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Both external and internal speakers are invited to the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment to present the latest results of their research.

Everyone is invited, so please join us!

What can zircon tell us about volcanic processes?

Wednesday 20 May 2026, 1.00pm, Lecture Theatre B, George Porter Building

Professor Jane Scarrow, University of Granada, Spain

Zircon geochronology and mineral chemistry case studies from a range of volcanic systems will be presented to show how such data can be applied to link magma storage, evolution, and eruption dynamics. Hazard assessment is often limited by poorly constrained eruptive histories, particularly at long-dormant or unmonitored volcanoes near population centres.

The Coatepeque caldera, El Salvador continental arc magmatism, exemplifies this issue, preserving evidence of multiple high-magnitude eruptions (VEI 4-7) over ~220 ka, but with poorly constrained timing of its most recent activity, limiting robust hazard evaluation. We use zircon U-Th and (U-Th)/He dating combined with petrological data to refine the eruptive chronology and understand silicic magma petrogenesis.

In a contrasting ocean island setting, Ascension Island, zircon records recurrent magmatism over ~1.3 Ma, episodic eruptions, and magma mingling between mafic and evolved reservoirs associated with explosive and effusive activity. Whereas, in the Caribbean ocean arc at Soufrière Hills Volcano, Montserrat, zircon constrains long-lived andesitic mush storage (2–250 ka), periodic recharge, and rapid pre-eruptive destabilisation prior to the most recent 2010 eruption.

To conclude, low-cost approaches to assessing risk perception will be considered, together with outreach using the ‘Volkis’ primary education resource, to support application of these findings to volcanic hazard mitigation.

Jane H. Scarrow is a lecturer at the University of Granada, Spain. Her work focuses on the use of zircon to investigate magmatic processes in recent and active volcanic systems. Current research, now centred on Central American volcanism, particularly El Salvador, builds on studies spanning the British Tertiary Province, the Antarctic Peninsula arc, the Ural Mountains, the Iberian Variscan belt, and oceanic island and arc systems.

She has established multidisciplinary collaborations with colleagues in education and psychology, permitting geological insights to be applied to assessment of volcanic hazards, risk perception, and communication, with the aim of improving societal resilience.

Oceanographic evolution of the Late Cenozoic Red Sea

Tuesday 26 May 2026, 1.00pm, Attenborough 111

Dr Diederick Liebrand, University College London

The Red Sea rift system is about 30 million years old and during this time it has been intermittently flooded. For the past 6 million years or so, the Red Sea has had at least one open connection to the global ocean. Little is known, however, about the oceanographic evolution of the Red Sea during the last 6 million years—a time period during which the globe cooled down, and large ice sheets developed in the Northern Hemisphere.

In this talk, we will present a reassessment of old deep sea drilling cores from the Central Red Sea. We will show how the Red Sea developed over time, which oceanographic 'behaviours' it displayed, and how its oceanography ties in with both regional and global climate evolution over the past 6 million years. Our inventory, or cataloguing, of oceanographic behaviours may help scientists better project how the Red Sea will function in a rapidly warming world. 

Dr Diederik Liebrand is a palaeoceanographer/palaeoclimatologist with specialist knowledge in cyclostratigraphy, astrochronology, and Milankovitch Theory. He has a BSc and a MSc from Utrecht University, and a PhD from the University of Southampton. Currently, he is a postdoctoral research fellow at University College London working with Professor Bridget Wade on Oligocene planktonic foraminifera. His research focusses on reconstructing climates, oceans, and ice sheets during the Icehouse Earth period—the last 34 million years of Earth history. 

Exploring Zealandia: Geological History of the Eighth Continent

Wednesday 27 May 2026, 1.00pm, via Teams

Dr Edoardo Dallanave, University of Milan

Meeting ID: 384 039 617 186 832
Passcode: 3YU3EW2P

The continental crust of Zealandia extends for nearly five million of squared kilometres, but today over 90% of it lies beneath the waters of the southwest Pacific Ocean. 

The geological history of Zealandia during the Eocene is intricately linked to the movements of the Pacific Plate, which in turn likely modulates the long-term climate evolution of the planet. Understanding these mechanisms requires studying sedimentary sections now exposed on the emerged parts of Zealandia and the sediments collected during deep-sea drilling expeditions. 

In this presentation, we will explore how these data can be correlated and what insights we can gain on the influence of continental-scale tectonic events on global climate.

Edoardo is a Geologist and Palaeomagnetist in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Milan. 

Dr Edoardo Dallanave is an Earth scientist specialising in palaeomagnetism and rock-magnetism. He is interested in chronology, paleogeographic reconstructions, paleoceanography, and magnetic properties of rocks. His interests in palaeogeography has been largely addressed to the southwest Pacific area (Zealandia continent) as well as the Alpine Tethys area during the Meso-Cenozoic, as tested by several publications and funded proposals for a total of ~1M€. Among the different topics, Edoardo is currently working on the stratigraphic records recovered during IODP Exp.

371 and IODP Exp. 392, on which he sailed as on-board Palaeomagnetist, as well as on a of R-based web platform to facilitate analyses of paleomagnetic data from exposed rocks and deep-sea sediments. Within the IODP³ frame, Edoardo is part of an international working group conducting research on past climate examples that, with the current CO₂ emission rates, are the best analogous in the geological past of the possible near future of our planet.

The Curiosity rover's journey across Gale Crater

Wednesday 3 June 2026, 1.00pm, Lecture Theatre B, George Porter Building

Professor Susanne Schwenzer, Professor of Planetary Mineralogy, The Open University

The NASA Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity has been travelling across Gale Crater since August of 2012. Through images and geochemical data returned by the rover, we now understand that a lake filled the crater for an extended period of time, with dryer and wetter periods documented in the stratigraphic record.

Most recently, the rover has traversed an area called 'boxwork', where decameter-sized structures comprised of ridges and hollows dominate the landscape. The talk will give an overview of the mission, stopping at stratigraphically or otherwise important waypoints and highlighting how the mission has shifted our understanding of planet Mars's climate evolution. 

Professor Susanne Schwenzer is a planetary mineralogist, studying volatiles and water-rock reactions on Mars and Earth. She received her Masters in Mineralogy from University of Mainz, where she subsequently studied for her PhD, with much of the work on noble gases in Martian meteorites being carried out at Max-Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz.

She then went to the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston for a post-doctoral position before coming to the UK as a postdoctoral researcher. In 2011 Prof. John Bridges from Â鶹ÊÓƵ invited her to join him on a - successful - bid to join the Curiosity rover mission - and we have been working together on the MSL team since November of 2011. Susanne has been at the Open University since 2009, and now is a Professor of Planetary Mineralogy and the associate director of AstrobiologyOU.