SEE Here School of Earth and Environment In this Issue: WELCOME from the Head of School & Editors Prizes awarded to our staff and students Learning and Teaching update on our ADF and UTF projects In the news: highlighting where our research has hit the headlines Widening Participation Postgraduate Research Student News/ Profile Welcome to all our new staff Next Issue: Spring 2012 Welcome to an update on our activity in 2011! The 2010/2011 academic year has witnessed the continued success and development of the School as we become established in our new surroundings. For the first time, the number of students registered in the School exceeds 1,000 undertaking their studies and research in a wide range of programmes across the Earth and Environmental sciences. Exciting new teaching initiatives, revamped modules including latest teaching technologies and opportunities and our strong employer links position us well to face the funding arena. In research, we continue to lead a wide range of cutting-edge projects and programmes delivering high quality outputs and impacts, a mere fraction of which we are able to report on here. This year has notably seen us formalise an important academic partnership with the Met Office building on our world-leading research in climate and atmospheric sciences. We have also secured further new investment from the University as part of the Centre for Integrated Energy Research that will more formally link the Faculty of Engineering to our strengths across geophysics, energy policy and sustainability research. New partnerships are evolving and being actively developed through many means including strengthening connections to our many alumni across the globe. By building on such strengths and by identifying new collaborations and opportunities across disciplines we will continue to lead research debates and deliver high quality teaching through the new challenges of 2012 and beyond. Ongoing support and active collaborations with you all in meeting these aims is warmly welcomed to ensure many future successes to build on those reported here. Andy Dougill and Mollie van der Gucht George Holmes has been awarded a two-year Leverhulme early career fellowship: “Private Conservation and environmental governance” – this looks at the growing trend of privately owned protected areas in Patagonia, its driving factors and its social and environmental impacts. Whilst most protected areas (e.g. national parks, nature reserves) are owned and administered by governments, in the southern regions of Argentina and Chile there are large tracts of land owned by rich philanthropists but managed for nature conservation. This project looks at why this trend has emerged – why so many people are investing in private conservation here – and what the consequences are for local societies and ecosystems. Such private conservation initiatives may provide a new tool in the race to prevent biodiversity loss, but they have rarely been analysed in detail. Rob Raiswell has been made a Fellow by the Geochemical Society. "The honorary title of Geochemistry Fellow is bestowed upon outstanding scientists who have, over some years, made a major contribution to the field of geochemistry." John Marsham won European Meteorological Society Young Scientist Award for 2010. The Young Scientist Award is presented annually to acknowledge excellence in young scientists. Noel Gourmelen has been awarded a personal fellowship by the European Space Agency. The award is given every year to a handful of European early-career scientists to carry out innovative research using Earth Observation data. He is the first European Space Agency (ESA) fellow for the School, and his award is a great opportunity for us to strengthen our partnership with the agency. Bridget Wade is the 2011 recipient of the Alan Higgins Award from The Micropalaeontological Society "in recognition of significant achievement in the field of applied and industrial micropalaeontology". The prize is given to a young scientist, less than 10 years from graduation, in recognition of significant achievement in the field of applied and industrial micropalaeontology. SEE Here: Research in the News New eruptions show African continent continues to split apart… Scientists at the School of Earth and Environment are predicting that within 10 million years Africa’s Horn will fall away and a new ocean will form. The team, aimed to show that geology can be fast and furious, presented their research at 2010’s Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition . Fast and Furious: Witnessing the birth of Africa's new ocean; exhibition stand at the Royal Society's 2010 Summer Exhibition in London Visitors to the exhibit were able to take 3D tour of the Afar rift in Ethiopia - above and below ground – where the African continent is cracking open. In the remote Afar desert a 60 kilometre – around 40 miles – a long segment of plate boundary cracked open by as much as eight metres over ten days in 2005. The gap filled with 2.5 cubic kilometres of molten rock – enough to cover London and the area within the M25 with one metre thick blanket of rock. Fault scarp with significant debris within the hangingwall crossing a pre-existing NW-SE trending monoclinal feature Since then the crack has been growing wider and longer with the latest eruptions taking place as recently as May 2010. The scientists studying the region believe that a new ocean is slowly forming and will eventually split the African continent in two. Visitors to the “Fast and furious: witnessing the birth of Africa’s new ocean” exhibit saw a 3D interactive movie of the Afar region, examining how the surface geology changes when the land splits apart. At the seismometer stand visitors had the opportunity to jump up and down to create their own earthquakes as well as learn how scientists use earthquakes to figure out the earth’s processes. Detail (1000x500m) of the high-resolution Lidar DEM of the central rift of the Dabbahu segment Dr Tim Wright, from the School of Earth and Environment said: “The process of ocean formation is normally hidden deep beneath the seas, but in Afar we have are able to walk across the region as the Earth's surface splits apart – it really is amazing. We now have the opportunity to conduct all sorts of experiments in this unique natural laboratory, to further understand the processes involved in shaping the surface of the Earth. It helping us to understand and mitigate natural hazards like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Satellite image of the Afar rift in Ethiopia “The other exciting thing is the economic benefit this continental shift might bring for countries in this region. There have been significant quantities of oil and gas found buried at the edges of continents that have split apart in the past. Studying how the continents split apart helps us better predict where to find this oil and gas.” In the field, Afar, Ethiopia Spring 2011 www.see.leeds.ac.uk www.see.leeds.ac.uk School of Earth & Environment’s Professor Liane Benning and former SEE PhD student Dr Dominique Tobler travelled to one of the coldest places on Earth to help them understand how life could exist on other planets in our Solar System. Liane Benning and Dominique Tobler (University of Glasgow) travelled to Ny-Ålesund on the island of Svalbard in the Arctic to investigate how the snow and ice there was first colonised by extremophiles – organisms that thrive in harsh conditions. The team spent two weeks on Svalbard from 6 to 20 August as part of the Europlanet Research Infrastructure’s Translational Access Programme. The expedition was part