00:00:00 Z{05D35435-2ECC-46CE-ABBA-3C551084CF11}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Casey-museum-buildingThe Museum Building of Trinity College London - A Model of Victorian Craftsmanship<img height="366" alt="Casey_trinity college" width="250" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/001 Book review thumbs/Book review thumbs 2020/trinity college web.jpg?la=en" class="tcpImageleft" />This book presents a series of essays exploring the most influential Victorian building in the city of Dublin. In the 1850s, the Museum Building of Trinity College was built to showcase the potential of Irish stone at the start of a golden age of Ireland&rsquo;s decorative stone industry.&nbsp;<br /> <br /> Those familiar with the building will know it is an Irish geology lesson in itself. The experience that the visitor would have translates into the book very well. Colour photographs are used throughout to capture the sumptuous polychromy and present the detail of the carved ornament of the building. The descriptions by the authors bring the geology to life and make for a fascinating geological tour of the building.<br /> <br /> The book goes on to explore the sources of the stone and the pivotal role the museum played. The story of the development of Ireland&rsquo;s stone industry is a well-researched highlight. This looks at the extraction and marketing of Ireland's coloured limestones and serpentinites. Selecting suitable stone to fulfil both decorative and structural roles was a particular challenge to overcome at some quarries. Interesting research is presented on the evolution of granite quarrying techniques, transport and roads, which led to the migration of the Wicklow quarrying communities. And of course, no story of Irish stone is complete without the Kilkenny Marble. The challenges in transporting the stone and how it compared with native and continental competitors in the Victorian period is fascinating.&nbsp;<br /> <br /> The architectural influences for the Museum Building are researched, with suggestion of influence from other sources including John Ruskin. The story of the innovative ventilation system is also explored.&nbsp;<br /> <br /> We meet the builder and carvers responsible for the construction of the Museum Building in later chapters. The theme of Ireland&rsquo;s natural resources follows through into the depiction of native Irish plants and animals in the building&rsquo;s remarkable carvings. Portland Stone was mainly used by the talented team of Irish stone carvers whose work is recorded by the authors in a captivating way. The final section looks at the current conservation of the building by considering the weathering of the exterior and recent cleaning techniques.&nbsp;<br /> <br /> This is an entertaining book representing an inspired and thorough research project. The crucial relationship between architecture and geology is made clear throughout. This is much more than a book about a building and will appeal to any geologist with an interest in Ireland's geology and architecture.&nbsp;<br /> <p><em>By Julian Ingram</em></p> <p>THE MUSEUM BUILDING OF TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN &ndash; A MODEL OF VICTORIAN CRAFTSMANSHIP edited by CHRISTINE CASEY &amp; PATRICK WYSE JACKSON, 2019. Published by Four Courts Press 400pp (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-84682-789-1 List Price &pound;50.00<br /> https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2019/the-museum-building-of-trinity-college-dublin/&nbsp;<br /> <br /> </p>Mon, 16 Nov 2020 00:00:00 Z{E846CF8B-C22D-4205-A5E5-F9F586BB7A90}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Davis_beaches-and-coastsBeaches and Coasts<img height="377" alt="Beaches and Coasts cover" width="250" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/001 Book review thumbs/Book review thumbs 2020/Davis Beaches and Coasts smallered.jpg?h=377&amp;w=250&la=en" class="tcpImageright" style="height: 377px; width: 250px;" />The world&rsquo;s coastlines are of geologically recent origin, most of their geomorphic features (other than a few relict ones) having arisen since the transgression at the end of the Pleistocene. Seaboards are as diverse as any geological setting on Earth, and of great importance to humans, many people gaining their livelihoods from them. Davis and FitzGerald have in this revised edition of Beaches and Coasts risen to the challenge of publishing a concise and informative book that summarises the nature of Earth&rsquo;s different coastlines. It also describes the various processes that formed these coasts, and the many factors (climate change, sea level rise, urban development) which making maintaining coastlines&rsquo; integrity challenging.&nbsp; <div>&nbsp; <div> <p>The authors take a novel approach, such that their book&rsquo;s title belies its full scope. Prior to describing shoreline systems (deltas, estuaries, tidal flats and so on), they provide an overview of plate tectonics and then classify coastlines according to their plate tectonic settings. They group coasts into three categories: collision types, trailing edge types and marginal seas. These differ in part in the scale of the rivers draining them, collision coasts having short rivers and trailing edge coasts having long ones. They differ also in the nature of the continental shelves, which are narrow on collision coasts, wide on trailing edge coasts, and bordered by offshore island arcs along marginal seas. Trailing edge coasts are subdivided into Neo-types (geologically &lt;30 million years old) resulting from continental rifting, Afro-types around continents lacking opposing collision- and trailing-type coastlines, and Amero-types along passive, Atlantic type margins. Superimposed on this classification are the effects of modern climates, weather systems such as hurricanes, wave types and their propagation, and tides. A brief description of sediments and rocks is presented, but the mineralogical component is kept to a minimum, shoreline sediments containing primarily four mineral types: feldspars, quartz, clay minerals and carbonates.&nbsp;</p> <p>With this background in place, the authors describe the many shoreline systems, noting in which plate tectonic setting they primarily occur. The emphasis is on depositional features, but one chapter is devoted to rocky coasts. In addition to diagrams showing systems&rsquo; evolution, photographs from worldwide settings are provided to illustrate them. Boxed case studies add depth; I particularly enjoyed one describing historic car races at Daytona Beach, Florida.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>This book is designed for introductory students, bibliographic references being kept to a minimum. However, it has much to offer for those in more advanced courses and for those working in coastal management.<br /> <br /> <em>By Brent Wilson</em><br /> <br /> BEACHES AND COASTS, by Richard A. Davis, Jr., and Duncan M. Fitzgerald. Second Edition, 2020, 536 p. Published by John Wiley and Sons Ltd., Hoboken, USA. ISBN 978-1-119-33448-4 (hardback), list price, &pound;70.00. Also available as an e-book.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> </div> </div>Mon, 09 Nov 2020 00:00:00 Z{BB85CE4F-74B4-40D1-B347-57D56E4D759F}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/McClay_passive-marginsPassive Margins; Tectonics, Sedimentation and Magmatism<img height="358" alt="Passive Margins cover" width="250" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/001 Book review thumbs/Book review thumbs 2020/McClay passive margins smallered.bmp?la=en" class="tcpImageleft" />This volume grew out of a conference held in 2016 to commemorate the life and work of Prof David Roberts, whose influence straddled both academia and industry for the best part of 40 years with an overriding focus on passive margin evolution. The book does exactly what it says on the tin, and with sixteen papers covering passive margins with case studies from both sides of the South Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico and Australia along with the Mediterranean Sea, there is something for everyone. The individual papers cover crustal structure, volcanism, fault growth and subsequent erosion, halokenesis, tectono-stratigraphic evolution of passive margins and the collapse of the Niger Delta. <div>&nbsp; <p>The book appears to have had a difficult birth, with many of the papers being available online for two years in some cases. This means that some papers are referenced as being from 2018, yet are contained in a 2020 publication, which is slightly confusing.&nbsp; I felt that the volume doesn&rsquo;t really do justice to some of the areas that David worked on such as the UK Continental shelf, where he was responsible for naming many of the features on the Rockall Plateau after Lord of the Rings characters (Eriador Seamount, anyone?) Also the lack of papers from the oil exploration industry, who collectively know a thing or two about passive margins - or at least like to think that they do - is a sad omission and perhaps reflects a lack of time and motivation for geologists in oil companies to publish these days.&nbsp;</p> <p>So is this publication worth purchasing? Well after much deliberation I can say unfortunately it is a no from me at this time. The book is beautifully crafted with a wide range of papers; however this is the problem, the topic of passive margins is so wide and diverse that this book has been spread too thin and far to focus on a single aspect. The papers contained within are interesting and important in their own fields but there is only ever going to be one or two that are of interest to readers. So does this warrant purchasing the written volume? I would say no, but I would recommend using the Lyell Collection to pick and purchase the papers you want as there are some cracking papers in there that are well worth reading.