AAPG-RICE CANADIAN ROCKIES FIELD TRIP 2016
The AAPG Canada Region welcomed Rice AAPG Student Chapter for a four day guided transect through the Canadian Rockies. This trip was supported in part by funds provided by SHELL. Trip Leaders: Dr. Clinton Tippett (Geoscience Leader), Dr. Kevin Root (Geoscience Leader) and Dr. Malcolm Ross (SHELL – Rice University) Assistant trip leaders: Lacey Pyle […]
Rice University scientists propose that life in the solar system could have been very different
The Solar System of Forking Paths: Bifurcations in Planetary Evolution and the Search for Life-Bearing Planets in Our Galaxy Lenardic A., Crowley J.W., Jellinek A.M., and Weller M.. Astrobiology. June 2016, 16(7): 551-559. doi:10.1089/ast.2015.1378. —From Rice News… Rice University scientists propose that life in the solar system could have been very different If conditions had […]
AAPG Annual Convention & Exhibition, Calgary (2016)
Students, staff, professors, and alumni from Rice University, Department of Earth Science attended the AAPG, Annual Convention & Exhibition, Calgary 2016 from June 20th – June 23rd. Faculty – André W. Droxler Adjunct – Vitor Abreu, Paul M. (Mitch) Harris, Stephanie Shipp Alumni – Vitor Abreu, Martha Lou Broussard, Gary Couples, Gulce Dinc, Hunter Lockhart, Bob Milam, Jack Neal, Stephanie Shipp, Joan Spaw, Richard Spaw, Nana Xu, […]
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 […]
A Graduating Senior’s Geologic Retrospective
I am Adeene Denton, a senior in this Earth Science department, and that means I’m graduating in a very short time because Rice has decided that I am worthy even if I still feel like I have so, so much to learn. I want to thank the department and look back on what it did […]
Earth Structure and Deformation: Field Trip 2016
It was a nice and sunny Saturday when we started our journey on I-10 going west of Houston. We crossed Pleistocene and thin Pliocene rocks until we were near the Little Low Miocene Hills of Columbus, a very small strip. Finally, we arrived at our first stop where lower Cretaceous rocks onlap onto basement rocks. […]
ESCI 322 Field Trip: Mysterious Visitors from the Deep
This blog describes the 3-day field trip that the Fall 2015 ESCI 322 class took to northern California with Professors Cin-Ty Lee & Rajdeep Dasgupta and TA Laura Carter, as told by the undergraduate students: Sofia Avendano, Anthony Foster, Alexandra Homes, Garrett Lynch, Oliver Lucier, Ian Mellor-Crummey, Leila Wahab, Shannon Wang, and Sam Zapp. Day 1: […]
PetroChallenge 2015
Some Rice Earth Science students participated in PetroChallenge, an event sponsored by Schlumberger’s NExT. It is a two day, simulation-based, exploration and production-themed game where you are partnered with people from other backgrounds. There were a lot of Rice Earth Science PSM students. On the regular-track thesis program side, it was just me and my office […]
12th Annual Women’s Energy Network YWE Event
As two other undergrads and four grad students, we helped out at the Women’s Energy Network’s (WEN) 12th annual Young Women Energized (YWE) event. A lot of acronyms… We set up a small booth and then later broke into small discussion panels to talk to some Houston high school girls about getting a degree in […]
Cascades Field Trip: A Volcanic Blast!
Sept 30th: Dr. Helge Gonnermann’s Volcanic, Magmatic, and Hydrothermal Processes class set off dark and early Wednesday morning from Houston to the Cascades of California, Oregon, and Washington. We ventured across this varied volcanic terrain interpreting and learning about local and regional geologic events. The Cascades are an active continental volcanic arc resulting from the […]
Mw 8.3 September 16, 2015 Illapel, Chile Earthquake
On September 16, 2015, a magnitude 8.3 earthquake occurred offshore of Illapel, Chile along the interface between the subducting Nazca and overriding South America plates. Here I’ve used seismic data recorded in North America to image the source distribution of high-frequency energy radiated during this event using a method called back-projection. The initial 60 seconds […]
Working for the Government: Nisqually Wildlife Refuge 2015
This summer, I left the warm embrace of Houston and embarked to work for the U.S.G.S. as part of a Field Intensive Summer Internship program at the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge in Olympia, Washington. For three months, I experienced life in the northwest, and even got to try my hand at being an ecologist. The […]
Cambrian Stromatolites in Central Texas – video!
Watch Andre Droxler and his students talk about their research on Cambrian stromatolites out in Central Texas!
Rice Earth Scientists at CIDER 2015 Summer Program
Several Rice Earth Scientists (PhD students Laura Carter, Shuo Ding, Michael Farner, and Lacey Pyle, post-doc Julia Ribiero, and Professor Helge Gonnermann) have just returned from the month-long CIDER workshop hosted at UC Berkeley in California. CIDER (Cooperative Institute for Dynamic Earth Research) is a FESD-funded grant tasked with the ambitious goals of: 1) providing […]
ESCI 322 – Going Across Southern California
Students in 322 go on a geology trip across southern California led by their professor Cin-Ty Lee and graduate student Hehe Jiang. This is a mid-term field trip that the department has used to give a students a chance to apply some of their classroom knowledge to the field. When it comes to looking at […]
Earth Science ESCI 334 Field Trip
ESCI 334 is one of the Earth Science department’s capstone undergraduate courses. The field trip takes us to a location near San Ysidro, New Mexico, because of the easy access to phenomenal rock exposures, which span approximately one billion years of geological time. Students map in detail rocks that were folded and faulted during the […]
RUGS Students Visit 1 Billion-year-old Serpentinite
How do you get water back into the mantle? Serpentinites, of course! The main source of water in magmatic arcs like the Cascades comes from altered oceanic lithosphere. Interaction of the seafloor results in extensive hydration of the crust and lithospheric mantle, resulting in the conversion of olivine-rich rocks (peridotite) to a green phyllosilicate-bearing rock […]
New Micro-XRF installed – time to play!
A new micro-XRF element mapper (Horiba XGT 7000) has been installed on the third floor. This instrument excites atoms using a Rhodium x-ray source and measures the energy of the re-emitted x-rays using energy dispersive spectrometry. This instrument generates qualitative elemental maps at 50 or 100 micron spatial resolution and can handle sample sizes up to 10 […]
