Inaugural lecture series

Mostly Geochemistry

Pollution and waste have been companions to human development. In the past, the natural world was considered infinite, as was the Earth’s capacity to assimilate our wastes. Now we may know better but keep on making mistakes. The diverse chemical conditions that occur in natural and engineered environments result in radically different contaminant fates and ecotoxicity outcomes. Therefore, to understand how to fix pollution, we require data on the chemical form and behaviour of contaminants as they spread about in nature. This information also helps plan potential interventions aimed at reducing harm. Increasingly, there is also the opportunity to recover value from our wastes. If this can be achieved using less resources, while also protecting the environment, so much the better. In this talk I will cover just some of the stuff that has interested me as I tried to look at what happens as humans busily convert natural resources to economic activity and return what’s left over to nature. Although it feels like I’ve done a lot of different things, it’s all been mostly geochemistry.

Ian studied Environmental Geoscience at the University of Edinburgh. This was a brilliant time in a brilliant city. A project on oxidation fronts in deep sea sediments lead Ian to want to be an oceanographer, work on research ships and look at the chemistry of mud. So, he went and did a PhD at the Southampton Oceanography Centre, working on research ships and looking at the chemistry of mud. This was fun too, but he learned that people who spend their life on ships often do so alone. So, while Ian still wanted to look at the chemistry of mud, he wanted to do so while being on land. Three available postdocs seemed to fit this bill, so Ian chose best one, moved to Leeds, and made his career out of the geochemistry of (contaminated) mud. Along the way he did almost every job there was going for the environmental science degree programme and met an enormous number of brilliant (and increasing younger) people who have immeasurably enriched my life.

Prof Rob Newton

The sulfurous story of mass extinctions

Sulfur is an abundant element at the Earth’s surface that’s released in substantial quantities by volcanoes, forms an important part of seawater, and which can have a profound effect on Earth’s environment. Understanding the ways in which sulfur is transported and transformed at the Earth’s surface provides us with insights that can be applied to sulfur trapped in ancient sediments to explore changes in Earth’s environment millions of years ago. Much of my work has focussed on what a study of sulfur (and a few other elements) can tell us about mass extinction events: the huge, often volcanically driven, catastrophes for multicellular life which occurred repeatedly throughout the last half a billion years. I’ll talk about the evolution of my career, the scientific ideas developed with a series of wonderful colleagues, and discuss why sulfur may not just record these events, but may also be important in their genesis and severity.

Rob studied geology and geography at what is now Anglia Ruskin University. Following his policy of ‘at least year out between all of his qualifications’ he then worked at the British Geological Survey on their borehole database, during which time he realised that to get a really interesting job he might have to do some more studying. This lead to an MSc in Geochemistry at the University of Leeds where he has been ever since, first working as a postgraduate research assistant on a wide variety of projects, and then studying for a part time PhD on the carbon, sulfur and iron geochemistry of the Jurassic early Toarcian event. After his PhD he became a research fellow,  a senior research fellow (during which time he led the MSc he once did), and then associate professor, before becoming a Professor of Earth Surface Geochemistry.

 

 

Professor Natasha Barlow

“I’ve been to the year 3000, Not much has changed, But they live underwater” (Busted, 2003)

Changes in sea level, ice sheets and environments in response to climate change over the past 500,000 years (geologically, the very recent past) have shaped many of the landscapes we see today.  Work in our research group has sought to understand why and how sea-level changes over time, in response to climate and earthquakes, and the resulting coastal and marine landscape response. Understanding the rate and magnitude of environmental change in the recent past also provides important contextual information for offshore wind developments and storylines for future Earth system response.  In this lecture, I will explore how past sea level and environmental research can be used to test the Busted (2003) ‘hypothesis’ and, along the way, highlight some of the work done by the amazing early career researchers I have the absolute pleasure of working with.

Natasha is Professor of Environmental Change in the School of Earth and Environment. She trained as a Geographer, with her formative years (from undergraduate to senior postdoc) spent within the renowned Quaternary research group at Durham University.  She arrived at Leeds in 2016 as a University Academic Fellow. Her research focuses on the rates and magnitudes of past sea level to understand changes in ice sheets, climate and tectonics. Natasha also works alongside industry to ensure that Quaternary research lays the foundations for sustainable offshore wind development, and is interested in how climate change drives the storage of carbon in coastal and marine environments. Natasha is a former leader (2018-2023) of PALSEA, the international palaeo sea-level and ice sheet working group, and currently serves as a member of the PAGES Scientific Steering Committee. Beyond her research, she is captivated by the role of non-academic communication in the climate crisis and acts as a scientific advisor on ‘Meltwater’, an immersive performance focussing on ‘water’ as an environmental disruptor.