</p> <p><em>By Gavin Elliott</em><br /> <br /> Passive Margins: Tectonics, Sedimentation and Magmatism. Geological Society, London, Special Publication Volume 476 (2020). Edited by: K. R. McClay and J. A. Hammerstein www.geolsoc.org.uk/SP476&nbsp;</p> <div><br /> </div> </div>Mon, 09 Nov 2020 00:00:00 Z{F3C61D8D-8135-4908-9A66-34BC02A1A52D}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/November-2020/Distant-ThunderDISTANT THUNDER: Safe landings<h4>Geologist and science writer Nina Morgan discovers the key role geology played in the D-Day landings</h4> <div></div> <hr /> Morgan, N., Safe landings. <em>Geoscientist </em><strong>30 (10)</strong>, 27, 2020<br /> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-118">https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-118</a>; <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/November 2020/Geo_NOV2020_Distant Thunder.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a><br /> <hr />Fri, 30 Oct 2020 00:00:00 Z{279A2F24-6151-4C5E-9472-0E6F7DB38741}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/November-2020/EditorialChange in a time of crisis<h4>It&rsquo;s been a tough year for everyone and change inevitably lies ahead</h4> <div><hr /> Whitchurch, A., Change in a time of crisis. <em>Geoscientist </em><strong>30 (10)</strong>, 5, 2020<br /> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-113">https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-113</a>; <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/November 2020/Geo_NOV2020_Editorial.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a><br /> </div> <hr />Fri, 30 Oct 2020 00:00:00 Z{9F7CACD4-61F9-467D-8761-BB5C8F7F6D5C}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/November-2020/Feature-1Scaling a giant <h4>To date, only the total length of the largest prehistoric shark has ever been known. Now, Jack Cooper reveals the first measurements of the rest of Megalodon&rsquo;s body, including a dorsal fin as large as a human adult</h4> <div></div> <hr /> Cooper, J., Scaling a giant. <em>Geoscientist </em><strong>30 (10)</strong>, 10-15, 2020<br /> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-115">https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-115</a>; <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/November 2020/Geo_NOV2020_Feature 1.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a><br /> <hr /> <br /> <br />Fri, 30 Oct 2020 00:00:00 Z{EA1B6308-6BEB-443D-A650-9E0881E29F11}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/November-2020/Feature-2Tech, ethics and the digital citizen<h4>Cutting-edge tech provides endless possibilities for data collection through digital citizen science projects. But with big opportunities come big ethical challenges, cautions Estelle Clements</h4> <div></div> <hr /> Clements, E., Tech, ethics and the digital citizen. <em>Geoscientist </em><strong>30 (10)</strong>, 16-17, 2020<br /> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-116">https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-116</a>; <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/November 2020/Geo_NOV2020_Feature 2.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a><br /> <hr /> <br />Fri, 30 Oct 2020 00:00:00 Z{709A8699-7319-419C-8B54-03EFFCA7A943}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/November-2020/Feature-3New homes for old core<h4>Two years on from its launch, Kirstie Wright and Henk Kombrink discuss how the North Sea Core initiative is helping to support the future of geoscience</h4> <div><hr /> Wright, K. &amp;&nbsp; Kombrink, H. New homes for old core. <em>Geoscientist </em><strong>30 (10)</strong>, 18-21, 2020</div> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-117">https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-117</a>; <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/November 2020/Geo_NOV2020_Feature 3.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a><br /> <hr /> <br /> <br />Fri, 30 Oct 2020 00:00:00 Z{43945328-4043-4567-A6DB-355C6388DC66}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/November-2020/People-NewsThe Scottish Geology Trust<h4>Melvyn Giles issues a call to arms for Scotland&rsquo;s geoheritage</h4> <hr /> Giles, M., The Scottish Geology Trust. <em>Geoscientist </em><strong>30 (10)</strong>, 28-29, 2020<br /> <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/November 2020/Geo_NOV2020_People News.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a><br /> <hr />Fri, 30 Oct 2020 00:00:00 Z{F7ED6E11-CB01-4C3E-A558-43E8C93DE7B8}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/November-2020/SoapboxThe Year of (what is?) Life<h4>With life altered irrevocably by the pandemic, Michael A. Rosen asks whether viruses might be geological agents</h4> <div> <hr /> Rosen, M.A., The year of (what is?) life. <em>Geoscientist </em><strong>30 (10)</strong>, 8, 2020<br /> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-114">https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2020-114</a>; <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/November 2020/Geo_NOV2020_Soapbox.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a> </div> <hr />Fri, 30 Oct 2020 00:00:00 Z{27039798-E9BB-479F-BC03-1F695576C9CE}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/November-2020/Society-NewsNews from the Society<h4>What your Society is doing at home and abroad</h4> <div></div> <hr /> Society News. <em>Geoscientist </em><strong>30 (10)</strong>, 6-7, 2020<br /> <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/November 2020/Geo_NOV2020_Society News.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a><br /> <hr />Fri, 30 Oct 2020 00:00:00 Z{E1EF8C4F-2240-4BF1-BC4C-5E166DDB5743}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/October-2020/EditorialNo stupid questions<p><em> Sarah Day has a confession to make... </em></p> <hr /> <p> Day, S., No stupid questions. Geoscientist&nbsp;<strong>30 (10),&nbsp;</strong>5, 2020<br /> <a href="https://doi.org/doi: 10.1144/geosci2020-108" target="_blank">https://doi.org/doi: 10.1144/geosci2020-108</a>, <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/october 2020/Geo_OCTOBER2020_editorial.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a></p> <hr /> <p><img height="375" alt="editorial" width="500" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 9/geograph-4132390-by-Mike-Quinn.jpg?la=en" class="tcpImageright" />It&rsquo;s time to &lsquo;fess up. In this, my final solo produced issue of Geoscientist magazine, I&rsquo;m coming clean: I&rsquo;m not actually a proper geologist.</p> <p>Yes, there were a few geology modules included in my extremely eccentric modular science degree (thank you, Durham University). There was even some fieldwork; a few hours on a soggy beach in Tynemouth during which my lack of appropriate field gear was mocked. But certainly nothing resembling a specialism. I have been hiding in plain sight: a science writer with a penchant for dinosaurs and an ability to conceal my lack of knowledge behind a conviction that there&rsquo;s no such thing as a stupid question. </p> <p>By design, I never specialized in anything. (My crowning achievement was infiltrating a third year archeology module called &lsquo;Roman Imperialism&rsquo; and discovering three days in that everyone else was in their final year of an entire degree called &lsquo;Roman Imperialism.&rsquo;) A career in communicating geology came along by chance &ndash; the right job at the right time - and thank goodness it did. </p> <p>To say that I stood a better chance of getting by as a science communicator without specialist knowledge in geology rather than, say, physics or chemistry, is not to denigrate the subject. It&rsquo;s the opposite. Geology has a way of capturing the imagination, whatever level of detailed understanding you reach. Children collect pebbles, climbers take in the view and wonder what&rsquo;s under their feet, amateur fossil hunters make the news, and people of all ages pick up interesting looking rocks and wonder, could this be from space, or from the deep past? Geology is not just the most scenic and narratively satisfying of sciences &ndash; it&rsquo;s the most welcoming. </p> <p>This month&rsquo;s main feature is a perfect illustration &ndash; a compelling story of tectonic plates and time which asks questions about the most fundamental aspects of how our planet works. I may never be able to fully understand the detail of how the models work, or be able to come up with my own, but I can visualize moving plates and rising plumes, and feel I understand, at least in part, which questions have been answered and which remain. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have. </p> <p>From next month, normal service will resume as Amy Whitchurch returns from maternity leave. A big thank you to everyone who&rsquo;s helped me keep Geoscientist magazine going in her absence; from writing articles to getting in touch to share your thoughts about your Fellowship magazine. </p> <p>Getting by as a non specialist only works with the patience and expertise of specialists. Over the past twelve years I&rsquo;ve quizzed many; from palaeontologists to oil industry experts, engineering geologists to climatologists, all of whom have responded with generosity as I&rsquo;ve tested the &lsquo;no stupid questions&rsquo; theory to its limits. I&rsquo;ve learned a little bit about a lot of things, but most of all I&rsquo;ve learned about geologists themselves, and I can confidently say I&rsquo;ve yet to meet an unenthusiastic one. </p> <p>Most recently, I&rsquo;ve relied on the expertise and generosity of Geoscientist&rsquo;s Editorial Panel and particularly its Chief Editors, to whom I&rsquo;m extremely grateful. I owe a lot of thanks to this magazine, and to its editors past and present, for helping me to navigate my adopted subject, and to have had such a good time doing it. Any lingering errors, as they say, are all my own. </p> <p>Sarah Day, FGS, Editor<br /> @geowriter</p>Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 Z{9705E0CF-E0CF-424E-9704-BC2DF96B5A2D}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/October-2020/soapboxThe future is geoscience<p><em> Geoscience will be vital to a post-Covid world, says Jonathan Turner </em></p> <hr /> <p> Turner, J., The future is geoscience. Geoscientist <strong>30&nbsp;(10),</strong>&nbsp;9, 2020<br /> <a href="https://doi.org/doi: 10.1144/geosci2020-109" target="_blank">https://doi.org/doi: 10.1144/geosci2020-109</a>, <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/october 2020/Geo_OCTOBER2020_soapbox.