Welcome to GeoUnion, the graduate student body of the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences. GeoUnion strives to supplement the overall graduate student experience at Rice and DEEPS. GeoUnion represents DEEPS in the overall Rice grad student community, acts as a liaison between students and faculty and organizes a number of intra- and inter-departmental events throughout the academic year.
Date | Event |
---|---|
August 19-23 | O-Week |
September 6-8 | Overnight Camping at San Marcos |
September 13 | Welcome Barbecue |
Cancelled because of Imelda | Pre-GSA talk |
October 12-15 | Field Trip to Big Bend |
October 25 | Halloween Kickball Tournament |
November 26 | Multicultural Thanksgiving! |
Dec 6 | Pre-AGU practice session |
TBA | Enlightenment |
Here’s a list of the resources that you would need to use frequently as graduate students at Rice. The websites of the Rice Graduate Student Association (GSA), Office of International Students and Scholars (OISS), Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (GPS) are platforms which graduate students can use to keep track of upcoming events, funding opportunities, changes in rules and regulations, etc.
Living in a vast city like Houston and exploring a new place can also be challenging, and so we have compiled a list of recommendations for housing and fun things to do in the Space City!
EPSL: Critical porosity of melt segregation during crustal melting: Constraints from zonation of peritectic garnets in a dacite volcano
Critical porosity of melt segregation during crustal melting: Constraints from zonation of peritectic garnets in a dacite volcano
Xun Yu* and Cin-Ty Lee
*visiting student
Earth and Planetary Science Letters
Volume 449, 1 September 2016, Pages 127–134
The presence of leucogranitic dikes in orogenic belts suggests that partial melting may be an important process in the lower crust of active orogenies. Low seismic velocity and low electrical resistivity zones have been observed in the lower crust of active mountain belts and have been argued to reflect the presence of partial melt in the deep crust, but volcanoes are rare or absent above many of these inferred melt zones. Understanding whether these low velocity zones are melt-bearing, and if so, why they do not commonly erupt, is essential for understanding the thermal and rheologic structure of the crust and its dynamic evolution. Central to this problem is an understanding of how much melt can be stored before it can escape from the crust via compaction and eventually erupt. Experimental and theoretical studies predict trapped melt fractions anywhere from <5% to >30%. Here, we examine Mn growth-zoning in peritectic garnets in a Miocene dacite volcano from the ongoing Betic–Rif orogeny in southern Spain to estimate the melt fraction at the time of large-scale melt extraction that subsequently led to eruption. We show that the melt fraction at segregation, corresponding approximately to the critical melt porosity, was ∼30%, implying significant amounts of melt can be stored in the lower crust without draining or erupting. However, seismic velocities in the lower crust beneath active orogenic belts (southern Spain and Tibet) as well as beneath active magmatic zones (e.g., Yellowstone hotspot) correspond to average melt porosities of <10%, suggesting that melt porosities approaching critical values are short-lived or that high melt porosity regions are localized into heterogeneously distributed sills or dikes, which individually cannot be resolved by seismic studies.
ESCI 546 Basin Analysis: Field Trip to Ireland
Overview
ESCI 546 “Advance Topic in Basin Sedimentology and Stratigraphy ” participated in a field trip to County Clare, western Ireland, from May 2nd to May 12th, 2016. The class visited sea-cliff exposures of rocks found in the Western Irish Namurian Basin (WINB), which were deposited during the Upper Carboniferous (326 Ma – 317 Ma). The deposits represent a variety of sedimentary depositional environments, including fluvial-deltaic to deep water turbidites. The rocks were later obscured by fold-thrust related deformation associated with the Variscan (Hercynian) orogeny, brought on by rift-related deformation during the breakup of Pangaea. The WINB is an ideal location to evaluate the interconnectedness of the various sedimentary environments, in particular, linking the physical processes that shape the internal stratigraphy.
