OSCAR on tour, Cyprus 2016

Last week, Emma, Jowan and Dean joined the Durham University fieldtrip to the Troodos Ophiolite, Cyprus. During our three-day geological tour we embarked on a journey from the depleted upper mantle harzburgite, through the gabbroic and basaltic ocean crust to the sediments deposited on the Cretaceous seafloor.

Foreground: Jowan, Emma and Dean. Background: vertical dykes (red/brown colour)
bookending a section of pillow lavas (light grey/brown colour, above Emma's head!).

Highlights included standing on the petrological and geophysical Mohos (Mohi!), witnessing the results of pervasive serpentinisation and hydrothermal alteration and taking in the view at a fantastic section of hyaloclastites, pillows and dykes (pictured).

We're currently in the process of organising our hand specimens, annotating our field photos and writing up a short report that we'll deliver at the next project meeting in the summer.

Emma Gregory at AGU Fall Meeting 2015

Tomorrow morning (15 Dec 15), Emma will be discussing her work at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco. An array of exciting preliminary results, relating to the velocity-depth structure and anisotropy of 6 Ma oceanic crust near borehole 504B, will be showcased on a poster entitled "Seismic structure of oceanic crust at ODP borehole 504B: Investigating anisotropy and layer 2 characteristics" (V21A-3025, Moscone South). Why not drop by to find out more about the OSCAR project.

See you again soon Qunshu Tang

Today Qunshu Tang has left Durham and returned to China. Tang's one year visit to Durham to study seismic oceanography was sponsored by the China Scholarship Council. During his stay we developed a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm to model the temperature and salinity of the ocean given a seismic reflection image (2 papers submitted). He also had the opportunity to join the OSCAR cruise (JC114) and has processed the seismic images of the water structure in the Panama Basin. He plans to continue this work on his return to the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology in Guangzhou and integrate his results with other data from the OSCAR cruises. Bon voyage!

InterRidge Theoretical Institute in Hangzhou, China

Representatives from the OSCAR project attended the Third InterRidge Theoretical Institute in Hangzhou, China last week. There were many enthusiastic speakers covering a diverse range of topics from hydrothermal circulation and melt plumbing to complex ridge-transform evolution.

Richard outlined our ultimate goal of better understanding the heat and mass flux between the solid Earth and the abyssal ocean. Preliminary results on crustal structure from the Costa Rica Rift to borehole 504B (Dean), crustal anisotopy at borehole 504B (Emma) and tectonic and magmatic features near the ridge axis (Gavin) were also presented on posters. Congratulations to Emma for winning one of the three student prizes for an outstanding poster.

Workshop #1 in Durham, UK

The first OSCAR workshop was held in Durham earlier this month. It provided an opportunity to:

– review all of the data acquired during the research expeditions,
– examine initial findings and outline future research plans,
– assess key research outputs and coordinate collaboration, and
– discuss new ideas, funding and outreach.

The workshop stimulated lots of interesting discussions and was rounded off by an enjoyable evening of croquet and a bbq at Brancepeth Castle.

Conference in Durham, UK

The third annual Department of Earth Sciences conference at Durham University saw Emma and Jowan introduce the geophysical and oceanographic aspects of the OSCAR project, respectively. Their posters included an introduction to the extensive datasets that have been acquired, a summary of preliminary synthetic modelling and data processing results and an outline of their research aims within the context of the whole project.

Home rejoicing

Following a series of extremely successful oceanography and seismic cruises (see OSCAR Blog), the OSCAR participants have returned home to review and catalogue the enormous volume of data that has been acquired.