of the larger international AMASE project, which uses extreme environments on Earth as a test-bed for technology that will be used on future NASA and ESA 'Search for Life' missions to Mars. “Glacial snow and ice is a good analogue for ice and frost-covered ground at the Martian poles or other icy bodies in the Solar System, like Europa,” said Liane Benning. “Organisms that live here have evolved to thrive with very little food, large temperature fluctuations, dehydration and high levels of UV radiation. For example, snow algae make carotinoids pigments that protect them from UV radiation and cause the snow to turn bright red. “If we can learn more about how life can form and thrive in these areas, and the survival strategies they adopt, it gives us a better chance of detecting life on other planets with similarly extreme conditions.” To date, studies of microorganisms in the cryo-world have focused on life found in sediment-rich subglacial ice or in melt holes on the surface. Signs of life present in surface ice and snow have not been studied as extensively. The team collected samples from snow fields near the Ny-Ålesund research station and from more remote glacial sites, which they accessed by helicopter. The samples were filtered, preserved and shipped back to the UK for laboratory analysis. The team also studied microorganisms on site using ‘life-detection techniques’ to allow them to determine live/dead cell counts, catalogue the biodiversity, investigate the geochemistry of inorganic samples and analyse the DNA of microorganisms. “It’s a little like CSI in the snow,” said Professor Benning. “Just like a forensics team investigating a crime scene, we have to make sure we are not detecting any contaminants we might have brought with us into the field. “The sensitivity of our techniques is also key. If life does exist on other planets, it is likely to be present in very small amounts – just a few cells in a large area – so we need very sensitive equipment that can detect very small signals. If we don’t get our experiments right on the ground, they have little chance of working elsewhere in the solar system.” Professor Benning wrote a blog about her experiences on the Europlanet Outreach Website link is on: http://homepages.see.leeds.ac.uk/~earlgb/ The School of Earth & Environment is joining forces with the Met Office, University of Exeter and the University of Reading to form a new partnership that could lead to better weather and climate predictions. The Met Office Academic Partnership aims to combine the strengths of the universities and the Met Office to secure the UK’s position in leading the world in weather forecasting and climate prediction, and provide an outstanding environment to develop the atmospheric science leaders of the future. The partnership will be officially launched in London today. The University of Leeds arm of the collaboration is led by Professor Doug Parker from the School of Earth and Environment, who will become Met Office Chair of Meteorology. Part of his research will be trying to unravel the mysteries of one of the most unpredictable weather systems on Earth – the West African Monsoon. Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, Sir John Beddington said: “Our economies and societies are increasingly vulnerable to hazardous weather and climatic changes. To understand the challenges we face and to help build resilience requires cutting edge scientific research and its application to practical policy making and decisions. “I welcome this Partnership which seeks to boost our national capability, by harnessing better the excellence that exists within the UK Met Office and across academia.” Professor Parker said: “Weather and climate affect every person on the planet and being able to accurately model and predict these highly variable systems is one of the biggest challenges we face as scientists. “Working closely with the partner institutions and having access to the Met Office models and supercomputers will allow us to contribute to better, more detailed computer models that will have a positive impact on society. It’s also great news for the Yorkshire region as it as it firmly positions Leeds as one of the foremost UK centres for meteorology and climate science.” Julia Slingo, Met Office Chief Scientist said: “This is the first time that a group of universities has joined forces with a leading government organisation to form a cluster of research excellence aimed at accelerating science research to benefit society. This is just the start of what I hope will be an exciting joint venture and only one element of our collaborations, both here and overseas, aimed at maximising the benefit of the UK’s world-class expertise in weather forecasting and climate prediction.” The Met Office already collaborates on around 40 projects with the universities within the Academic Partnership and supports over 30 Collaborative Awards in Science and Engineering (CASE) studentships. This new relationship will create a cluster of over 1,000 scientists working in areas from atmospheric chemistry and air quality to weather extremes and risk management. CSI in the snow: the search for the world’s coolest life forms SEE Here: Research in the News SEE Here: Research in the News SEE Here: Research in the News SEE Here: Successes and Awards Witness the birth of Africa’s new ocean in 3D Met Office and leading UK Universities launch Academic Partnership Issue 1 Autumn 08 SEE Here: Research in the News Media coverage on HIV/AIDS has fallen by more than 70% in developed countries over the last 20 years, according to an international team of researchers including School of Earth & Environment’s Dr Ralf Barkemeyer. While in the early 1990s, an average of 1.5 articles linked to HIV/AIDS could be found in every issue of the main broadsheet newspapers, levels of coverage have dropped to below 0.5 articles per newspaper issue since 2008. Coverage in French and US-based newspapers has decreased particularly dramatically during this period. The findings are part of an ongoing study into sustainability-related media coverage worldwide by the University of Leeds, Queen’s University Belfast, the Berlin-based Institute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment (IZT) and Euromed Management School in Marseille. The Trends in Sustainability project tracks coverage of issues such as climate change, poverty and human rights in 115 leading broadsheets newspapers from 41 countries over a 20-year period from 1990 until May 2010. To date the research has looked at approximately 69,000,000 articles in 410,000 newspaper issues, and the results have been used to generate a new website: trendsinsustainability.com, which launched on World AIDS Day (1 December 2010). The research shows that while attention to sustainability-related issues has increased overall during the last 20 years, the media agenda in this area has changed considerably. In general, coverage of environmental problems like acid rain and the ozone hole, which have been successfully addressed, has diminished since the early 1990s. On the other hand, articles on climate change have increased more than 10-fold since this time, amounting to an average of more than two articles per newspaper issue across the overall sample of 115 newspapers. Ralf Barkemeyer said: “The analysis of levels of broadsheet newspaper coverage on sustainability-related issues can help to shed light on levels of public attention to specific issues. “In recent years, climate change has emerged as a defining issue in the context of sustainability. This globally-important issue has been very successful in