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a></p> <hr /> <h4>Geoscientists will be vital to major infrastructure delivery, particularly in a post-Covid world, says Jonathan Turner</h4> <p><img height="374" alt="jonathan turner" width="250" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 9/Turner Jonathan web.png?la=en" class="tcpImageright" />The geoscience community looks like it may be getting sucked into the proverbial perfect storm: the demise of oil and gas exploration and production activities, at least on the UK continental shelf, a general decline in young people&rsquo;s perception of geoscience careers, and a Covid-19-induced financial crisis affecting universities and learned societies among others. Major infrastructure programmes and geo-energy projects should be critical to revitalising the economy, and geoscientists will be central to their successful delivery.</p> <h4>UK infrastructure projects</h4> <p>Major infrastructure programmes are something the UK is good at. Queensferry Bridge, CrossRail, and further back, the Olympics and Channel Tunnel are all examples of projects in which geoscience talent has been fundamental to delivery. Looking forward, projects such as HS2, Heathrow Third Runway, Lower Thames Crossing, geo-energy and deep geological disposal of radioactive waste will be similarly reliant on a steady supply of appropriately skilled geoscientists. Furthermore, it is likely that delivery bodies will increasingly specify Chartership as a basic requirement. It is easy to argue, therefore, that through its degree accreditation and professional Chartership programmes, the Geological Society will continue to play a key role.</p> <h4>Where are we going with big projects?</h4> <p>There are a range of views on the post-Covid-19 fate of some of the major infrastructure programmes currently on the government&rsquo;s books. To take polar opposites &ndash; i) they are very expensive thus unaffordable; conversely ii) their potentially transformational effect on communities, through long-term investment in jobs and infrastructure, means that the imperative to deliver them may actually increase.</p> <p>However, major infrastructure programme lifecycles can be very long indeed. Should the second of the above options transpire it is likely that, as well as an intense focus on cost, there may be a strong push to deliver them more quickly. Moreover, in the event that their delivery timelines are significantly foreshortened, geoscientists will be critical for evaluating subsurface uncertainties and refreshing strategic programme risks.</p> <h4>Future-proofing professional geoscience</h4> <p>Given that oil and gas on the UK continental shelf is entering its end game, university programmes and the professional ecosystem supporting applied geoscience must ensure that geoscientists possess the skills they will need to succeed in a shifting and increasingly competitive job market. These skills include site investigation, shallow boreholes, geotechnics, hydrogeology, GIS, environmental geophysics and environmental geochemistry, to name but a few. Some of them require only a relatively light touch adaptation from the knowledge of basins and deeper crustal processes that are the prerequisite for oil and gas specialisms. Others will need to be actively managed in order to deliver the required change of emphasis in taught programmes.</p> <p>There will always be steady demand for good basic geoscience skills &ndash; rock properties, structure, stratigraphy, Earth processes and that unique 3D perspective instilled by weeks of geological fieldwork. This next phase is about future-proofing the geoscience community such that is suitably equipped to contribute to the needs of major infrastructure delivery for decades to come.</p> <p><strong>Author</strong></p> <p>Jonathan P Turner is Chief Geologist at Radioactive Waste Management Limited</p> <br />Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 Z{B40AA407-EB8C-4720-A46B-9D3E20CEFF8A}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/October-2020/Feature-1Plates, plumes and geological time: Are we wrong about plume-push?<em>In setting out to better understand what drives plate movements, not only did Lucia Perez-Diaz, Graeme Eagles and Karin Sigloch cast doubt on the theory of plume-push &ndash; they also unearthed a potential error in the calibration of our geological timescale</em><br /> <p> </p> <hr /> Perez-Diaz, L, Eagles, G and Sigloch, K., Plates, plumes and geological time: Are we wrong about plume-push? Geoscientist <strong>30 (9)</strong>, 10-15, 2020<br /> <a href="https://doi.org/doi: 10.1144/geosci2020-110" target="_blank">https://doi.org/doi: 10.1144/geosci2020-110</a>, <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/october 2020/Geo_OCTOBER2020_F1.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a> <hr /> Since the emergence of plate tectonic theory in the 1960s, geoscientists have pondered the question of what forces are involved in keeping tectonic plates moving. One way to try and answer this question is to examine present-day patterns of plate motion - but to have confidence in this approach depends on good timing.&nbsp;<br /> <br /> Today, time can be known and followed precisely.&nbsp; We define and measure seconds using immutable atomic-scale physical processes. Embedded in satellite navigation equipment, we can use this technology to determine locations and speeds, including those of tectonic plates, with breathtaking accuracy.<br /> <br /> These measurements support the notion that the movement of tectonic plates today is ruled by sets of forces generated at their boundaries and bases, transmitted over long distances through their rigid interiors. But was this always the case? Is it possible that episodic Earth system events not seen anywhere on the planet today may have impacted on plate movements in the geological past? In order to pursue this question, we focused on the R&eacute;union plume, whose arrival beneath eastern India 67 million years ago led to the eruption of over a million cubic kilometres of basalt that underlie the Deccan Traps. In doing so, we found that not only do mantle plumes seem to have little effect on driving the motion of tectonic plates, but that part of the timescale around the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary could be in need of revision.&nbsp;&nbsp; <h4> Reconstructing past plate motions</h4> We can reconstruct plate motions for the recent past (i.e. less than 200 My) with relative ease and high precision, thanks to the sharpness of magnetic polarity reversal signals recorded in oceanic lithosphere. The oceanic crust is continually generated in the presence of a geomagnetic field that periodically and unpredictably reverses, so that the locations of the north and south magnetic poles swap. This polarity is recorded in the lithosphere, with the orientations and spacings of these so-called magnetic isochrons either side of spreading centres worldwide providing quantitative information about spreading orientations and changing plate locations over time. (Fig. 1).&nbsp;<br /> <br /> To look further back in time,&nbsp; we need to know the numerical ages of the isochrons using geomagnetic timescales. Without these, it is all too easy to misinterpret - within the context of a timescale, a set of closely-spaced magnetic isochrons can reliably be taken to indicate a period of slow seafloor spreading, in the same way that closely spaced rings on a tree-trunk indicate slow growth. Without a timescale, the same set of isochrons might just as well indicate a period of rapid plate motion during a period of high-frequency polarity reversals.&nbsp; <p><img height="389" alt="F1 F1" width="500" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 9/F1 F1.jpg?la=en" class="tcpImageleft" /></p> <em> Left: Fig 1 - A) Seafloor spreading data (magnetic anomaly picks and fracture zone traces) used to model South Atlantic plate motions (P&eacute;rez-D&iacute;az, Eagles and Sigloch, 2020). Background image shows vertical gravity gradient (Sandwell and Smith, 2014). B) Diagram illustrating the spatial relationships between a divergent plate boundary and the small and great circles about the pole of rotation describing the motions across it. C) Cartoon illustrating the process of interpreting and dating magnetic isochron picks from a magnetic anomaly wiggle (from cruise EW9011, solid line) by correlating it to a synthetic curve (dashed line) calculated from the pattern of polarity reversals in the geomagnetic timescale.</em> <br /> <h4> What drives plate tectonics?&nbsp;</h4> Accurate GPS-based measurements of current plate motion tells us that the fastest-moving plates are those in which a large part of the plate boundary is a mature subduction zone, and the slower-moving plates are those that lack subducting boundaries or that have large continental blocks embedded in them (Zahirovic et al. 2015). This all seems to confirm that plate motion is controlled by the gravitational potential of its surface and subducting parts, and to a lesser extent by viscous coupling between their bases and the underlying mantle, and that tectonic plates are essential motive parts of the vehicle of Earth&rsquo;s convection system, rather than mere passengers (Fig. 3A).