The first part of the class trip included a five day “basin overview” led by Professor Jim Best of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC), who has 30 years of experience working in the WINB. During this tour, students self-organized to develop research projects for the range of depositional environments. Students were then provided three days to work among the outcrops to pursue their respective projects. On the final day, these students led the class through the outcrops, presenting their specific findings.
Participants
Professors: Jeffrey A. Nittrouer, Jim Best (UIUC)
Post-doc: Hongbo Ma
Students: Andrew Moodie, Brandee Carlson, Sam Zapp, Simon Chan, Garrett Lynch, Brian Demet, Chenliang Wu, Pulkit Singh
Visiting Student: Matthew Czapiga (UIUC)
Teaching Assistant: Tian Dong
Day 1 Loop Head Cliffs: Ross Fm. (Deep Water Turbidite)
May 3rd
We arrived in Shannon, Ireland, on the morning of May 3rd. In the early afternoon, after settling into our rental home in Kilkee, we visited cliff exposures of the Ross Fm. near the Loop Head lighthouse. The Ross Fm. is a sandstone unit, interpreted as deep-water turbidite fan deposits. Among the lobes are a few channel features higher in the stratigraphic section. The Ross Fm. is the thickest near the Shannon Estuary (~380 m) and thins to the north, in the general direction of paleo flow.
Day 2 Northern County Clare: Visean Fm. (Basement Limestone) and Clare Shale Fm.(Deep Water Shale)
May 4th
We drove north for 2 hours from Kilkee to the south of Galway Bay at the northern end of County Clare. Here, we visited the Burren Fm., a Visean limestone unit that forms the basement of the WINB. This unit is interpreted to be a shallow-water carbonate deposit, likely associated with a shelf setting. The unit contains variety of fossils, including rugosa corals and brachiopods.
Travelling to the south, we moved upsection to the “St. Brendan’s Well” outcrop to locate the contact between the Visean Limestone and the Clare Shale. The Clare Shale Fm. is the lowest unit of the WINB sedimentary fill, and consists of a deep marine black shale. At the contact of the Clare Shale and Visean Limestone is a phosphate rich bed, ~ 8 cm thick, interpreted to be a condensed section likely associated with an open marine environment, where sedimentation is extremely minimal.
Day 3 Point of Relief: Deep Water Deposit (Ross Sandstone Fm.) and Slope Deposit (Gull Island Fm.)
May 5th
We visited the Bridge of Ross and the Ross Fm. to examine the sedimentary structures found within the turbidite deposits. One of the most famous structures here is the Ross Slide, a highly deformed, inter-bedded mudstone and sandstone unit, which contains various soft sediment deposition features, including sand volcanoes and syndepositional folds. The Ross Slide is more recently interpreted as a slump deposit, whereby external forces caused liquefaction of sand and mud and initiated motion that produced significant folding and deformation. The Ross Slump is very laterally extensive (10’s of kilometers long), and this significant size is considered to be associated with a seismic event as triggering the the deformation.
Moving up Section, we examined the contact between the Ross Fm. and the Gull Island Fm., identified by a thin layer of mud with a goniatite (ammonoid) band, which is likely associated with a condensed open-marine section.
The Gull Island Fm. is interpreted as a slope deposit, whereby numerous failures trigger mass transport of sediment that ultimately feed the Ross Fm. turbidite deposits. The Gull Island Fm. contains various styles of soft sediment deformation, including slides, slumps, growth faults, and mud volcanoes.
At end of the day, we visited the Tullig Cyclothem, the formation atop the Gull Island. Here, this cyclothem represents alternating sequences of fluvial-delatic and near-shore, shallow marine deposits, indicated by a classic coarsening upward deltaic sequence of interfingering pro delta, interdistributary bay, and fluvial-deltaic deposits. The middle to upper Tullig Cyclothem is characterized by channels of various sizes, and the Upper Tullig sandstone possesses bedforms and terrestrial plant fossils, indicating a fully fluvial depositional setting.
