Events

EPS Faculty Meeting

DeFord Lecture | Scott Jasechko

Global groundwater well water levels and drilling activities

Dr. Scott Jasechko, University of California, Santa Barbara

Abstract: Groundwater resources sustain human livelihoods and ecosystem health, but they are under pressure from overuse. Here we report on a continental-scale and locally relevant database of groundwater well construction reports. We analyze these data to (i) evaluate how groundwater users (i.e., humans) are responding to groundwater depletion in numerous areas around the globe, and (ii) to compare water levels in wells to water levels of nearby streams to map out which rivers may be leaking into the subsurface as they flow downstream.

DeFord Lecture Series
Since the 1940’s, the DeFord (Technical Sessions) lecture series, initially the official venue for disseminating EPS graduate student research, is a forum for lectures by distinguished visitors and members of our community. This is made possible through a series of endowments.

TBD - Bureau Seminar Series

Bureau Seminar Series

UTIG Seminar: Antoniette Greta Grima, UTIG

Contact costa@ig.utexas.edu for a link to join the live talk.

Speaker: Antoniette Greta Grima, Postdoctoral Fellow, UTIG
 
Host: Thorsten Becker

Title: On the evolution of slab morphology and topography at subduction zones

Abstract: Subduction of oceanic lithosphere is a key mechanism for modifying overriding continental plates permanently and so affects the thermo-chemical evolution of our planet. In particular, overriding plate deformation and stress fluctuate as the slab transitions throughout the upper mantle, and that time-dependent deformation is recorded geologically.

We use 2-D numerical models of subduction and surface deformation with a free surface to understand how overriding plate heterogeneity and slab dynamics interact to deform the continental lithosphere. We observe that a heterogeneous continental lithosphere is a fundamental ingredient for the way in which the foreland region is affected by basin formation and extension. These insights may facilitate interpretation of sedimentological constraints in light of upper mantle slab dynamics.

Slab evolution at transition zone depths also varies greatly based on the overriding plate type, with continental lithosphere encouraging slab penetration into the lower mantle. However, slab behavior is also influenced by increasing viscosity and sharp changes in density and temperature due to a series of phase changes, as reflected in the complex morphology of deep slabs seen in seismic tomography. We identify deep slab break-off around 660 km (“slab orphaning”) as a new flavor of dynamical processes involved in these deep slab morphologies. Orphaning is one way by which slabs switch between penetrative and flattened modes, and thus provides another example of the links between phase change dynamics, viscosity layering in the mantle, and surface deformation.

UT Paleontology Seminar: Lachie Scarsbrook

DeFord Lecture | Mattheos Santamouris

Urban Overheating: The Impact on Energy and Health, State of the art and the potential of mitigation technologies

Dr. Mattheos Santamouris, University New South WalesAbstract: Regional climate change in cities is the most documented phenomenon of climate change. Higher urban temperatures are documented experimentally for more than 450 major cities in the world. Numerous investigations demonstrate that the mean magnitude of the temperature increase may exceed 4-6 C, while at the peak it may exceed 10 C. The serious increase of the frequency and the strength of heat waves creates strong synergies between the global and regional climate change and intensify the magnitude of the overheating.
Urban overheating causes a serious impact both on the energy demand and generation sectors. It increases the cooling energy consumption of buildings, rises the peak electricity demand and obliges utilities to built additional power plants, it affects seriously health issues and in particular heat related mortality and morbidity, impacts the concentration of pollutants and damages the urban environmental quality, and finally deteriorates the levels of local vulnerability and thermal comfort.
To counterbalance the problem of urban overheating, numerous heat mitigation systems and technologies are proposed, and implemented in more than 250 large scale urban projects. Mitigation policies and technologies aim to strength the cooling potential of heat sinks and weaken the intensity of the heat sources. Among the developed mitigation technologies, the use of advanced, materials like the recently developed photonic components and the reflective, cool materials, the implementation of additional greenery in buildings and open spaces, the use of passive evaporative systems involving additional irrigation of urban zones and finally the dissipation of the excess heat into the ground seems to provide the higher mitigation potential.
Although mitigation seems to seriously counterbalance the impacts of urban overheating, there is a need to adapt the built environment to face the present and future climate challenges. Adaptation technologies involving advanced energy and environmental systems for buildings, may minimize the energy needs of buildings and provide indoor comfortable conditions with the minimum energy use.
The present lecture reviews and reports the recent progress and knowledge on the specific impact of current and projected urban overheating in energy, peak electricity demand, air quality, mortality and morbidity and urban vulnerability. In parallel, it discusses new findings related to the characteristics and the magnitude of urban overheating, and reports and analyse the recent knowledge on the synergies between urban heat island and heat waves. Finally, it presents the recent developments in the field of mitigation technologies for buildings and cities and provides inside information on the current and future potential.