<br /> <br /> For the distant past, the geological timescale is accurate enough to show that the tectonic plates have usually moved at similar speeds to today&rsquo;s, but also that those speeds have changed gradually through time. Any large and sudden changes in a plate&rsquo;s speed or direction may therefore indicate the action of some exotic process, other than oceanic ageing and subduction, that is important for plate motion.<br /> <br /> An example of one such evocative change is the apparent abrupt speed-up of the Indian plate between the late Cretaceous and the early Cenozoic. This short-lived event (~67-52 Ma) is clearly recorded by the spacings of magnetic anomaly lineations formed at the divergent India-Africa (IND-AFR) and India-Antarctica (IND-ANT) plate boundaries (Fig. 2). Neither the top spreading rate reached, exceeding 200 km/Myr, nor the acceleration that achieved it, can easily be explained in terms of any normal pattern of subduction zone evolution at the plate&rsquo;s northern boundary (Cande et al., 1989, van Hinsbergen et al., 2011).&nbsp;<br /> <br /> Multiple suggestions have been offered, including double subduction at the Indian plate&rsquo;s northern boundary (Jagoutz et al., 2015), reduction of basal drag on the Indian plate by smoothing of its lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary (Kumar et al., 2006), and uplift of parts of the mid-ocean ridge west of India (Eagles and Wibisono, 2013).&nbsp;<br /> <br /> Amongst all this geodynamic intrigue, it was quickly noted that the Indian acceleration coincided with the arrival of the Reunion mantle plume, which was responsible for the eruption of the Deccan Traps Large Igneous Province (Fig. 2). As dinosaur fans all know, the R&eacute;union-Deccan plume has long been suspected of playing an exacerbating role in the late Cretaceous mass extinction, making it one of the best-known examples of a direct link between mantle convection and global biotic and environmental change. The temporal and spatial coincidence of plume arrival and plate acceleration thus prompted an addition to the plume&rsquo;s resum&eacute;: the idea of a &ldquo;plume-push&rdquo; force that is significant enough to cause large tectonic plates to break the planet&rsquo;s usual speed limits. And so, a new hypothesis was born. <div><img height="282" alt="F1 F2" width="500" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 9/F1 F2.jpg?la=en" class="tcpImageright" /><em>Right:&nbsp;Fig. 2</em> - <em>Schematic diagram of the Indo-Atlantic plate circuit at the time of arrival of the R&eacute;union plume. Thick black arrows show the magnitudes and directions of plate movement over the mantle. Smaller arrows show the orientations of relative motions at the plate boundaries. White hatching: present-day extent of Deccan Traps. Red arrows: location and sense of hypothesised plume-related push forces. Plates are AFR: African, ANT: Antarctic, IND: Indian and SAM: South American</em><br /> <br /> <br /> <h4>Pushy plumes</h4> Like all good hypotheses, plume-push is simple: it states that plume arrival beneath a lithospheric plate leads to doming that increases the plate&rsquo;s gravitational potential energy by an amount large enough to affect the pre-existing force balance, and thus change plate motion (Fig. 3B). Starting from this, Cande and Stegman (2011) noted that the R&eacute;union plume arrived close to the boundary of the Indian and African plates, and should thus have imparted push forces on them both. They concluded that these forces were so overwhelming that they brought knock-on effects for all plates that shared boundaries with the African and Indian plates late in the Cretaceous.&nbsp;<br /> <br /> These so-called tectonic reorganizations are well known from global plate models. The best-known examples are relatable to unusually rapid changes in plate boundaries, such as when a major subduction zone ceases to operate after using up its supply of oceanic lithosphere. Plume-push thus stands to add complexity to the task of identifying and understanding the causes of plate tectonic reorganization events.<br /> <br /> Plume push is also, like any good hypothesis, testable. The most well-known study, by Cande and Stegman (2011), examined the rates of late Cretaceous and Paleogene plate divergence around the margins of the Indian and African plates. Their test followed from a recognition that, at the time of plume arrival, both the Indian and African plates were moving towards the northeast, albeit at different rates (shown by black arrows in fig. 2). The gravitational push force resulting from lithospheric doming associated with a plume arriving at the IND-AFR boundary would have opposed the motion of the African plate at the time, but favoured that of the Indian plate (red arrows in figs. 2 and 3B).&nbsp;<br /> <br /> The testable consequences of this would be accelerations along the boundaries of the Indian plate with its neighbours (Africa and Antarctica) and simultaneous decelerations along boundaries of the African plate elsewhere (SAM-AFR and AFR-ANT). Cande and Stegman searched for records of these anticorrelating spreading rate changes in the floors of the Indian and Atlantic oceans. They used models of plate divergence based on hundreds, or even thousands, of crossings of conjugate magnetic isochron pairs, which are much less prone to local geological and interpretational variability. By showing the models they chose to be consistent with the changes expected of plume push, their study has since been invoked as the main proponent of the validity of plume-push.</div> <div><br /> </div> <div><img height="527" alt="F1 F3" width="500" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 9/F1 F3.jpg?h=527&amp;w=500&la=en" class="tcpImageleft" style="height: 527px; width: 500px;" /><em>Left:&nbsp;Fig. 3 - A) Schematic diagram illustrating our current understanding of plate-mantle interactions and B) implications of the introduction of a plume-push force into the system, according to the plume-push hypothesis. Plates are the same as in figure 1. BS: Basal Drag; MR: Mantle resistance; PP: Plume push; RP: Ridge Push; SP: Slab Pull; SS: Slab Suction.</em><br /> <h4> A higher-resolution test</h4> Nevertheless, the suite of plate motion models Cande and Stegman used was not ideally suited for testing plume push. We decided to see if the hypothesis was robust enough to pass a more rigorous version of the same test.&nbsp;<br /> <br /> One shortcoming of the earlier test was that the models chosen were built using a variety of statistical techniques, each with its own pros and cons that bias eventual reliability in particular ways. In order to avoid introducing uncertainty into our interpretations by comparing models with variable biases, we set out to calculate spreading rates for the five plate pairs in the circuit from kinematic models all produced using the same technique.&nbsp;<br /> <br /> A second shortcoming concerned temporal resolution. Radiometric dating of the Deccan Trap basalts places the time of plume arrival at around 67 Ma. We needed models that imaged even small changes in the period between magnetic isochrons C29-C27 (67-64 Ma) &ndash; we can&rsquo;t interpret what our models can&rsquo;t see.&nbsp;<br /> <br /> Our existing models for four of the five plate pairs - IND-AFR, IND-ANT, SAM-ANT and AFR-ANT - already achieved this resolution, and so could simply be dusted off ready for use in the new study. But there was no model of South American-African plate divergence. By re-examining available marine magnetic profiles, we increased the size of the modellable database by over 2000 isochron picks,&nbsp; 389 of which are for isochrons within the critical 68-57 Ma period. Our new South Atlantic model thus depicts the events in this short interval in more detail than ever before (Fig. 1).&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /> <br /> Divergence rates calculated for the IND-AFR and IND-ANT plate pairs replicate Cande and Stegman&rsquo;s previous observations of sharp short-lived spikes (119% and 78% respectively) centred at 65 Ma. But we were unable to replicate the deceleration that would be expected of a plume-related push force., Our higher-resolution models for all other spreading centres around the African plate depicted similar short-lived accelerations (Fig. 4). All were significant increases over the pre-Deccan rates- by 60% in the South Atlantic (SAM-AFR), 35% in the SW Indian Ocean (AFR-ANT) and 54% in the Weddell Sea and Southern Ocean (SAM-ANT).<br /> <br /> Can plume-push overwhelm entire plate circuits in the way described in figure 3B? Our answer was an emphatic &ldquo;no&rdquo;. But it immediately gave way to a new and perhaps even more puzzling question: how might we explain simultaneous divergence rate accelerations across almost half the globe&rsquo;s spreading centres?&nbsp;</div> <div><br /> </div> <div><img height="229" alt="F1 F4" width="500" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 9/F1 F4.jpg?h=229&amp;w=500&la=en" class="tcpImageright" style="height: 229px; width: 500px;" /><em>Right:&nbsp;Fig. 4 - Spreading rate changes for the five plate pairs in the Indo-Atlantic circuit. Percentage values indicate spreading rate increase at chron C29 with respect to pre-Deccan rates. Background shows magnetic reversal timescale of Gradstein et al. (2012). Hatching: Deccan volcanism</em><br /> <br /> <h4>Reassuringly boring</h4> It is worth noting that not only do all five spreading centres within the Indo-Atlantic circuit accelerate simultaneously for a short period of time, but that afterwards they revert to their pre-Deccan trends. The period of fast rates appears not to have affected any of the plates involved, for instance by increasing their area or average temperature, or the length and depth of subducting slabs, in a way that might have changed the balance of forces that maintained their motion prior to the plume&rsquo;s arrival. That is, the accelerations appear to be without geodynamic cause or effect.