News

Dry Valleys- uncovering the past to predict the future

(8 June 2005)

Two geologists from the Department of Earth Sciences of Durham University are analysing rock crystals from Antarctica as part of an international quest to learn more about the formation of the planet.

The samples were collected as part of a ‘Magmatic Field Workshop’ in the Dry Valley in Antarctica, funded by the NSF (US National Science Foundation)

Professor Jon Davidson and Dr Dougal Jerram were two out of three British researches who joined the team assembled by Bruce Marsh from Johns Hopkins University to help extend the research he has been doing there for the past fifteen years, to unravel some of the more complex problems associated with volcanic activity.

This team of twenty-three scientists with different backgrounds and expertise went to the Dry Valleys, a unique part of Antarctica which, because it has virtually no precipitation and because the Transantarctic Mountains dam the advance of ice, is in actual fact a sub-zero desert.

This landscape is so extraordinary, not least because of its extraordinary character in an area that is all around surrounded by ice, but also because this is where geologists could unlock a veritable source of secrets to the future.

The Dry Valleys environment allows geologists, in effect, to look back in time in order to predict what will happen in the future in other parts of the globe. The volcanic sills are completely exposed. There’s no vegetation or layers of sedimentary rock to hinder access to the outcrops, giving the scientists the opportunity for close study that does not exist in other locations. This means that they can more easily access what they refer to as the plumbing system that transports magma to the earth’s crust.

New techniques from the three dimensional imaging in Durham University’s E-Science Laboratory enable geologists to look at the textures formed by crystals contained in volcanic rocks that make up the plumbing system of this once massive volcanic system erupting some 180 million years ago accompanied by the break up of the super continent Gondwanaland which formed South America, Asia, Australia and Antarctica.

Recent technological advances have meant that scientists can analyse single crystals or even make several analyses of a single crystal. Isotopic compositions act as a sort of ‘rock DNA’ to tell what the origins of the crystal or parts of the crystal are. By analysing isotopic compositions from core to rim, similar to tree rings, they can recover a history of the changing environment in which the crystal grew.

With fifteen years of samples collected, it is their hope that this information will help them to better understand the cycles of volcanic activity as these can have significant effects for human society, not least in their impact on climate change. It is this volcanic impact on climate that has been linked with some of the major extinctions of species that we have seen in the past.

ends

To see more, including Antarctica video footage of this story, please visit: http://www.research-tv.com/stories/science/antarctic/

A beta format tape is available for broadcasters from the University PR Office

For more information, please contact:

Professor Jon Davidson
Department of Earth Sciences
Durham University
Tel: 0191 334 2328
E-mail: j.p.davidson@durham.ac.uk

Dr Dougal Jerram
Department of Earth Sciences
Durham University
Tel: 0191 334 2281
E-mail: d.a.jerram@durham.ac.uk

Media enquiries to: Joy Davis, Public Relations Office, The University Office Tel 0191 334 6803, E-mail joy.davis@durham.ac.uk