Here are all the latest EarthByte news posts. See News Archive for recent years.
EarthByte also publishes the ‘GPlates News‘ newsletter every quarter. The GPlates newsletter contains features such as the latest GPlates updates, tutorials and datasets, EarthByte news highlights and much more! Click here to view the latest and past editions of ‘GPlates News‘, or subscribe to receive the newsletters.
GPlates is a free desktop software for the interactive visualisation of plate-tectonics. The compilation and documentation of GPlates 2.3 data was primarily funded by AuScope National Collaborative Research Infrastructure (NCRIS).
GPlates is developed by the EarthByte Group (part of AuScope NCRIS) at the University of Sydney and the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS) at California Institute of Technology (CalTech). … Read more…
Assessing the size of a former ocean of which only remnants are found in mountain belts is challenging but crucial to understanding subduction and exhumation processes. Here we present new constraints on the opening and width of the Piemont–Liguria (PL) Ocean, known as the Alpine Tethys together with the Valais Basin. We use a regional … Read more…
Porphyry copper (Cu) systems occur along magmatic belts derived in subduction zones. Our current under- standing of their formation is restricted to observations from the overriding plate, resulting in a knowledge gap in terms of processes occurring in convergence zones through time. An association between key tectonic processes and the timing and location of porphyry … Read more…
The driving mechanisms of Earth’s climate system at a multi-Myr timescale have received considerable attention since the 1980’s as they are deemed to control large-amplitude climatic variations that result in severe biogeochemical disruptions, major sea-level variations, and the evolution of Earth’s land- and seascapes through geological time. The commonly accepted mechanism for these changes derives … Read more…
Behnam Sadeghi from EarthByte Group has published a new paper in journal “Ore Geology Reviews”, based on his PhD thesis. In this research, to explore the VMS Cu deposits throughout Sweden a novel multifractal model of concentration-distance from centroids (C-DC) has been developed and applied to the till data provided by the Geological Survey of … Read more…
Join the IGCP 648 Virtual Seminar Series on Thursday, 17 June, at 9am Australian Eastern Standard Time, on “Plate tectonic rules, absolute plate motions and plate mantle system evolution” by Dietmar Müller Register here:
We are seeking to appoint an enthusiastic researcher at either a Level A or Level B to join the research team for the STELLAR project group (Spatio TEmporaL expLorAtion for Resources). STELLAR is a collaboration between BHP and the EarthByte Group at the University of Sydney aimed at implementing big and complex spatio-temporal data analysis … Read more…
The existence of mantle plumes was first proposed in the 1970s to explain intra-plate, hotspot volcanism, yet owing to difficulties in resolving mantle upwellings with geophysical images and discrepancies in interpretations of geochemical and geochronological data, the origin, dynamics and composition of plumes and their links to plate tectonics are still contested. In a recently … Read more…
Dr. Behnam Sadeghi from EarthByte Group has published this paper recently in the journal “Geochemistry-Chemie der Erde” (Special Issue of “Mineral exploration: a journey from fieldwork, to laboratory work, computational modelling and mineral processing”). This research is part of a research project with the University of Neyshabur, which has been done in SE Iran. Abstract … Read more…
In Eastern Asia, Jurassic and Cretaceous intraplate volcanism and magmatism differ in their spatial distribution and composition. A combination of plate kinematic and geodynamic models provides clues for their causes.
Behnam Sadeghi has published this paper in the Iranian Journal of Earth Sciences. In this research, he has developed an algorithm to down-scale the maps, to reduce the simulation time and the required memory, but to keep the same geostatistical performance and accuracy. This model strongly helps with huge and time-consuming simulations. Abstract In geochemical … Read more…
Carbonate accumulation rates (CAR) in the South Atlantic through time, with the average CCD for the South Atlantic shown in black, which the CCD in the Walvis Ridge/Rio Grande Rise area is shown in magenta. Deep-sea carbonate deposition is a complex process that is encapsulated in the carbonate compensation depth (CCD)—a facies boundary separating calcareous … Read more…
We are very excited to announce the launch of the newly designed GPlates website. Visit the new website at www.gplates.org. After a few months of team work and dedication, we have made the new GPlates website more responsive and more mobile-friendly. As the development team of the GPlates open source project, our goal with this … Read more…
Weighting of BLEG data with drainage and catchment properties to enhance Au anomalies Dr. Behnam Sadeghi with Profs. Huseyin Yilmaz and Franco Pirajno, has published this paper in journal “Geochemistry/Chemie der Erde”, based on bulk leachable extractable gold (BLEG) data in Western Turkey, considering several other relevant parameters such catchments’ areas, slopes and curvatures plus … Read more…
Category-based fractal modelling: A novel model to integrate the geology into the data for more effective processing and interpretation Dr. Behnam Sadeghi and his PhD supervisor, Prof. David Cohen, has published another paper in Journal of Geochemical Exploration. This paper is based on his PhD thesis. In this research, they have proposed two novel fractal … Read more…
In the latest Geology Bites podcast series, Dietmar Muller talks about the challenges and benefits of reconstructing Earth evolution over a billion years with Oliver Strimpel, former astrophysicist and museum director, and Visiting Professor at the Department of Earth Sciences at Oxford University. https://www.geologybites.com/ A transcript of the podcast can be found here.