&nbsp;<br /> <br /> The most obvious non-geodynamic explanation is that that acceleration is simply an artefact of a timescale error. If so, it should also affect any model of sufficient resolution over the Deccan period for any other pair of diverging plates, anywhere in the world. A brief test of this idea using two published models, for the northern central Atlantic (Machiavelli et al., 2017) and southern Pacific oceans (Wobbe et al., 2012), indeed revealed similar divergence rate peaks.&nbsp;<br /> <br /> Seafloor spreading rates are calculated by considering the widths of swaths of oceanic lithosphere formed over periods of time whose durations are obtained by assigning numerical ages to magnetic anomaly isochrons at the swath edges (Fig. 1). In this case, the observed divergence rate spikes would almost disappear if the period between magnetic anomaly chrons C29 and C28 had in fact lasted for a time between 57% and 70% longer than is currently presented in the geological timescale. This would mean that the boundaries of the old end of C29 and young end of C28 in the current version of the geological timescale might be too closely-spaced by somewhere between 1.7 and 2 Myrs.&nbsp;<br /> <br /> When spreading rates are adjusted to account for our proposed timescale error (Fig. 5), they reflect reassuringly boring plate behaviour. In terms of seafloor spreading rates at least, no speed limits are broken in this adjusted history. Peak rates, in the Indian Ocean, are not much different to those at today&rsquo;s fastest spreading ridge, the East Pacific Rise. These long-term trends reflect the slow kinds of changes in the distribution and activity of plate boundaries that can be inferred from the pattern of GPS-derived present day plate motions (Fig. 2).&nbsp;<br /> <h4> A calendar in constant revision</h4> We can&rsquo;t look up geological time precisely on a pocket-sized device because process preserves atomically-defined frequencies over long periods with enough accuracy. Atoms, however, do help us to build the skeleton of geological time by determining more or less precise radiochronological ages whose spacing is determined by the vagaries of rock formation and preservation(and research funding).&nbsp;<br /> <br /> A variety of geological tools, based on understanding of orbital, evolutionary or geodynamic processes, are applied to interpolate between those ages. Built in this way, today&rsquo;s geological timescale is undoubtedly one of the greatest achievements in Earth science. It allows us not only to fit 4.6 billion years&rsquo; worth of Earth&rsquo;s history onto a handy bookmark but also to accurately pinpoint events in some stretches of the geological past to within a few thousand years&rsquo; precision.<br /> <br /> The rates of the orbital, evolutionary and geodynamic processes used to build the timescale can be expected to have changed over geological time. Along with the fragmentary nature of the rock record, this means that no single interpolation can be applied over the entirety of geological time. The timescale thus comprises a spliced set of diversely-calibrated sub-timescales. Given the variety of techniques and data sets involved in generating these sub-timescales, splicing them is a procedure fraught with potential pitfalls, explaining why the timescale remains under constant revision. The Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, the moment of our study&rsquo;s startling global pulse of plate motion, is the location of one such splice between two separate orbitally-calibrated stretches of time and, we suspect, the location of one such pitfall.&nbsp;&nbsp;</div> <div><br /> </div> <div><img height="485" alt="F1 F5" width="500" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 9/F1 F5.jpg?la=en" class="tcpImageleft" /><em>Left:&nbsp;Fig. 5 - Adjusted model divergence rate changes, accounting for our proposed timescale error affecting the period between chrons C29-C28</em> <h4>What next?</h4> Our test returned little evidence for the suggested influence of plume arrival on plate motion. Instead, it revealed an unusual, and most likely global, signal that is difficult to explain using the contents of the current geodynamic toolbox. The simplest explanation is likely to be a significant miscalibration of the geological timescale over the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. Of course, like plume push was for us, the idea of a miscalibration is for now a hypothesis,&nbsp; one that we hope will be thoroughly tested by chronostratigraphers.<br /> <br /> And what about plume push? For now, at least, we can best conclude that if plume arrival has an effect on plate speeds, then it seems to be a second- or lower-order one too small to pick using the combination of currently-available plate motion modelling techniques and the example of the Deccan-R&eacute;union plume. Deccan-R&eacute;union seems therefore to have played a bit part, rather than acted as choreographer, for the dance of the plates at the end of the Cretaceous.&nbsp;<br /> <h4> Authors</h4> <p> Lucia Perez-Diaz, Graeme Eagles and Karin Sigloch, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford</p> <h4> Further reading</h4> <p> This article is based on our recent study:<br /> <br /> P&eacute;rez-D&iacute;az, L., Eagles, G. and Sigloch, K., 2020. Indo-Atlantic plate accelerations around the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary: A time-scale error, not a plume-push signal. Geology.</p> <div> </div> <h4>References</h4> <p> Amante, C. and Eakins, B. W., 2009. ETOPO1 1 Arc-Minute global relief model: Procedures, data sources and analysis. NOAA Technical Memorandum NESDIS, NGDC-24, 19p. doi: 10.1594/PANGAEA.769615<br /> <br /> Cande, S.C., Labrecque, J.L., and Haxby, W.F., 1988. Plate kinematics of the South Atlantic chron C34 to present: Journal of Geophysical Research, v. 93, doi:10.1029/JB093iB11p13479.<br /> <br /> Cande, S.C., and Stegman, D.R., 2011. Indian and African plate motions driven by the push force of the R&eacute;union plume head: Nature, v. 475, p. 47&ndash;52, doi:10.1038/nature10174.<br /> <br /> Eagles, G., and Wibisono, A.D., 2013. Ridge push, mantle plumes and the speed of the Indian plate: Geophysical Journal International, v. 194, p. 670&ndash;677, doi:10.1093/gji/ggt162.<br /> <br /> van Hinsbergen, D.J.J., Steinberger, B., Doubrovine, P. V., and Gassm&ouml;ller, R., 2011. Acceleration and deceleration of India-Asia convergence since the Cretaceous: Roles of mantle plumes and continental collision: Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, v. 116, p. 1&ndash;20, doi:10.1029/2010JB008051.<br /> <br /> Jagoutz, O., Royden, L., Holt, A. et al. 2015. Anomalously fast convergence of India and Eurasia caused by double subduction. Nature Geoscience 8, 457-478, doi:10.1038/ngeo2418.<br /> <br /> Kumar, P., Yuan, X., Kind, R. and Ni, J., 2006. Imaging the colliding Indian and Asian continental lithospheric plates beneath Tibet, Journal of Geophysical Research, 111, B06308, doi: 10.1029/2005JB003930.<br /> <br /> Macchiavelli, C., et al., 2017. A new southern North Atlantic isochron map: Insights into the drift of the Iberian plate since the Late Creta&not;ceous: Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, v. 122, p. 9603&ndash;9626, https://doi .org/ 10.1002/2017JB014769.&nbsp;<br /> <br /> Wobbe, F., Gohl, K., Chambord, A., and Sutherland, R., 2012. Structure and breakup history of the rifted margin of West Antarctica in relation to Cretaceous separation from Zealandia and Bell-ingshausen plate motion: Geochemistry Geo&not;physics Geosystems, v. 13 p.<br /> <br /> Zahirovic, S., M&uuml;ller, R.D., Seton, M. and Flament, N., 2015. Tectonic speed limits from plate kinematic reconstructions. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 418, pp.40-52.</p> <div><br /> </div> <br /> </div>Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 Z{D98E9C79-E510-4829-98FA-C1B69FEA394C}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/October-2020/interviewUnderstanding underwater landslides<em>A chat with the editor of the Geological Society&rsquo;s 500th Special Publication</em> <p> </p> <hr /> <p> Pullen, L and Phillips, B., Understanding underwater landslides. Geoscientist&nbsp;<strong>30 (9),&nbsp;</strong>16-19, 2020<br /> <a href="https://doi.org/doi: 10.1144/geosci2020-111" target="_blank">https://doi.org/doi: 10.1144/geosci2020-111</a>, <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/october 2020/Geo_OCTOBER2020_interview.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a></p> <hr /> <p><img height="375" alt="aggie abstract" width="500" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 9/A Georgiopoulou.jpg?la=en" class="tcpImageright" />This year, the Geological Society&rsquo;s Publishing House published the 500th volume in its Special Publication series, which first appeared in 1964. SP500: Subaqueous Mass Movements and their Consequences&rsquo; looks at the latest research in underwater landslides and associated hazards.&nbsp;</p> <p>The book&rsquo;s Co-ordinating Editor, Dr Aggeliki Georgiopoulou, is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton and a member of the Applied Geosciences and the Past Human and Environment Dynamics Research and Enterprise Groups, and the Centre for Aquatic Environments. She spoke to Lucy Pullen at the Society&rsquo;s Publishing House about her research, and the marine geoscience community.