Day 4 Trusclieve: Fluvial-Deltaic Deposit (Tullig Cyclothem and Kilkee Cyclothem)
May 6th
We took a boat ride on the Shannon Estuary, in order to observe cliff exposures of the Middle to Upper Ross Fm., and the underlying Clare and and Visean Limestone. The upper Ross Fm. contains numerous feeder channels that routed sediment to the fan lobe deposits of the Ross Fm.
Later, we drove to Trusklieve to visit the Tullig Cyclothem in detail, specifically, the changes in vertical stacking patterns. Stratigraphic Sequences of the Tullig Cyclothem at Trusklieve show that an overall coarsening upward trend is pervasive (as described above). Moving up section, there is an increase in the frequency of amalgamated channels bodies, which possess bedforms, barforms, and terrestrial plant fossils, all of which indicate a land-based fluvial-deltaic environment.
Overlaying this fluvial section is a thick transgressive mudstone that contains various types of marine fossils, including zoophycos, which is a trace fossil left behind by the movement of polychaete worms. Above this mudstone is a marine mud bed, rich with goniatites, and representing the final stage of the Tullig transgression. Overlying this is the Kilkee Cyclothem, which progrades overtop and marks of the onset of a new fluvial-deltaic progradation.
Day 5 Killard: Fluvial-Deltaic Deposit (Tullig Cyclothem)
May 7th
We drove several kilometers north of Trusklieve to examine the Tullig Cyclothem at Killard Bay. We observed similar coarsening upward sand bodies, as well as sedimentary structures and plant fossils that are quite similar to those observed at Trusklieve. An interesting question arose regarding this outcrop: Why do the bedform foresets dip at such a shallow angle, much lower than angle of repose? Hongbo Ma is investigating this phenomenon, and has some interesting findings based on ongoing studies in the modern Huanghe River (China) which could be used to compare to the Tullig channel dunes.
Day 6-8 Group Project
May 8th – 10th
Students self-organized into four groups of two people each, and pursued independent research projects, conducted at various field sites for the range of depositional environments. On May 10th, each team presented the results of their individual projects to the class. The following list describes the student groups and their respective project depositional environments:
Fluvial-deltaic (Trusklieve and Killard): Brandee and Andrew
Pro-Delta/Shelf (Point of Relief and Killard): Chen and Sam
Slope (Point of Relief): Garrett and Brian
Turbidite (Bridge of Ross): Pulkit and Simon
Day 9 Cliffs of Moher
May 11th
We visited the Cliffs of Moher on the northern end of County Clare. This location is distal part of the WINB, where it contains a condensed section of all the previously visited sedimentary formations. At the highest point of Cliff of Moher, stands the O’Brien’s Tower, an observation tower build by local landlord in the early 1800s. Standing by the tower, we had a spectacular view of the Loop Head peninsula and north Atlantic, which is a great way to conclude this wonderful trip.