terms of gaining general public acceptance of and attention to sustainability, but at the same time it may have significantly changed the sustainability agenda itself – possibly at the expense of attention to socioeconomic problems such as malaria and HIV/AIDS or even corruption, human rights or poverty. All of these issues have seen a stark decline in media coverage in recent years, in particular since early 2006 when media attention devoted to climate change started to pick up markedly.” However, this changing agenda has been largely identified in newspapers based in the developed world. Attention levels in areas that are hit hardest by the AIDS pandemic – such as South Africa – have remained at a high level or even increased throughout the last 20 years. “If we look at generic differences between the agendas that are reflected by newspaper coverage in developing and developed countries, we can arguably identify typical ‘Northern’ and ‘Southern’ sustainability agendas, with the latter tending to revolve around issues commonly associated with socioeconomic development rather than climate change,” said Professor Frank Figge from Queen’s University Management School Belfast. “HIV/AIDS has emerged as a key issue that increasingly tends to be treated with neglect by newspapers based in the developed North. This does not necessarily come as a surprise, as the remarkable progress that has been made in tackling HIV/AIDS has also largely been restricted to the wealthy North. Hence, the problem itself has shifted towards the global South.” As the vast majority of research into HIV/AIDS takes place in the developed world, the researchers argue that a lack of interest in these countries might hamper the advance of solutions for the spreading pandemic in developing countries, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa. Dr Tobias Hahn of Euromed Management School Marseille added: “It’s not just the geographic shift of the problem and the emergence of climate change as a global concern that might crowd out levels of public attention to the pandemic. Over the last ten years, the threat posed by international terrorism also appears to have crowded out most of the set of 20 sustainability-related issues we have analysed in US-based newspapers. The global recession certainly hasn’t helped in terms of public attention to HIV/AIDS, either.” The project was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (Mistra). www.trendsinsustainability.com 6 8 9 10 11 www.see.leeds.ac.uk Spring 2011 5 ICAS’s Lecturer in Dynamical Meteorology Peter Knippertz is to leading a £1m project to study the giant desert storms of the Sahara which will help improve climate and weather prediction models. Extreme sandstorms like the fast-moving ‘walls of dust’ seen in Hollywood film The Mummy may look spectacular, but their effects on weather systems and climate change are even more dramatic. These storms – known as ‘haboobs’ – sweep large quantities of mineral dust off the sands of the Sahara into the atmosphere, where it exerts a wide range of effects on the environment. Project leader Dr Peter Knippertz, of the University of Leeds, said: “Dust is a really important player in the climate system - for example, dust from the Sahara provides most of the nutrients needed to fertilise the Amazon rainforest. But the harsh desert environment of the Sahara means very few measurements have ever been made there.” Dust is one of the main sources of iron to the oceans where it is important in the formation of CO2-guzzling phytoplankton. In the atmosphere, dust particles affect how much energy from the sun enters and leaves the planet, which has a longer-term impact on climate, and dust also deteriorates overall air quality and therefore has direct implications for human health. The haboob storms of the Sahara are one of the main sources of atmospheric dust. They are caused by downdrafts at the end of a thunderstorm, which can whip up a solid wall of dust up to 1,000 metres high that travels at speeds of up to 50mph. As dramatic as haboobs are, however, their role in the global dust cycle is still unclear and they are therefore not routinely included in climate models. Dr Knippertz said: “We don’t know for sure how much of the dust within these storms ends up in the atmosphere and how much returns to earth once the winds have died down. This project will help us to answer this question and to produce a comprehensive representation of the global dust cycle with the view to developing more accurate models. “Ultimately the study will help to eliminate some of the uncertainties in predicting climate, weather and the impacts on human health.” The team will examine data on these storms from recent and future international field campaigns to the Sahara and its surroundings. They will study haboobs, smaller storms known as ‘dust-devils’ and fast moving ribbons of air known as low-level jets, all of which contribute to atmospheric dust. The study is funded by a € 1.36 m Starting Grant from the European Research Council and commenced in October 2010 and will run for five years. www.see.leeds.ac.uk Spring 2011 www.see.leeds.ac.uk Spring 2011 2 Spring 2011 Study to investigate giant Saharan dust storms www.see.leeds.ac.uk Spring 2011 www.see.leeds.ac.uk Spring 2011 Professor Bill McCaffrey has been awarded £200k for a new knowledge exchange project that should help to enhance the UK’s energy security and carbon capture and storage capabilities. The three-year NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellowship fund will leverage research from across the School of Earth and Environment and Faculty of Engineering at the University of Leeds. The funding will support the University’s cross-faculty Centre for Integrated Petroleum Engineering and Geoscience (CiPEG) (http://cipeg.leeds.ac.uk) through building new, responsive partnerships allowing a greater two-way exchange of information and expertise between researchers and oil and gas companies. Prof McCaffrey, who is Executive Director of CiPEG and Professor of Clastic Sedimentology in the School of Earth and Environment, said: “This project gives us a fantastic opportunity to showcase how engineering, geoscience and environmental research from Leeds is directly relevant to industry, including established global oil and gas companies and those who are part of the emerging carbon capture and storage industry.” The project also aims to emulate the success of CiPEG by developing several other new University-based research groups, including Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS), led by Doug Angus. Yorkshire hosts several key sources of CO2 emissions as well as potential sites for the long-term storage of carbon, both onshore and offshore, to mitigate climate change. Experts from the CCS group will collate existing literature and data and work in partnership with businesses to identify optimal sites for such storage. Finally, the project will support additional development of the Virtual Seismic Atlas http://www.seismicatlas.org – an open-access community resource to share the geological interpretation of global seismic data. Currently the site attracts up to 150,000 regular users from both universities and industry and it is hoped that this will become the default repository for seismic imagery within three years. Our prize and award winners Developed world at risk of forgetting about AIDS pandemic 7 www.see.leeds.ac.uk Spring 2011 'Hidden plumbing' helps slow Greenland ice flow Hotter summers may not be as catastrophic for the Greenland ice sheet as previously feared and may actually slow down the flow of glaciers, according