&nbsp;</p> <h4>What can we expect to find in SP500?</h4> <p>The papers in this book present the latest results in underwater landslide research. It covers almost the entire world and includes diverse geological settings, from lakes and fjords to volcanic islands, passive and active margins.&nbsp;</p> <p>Traditionally our research has been descriptive and observation-based, but it is becoming more and more numerical and follows technological advances and this can be seen in many of the contributions in this volume. Quite promising for the field is that much of the research included here is by early career researchers, who will be leading the way in the coming years.&nbsp;</p> <h4>What are some of the most exciting findings?&nbsp;</h4> <p>Submarine mass movements are very complex and there is still a lot to know about their dynamics and impact. Forecasting these events is very difficult, almost impossible, but the research here brings us several steps closer to characterizing the hazard that exists for certain areas.&nbsp;</p> <p>Some of the most exciting results came from the 4D analysis work, where we can have a real dynamic feel of movement throughout the years and decades. This can only be possible through repeat surveys of specific areas and the implementation of monitoring systems for continuous record, which is probably where a lot of the future effort of marine research will focus. This is extremely important for tsunami hazards, of which we have seen quite a bit in the last decade or two.</p> <h4>The book contains one of our most downloaded Special Publication papers so far this year (&lsquo;Indonesian Throughflow as a preconditioning mechanism for submarine landslides in the Makassar Strait&rsquo; by Brackenridge et al.) Why do you think this paper is especially appealing?&nbsp;</h4> <p>One of the reasons is probably the proximity of the study area to the Bay of Palu, which was struck by the Palu-Sulawesi tsunami in 2018. The media picked up on the paper because of this and almost certainly exposed it to a wider audience. There was a considerable death toll from the combined effect of the earthquake and tsunami, in addition to all the material damage.&nbsp;</p> <p>Sadly, it is often when we, as a global population, suffer the consequences of such natural disasters that attention is paid to their historical occurrence. Brackenridge et al.&rsquo;s paper is very valuable as it provides a scope of the size of the massive submarine landslides with tsunamigenic potential that occurred within the Strait of Makassar, all of them much larger than the Palu one in 2018. If a tsunami is generated by such massive failures, the impact on the surrounding coastal areas would be truly devastating, so we and local authorities and governments need to be aware of the risks.</p> <p>One of the focuses of this volume is the societal impacts of subaqueous landslides and risks for inhabited areas. Why are these issues particularly relevant right now?&nbsp;<br /> It becomes more relevant when people see these events and their aftermaths during their lifetime. It is the &lsquo;out of sight, out of mind&rsquo; effect, and nowhere is this more relevant than for processes that take place beneath the ocean or lake surface. It is not that this kind of work was not being done before &ndash; for instance, there was the recent Anak Krakatau collapse and resulting tsunami on 22 December 2018. A 2012 piece of work by Giachetti et al., published in another Geological Society Special Publication (Volume 361, Natural Hazards in the Asia&ndash;Pacific Region: Recent Advances and Emerging Concepts) had modelled such an event and their tsunami model was similar to what actually happened. However, at the time of its publication, the paper did not get the attention it probably should have.&nbsp;</p> <p>The recent events are a reminder that geohazards are all around us and can occur any time now; they are not just catastrophic events in history books. Policy-makers and insurance companies are also more aware of the importance of research into geohazards, again as a result of seeing things happening, and subaqueous landslides and tsunami hazards are increasingly accounted for in civil protection plans.&nbsp;</p> <p>The next challenge is to keep these hazards in the minds of the general public and policy-makers. The increasing efforts given to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and related activities are crucial for this, so as scientists, apart from carrying out the actual research, we must also focus on outreach to create awareness about the impact of geohazards.</p> <h4>What are the most important unanswered questions in this field?&nbsp;</h4> <p>There are many &hellip; one of the first challenges we encounter is to compare across scales. We can study subaqueous landslides exposed on outcrops, on seafloor bathymetry and direct sampling, on ultra-high resolution seismic or on &lsquo;standard&rsquo; seismic data buried several hundred to thousands of metres beneath the seafloor or lake floor &hellip; all these different scales of analysis provide different data that are often challenging to integrate.&nbsp;</p> <p>One question that comes to mind relates to the recurrence of events. How long is the gap between events and what controls the events and therefore the recurrence interval? This gets very challenging the older and the larger these events are, as they often end up being complexes with various amalgamated or fused deposits. Understanding their dynamics is also a challenge as what we tend to see are &lsquo;still frame shots&rsquo; of the final result, the deposit, which is the &lsquo;dying&rsquo; stage of an underwater landslide, not its most dynamic. For some we can infer, with some degree of uncertainty, that they were slow-moving, others fast-moving and others a mix of evolving processes, transitioning from one to another, that we may not be able to resolve entirely. This leads to something I mentioned earlier, and where I see a part of the future of this research: 4D evolution through continuous monitoring. This may provide a lot of new data and perspectives on the study of these events.</p> <h4>What&rsquo;s it like being a part of this community?&nbsp;</h4> <p><img height="358" alt="SP500" width="250" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 9/SP500 front cover.jpg?la=en" class="tcpImageleft" />Our community is very collaborative, very friendly, very passionate about science and landslides, inclusive and helpful. You will see that many of the papers we produce are multi-authored, which reflects not only the requirement our science has for collaboration but also that spirit of collegiality.&nbsp;</p> <p>Our biannual dedicated conference (International Symposium on Subaqueous Mass Movements and Their Consequences), such as the one that led to this Special Publication (although the conference has been postponed to 2021 because of the pandemic), is actually a meeting of old friends catching up on work and life, and a platform for new people to join us. As a result of these frequent and friendly interactions SLATE (Submarine landslides and Their impact on European continental margins) was created, a major European Training Network funded by the EU to train the next generation of subaqueous landslide experts through integrated innovative research.&nbsp;</p> <h4>What are your thoughts on being the 500th Special Publication?&nbsp;</h4> <p>We are really excited about that! Creating the 500th volume is a very proud moment for me and the team. Beyond the valuable landmark of such a round number, it will also make our volume number easy to remember!</p> <h4>Further reading:&nbsp;</h4> <p>SP500: Subaqueous Mass Movements and their Consequences: Advances in Process Understanding, Monitoring and Hazard Assessments, edited by: A. Georgiopoulou, L. A. Amy, S. Benetti, J. D. Chaytor, M. A. Clare, D. Gamboa, P. D. W. Haughton, J. Moernaut and J. J. Mountjoy&nbsp;<br /> <br /> <br /> </p>Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 Z{CA5B2917-B9AA-4F82-A31C-39BF2C51D07E}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/October-2020/Distant-ThunderHome schooling<p><em>As geologist and science writer Nina Morgan discovers, education begins at home&nbsp;</em></p> <p> </p> <hr /> <p> Morgan, N., Home schooling. Geoscientist <strong>30&nbsp;(10),</strong>&nbsp;25, 2020<br /> <a href="https://doi.org/doi: 10.1144/geosci2020-112" target="_blank">https://doi.org/doi: 10.1144/geosci2020-112</a>, <a href="/~/media/shared/documents/geoscientist/2020/october 2020/Geo_OCTOBER2020_DT.pdf?la=en">Download the pdf here</a></p> <hr /> <p><img height="444" alt="Bucklands" width="500" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist 30 9/DT.jpg?la=en" class="tcpImageleft" />In these days of lockdown with schools closed, the role of parents in educating their children has never been more important. Those struggling to keep the school lessons going and their children interested might well take some inspiration from William Buckland [1784 &ndash; 1856], the first Reader in Geology at Oxford University, and his wife, Mary [n&eacute;e Moreland; 1797 &ndash; 1857].&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </p> <p>Buckland's popular university lectures on geology and mineralogy included jokes, &nbsp;impersonations of extinct animals, as well as maps, drawings, fossils and mineral specimens. Field trips either on foot or horseback to local geological sites added extra spice. With the opening of the Great Western Railway route through Oxford, these were extended to locations as far away as Bath and Bristol, with Buckland giving a running commentary on the geology and scenery as the train passed through. </p> <p>Mrs Buckland too contributed to her husband's educational efforts. As her eldest son, Francis Trevelyan (Frank) [1826 &ndash; 1880] recalled: </p> <p>'...