Events
Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
Legend | |||||||||||
JSG | BEG | UTIG | DGS |
DeFord Lecture | Kristin Bergman
Start:March 2, 2023 at 4:00 pm
End:
March 2, 2023 at 5:00 pm
Location:
JGB 2.324 (Boyd Auditorium)
Contact:
John Lassiter
View Event
Towards a temperature record across the advent of complex life by Kristin Bergman, MIT
Abstract: The ecology and habitability of Earth is fundamentally shaped by its surface temperature. But, the further back in time we look, this history becomes increasingly difficult to reconstruct. This is particularly true over the ?4 billion years when microbes ruled and before animals like corals began making skeletons and shells out of seawater. Consequently, Earth’s temperature history in deep time is, and has been, the subject of a vigorous, decades-long debate.
In my work, we are developing multi-mineral isotopic and petrographic methods to understand the role of temperature, fluid chemistry, and diagenesis on two isotopic systems—oxygen isotopes and clumped isotopes—that reefs and other carbonates record as they grow. We are developing local records and present details of those alongside a new high-resolution record of bulk carbonate oxygen isotopes for the last billion years of Earth’s history.
My results suggest one solution to the previous ambiguity surrounding seawater oxygen isotope composition through time. Based on our results to date, and other distinctive features of our high resolution oxygen isotope record, we hypothesize that temperature, and not just atmospheric oxygen levels, was a key factor for understanding emergence, diversification and subsequent trajectory of complex life.
DeFord Lecture Series
Since the 1940’s, the DeFord (Technical Sessions) lecture series, initially the official venue for disseminating DGS 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.
RoKafe
Start:March 7, 2023 at 10:00 am
End:
March 7, 2023 at 11:00 am
Location:
JGB 2.104A
Contact:
Nicola Tisato
Faculty Meeting
Start:March 7, 2023 at 12:30 pm
End:
March 7, 2023 at 1:45 pm
Location:
JGB 4.102 (Barrow)
Contact:
Jessica Yeager
DeFord Lecture | Renyi Zhang
Start:March 9, 2023 at 4:00 pm
End:
March 9, 2023 at 5:00 pm
Location:
JGB 2.324 (Boyd Auditorium)
Contact:
John Lassiter
View Event
Do industrial emissions play a role in the catastrophe during Hurricane Harvey? by Renyi Zhang, Texas A&M University
Abstract: Hurricane Harvey caused catastrophic flooding (about 555 mm in the Houston urban area) and more than 100 deaths during 25-27 August 2017. It is tied with 2005’s Hurricane Katrina as the costliest tropical cyclone on record, inflicting 5 billion in damage, primarily from catastrophic rainfall-triggered flooding in the Houston metropolitan area and Southeast Texas. Although several recent studies have linked Hurricane Harvey’s devastation to climate change or changes in land use due to urbanization, the cause of the catastrophic flooding remains uncertain. Tropical cyclones are driven by latent heat release from condensation and are inevitably linked to the abundance of aerosols by acting as cloud condensation nuclei. In this talk, I will present results from both measurements and numerical model simulations to investigate the impacts of anthropogenic aerosols on deep moist convection, precipitation, and lightning activities during hurricane Harvey. Our work shows a non-negligible effect of anthropogenic aerosols on this regional extreme weather event, highlighting the necessity of accounting for the aerosol effects in hurricane forecast models to accurately predict precipitation and to minimize the storm damage along the heavily industrialized Gulf of Mexico region.
DeFord Lecture Series
Since the 1940’s, the DeFord (Technical Sessions) lecture series, initially the official venue for disseminating DGS 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.
UTIG Seminar Series: Liz Drenkard, GFDL NOAA
Start:March 10, 2023 at 10:30 am
End:
March 10, 2023 at 11:30 am
Location:
BEG 1.202
Contact:
Constantino Panagopulos, costa@ig.utexas.edu, 512-574-7376
View Event
Note: This week’s seminar will be held at BEG 1.202, at the Bureau of Economic Geology, next door to UTIG. Signs will be posted.
Abstract: Earth System Models (ESMs) are invaluable for understanding the ocean’s role in climate change and anticipating future global ocean conditions. Ongoing model developments toward more holistic representation of the Earth System continue to shape our knowledge of global change but, in order to capture the regional ocean processes most relevant to coastal communities and the living marine resources (LMRs) on which they depend, these models sometimes need to be translated to smaller scales. Downscaling ESMs to limited area domains can address this need, but only with significant improvements relative to past efforts, including strategic budgeting of finite computational resources to balance resolution, uncertainty quantification, and comprehensiveness needs.