to new research led by School of Earth & Environment’s Professor Andrew Shepherd . A letter published in Nature on 27 January explains how increased melting in warmer years causes the internal drainage system of the ice sheet to ‘adapt’ and accommodate more melt-water, without speeding up the flow of ice toward the oceans. The findings have important implications for future assessments of global sea level rise. The Greenland ice sheet covers roughly 80% of the surface of the island and contains enough water to raise sea levels by 7 metres if it were to melt completely. Rising temperatures in the Arctic in recent years have caused the ice sheet to shrink, prompting fears that it may be close to a ‘tipping point’ of no return. Some of the ice loss has been attributed to the speed-up of glaciers due to increased surface melting. Each summer, warmer temperatures cause ice at the surface of the sheet to melt. This water then runs down a series of channels to the base of the glacier where it acts as a lubricant, allowing the ice sheet to flow rapidly across the bedrock toward the sea. Summertime acceleration of ice flow has proved difficult for scientists to model, leading to uncertainties in projections of future sea level rise. “It had been thought that more surface melting would cause the ice sheet to speed up and retreat faster, but our study suggests that the opposite could in fact be true," said Andy Shepherd. "If that's the case, increases in surface melting expected over the 21st century may have no affect on the rate of ice loss through flow. However, this doesn't mean that the ice sheet is safe from climate change, because the impact of ocean-driven melting remains uncertain." The researchers used satellite observations of six landlocked glaciers in south-west Greenland, acquired by the European Space Agency, to study how ice flow develops in years of markedly different melting. Although the initial speed-up of ice was similar in all years, slowdown occurred sooner in the warmest ones. The authors suggest that in these years the abundance of melt-water triggers an early switch in the plumbing at the base of the ice, causing a pressure drop that leads to reduced ice speeds. This behaviour is similar to that of mountain glaciers, where the summertime speed-up of ice reduces once melt-water can drain efficiently. Study co-author Dr Edward Hanna from the University of Sheffield added: "This work also underlines the usefulness of modern gridded climate datasets and melt-model simulations for exploring seasonal and year-to-year variations in Greenland ice sheet dynamics and their relationship with the global climate system." The study was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council’s National Centre for Earth Observation, the Philip Leverhulme Trust, and by the European Commission Ice2Sea project. For more information The Letter entitled ‘Melt-induced speed-up of Greenland ice-sheet offset by efficient subglacial drainage’ by Aud Venke Sundal, Andrew Shepherd, Peter Nienow, Edward Hanna, Steven Palmer & Philippe Huybrechts is published in Nature on 27 January 2011 [doi:10.1038/nature09740]. Photos Courtesy of Jason Box SEE Here: Research in the News WELCOME WELCOME WELCOME Meet our new staff for 2010/ 2011: Academic Staff Ralf Barkemeyer : Lecturer in Corporate Social Responsibility John Barrett : Professor in Sustainability Research Luuk Fleskens: Lecturer in Environmental Change Ben Murray : Lecturer in Aerosol Science Julia Steinberger : Lecturer in Ecological Economics Research Staff Stavros Afionis : Research fellow with Lindsay Stringer Kieran Baker : PhD Plus Fellowship with Simon Bottrell Sarah Broadley : Research Fellow with Ben Murray Guylaine Canut: Research Fellow with Ian Brooks Chris Davies: NERC Postdoctoral Fellowship Jennifer Davis : Research Fellow with Peter Knippertz Fiona Gill : Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow Oguz (Oz) Gogus : Research fellow with Greg Houseman Jason Harvey : Research Fellow with Ivan Savov Bernd Heinold: Research Fellow with Peter Knippertz Ann-Kristin Koehler : Research Fellow with Andy Challinor Florence Levy : Research Fellow with Greg Houseman Tamsin Malkin: Research Fellow with Ben Murray Ros McDonnell : IAGP Project Administrator Marco Patacci : Research Fellow with Bill McCaffrey Victoria Smith : Research Fellow with Stephen Mobbs David Sproson: Research Fellow with Ian Brooks Rory Sullivan : Senior Research Fellow with Andy Gouldson Esther Sumner : Research Fellow with Jeff Peakall Tomasz Trzeciak: Research Fellow with Peter Knippertz Matt Woodhouse : Research Fellow with Graham Mann Support Staff Lisa Beare : Student Support Assistant Nikki Burton : NCAS Finance & Admin Manager Lee Coothoopermal : Faculty PC Support Assistant Kath Faloon: NCAS Education & Staff Development Assistant Jo Gibson : Faculty Marketing Manager Randolph Haggerty : Faculty Research Manager Catherine Haworth: Student Support Assistant Susan Lee : NCAS Research Fellow Katie Livesey (née Bull): Project Officer working with Andrea Jackson Liz Mylod : NCAS Admin Assistant Gavin Phillips : NCAS Education & Staff Development Manager www.see.leeds.ac.uk Spring 2011 17 SEE Here: Research in the News www.see.leeds.ac.uk Spring 2011 18 SEE Here: Building Open Evening The editors would like to thank all those who contributed text and images to this issue of SEE Here. School of Earth and Environment University of Leeds Leeds LS2 9JT t 0113 343 5222 f 0113 343 5259 www.see.leeds.ac.uk Record Arctic ozone loss ‘not unexpected’ www.see.leeds.ac.uk Spring 2011 12 SEE Here: Research in the News Depletion of the ozone layer has reached an unprecedented level over the Arctic this spring because of the continuing presence of ozone-depleting substances in the atmosphere and a very cold winter in the stratosphere, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Tuesday. Observations from the ground and from balloons over the Arctic region as well as from satellites show that the Arctic region has suffered an ozone column loss of about 40% from the beginning of the winter to late March. The highest column ozone loss previously recorded was about 30% over the entire winter. At around 18-20 km altitude the percentage reduction is much larger. However, this unprecedented level of depletion had been expected by ozone scientists who have foreseen that significant Arctic ozone loss is possible in the case of a cold and stable Arctic stratospheric winter. Professor Martyn Chipperfield and Dr Wuhu Feng from the School of Earth and Environment have interpreted the WMO observations using their TOMCAT/SLIMCAT 3D ozone model: Prof. Chipperfield said: "According to the model the ozone loss over the Arctic at about 20 km altitude is already at record levels this year and the upper atmosphere is still cold, meaning loss is still ongoing. While this is unusual, the model clearly shows that the low ozone is related to the unusually cold meteorological conditions over the Arctic this year. "Our models also show that the ozone observations in the Arctic this year are in line with current depletion theories so the record loss doesn't change our expectations for the long-term predicted recovery of the ozone; we still expect the ozone layer to repair itself by about 2050. However, the recent observations suggest that in certain regions, such as over the Arctic, it may get worse before it gets better." For more information about Professor Chipperfield’s ozone modelling, visit http://homepages.see.leeds.ac.uk/~lecmc/tomcat.htm. PhD student Successes, News and Projects www.see.leeds.ac.uk Spring 2011 15 SEE Here: Postgraduate Research Student News Abigail Clifton won the 2010 Palaeontological Association’s President’s Award for her talk about her PhD work on fossil leaves from Svalbard. Joanne Venus and Aisling Dolan helped to promote networking between early career researchers with their joint YES Network and APECS social event held during the European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna.  