&nbsp; Not only was she a pious, amiable and excellent helpmate to my father; but being naturally endowed with great mental powers, habits of perseverance and order, tempered by excellent judgement, she materially assisted her husband in his literary labours, and often gave to them a polish which added not a little to their merit....</p> <p>... &nbsp;there is hardly a fossil or bone in the Oxford Museum that has not her handwriting upon it." </p> <h4>Teaching tools</h4> <p>Contemporary descriptions of the Buckland household by Frank, his sister, Elizabeth Oke (aka 'Mrs Gordon') and their brother-in-law, George Bompas, husband of their sister, Mary Ann Scott (aka 'Mit') reveal that the Buckland parents applied the same innovative teaching methods to their own children as William Buckland did to his Oxford students. As Bompas revealed:</p> <p>"In summer afternoons, after the early three o'clock dinner, Dr Buckland would drive out Mrs Buckland and their children in a carriage, known as the bird's nest to Bagley Wood to hunt for moles and nests ... or another day to Shotover, to dig in the quarries for oysters and gryphites... Some of the graver dons were perhaps a little scandalised by such vagrant proceedings, but how much happiness and wisdom were gathered in these excursions!" </p> <p>And Mrs Gordon adds:</p> <p>"The young people were always presented to the numerous learned foreigners and illustrious travellers who came to Oxford to see the Professor's world-famed collection of fossils and bones at the Clarendon; and at dessert in the evening they were told, shortly and graphically, what these great men were famous for." </p> <p>Frank too, praises the active role their mother played in her children's education: </p> <p>'... she did not neglect the education of her children, occupying her mornings in superintending their instruction in sound and useful knowledge.&nbsp; The sterling value of her labours, they now, in afterlife, fully appreciate and feel most thankful that they were blessed with so good a mother."</p> <h4>Success stories</h4> <p>Frank himself must be the most famous example of the success of the Bucklands' teaching techniques. He became an expert on fisheries and a prolific writer who went on, among other things, to author the best selling series of books, <em>Curiosities of Natural History</em>,<em> </em>which ran to 15 editions. A fluent and engaging speaker, in his lifetime he was regarded as one of the most successful popularisers of natural history around. </p> <p>Although Mary Buckland's handwriting is no longer displayed prominently on the bones or fossils in the Oxford Museum &ndash; now known as the Oxford University Museum of Natural History &ndash; the educational legacy of both Buckland parents lives on. The Museum's very popular education programmes, public events and website continue to open the eyes of many to the wonders of geology and natural history.&nbsp; </p> <p>So for all parents struggling with home schooling during this time of Covid-19, the Bucklands' success in home education, as busy working parents and without the aid of the internet, must surely be an inspiration. If they could turn out a Frank Buckland &ndash; so could you! </p> <h4>End notes</h4> <p>Sources include: Frank Buckland's Memoir in Treatise VI of the <em>Bridgewater Treatises</em> by William Buckland, Vol 1, 1858; <em>The Life and Correspondence of William Buckland</em> by Mrs Gordon, 1894; <em>The Life of Frank Buckland</em> by George Bompas, 1896; Lynn Barber, <em>The Heyday of Natural History, 1980, ISBN 0-224-01448-x</em>; Patrick John Boylan's 1984 PhD thesis on Buckland, available from Researchgate.net.&nbsp; I also thank Peter Lincoln for providing additional information. </p> <h4>Author</h4> <p>Nina Morgan is a geologist and science writer based near Oxford.&nbsp; Her latest book, <em>The Geology of Oxford Gravestones</em>, is available via <a href="http://www.gravestonegeology.uk/">www.gravestonegeology.uk</a> </p> <br />Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 Z{606C09E2-644D-4BF2-89D1-7A369544F6F2}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Alkaline-rocks-and-carbonatitesAlkaline Rocks and Carbonatites of the World, Part 4: Antarctica, Asia and Europe (excluding the former USSR), Australasia and Oceanic Islands <img alt="Carbonatites" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/001 Book review thumbs/Book review thumbs 2020/Carbonatites.jpg?h=477&amp;w=340&la=en" style="height: 477px; width: 340px;" class="tcpImageleft" width="340" height="477" />The last part of a four-volume set on the distribution of alkaline rocks and carbonatites has recently been published by the Geological Society of London. As with the other volumes, the work is authored by a true authority of the subject, Dr Alan Woolley.<br /> <br /> Woolley&rsquo;s knowledge and enthusiasm for these rocks is reflected in this highly professional publication. Alkaline igneous rocks are an important source of mineral commodities including niobium, rare earth elements and phosphates. In addition, the study of alkaline rocks and carbonatites has greatly contributed to our understanding of crustal scale and mantle processes based on field, petrographic, mineralogical and geochemical studies.&nbsp; Despite this, clearly identifying these rocks can be challenging, particularly in the areas covered within this volume, where such rocks were mis-identified in historical studies.<br /> <br /> Consistent with the other volumes, the book is divided on the basis of geography and country. For each of these, a locality map and a cross-referenced list of occurrences is given.&nbsp; Each alkaline and carbonatite complex is accompanied by a detailed geological map, geographical co-ordinates, details of the general geology, petrography, ages and, where relevant, economic aspects. An index at the end of the book provides easy access to sections on individual localities.<br /> <br /> This is a unique reference source for alkaline igneous rocks that can be found outside of the generally recognised areas for these rocks. As with all previous volumes, it is well presented and will, I am sure, along with its companion volumes be the focal reference for generations to come on these enigmatic rocks. <br /> <em><br /> Reviewed by Rob Bowell</em><br /> <br /> ALKALINE ROCKS AND CARBONATITES OF THE WORLD, PART 4: ANTARCTICA, ASIA AND EUROPE (EXCLUDING THE USSR), AUSTRALIANA AND OCEANIC ISLANDS. Woolley, A.R. (2019) The Geological Society of London. 562 pp. (hbk) <strong>List price:</strong> &pound; 120.00 <strong>Fellow's price:</strong> &pound; 60.00 <strong>W:</strong> <a href="https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/MPAR4">https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/MPAR4</a><br /> <br /> <br /> <br />Mon, 28 Sep 2020 00:00:00 Z{8A735B9B-20B2-47B7-95F1-4E293DECE323}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/HydrogeologyIntroducing Hydrogeology<img alt="Hydrogeology" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/001 Book review thumbs/Book review thumbs 2020/Hydrogeology.jpg?h=500&amp;w=500&la=en" style="height: 500px; width: 500px;" class="tcpImageleft" width="500" height="500" />Introducing Hydrogeology is another addition to the &ldquo;Introducing Earth and Environmental Sciences&rdquo; series by Dunedin Academic Press, which focuses on providing elementary understanding of the sub-disciplines within the Earth and Environmental Sciences. <br /> <br /> Hydrogeology is critical part of applied geology and deals with the distribution and movement of water in Earth&rsquo;s crust. Groundwater transport is an important part of the overall hydrological cycle in which water is transferred by evaporation from the oceans and seas into the atmosphere. This cycles back to the ground through precipitation and some percolates underground, to become groundwater. This process imprints distinct chemical signatures on the water dependent on the rock type the water contacts, and migration can occur over a period of a few weeks to tens of thousands of years.<br /> <br /> Hydrogeology intersects a variety of disciplines that do not strictly fall within the science of geology, including hydrology, climatology and socioeconomics. Therefore, this guide describes the base concepts of groundwater flow analysis in simple language and avoids specialised jargon or detailed analysis of the topic (there is also a glossary). The book describes all facets of the science, both physical and chemical, together with topical issues, including climate change and our insatiable demand for water. It also covers several other subjects, including aquifers, groundwater flow and numerical analysis, boreholes and testing, the management and quality of groundwater (including pollution, vulnerability and protection), flood, drought and subsidence, and other topical issues.<br /> <div><br /> </div> <div>The book will appeal to Earth scientists and engineers not familiar with the topic, as well as students and non-scientists looking for a basic text on the subject. The emphasis of the book is the underlying measure of the importance of hydrogeology to society, and this is communicated through example topics such as climate change impact, water scarcity, nuclear waste repositories and oil shale fracking.</div> <div><br /> </div> <div>Dr Nicholas Robins worked for much of his career as a hydrogeologist with the British Geological Survey, both in the UK and overseas, including extensive periods in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Central America. He has also been involved with research into radioactive waste disposal. As the current Editor-in-Chief for the International Association of Hyrdogeologists he is well placed to review contemporary literature in the field.