Professor Jon Mound

A geophysical journey to the centre of the Earth

Earth is a dynamic planet with global scale movements driven by the escape of heat from its deep interior. Motions of the liquid metal core and solid silicate mantle occur at very different rates and together they impact a variety of observable features on times scales from a few years to a few billion years. The Earth's magnetic and gravitational fields, rotation, and surface shape are all influenced by the dynamics of its deep interior. This talk will cover some of the ways I have investigated the physical processes occurring in the core and mantle, and at the boundary between them, and how we can use observations at the surface to understand what happens thousands of kilometres beneath our feet.

Jon studied Geology and Physics at the University of Toronto and did an MSc and PhD in Physics there as well. After his PhD he held a NSERC postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of British Colombia, followed by positions at the University of Toronto and Harvard. In 2006 he joined the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds as a lecturer in geophysics and is now Professor of Global Geophysics and co-director of the Institute of Geophysics and Tectonics. His research uses a combination of theoretical and computational approaches to investigate the dynamics of the deep Earth and to understand how they impact global scale observables such as the structure and variability of the geomagnetic field.

1. Professor Ben Mills and Professor Amanda Maycock

Monday 3rd June 2024, 5.30 – 6.30pm at Esther Simpson LT 1.01. Followed by a drinks reception in the School of Earth and Environment Foyer.
 

Booking details can be found here

Professor Ben Mills: Making toy planets and trying to keep them alive

 

The history of the Earth is remarkable in many ways. On one hand, it is amazing that we have managed to figure out what the planet was like billions of years ago. On the other hand, we still do not know the answer to so many basic questions, such as why the atmosphere is so rich in oxygen, or how the Earth’s global temperature has remained so stable and comfortable for life. Our own solar system is full of examples of inhospitable worlds, but when we look out into space, we have quickly found planets that appear to be more similar to our own. In this lecture – with the help of our computerised toy planet – I will explain some of the biggest problems we have in understanding the evolution of our world, introduce some of the solutions my group has developed, and speculate on what this means for the existence of habitable worlds elsewhere.

Ben studied mathematics at UEA Norwich and moved to their Environmental Science department for his PhD. He has since worked at the Universities of Exeter and Bristol, before moving to Leeds as an Academic Fellow in 2015. He designs ‘Earth Evolution’ computer models, which aim to explain the changing chemical make-up of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans over the entire history of the planet, and even into the deep future. His research group is now working to simulate how life and planetary environments have shaped each other over time and how they might do so on ‘exoplanets’ outside of our solar system.

Professor Amanda Maycock: Chasing the signal and the noise in Earth’s climate

 

Edward Lorenz famously coined the ‘butterfly effect’ to describe the chaotic nature of Earth’s climate. He posited that a butterfly flapping its wings could lead to a tornado forming many miles away. Interpreting the observed climate record and projecting climate into the future using computer models therefore requires an appreciation of how chaotic variability (noise) interacts with the overall trend of human-caused climate change (signal). Much of the research I conduct concerns understanding the variability that the climate system generates by itself, our ability to accurately capture this variability in state-of-the-art computer climate models, and the implications for projecting future climate change. In this lecture, I will explain the importance of understanding both the signal and the noise of climate using examples from research conducted by the talented early career researchers I have been fortunate to work with.

Amanda studied Physics at the University of Manchester followed by an MSc and PhD in Climate Science at the University of Reading. She undertook postdoctoral research in Cambridge, where she held an AXA Research Fellowship. In 2015 she joined the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds as a NERC Research Fellow. She has since served as Lead Author for the 2018 WMO/UNEP Ozone Assessment Report and the 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report. She co-leads the World Climate Research Programme Atmospheric Processes and their Role in Climate Project and was Director of the Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science at Leeds from 2020-24. Her research uses observations and computer climate models to investigate the mechanisms that cause climate variability and climate change on timescales spanning seasons to centuries.