This event brought together around 100 students and early career scientists from around the world and provided a great opportunity for meeting people and establishing research connections.  Joanne Venus is currently the President of the YES (Young Earth Scientist) Network.  The YES Network aims to link early-career geoscientists through scientific research and interdisciplinary networking, as well as to provide professional career development. Aisling Dolan was recently elected to Secretary of the UK Polar Network.  UKPN is the UK branch of APECS (Association of Polar Early Career Scientists), an international and interdisciplinary organisation for those with an interest in the Polar Regions or wider cryospheric sciences. Tom Blanchard gave 2 papers at the 2010 SEG (Society of Exploration Geophysicists) Annual Meeting, in Denver last November: one was ranked in the Top 30 papers of the meeting and invited for fast-track publication in Geophysics. The SEG Annual meeting is the largest applied geophysics meeting in the world - for 2010, over 1,100 papers were submitted and about 700 accepted, so this was a considerable success for the School and University. Success in Learning and Teaching www.see.leeds.ac.uk Spring 2011 11 SEE Here: Learning & Teaching SEE continues to be a leading light in the University in delivering innovative and exciting learning and teaching, building a strong student experience. We have a wide range of teaching projects funded by the University and Higher Education Academy, and have invested in new technology to support these initiatives. Central themes of our learning and teaching success are assessment and feedback, student engagement and community building, technology, and employability. Assessment and Feedback Rob Mortimer is using his University Teaching Fellowship award to undertake a project on feedback. The project officer, Graham McLeod, reviewed current practice in feedback within SEE and across the sector, holding focus groups with staff and students to gauge which approaches are most effective. This lead to a ‘key recommendations’ document on assessment and feedback which is being implemented using a highly visual campaign. We have created bespoke resources for students and raised awareness and engagement of staff and students in getting the best out assessment and feedback. Rob and Graham have presented this work at events across campus and beyond, and their campaign has already been adopted in two other faculties. The Vice Chancellor also remarked on the project in his leader column in the Reporter (Issue 556, February 2011). http://www.leeds.ac.uk/forstaff/homepage/66/reporter The next stage of the project will link assessment and feedback with student engagement and technology. A student intern will join the team and the project will focus on electronic submission and feedback, audio and video feedback, and creation of online resources for staff and students highlighting good and bad practice. Student Engagement www.see.leeds.ac.uk Spring 2011 4 SEE Here: Learning & Teaching Andrea Jackson’s highly successful ‘Countdown to University Life’ online resource to help students with their transition from School to University continues to be a great success, and has lead to a variety of follow-on projects. Anne Tallontire’s TESS-funded ‘Step Up To Masters’ project has used a similar approach to produce an online resource to better prepare taught postgraduate students for the academic, social and cultural challenges of Masters level study. Andrea is using her University Teaching Fellowship to undertake a project aimed at understanding how students get involved in the wider School community. She is working with the project officer, Katie Livesey, and two student ambassadors to identify the most effective ways of enhancing student engagement, and to develop supporting activities and resources. They have launched a student newsletter, and recently organised a building open evening to showcase and explain research going on within the School. They also supported the EnviroSoc student society to host a seminar from the Environment Agency, and are planning a results day celebration event. The next stage of this work will be a project to compare community building in SEE with the wider sector, developing a national network to investigate how to ‘understand and promote student engagement in Earth and Environmental Science Learning Communities’. This work by Andrea Jackson, Damian Howells and Rob Mortimer has been funded by the Higher Education Academy GEES subject centre. Rob Mortimer has been awarded a full University Teaching Fellowship Andrea Jackson, Damian Howells and Rob Mortimer have been awarded a GEES project: ‘Understand and Promote Student Engagement in Earth and Environmental Science Learning Communities’. RocSoc won the Riley Smith 2010 Award for Best Departmental Society and, at the same event, Phillipa Demonte won the Leeds for Life Employability Award. In addition, RocSoc was also short listed for Best Society and EnviroSoc were short listed for Best Event for “Laugh in the Face of Climate Change” Comedy Night. The School hosted the GEES ‘Geoscience Graduates for the 21st Century’ conference on 19th January. Our Teaching prize and award winners, and other successes: Technology in Learning & Teaching www.see.leeds.ac.uk Spring 2011 5 SEE Here: Learning & Teaching We have numerous projects underway that utilise the latest developments in learning technology: Douglas Paton and Jacqueline Houghton are undertaking a GEES funded project to investigate the use of blended learning and technology to help 3D understanding of Earth and Environmental Sciences. They are producing a suite of bespoke 3D teaching resources for use in the 3D visualisation suite, online and in lectures and practicals. Jacqueline has also created a series of popular YouTube videos on how to use stereonets to understand geological structures. 3D Geospatial models, such as this example from Bude in Cornwall, are being developed to help students develop a better understanding of 3D geometries on field trips. Nigel Mountney has produced an online learning resource to provide a thematic set of interactive training tutorials for core parts of our year 1 taught programmes. This resource is hosted on the University VLE and was funded by the University as a VLE pilot-project. Rob Mortimer and Graham McLeod have created ‘Rock Base’, an online, interactive virtual collection of rocks, minerals and fossils to support practical work in Geological Sciences. This work was funded as part of an Academic Development Fund (ADF) grant on blended learning that is also being used to help identify clear pathways through our degree programmes for current and prospective students. Future work in learning technology will be to roll out the use of new equipment purchased by the School infrastructure fund, which includes three participant response (‘clicker’) systems, and digital audio and video equipment. We have held learning and teaching forums to showcase this technology and will disseminate good practice to encourage further take up. More Technology in Learning & Teaching Colin Pitts is leading a Faculty TESS project, working with the Careers Centre to evaluate and