DeFord Lecture Series
Since the 1940’s, the DeFord (Technical Sessions) lecture series, initially the official venue for disseminating EPS graduate student research, is a forum for lectures by distinguished visitors and members of our community. This is made possible through a series of endowments.

TBD - Bureau Seminar Series

Bureau Seminar Series

UTIG Seminar: Reed Scherer, Northern Illinois University

Contact costa@ig.utexas.edu for a link to join the live talk.

Visit the Event Page

Contact costa@ig.utexas.edu for a link to join the live talk.

This is an Ocean Discovery Lecture Series talk!

Speaker: Reed Scherer, Distinguished Research Professor, Micropaleontology and Biostratigraphy, Northern Illinois University

Host: Sean Gulick

Title: Inferring West Antarctic Ice Sheet History from Diatoms Offshore, Nearshore, Downcore and Beneath the Ice Sheet

Abstract: For more than four decades the paleoceanography community has worked to reconstruct ice sheet history. Similarly, glaciologists and ice sheet modelers have worked to understand ice sheet dynamics and mechanisms of long-term ice sheet growth and decay. Pleistocene history of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) had been particularly difficult to resolve. Mercer (1978, Nature) inferred WAIS collapse during the last interglacial, whereas Kennett (1977, JGR) suggested relative stability of Antarctic ice since the latest Miocene.

Interpreting past WAIS collapse events from ocean drilling records requires clearer understanding of the oceanographic drivers as well as the effects of ice sheet retreat. I will discuss recent advances in directly tying Antarctic nearshore and subglacial records with those of the deep sea, with a particular focus on diatoms as tracers, which have provided notable insights. Sediments recovered from subglacial basins (e.g., the WISSARD Project) provide incomplete but direct evidence of marine events in the Antarctic interior. More continuous marginal ocean records (e.g., IODP Expeditions 374 and 379 and the ANDRILL program) provide clear evidence of significant glacial-interglacial changes, but unique signatures of past collapse events are more elusive.

Recent advances in glaciological observations and coupled ice sheet/ocean models has brought us to the threshold of more confident forecasting of ice sheet behavior, thus future sea level rise under different CO₂ emissions scenarios. High resolution paleoceanography is a critical component of assessing the veracity of these models.

About the Speaker: Reed Scherer is Board of Trustees Professor and Distinguished Research Professor of Geology & Environmental Geosciences at Northern Illinois University. He’s sailed on two ODP and one IODP expedition to date, plus ten expeditions to the Antarctic continent, including participation in ANDRILL 1B, the Cape Roberts Project and the WISSARD project.

Brandon Schwartz, Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University

Techno-economic Analysis of Enhanced Performance of Large-scale Wind Power Generation Using Underground Hydrogen Storage

The intermittent nature of wind power generation creates mismatches between electricity supply and demand, limiting its penetration in modern electricity grids. We explore the impact of salt cavern storage of hydrogen gas produced using water electrolysis during periods of excess wind power generation on overall project finances for a hypothetical 1 GW electricity market. Rate of return (ROR) is used to quantify project outcomes for a 30-year project over a range of ten variables including cavern size, cavern installation costs, cost of hydrolysis, transmission costs, production tax credit, and compression costs. Our key finding is that salt cavern storage of hydrogen can enhance the capacity factor of a wind project without losing power generation capacity: the 1 GW wind farm is able to utilize an additional 41 GWh of energy in the form of hydrogen. While the ROR ranges from approximately 8% to 20% for non-storage scenarios, the rate of return ranges between 20% to 35% when including storage costs and benefits. The cost of hydrolysis is evaluated at {CALENDAR} to 8M per year. We consider the case of hydrolysis having zero cost to correlate to the practice of pricing excess wind power generation at {CALENDAR}/kWh—if excess wind power has zero value, then using it to generate hydrogen via hydrolysis has zero cost. We find that the additional CAPEX and OPEX of salt cavern installation are far outweighed by the benefits of hydrogen storage as a large-scale renewable energy battery. Our results also suggest that subsidies for hydrogen storage generate higher RORs than the production tax credit, meaning that wind power penetration increase further with storage subsidies than with electricity generation subsidies.