</div> <div><br /> </div> <div>A definition I was once given of an expert is not how much they can write on a topic but rather how well they can explain that topic in a few words. By this definition Nick Robbins is an expert in hydrogeology and succeeds in providing a readable and successful introduction to hydrogeology in a slim volume. I strongly recommended this book or those interested in pursuing hydrogeology as a discipline.</div> <br /> <em>Reviewed by Rob Bowell</em><br /> <br /> INTRODUCING HYDROGEOLOGY by Nicholas Robins (2020). Dunedin Academic Press, 115 pp. (pbk, also available as an eBook), ISBN: 978-178046-078-9 <strong>List Price: </strong>&pound;14.99 <strong>W:</strong> <a href="https://www.dunedinacademicpress.co.uk/page/detail/Introducing-Hydrogeology/?K=9781780460789 ">https://www.dunedinacademicpress.co.uk</a><br /> <br /> <br />Mon, 28 Sep 2020 00:00:00 Z{85E503F5-2A5A-4318-9F83-255517EA8B31}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/New-CaledoniaNew Caledonia: Geology, Geodynamic Evolution and Mineral Resources <img alt="Caledonia" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/001 Book review thumbs/Book review thumbs 2020/Caledonia.jpg?h=476&amp;w=340&la=en" style="height: 476px; width: 340px;" class="tcpImageleft" width="340" height="476" />New Caledonia is a small group of tropical islands in the south-western Pacific Ocean and is still a department of France.&nbsp; New Caledonia is an archipelago composed of several islands (Loyalty Islands, Belep Islands, Ile des Pins, Grande Terre), reefs and lagoons. It lies approximately 1500 km east of Australia, 2000 km north of New Zealand and just south of Vanuatu. The islands have had a long geological history that begins with Gondwana&rsquo;s break up during the Mesozoic. The island&rsquo;s geology can be segregated into four major rock groups that were subject to accretion, subduction and obduction.<br /> <br /> Such an active geological environment and complex geological history provides the basis for the development of the island&rsquo;s economic geology.&nbsp; The most important component of the mining industry in New Caledonia is nickel production from tropical laterites. These deposits are widespread and&nbsp; cover much of the ultramafic terranes and have been exploited for decades. Major projects include Goro and Koniambo, which are two of the largest producing nickel operations in the world.&nbsp; Other commercial operations produce cobalt and chromium, again as by-products of the ultramafic terranes.&nbsp; Although present in many similar geological environments, platinum group metals and gold are sparingly distributed and currently not economic.&nbsp; Minor occurrences of base metals, iron ores, coal and manganese are also reported&mdash;much variability from a small island. &nbsp;<br /> <br /> This memoir provides a comprehensive summary of the current knowledge of New Caledonia&rsquo;s geology, geodynamic evolution, and mineral resources, based on a compilation of published and unpublished information. It comprises 10 research papers, each addressing a geological assemblage or topic. After an introductory chapter and a review of the published geodynamic models of evolution of the SW Pacific, chapters 3 to 5 focus on the main geological assemblages of Grande Terre: the Pre-Late Cretaceous basement terranes, the Late Cretaceous to Eocene cover, and the Eocene subduction-obduction complex&mdash;one of the largest and best-preserved in the world. Chapter 6 is devoted to the Loyalty Islands and Ridge. Chapter 7 deals with the mostly terrestrial post-obduction units including regolith. Chapter 8 deals with palaeobiogeography and discusses plausible scenarios of biotic evolution. Chapters 9 and 10 provide a comprehensive review of New Caledonia&rsquo;s mineral resources. <br /> <br /> The editors and authors are to be congratulated on such a large undertaking, particularly the senior editor who has co-authored all the chapters. The volume will interest stratigraphers, sedimentologists, marine geologists, palaeontologists, palaeogeographers, igneous and metamorphic petrologists, geochemists, geochronologists, and specialists in tectonics, geodynamic evolution, regolith development and economic geology.<br /> <br /> <em>Reviewed by Rob Bowell</em><br /> <br /> NEW CALEDONIA: GEOLOGY, GEODYNAMIC EVOLUTION AND MINERAL RESOURCES. Edited by P. Maurizot &amp; N. Mortimer (2020) Geological Society Memoir No.51. 285p.<strong> List price:</strong> &pound; 120.00. <strong>Fellow's price:</strong> &pound; 60.00. <strong>W: </strong><a href="https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/M0051 ">https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/M0051 </a><br /> <br /> <br />Mon, 28 Sep 2020 00:00:00 Z{1E46D559-CD23-4398-8823-CA39E7EAB625}http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/books-arts/2020-reviews/Maltman-wine-and-geologyVineyards, Rocks, and Soils – The Wine Lover’s Guide to Geology<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><img alt="Maltman wine" src="/~/media/shared/images/geoscientist/001 Book review thumbs/Book review thumbs 2020/Maltman_Wine geology_Smallered.jpg?h=400&amp;w=266&la=en" style="height: 400px; width: 266px;" class="tcpImageleft" width="266" height="400" />The important link between geology and wine is, on one level, rather obvious: geologists drink a lot of it.<span>&nbsp; </span>It is also generally accepted that while geology is &lsquo;everything to the grower&rsquo;, in reality it is very little to the drinker.<span>&nbsp; </span>As Alex Maltman points out in this jolly and enthusiastic book, appreciation of geology can add as much to vinous enjoyment as history enhances one&rsquo;s enjoyment of a mediaeval cathedral.</p> <p> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">But lately, back-ticket labels&mdash;even some wine names&mdash;increasingly reference geology.<span>&nbsp; </span>The dustjacket, showing a collage of labels from wines called &lsquo;Amphibole&rsquo;, &lsquo;Moraine&rsquo; and &lsquo;Biotite&rsquo;, makes this clear.<span>&nbsp; </span>As with certain perpetrators of so-called &lsquo;new nature-writing&rsquo;, in much wine writing we see a stringing together of (often obsolete) geological vocabulary like beads on a string, just to be pretty and not to convey any meaning.<span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></p> <p> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Geologists should rejoice, because this trend evinces warm feelings towards their subject in the heart of the oenophile public.<span>&nbsp; </span>But often they wince. They know it&rsquo;s impossible to taste the slate or the flint, simply because rocks are insoluble.<span>&nbsp; </span>They know the &lsquo;iodine&rsquo;, which certain pundits pretend to detect in Chablis, can only be a metaphor, and certainly cannot derive from fossil molluscs.<span>&nbsp; </span>But unfounded belief in geological taste descriptors as &lsquo;actual&rsquo; rather than &lsquo;metaphorical&rsquo; seems to be tenacious.<span>&nbsp; </span></p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Revulsion at this sort of thing turns some geologists into tiresome &lsquo;anti-terroiristes&rsquo; who suspect that &lsquo;terroir&rsquo; as a concept is all magical nonsense, and that everything is vinification.<span>&nbsp; </span>The truth probably lies somewhere in between and thankfully, Maltman is not so reductionist.<span>&nbsp; </span>But he is at great pains to explain how&mdash;and why&mdash;the wine-geology pudding is so often over-egged in popular wine literature.</p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">PR is about warm feelings; education about conveyancing knowledge, which often (indeed, usually) has the reverse effect.<span>&nbsp; </span>If I have reservations about this book&mdash;apart from its anaemic index&mdash;it is wondering who should buy it.<span>&nbsp; </span>The first 140 pages are a good and comprehensive textbook of geology&mdash;from cation exchange to plate tectonics&mdash;seen through a glass, with occasional references to wine regions worldwide.<span>&nbsp; </span>Only when geomorphology makes an appearance (chapter 8) does it get into its stride; and the best passages come at the end, when relationships between rocks, geology, wine and wine terminology are truly discussed.<span>&nbsp; </span>But I found this a little unbalanced, like a joke whose punchline doesn&rsquo;t quite justify the laborious build-up.</p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">There is far more science in here than any normally arranged person can be expected to stomach; and being education, it has to begin at the beginning, which is to say, very far indeed from the matter in hand.<span>&nbsp; </span>That&rsquo;s education for you.<span>&nbsp; </span>It assumes the audience is captive, which is why its storyboarding is really rubbish.<span>&nbsp; </span>Most geologists will not learn much geology, but most non-geologists will find it all a bit too much.<span>&nbsp; </span></p> <p> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Nevertheless I would recommend it as a fantastic and improving Christmas present for any vinous rockhound, who will find much to savour throughout.</p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><em>Reviewed by Ted Nield</em></p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">VINEYARDS, ROCKS, AND SOILS &ndash; THE WINE LOVER&rsquo;S GUIDE TO GEOLOGY by ALEX MALTMAN 2018 Oxford University Press ISBN: 978-0190863289 List price: &pound;26.99 234pp, hbk. W: <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/vineyards-rocks-and-soils-9780190863289?cc=gb&amp;lang=en&amp;">https://global.oup.com/</a></p>Tue, 22 Sep 2020 00:00:00 Z