improve our undergraduate careers modules. The aim is to understand the changing perceptions to the modules of current students and former students now in employment, in order to enhance student engagement in their own development. The project aims to inspire students so that they reach their full potential in the workplace. Alongside this, we held a Careers Week in the Faculty in mid March, with a Leeds for Life Project environment networking event organised by the Careers Centre on March 15th, and a new regional Earth and Environment Careers event in SEE organised by Colin Pitts and Jared West on March 18th. Finally, William Young is leading an ADF project to equip students for the transition to a sustainable low carbon society. This project will both help staff make real practical changes at the University, and at the same time will help meet the increasing demand from industry for graduates with the skills to tackle Sustainable Development issues such as climate change and poverty alleviation. Employability 3 Pin-pointing where volcanic eruptions could strike www.see.leeds.ac.uk Spring 2011 13 SEE Here: Research in the News A better way to pinpoint where volcanic eruptions are likely to occur has been produced by an international team of geophysicists including scientists from the School of Earth and Environment. Steaming volcanic cones along the line of lavas erupted in Afar in June 2009. Photograph by David Ferguson, University of Oxford. Scientists from the universities of Leeds, Purdue, Indiana and Addis Ababa, investigated volcanic activity occurring in the remote Afar desert of Northern Ethiopia between 2005 and 2009. By studying a rare sequence of 13 magmatic events – where hot molten rock was intruded into a crack between the African and Arabian plates – they found that the location of each intrusion was not random. They showed that they were linked because each event changed the amount of tension in the earth’s crust. Montserrat Eruption, Copyright: Marco Fulle The findings, published in Nature Geoscience, will help scientists to more accurately predict where volcanic eruptions could strike and contribute to efforts to limit the damage they can cause. Lead author Dr Ian Hamling, who completed the analysis as part of his PhD in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds said: “It’s been known for some time that a large earthquake has a role to play in triggering subsequent earthquakes, but until now, our knowledge for volcanic events has been based on isolated cases. “We have demonstrated that volcanic eruptions can influence each other. This will help us predict where future volcanic eruptions are likely to happen.” Montserrat Eruption, Copyright: Marco Fulle The team studied the region around a large volcanic dyke - a vertical crack which is created when Magma seeps from underground through rifts in the surface of the earth – which erupted in the Afar desert in September 2005. The Magma - hot molten rock - was injected along the dyke between depths of 2 and 9 km, and altered the tension of the earth. The team was able to watch the 12 smaller dykes that subsequently took place in the same region over a four year period. By monitoring levels of tension in the ground near where each dyke was intruded they found that subsequent eruptions were more likely in places where the tension increases. Dr Hamling said: “If you look at this year’s eruptions at Ejafjallajokull (pictured above) in Iceland, by estimating the  tension in the crust at other volcanoes nearby, you could estimate whether the likelihood of them eruption has increased or decreased. Knowing the state of stress in this way won’t tell you when an eruption will happen, but it will give a better idea of where it is most likely to occur.” The paper ‘Stress transfer between thirteen successive dyke intrusions in Ethiopia’ by Drs Ian Hamling and Tim Wright of the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds; Eric Calais and Laura Bennati of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Purdue University, Indiana, and Elias Lewi of the Geophysical Obervatory, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, is available online in http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n11/full/ngeo993.html. PhD Student News Profile of a PhD Project Human migration as a result of climatic change and drought in Africa PhD student: Natalie Suckall Funding: ESRC/NERC Interdisciplinary Scholarship Natalie’s research focuses on human migration in response to climate change in Africa, this is perhaps one of the most important issues of the 21st century. As our climate changes sub-Saharan Africa will be faced with longer and more intense droughts and more frequent flooding. With little capacity to cope with these issues the livelihoods of entire communities run the risk of collapse. A field assistant from Bunda Collage of Agriculture, Lilongwe, Malawi interviewing a woman from the village about why her husband had left to work in town. In Malawi, southeast Africa, about 90% of people live in rural villages where they practice subsistence farming. As the climate changes and livelihoods are affect people will be faced with a choice - leave the village or stay and face whatever comes their way. Previous research suggests that people (especially the young) will migrate away from their homes- however, evidence from Malawi suggests the opposite. The idea of an ancestral home is important to many Malawians and the idea of permanently leavening their home is far from the minds of most people. Understanding who will move, or not move, is important if development is to directed in the right place. The outcomes of this PhD research will be completed in summer 2011. www.see.leeds.ac.uk Spring 2011 16 SEE Here: Postgraduate Research Student News What have worms and rotting whale bones got to do with the fossil record? School of Earth & Enviornment research student, Nick Higgs has been interviewed for NERC’s Planet Earth podcast about his dead whales project. As Nick explains “A better understanding of what happens to whales when they die could well be the key to explaining a gap in the evolution of modern whales.” Nick’s project is funded via a NERC Case Award with the Natural History Museum, London and concentrates on whale carcasses which fall to the seabed in the deep ocean. His work paints a detailed picture of the complex processes at work: “In this food-poor habitat the carcasses represent a food bonanza; 200 years worth of food arriving all at once. These ‘whale-falls’ attract a diverse array of creatures from sleeper sharks to ‘snow-boarding’ worms and are considered oases of diversity in the deep sea. Once the meat has been eaten, the bones leach out oil that can fuel chemosynthesis (as opposed to photosynthesis) based communities for decades!” Nick admits that he is studying some of the weirdest animals from these habitats, Osedax worms. “This specialised group makes a living by boring into and eating the whale bones – and they do this without any mouth, gut or hard parts!” The Natural History Museum’s micro –CT scanner provides the perfect tool for viewing the bones in 3D to find out how the worms make their borings and to see exactly what these borings looks like. Nick explains, “Osedax worms only live on whale bones in the deep sea so they could have evolved at the same time as the whales, around 35 million years ago.” Meanwhile the Palaeontology Clean Room at Leeds provides the perfect environment for studying whether the worms have eaten other bones. Before the great whales, there were also huge marine reptiles roaming the oceans so one key