I will share some of my research at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory where I use ocean models to study the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems at different scales. At the global-scale, I’ve been investigating the impact of advances in coupled land-air-sea interactions, specifically the dynamic deposition of dust to the ocean in GFDL’s ESM4, on projections of ocean biogeochemistry. We’ve found that permitting dust deposition to reflect changes in land use and aridity (rather than prescribing a deposition climatology to the ocean) dramatically impacts the distribution of Pacific Ocean iron limitation under different emission scenarios. At the regional scale, I will delve into recommendations for next-generation regional ocean projections for LMR management (e.g., considerations for model domain size, resolution, ensemble size) arising from a recent synthesis of two decades of ocean downscaling efforts. Finally, I will describe nascent NOAA-led efforts to develop high-resolution ocean and biogeochemical modeling and climate-scale prediction frameworks for the Northeast Pacific and other U.S. coastal waters.
RoKafe
Start:March 21, 2023 at 10:00 am
End:
March 21, 2023 at 11:00 am
Location:
JGB 2.104A
Contact:
Nicola Tisato
Faculty Meeting
Start:March 21, 2023 at 12:30 pm
End:
March 21, 2023 at 1:45 pm
Location:
JGB 4.102 (Barrow)
Contact:
Jessica Yeager
Doctoral Defense | Nicholas Meszaros
Start:March 22, 2023 at 2:00 pm
End:
March 22, 2023 at 4:00 pm
Location:
JGB 3.116 and VIRTUAL
Contact:
Philip Guerreo
The final doctoral examination for NICHOLAS MESZAROS has been scheduled for MARCH 22, 2023; 2:00PM; JGB 3.116 AND VIRTUAL.
The PhD project “Prelude To The Latest Caldera-Forming Eruption Of The Jemez Magmatic System, New Mexico, USA” was supervised by Dr. Jim Gardner.
Committee members include: Kenneth Befus, Richard A Ketcham, Jaime D Barnes, Matthew Zimmerer, Laura Waters
ZOOM link: https://utexas.zoom.us/j/98837704980
The defense is open to all members of the University community and the public.
DeFord Lecture | Stephanie Pierce
Start:March 23, 2023 at 4:00 pm
End:
March 23, 2023 at 5:00 pm
Location:
JGB 2.324 (Boyd Auditorium)
Contact:
John Lassiter
View Event
Functional adaptive landscapes (help) illuminate major transitions in vertebrate evolution by Stephanie Pierce, Harvard University
Abstract: The concept of the adaptive landscape has been an invaluable tool to the field of modern evolutionary biology by providing a representation of how fitness and selection vary within populations of organisms. Trait variation can be visualized as a multidimensional “landscape” (analogous to a mountain range) with height on the landscape corresponding to fitness; selection acting on populations is expected to drive populations “up-hill” to cluster around “adaptive peaks” where fitness is maximized. Although originally implemented in the study of population genetics and microevolution, paleontologist G.G. Simpson expanded the idea of the adaptive landscape to explain phenotypic change over macroevolutionary timescales. Specifically, he linked large-scale biological and geological processes, such as extinction and climate change, with shifts in adaptive peaks representing selection acting upon phenotypic traits that were of “functional benefit”. Despite decades passed, the practical application of Simpson’s adaptive landscape in macroevolution has been limited by computational challenges in quantifying the functional performance outcomes of morphological traits and how they vary across a vast phenotypic landscape. Here I will introduce a new method called “functional adaptive landscape analysis” which determines the functional trade-offs associated with morphological adaptation to differing selection regimes. I will then use this method to explore two major transitions in vertebrate evolution. First, I will tackle the fish-to-tetrapod transition and the origin of land locomotion by modelling the evolution of the humerus bone. I will show that the earliest tetrapods occupied a performance valley between water and land adaptive peaks, but that adaptations suggest some capacity for terrestrial locomotion. Second, I will discuss the ‘reptile’-to-mammal transition and the evolution of the mammalian backbone. Using vertebral morphometric data and experimental biomechanics, I will test the lateral-sagittal functional paradigm and demonstrate how this long-held idea is too simplistic to explain mammalian backbone evolution. Together, I will establish the utility of functional adaptive landscapes in quantitatively testing longstanding questions in the vertebrate fossil record and its potential application to unravelling the relationship between form, function, and adaptation across deep time.
DeFord Lecture Series
Since the 1940’s, the DeFord (Technical Sessions) lecture series, initially the official venue for disseminating DGS 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.
UTIG Seminar Series: Ben Phrampus, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Start:March 24, 2023 at 10:30 am
End:
March 24, 2023 at 11:30 am
Location:
PRC 196/ROC 1.603
Contact:
Constantino Panagopulos, costa@ig.utexas.edu, 512-574-7376
View Event
Title: Why does the US Navy care about geology? — Geospatial machine learning and an application to Arctic gas hydrates.
Abstract: The US Navy is the seaborne branch of the United States military. To fulfill the Navy’s mission of maintaining security and deterrence, the Navy relies on all earth sciences including geology and geophysics. In this talk I will introduce how the Naval Research Laboratory uses geology and tools, such as machine learning, to safeguard Navy personnel and the warfighter.