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Doctoral Defense | Sebastian Ramiro Ramirez

The final doctoral examination for SEBASTIAN RAMIRO RAMIREZ has been scheduled for FEBRUARY 18, 2022; 10AM; JGB 4.102 (Barrow Family Conference Room).

 

The PhD project ” Integrated Stratigraphic And Petrophysical Analysis Of The Wolfcamp At Delaware Basin, West Texas, USA” was supervised by Dr. Peter Flemings.

 

Committee members include:

Nicola Tisato 

Athma R Bhandari 

Hugh C Daigle 

Charles Kerans 

 

The defense is open to all members of the University community and the public.

 

UTIG Seminar: Srisharan Shreedharan, UTIG

Contact costa@ig.utexas.edu for a link to join the live talk.

Speaker: Srisharan Shreedharan, Postdoctoral Fellow, UTIG
 
Host: Shuoshuo Han
 
Title: The sound of friction: Probing the mechanics of earthquake nucleation through experimental seismology and fault mechanics

Abstract: Variations in seismic wave properties before, during and after frictional instabilities have been documented in laboratory experiments as well as in a limited number of crustal earthquakes. These variations are generally attributed to fault zone healing, changes in crack density, or pore fluid effects modulated dilatation or fault slip. However, the relationships between amplitude and velocity variations during the seismic cycle, and the underlying mechanisms of precursors to failure remain poorly understood. In this talk, I introduce frictional shear experiments and the concurrently measured evolution of seismic wave properties throughout the laboratory seismic cycle. I show, through precise measurements of relative changes in seismic wave properties in the fault zone and surrounding rock, that these waves can probe earthquake nucleation and serve as stress and slip-meters. Moreover, I show that pre-earthquake changes in seismic wave speed may be more common than previously thought because they are masked by far-field tectonic stiffening. These results underscore the importance of continuous and long-term time-lapse monitoring of crustal faults for seismic hazard assessment.

UT Paleontology Seminar: Grace Musser

Bureau Seminar Series- Kyle Henderson, Ph.D. McGill University

Bureau Seminar Series

Water, Climate and Environment Seminar | Newton Nguyen - Caltech

From source to sink: towards constraining methane sources and sinks

Date/Time: Friday February 25, 12:00 pm CDT

Location: Zoom

Join Zoom Meeting
https://utexas.zoom.us/j/93865487444

Meeting ID: 938 6548 7444

UTIG Seminar Series: Heather Ford, Queen Mary University of London, UK

Contact costa@ig.utexas.edu for a link to join the live talk.

Speaker: Heather Ford, NERC Independent Research Fellow, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Science, Queen Mary University of London

Host: Yuko Okumura

Title: Paleo-reconstructions of Pacific climate – the global pacemaker and Achilles heel of climate projections

Abstract: Studying past ocean dynamics is vital for constraining future climate change. I use the geochemistry of fossil shells found in marine sediment to reconstruct past ocean conditions. During the mid-Pliocene warm period (~3 million years ago), global temperatures were 2-3°C warmer than today and CO2 is estimated to be similar to higher to today, making it a pseudo-analog for future climate change. In this talk I will present two data-model comparisons looking at Pacific deep ocean carbon cycling and tropical dynamics. Today in the North Pacific no deep water forms because of a strong halocline, but North Pacific Deep Water may have existed during the mid-Pliocene warm period. New results combined with previously published carbon isotope records show a spatial pattern consistent with a North Pacific Deep Water ventilating the deep ocean. Although the modelled Pliocene ocean maintains a carbon budget similar to the present, the change in deep ocean circulation configuration causes pronounced downstream changes in biogeochemistry in the tropical Pacific. Proxy data show the tropical Pacific had a reduced zonal temperature gradient and a deep thermocline; because this configuration looks similar to a modern El Niño event, this mean state is called “El Padre”. Models that best match with the proxy data dynamically link the eastern tropical Pacific sea surface temperature and thermocline. Future work includes using carbon models to understand deep ocean carbon storage and exploring climate transitions during the Northern Hemisphere Glaciation, mid-Pleistocene Transition and mid-Brunhes Event.