question for Nick is whether these carcasses also have provided food for Osedax worms? “For the next stage of the project, I will be exploring fossil whale and reptile bones to see if I can find the traces of the bone-eating worm in the fossil record.” Nick speaks to Planet Earth online about the how deep sea worms play a key role in the decomposition of whale bones “Fish poo, dead whales, and the Japan earthquake” 23/03/2011: http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/multimedia/story.aspx?id=949 For more information contact Nick Higgs eendh@leeds.ac.uk Osedax worms sticking out of their borings in a whale bone. N Higgs, 2010 Anja Schmidt has been awarded third prize in this year's University of Leeds Postgraduate Researcher of the Year competition. PhD student Anja won the prize for her work on the long-term impacts of non-explosive volcanic eruptions. She has been using a state-of-the art atmospheric model to study how large-scale eruptions, like that of Laki in Iceland in 1783-84, can affect the climate. So far, Anja has demonstrated that the impact of this eruption on clouds and climate is substantial and more complex than previously thought. She is now looking at how a similar eruption in future could impact air quality in Europe and subsequently turn into a severe modern health hazard. Her project also looks at how high levels of sulphur dioxide in upper parts of the atmosphere generated by such an eruption could impact commercial aviation. Anja prepared a poster and abstract for the competition, which involved 27 PhD students from across all of the University's nine Faculties. Commenting on her award, Anja said: "I was delighted to be awarded third place as there was a lot of competition from other participants conducting high-impact research. It's a great honour for me that my research was honoured with a prize at this conference." Anja works across the School of Earth and Environment's Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science and the Institute of Geophysics and Tectonics. She is supervised jointly by Professor Ken Carslaw and Professor Marjorie Wilson. Anja said: "I thoroughly enjoy my work environment at the University. It's a great feeling to receive support and feedback from a lot of people, some of which are not even involved in the same field of study as I am." More Prizes NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellowship Success Science Festival Hits the Road! www.see.leeds.ac.uk Spring 2011 14 SEE Here: Widening Participation The Leeds Festival of Science is an annual, cross-faculty event that coincides with National Science and Engineering Week, providing a focus for a large programme of outreach events for pupils from local schools. SEE’s Roadshow pioneers and their outreach activities include Mike Krom and his 'Saving the Dead Sea' project, Bob Buxton and Eleanor Okell  'What makes a good wind farm?’, and Fiona Gill and Nick Higgs 'The amazing history of life on Earth'. http://www.environment.leeds.ac.uk/outreach/news/ Science at the Ends of the Earth Polar scientists from Earth & Environment and Geography developed an exciting new outreach activity for the Festival this year, in which children from Batley Boys School and Calder High School were entertained and informed by an impressive cast of researchers. Paleaoclimatologist, Aisling Dolan, began the session with a short lecture about Antarctica, the coldest, windiest, driest continent on Earth. Amber Leeson, glaciologist, explained the science behind ice coring and gave the students the opportunity to test their ice coring skills on an 'ice sheet' made of playdough. Arctic explorer Chris Williams made his TV debut with a film about the Arctic, he then went on to demonstrate a range of field equipment used by polar scientists in the field. A pair of snowshoes and a dehydrated chicken stew were particularly popular with the young people! Tor Smith, who recently returned from six weeks working at Rothera base in Antarctica, gave a fascinating insight into a typical day in the life of an Antarctic Meteorologist, including the interesting sleeping conditions inside a bright orange Antarctic tent. The session culminated with a quiz about science and life 'At the Ends of the Earth'. The session clearly made an impression, as 70% of the answers were correct! Rob Chapman has taken his interest in gold prospecting into the virtual world, by designing a computer game that turns the competitors into armchair gold miners. The game was launched with 11 teams of sixth formers from Roundhay High School, Thomas Rotherham College and Woodhouse Grove School, who simulated the decisions taken by real miners: interpreting the results of exploration, deciding where and how to mine, when to sell the gold against fluctuating prices, and restoring the site to its original condition - or face a huge fine! Rob explained the reason for developing the game: ‘When teaching undergraduates, we have found it is difficult to convey the financial and practical constraints that colleagues in industry experience daily. This game is designed so that teams who understand the technical aspects of the problem have an advantage, but they must also understand that an ideal scenario, (the time and money to do everything to help solve that problem) is tempered by practical considerations. The choices made in this game mirror the complex decision making process encountered in a wide range of industrial environments. There are no clear ‘right or wrong answers’ but each decision involves cost benefit analyses. The importance of these ‘real life’ choices are extremely difficult to introduce effectively when teaching technical subjects.’ Schools can access the game free of charge on the University website http://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/misc/miner/ Gold Mining Game Launched Urban AWS Project The Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science (ICAS) at the University of Leeds hosts an Automatic Weather Station (AWS) for the UK Met Office. The AWS records dry and wet bulb temperatures as well as rainfall rates. The AWS is relatively unique in its urban location in the centre of the city of Leeds. Objective The Urban AWS network has been designed to monitor the urban heat island and also complement the existing AWS network. The urban heat island is significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas and is generally caused by the modification of the land surface by urban development, waste heat and population centres. The objective of this two year project is to monitor the temperature differences, which are usually larger at night than during the day, particularly in light winds, and to monitor the monthly rainfall as this is generally greater downwind of cities and is partially due to the urban heat island effect. Progress and future plans The Urban installations at the Leeds, Swansea and Glasgow Universities are part of a larger project to update and automate the Climate monitoring network in the UK. The instrumentation deployed at these sites is part of the automatic Meteorological Monitoring System. This system helps the many challenges the Met Office faces in maintaining its existing network, such as site retention, requirement for manual input, timeliness of observations and data quality. During 2011, further Urban installations are planned at Milton Keynes, Hull, Manchester University and Heaton Park Manchester are planned. ICAS have worked closely with the UK Met Office in sourcing a suitable site for locating the Urban AWS. Atmospheric Saharan Dust from Aircraft, Peter Knippertz In February current students toured