As an example of this work, I will discuss recent results of an Arctic-wide assessment of methane gas and hydrate. This work utilizes geospatial machine learned and physics-based inputs, combined with deterministic models to quantify the distribution of methane gas and hydrate contemporarily and during the Last Glacial Maximum (~20 kyrs). These assessments, when used in conjunction, can identify regions most likely to experience hydrate dissociation, potential locations of seafloor fluid flow and gas migration, and regions of active seafloor deformation due to melting permafrost.
Planetary Habitability Series: Katie Teixeira & Jialong Ren, UT Austin
Start:March 27, 2023 at 1:00 pm
End:
March 27, 2023 at 2:00 pm
Location:
PMA 15.216B
Contact:
Brandon Jones, brandon.jones@utexas.edu
View Event
TALK ONE
Speaker: Katie Teixeira, Graduate Student, Department of Astronomy, UT Austin College of Natural Sciences
Host: Brandon Jones
Title: Modeling the Evolution of Terrestrial Planet Atmospheres Through Outgassing and Escape
Abstract: With the successful deployment of JWST, and its aim to potentially search for biosignatures on exoplanets, an important endeavor, at present, is to determine whether the rocky planets we observe are likely to have atmospheres at all. M dwarfs, the main host stars of JWST’s rocky planet targets, are thought to pose a major threat to planetary atmospheres due to their high magnetic activity over several billion-year timescales, and might completely strip planets down to bare rocks. Physical models are necessary to understand how a planet’s atmosphere evolves to become what we see today. Here, I will present coupled time-dependent simulations of atmospheric escape and planetary outgassing, processes that most influence atmospheric size and composition. I will present a case study of TRAPPIST-1c, a possible “exo-Venus” for which observations have recently been taken. I will review the results of simulations of TRAPPIST-1c, specifically the constraints that they place on the history of TRAPPIST-1c’s atmospheric and geological properties. Finally, I will discuss both simulation and observational developments that will aid in understanding rocky planets like TRAPPIST-1c.
Biography: Katie is a 2nd year graduate student in the Department of Astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin. She received a B.S. in Astrophysics and Biology from the University of Florida. There she worked with Sarah Ballard to study the demographics of M dwarf exoplanets and implications for biological evolution. She now works with Caroline Morley, developing and using simulations to model the evolution of CO2-dominated terrestrial planet atmospheres. Broadly, Katie is interested in what makes planets habitable and how to search for both habitable and inhabited planets.
TALK TWO
Speaker: Jialong Ren, Graduate Student, Department of Geological Sciences, UT Austin Jackson School of Geosciences
Host: Brandon Jones
Title: Permeability Limited Compaction and (De)Serpentinization of Ceres
Abstract: The Dawn Mission revealed a surprise that Ceres is still hydrologically active, so its interior structure is important to explain the energy and mass transport at a later stage. In this work, we investigate the compaction history of dwarf planet Ceres with a two-phase flow scheme: viscous compaction of ductile rock coupled with Darcy’s flow in porous media. In such a scheme first used in the differentiation of volatile rich bodies, compaction is limited by pressure gradient required to expel the pore fluid and permeability as a function of porosity. Moreover, we also considered two phase changes: ice-melting and (de)serpentinization.
Biography: My background is in fluid/solid mechanics and numerical simulations. Currently I am interested in planetary science. There are two projects in process: 1) fragmentation and reassembly into rubble piles of planetesimals and 2) compaction and differentiation of small ocean worlds such as Ceres.
RoKafe
Start:March 28, 2023 at 10:00 am
End:
March 28, 2023 at 11:00 am
Location:
JGB 2.104A
Contact:
Nicola Tisato
DeFord Lecture | Dustin Trail
Start:March 30, 2023 at 4:00 pm
End:
March 30, 2023 at 5:00 pm
Location:
JGB 2.324 (Boyd Auditorium)
Contact:
John Lassiter
View Event
Traversing the chemical landscape of the early Earth by Dustin Trail, University of Rochester
Abstract: The conditions that gave rise to life on Earth are still unknown. Despite this, there is broad agreement that the early planet was habitable, with interactions between low-temperature water and rock, potentially creating the substrate upon which life arose. While planetary-scale constraints are a crucial part of habitability, it’s likely that key prebiotic chemistry occurred in smaller, more localized environments. This presentation will examine the early Earth environment on a global scale through zircon chemistry, while also delving into possible local environments and scenarios that may have played a significant role in prebiotic chemistry or the emergence of life.
DeFord Lecture Series
Since the 1940’s, the DeFord (Technical Sessions) lecture series, initially the official venue for disseminating DGS 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.
UTIG Seminar Series: Nicholas Harmon, WHOI
Start:March 31, 2023 at 10:30 am
End:
March 31, 2023 at 11:30 am
Location:
BEG 1.202
Contact:
Constantino Panagopulos, costa@ig.utexas.edu, 512-574-7376
View Event