GSAB: Controls on gravel termination in seven distributary channels of the Selenga River Delta, Baikal Rift basin, Russia
Controls on gravel termination in seven distributary channels of the Selenga River Delta, Baikal Rift basin, Russia
The Geological Society of America Bulletin (2016) doi:10.1130/B31427.1
T. Y. Dong, J. A. Nittrouer, E. Il’icheva, M. Pavlov, B. McElroy, M. J. Czapiga, H. Ma, G. Parker
The Selenga River Delta, Lake Baikal, Russia, is ∼600 km2 in size and contains multiple distributary channels that receive varying amounts of water and sediment discharge. The delta is positioned along the deep-water (∼1600 m) margin of Lake Baikal, a half-graben−styled rift basin, qualifying it as a modern analogue of a shelf-edge delta system. This study provides a detailed field survey of channel bed sediment composition, channel geometry, and water discharge. The data and analyses presented here indicate that the Selenga Delta exhibits downstream sediment fining over tens of kilometers, ranging from predominantly gravel (coarse pebble) and sand near its apex to silt and sand at the delta-lake interface. We developed an analytical framework to evaluate the downstream elimination of gravel within the multiple distributary channels. The findings include the following. (1) The Selenga River Delta consists of at least eight orders of distributary channels. (2) With increasing channel order downstream, channel cross-sectional area, width-depth ratio, water discharge, boundary shear stress, and sediment flux systematically decrease. (3) The downstream elimination of gravel in distributary channels is caused by declining boundary shear stress as a result of water discharge partitioning among the bifurcating channels. (4) Over longer time scales, gravel is contained on the delta topset due to frequent and discrete seismic events that produce subsidence and accommodation, so that coarse sediment cannot be transported to the axis of the Baikal Rift basin. The distribution of sediment grain size in deltaic channels, as related to hydrodynamics and sediment transport, plays a critical role in influencing stratigraphy, because the sustained tectonism leads to high preservation potential of the delta topset sedimentary deposits. Therefore, the Selenga River Delta provides an opportunity to explore the interactions between modern deltaic sedimentation processes and tectonics that affect the production of basin stratigraphy.
IMPORTANT NOTICE
Because of COVID-19, the field trip is being postponed to later (date TBD) this year. The seminar will continue via remote meetings through the end of the Spring 2020 semester.
As earth scientists we seek to understand the natural processes that have shaped the world around us through time. The most fundamental requirement to acquiring a deeper understanding of these mechanisms is through observation. EEPS has a strong heritage in field-based research that when combined with analytical excellence, produces skilled scientists with a broad view of Earth as a system. While Rice University is well placed to take advantage of a broad array of research resources, students in Houston do not always have immediate access to nearby geological sites that represent Earth as a system.
A generous gift from Mike Johnson enables EEPS students the opportunity to observe classic and fundamental geologic concepts in the field. Students are in charge of proposing, selecting and managing a field excursion that will benefit everyone in the department. A year-long seminar-based class run by the students prepares them to visit the locality they have selected. Papers are selected, presented and discussed, followed by activities that educate the students on how to run a field-based project. During the field excursion, elected stops will be led and presented by individual students. The knowledge gained before and during the field trip will cumulate into a multi-media field guide that will be made available to the department and public following the trips conclusion.
A significant benefit of a department-wide field excursion is the interaction of students with scientists from various disciplines. Many earth scientists only carry out field work with specialists in their own field. The real discoveries in modern earth science occur when the different disciplines are part of a collective discourse. This trip will have scientists with different backgrounds observe the same outcrops; fostering fruitful discussion that results in the generation of new and unique questions. In addition, this trip may inspire fellowship among EEPS graduate students that will hopefully create life-long collaborations and a cohesive department.
General route starting in Albuquerque, New Mexico
This year, EEPS elected to utilize Mike Johnson’s gift to lead graduate students on a 7 day field expedition to observe some of the most diverse and economically important geologic terrains in the United States.
In early June of 2020, EEPS will travel through New Mexico, Colorado and Utah, which have easily accessible exposures of metamorphic, sedimentary, and igneous rocks. Starting from Albuquerque, New Mexico they will explore the Rio Grande Rift, the San Juan Volcanic field, and the well exposed Mezozoic stratigraphy on the Colorado Plateau. Observing these diverse geologic terrains will give EEPS graduate students a chance to see how their research interests dovetail with what they observe in nature and provide opportunities to create new ideas.
Pre-Trip planning seminars
Fall semester: The graduate student of the winning field trip proposal organizes a weekly reading group focusing on the regional geology of the four corners region and come up with potential stops.
Spring semester: The weekly reading group continues. Students pick the final outcrops that they would like to visit. Each student is assigned to be an expert on 1-3 stops. Before the field trip, each student will submit their description(s) of their stop for the field guide.