We have developed a novel data-driven approach to reconstruct precipitation patterns through geological time, since the supercontinent Pangea was in existence. Our approach involves linking climate-sensitive sedimentary deposits such as coal, evaporites and glacial deposits to a global plate model, reconstructed paleo-elevation maps and high-resolution General Circulation Models via Bayesian machine learning. We model the … Read more…
Dr Nicolas Flament, University of Wollongong Dr Flament works at the interface between geodynamics and geology by novel 4D mathematical modelling of flow deep in Earth’s interior. He makes significant contributions to understanding our planet by connecting the evolution of the deep Earth with the evolution of its surface. He shows Earth was largely a water … Read more…
How a bit of the Australian desert is destined for the Red Planet – A small piece of the Pilbara holds the secret to an ancient geological environment that was common to Earth and Mars 3.5 billion years ago. Find out how Patrice Rey from the School of Geosciences played a pivotal role in unearthing … Read more…
New research shows how the earth’s tectonic plates have shifted over the last billion years. Tectonic plates are irregular-shaped slabs of solid rock which can vary massively in size from a few hundred to thousands of kilometres across. Heat from radioactive processes within the planet’s interior causes the plates to shift. And this movement creates … Read more…
Long-lived, widespread intraplate volcanism without age progression is one of the most controversial features of plate tectonics. Previously proposed edge-driven convection, asthenospheric shear, and lithospheric detachment fail to explain the ~5000-km-wide intraplate volcanic province from eastern Australia to Zealandia. We model the subducted slab volume over 100 million years and find that slab flux drives … Read more…
The relationships between plate motions and basal mantle structure remain poorly understood, with some models implying that the basal mantle structure has remained stable over time, while others suggest that it could be shaped by the aggregation and dispersal of supercontinents. Here we investigate the evolution of mantle flow driven by end‐member plate tectonic models … Read more…
Modeling the Dynamic Landscape Evolution of a Volcanic Coastal Environment Under Future Climate Trajectories Kyle Manley, T. Salles and R. D. Müller As anthropogenic forcing continues to rapidly modify worldwide climate, impacts on landscape changes will grow. Olivine weathering is a natural process that sequesters carbon out of the atmosphere, but is now being proposed … Read more…
Abstract: Polymetallic nodules found on the abyssal plains of the oceans represent one of the slowest known geological processes, and are a source of critical and rare metals for frontier technologies. A quantitative assessment of their occurrence worldwide has been hampered by a research focus on the northeastern Pacific Ocean and the lack of a … Read more…
Abstract: Subduction is a fundamental mechanism of material exchange between the planetary interior and the surface. Despite its significance, our current understanding of fluctuating subducting plate area and slab volume flux has been limited to a range of proxy estimates. Here we present a new detailed quantification of subduction zone parameters from the Late Triassic … Read more…
Abstract: There are a significant number of image processing methods that have been developed during the past decades for detecting anomalous areas, such as hydrothermal alteration zones, using satellite images. Among these methods, dimensionality reduction or transformation techniques are known to be a robust type of methods, which are helpful, as they reduce the extent … Read more…
Abstract: Anomalous topographic swells and Cenozoic volcanism in east Africa have been associated with mantle plumes. Several models involving one or more fixed plumes beneath the northeastward migrating African plate have been suggested to explain the space-time distribution of magmatism in east Africa. We devise paleogeographically constrained global models of mantle convection and, based on … Read more…
Abstract: The complex and computationally expensive nature of landscape evolution models poses significant challenges to the inference and optimization of unknown model parameters. Bayesian inference provides a methodology for estimation and uncertainty quantification of unknown model parameters. In our previous work, we developed parallel tempering Bayeslands as a framework for parameter estimation and uncertainty quantification … Read more…
Abstract: Traditional approaches to develop 3D geological models employ a mix of quantitative and qualitative scientific techniques, which do not fully provide quantification of uncertainty in the constructed models and fail to optimally weight geological field observations against constraints from geophysical data. Here, using the Bayesian Obsidian software package, we develop a methodology to fuse … Read more…
Abstract: Reconstructions of past seafloor age make it possible to quantify how plate tectonic forces, surface heat flow, ocean basin volume and global sea-level have varied through geological time. However, past ocean basins that have now been subducted cannot be uniquely reconstructed, and a significant challenge is how to explore a wide range of possible … Read more…