the building and were able to talk to staff and see a series of demonstrations in our research facilities. Feedback was very positive so this event will be repeated on an annual basis. Methane gas from cows – the proof is in the poo! www.see.leeds.ac.uk Spring 2011 14 SEE Here: Research in the News Scientists could have a revolutionary new way of measuring how much of the potent greenhouse gas methane is produced by cows and other ruminants, thanks to a surprising discovery in their poo. Researchers from the University of Bristol and the Teagasc Animal and Grassland Research Centre in Ireland, have found a link between methane production and levels of a compound called archaeol in the faeces of several fore-gut fermenting animals including cows, sheep and deer. The compound could potentially be developed as a biomarker to estimate the methane production from domestic and wild animals, allowing scientists to more accurately assess the contribution that ruminants make to global greenhouse gas emissions. Co-author Dr Fiona Gill, who conducted the work as a postdoctoral researcher at Bristol and is now at the University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment, said: “When it comes to calculating carbon budgets there is currently a lot of uncertainty surrounding animal methane contributions, particularly from wild ruminants. “We’re quite good at measuring man-made CO2 emissions, but techniques to measure the animal production of methane – a much more potent greenhouse gas – have serious limitations. “If we can identify a simple biomarker for methane production in animal stools, then we can use this along with information on diet and animal population numbers to estimate their total contribution to global methane levels.” Cows, sheep and other ruminants are thought to be responsible for around one-fifth of global methane production but the precise amount has proved difficult to quantify. Methane production from animals is often measured using respiration chambers, which can be laborious and are unsuitable for grazing animals. Archaeol is thought to come from organisms called archaea, which are symbiotic or ‘friendly’ microbes that live in the foregut of ruminant animals. These microbes produce methane as a by-product of their metabolism and this is then released by the animal as burping and flatulence. Principal investigator, Dr Ian Bull of Bristol’s School of Chemistry said: “We initially detected archaeol in the faeces of several foregut fermenters including camels, cows, giraffes, sheep and llamas. We then expanded the study to evaluate the quantities of this compound in the faeces of cows with different diets. “Two groups of cows were fed on different diets and then their methane production and faecal archaeol concentration were measured.  The animals that were allowed to graze on as much silage as they wanted emitted significantly more methane and produced faeces with higher concentrations of archaeol than those given a fixed amount of silage, supplemented by concentrate feed. “This confirms that manipulating the diet of domestic livestock could also be an important way of controlling methane gas emissions.” The work was carried out at the University of Bristol and the Teagasc Animal and Grassland Research Centre in Ireland. The research was funded by the Leverhulme Trust. The research is published in the journal Animal Feed Science and Technology. Pakistan and Queensland floods, will they become more regular events? www.see.leeds.ac.uk Spring 2011 15 SEE Here: Research in the News Dramatic climate swings behind both last year's Pakistan flooding and this year's Queensland floods in Australia are likely to continue as the world gets warmer, scientists predict. Researchers at the School of Earth & Environment and University of Oxford have discovered that the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the sloshing of the warmest waters on the planet from the West Pacific towards the East Pacific every 2-7 years, continued during the Earth's last great warm period, the Pliocene. Effects of flooding in villages on the Indus, near the Pakistan border (Indian Kashmir side). The damage was caused by flash floods. R.J Phillips Their results suggest that swings between the two climatic extremes, known as El Niño and La Niña, may even have occurred more frequently in the warmer past and may increase in frequency in the future. Extreme ENSO events cause droughts, forest fires and floods across much of the world as well as affecting fishery production. Reporting in the journal Paleoceanography, the team of geochemists and climate modellers use the Pliocene as a past analogue and predictor of the workings of Earth's future climate. The Pliocene (which lasted from 5 to 3 million years ago) had carbon dioxide levels similar to the present day, with global mean temperatures about 2-3ºC higher, so it is a useful test-ground for climate research. Lead Scientist Nick Scroxton from the University of Oxford said: "We know from previous studies that the mean state of the Pacific during the warm Pliocene was similar to the climate patterns observed during a typical El Niño event that we see today. Flood Chart "However, until recently it was believed that a warmer Pacific would reduce the climate swings that cause the dramatic weather extremes throughout the region leading to a permanent state of El Niño. What we didn't expect was that climatic variability would remain strong under these warmer conditions." The team combined experiments performed on the Met Office Hadley Centre climate model, HadCM3, with the analysis of the chemical composition of lots of individual shells of small organisms, known as foraminifera. These were collected from a deep sea sediment core in the East Equatorial Pacific, and provided a record of temperature in the upper layer of the ocean through time. They discovered that the range of temperatures experienced by these organisms during the Pliocene, was higher than what would be expected from just the seasonal cycle. The extra variation in temperature can be explained by the additional extreme temperature swings provided by the El Niño/La Niña system. The authors say the agreement in findings from both ocean data and modelling leaves little doubt that ENSO will persist in a warmer world. Co-author Alan Haywood from School of Earth & Environment said: "It is reassuring that ENSO kept on ticking during the warmer Pliocene as opposed to switching into some novel mode, which if it reoccurred in the future would have massive consequences for regional and global weather patterns and climate. Previously, many scientists had forewarned that a warmer world may experience a permanent El Niño state, a condition which could act to amplify warming." Family left devastated by flash floods in village on the Indus, Pakistan border (Indian Kashmir side). R.J Phillips Earlier this year a team from Japan studying corals from the same period showed climatic variability in the western Pacific on a similar scale to today, questioning the idea of a permanent El Niño during the Pliocene. This new study goes further, showing that the oscillation is Pacific-wide, and is likely to be caused by the El Niño/La Niña. This suggests that our warmer future will continue to be dogged, maybe even more regularly, by extreme climatic events. The paper, entitled 'Persistent El Niño-Southern Oscillation variation during the Pliocene Epoch' N Scroxton, SG Bonham, REM Rickaby, SHF Lawrence, M Hermoso, and AM Haywood, is published in the journal Paleoceanography [doi:10.1029/2010PA002097]. Highland Cattle, Wiswell, Lancashire. Scott Anthony Martin.