Research

The EarthByte research group is involved in a variety of projects funded both by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council (ARC) and through industry and other government departments. Our main research interests include:

Plate kinematics
Global and regional geodynamics
Structural geology
Archaean geodynamics
Palaeo-climate modelling
Exploration geodynamics
Basin evolution and linking surface processes to tectonics
GeoInformatics

The EarthByte research group collaborates with many national and international research institutions as well as major international industry partners. See below for current research projects, or visit our Research Archive to view past projects.

Kinematic constraints on the Rodinia to Gondwana transition

31 January, 201928 September, 2017 by earthbyte

Author List: Andrew Merdith, Simon Williams, Dietmar Müller & Alan Collins. Citation: Merdith, Andrew & Williams, Simon & Müller, Dietmar & Collins, Alan. (2017). Kinematic constraints on the Rodinia-Gondwana transition. Precambrian Research. 299. . 10.1016/j.precamres.2017.07.013. Abstract: Earth’s plate tectonic history during the breakup of the supercontinent Pangea is well constrained from the seafloor spreading record, but evolving plate configurations during … Read more…

Influence of mantle flow on the drainage of eastern Australia since the Jurassic period

20 October, 201728 September, 2017 by earthbyte

Author List: Tristan Salles, Nicolas Flament & Dietmar Müller. Citation: Salles, Tristan & Flament, Nicolas & Müller, Dietmar. (2017). Influence of mantle flow on the drainage of eastern Australia since the Jurassic Period. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems. 18. . 10.1002/2016GC006617. Abstract: Recent studies of the past eastern Australian landscape from present-day longitudinal river profiles and from mantle flow models … Read more…

Dynamic topography and eustasy controlled the paleogeographic evolution of northern Africa since the mid-Cretaceous

20 October, 201728 September, 2017 by earthbyte

Author List: Nicholas Barnett-Moore, Rakib Hassan, Dietmar Müller, Simon Williams & Nicolas Flament. Citation: Barnett-Moore, Nicholas & Hassan, Rakib & Müller, Dietmar & Williams, Simon & Flament, Nicolas. (2017). Dynamic topography and eustasy controlled the paleogeographic evolution of northern Africa since the mid Cretaceous. Tectonics. . 10.1002/2016tc004280. Abstract: Northern Africa underwent widespread inundation during the Late Cretaceous. Changes … Read more…

Origin and evolution of the deep thermochemical structure beneath Eurasia

27 February, 201928 September, 2017 by earthbyte

Author List: Nicolas Flament, Simon Williams, Dietmar Müller, Michael Gurnis & Dan Bower. Citation: Flament, Nicolas & Williams, Simon & Müller, Dietmar & Gurnis, Michael & J. Bower, Dan. (2017). Origin and evolution of the deep thermochemical structure beneath Eurasia. Nature Communications. 8. . 10.1038/ncomms14164. Abstract: A unique structure in the Earth’s lowermost mantle, the Perm Anomaly, was … Read more…

The origin of contractional structures in extensional gneiss domes

20 October, 201728 September, 2017 by earthbyte

Author List: Patrice Rey, Luke Mondy, Guillaume Duclaux, Christian Teyssier, Donna Whitney, Marie Bocher, cécile Prigent. Citation: Rey, Patrice & Mondy, L & Duclaux, G & Teyssier, Christian & Whitney, Donna & Bocher, Marie & Prigent, cécile. (2017). The origin of contractional structures in extensional gneiss domes. 45. 263-266. 10.1130/G38595. Abstract: The juxtaposition of domains of shortening and extension at different … Read more…

Rock solid insights deepen our understanding of the world

15 September, 2017 by Sam Russel

Final year undergraduate student, Madison East is based in the School of Geosciences EarthByte Group, a leading international collaboration between Australian universities, industry partners and centres of excellence. “I began a research scholarship with Dietmar Müller and the EarthByte Groupin the summer of 2016/17 looking at how subduction zones have evolved since the Jurassic,” said … Read more…

Understanding the Deep Carbon Cycle from Icehouse to Greenhouse Climates

16 May, 20178 May, 2017 by Ruken

Sydney Research Excellence Initiative grant (2017-2018) Research area, key questions, significance, and innovation. The planet is experiencing a major transition from an icehouse climate, one dominated by permanent continental ice sheets at high latitudes, to a greenhouse climate that favours ice-free conditions. Although part of the deglaciation trend is influenced by a natural orbital cycle, … Read more…

A full-plate global reconstruction of the Neoproterozoic

4 February, 201914 April, 2017 by Ruken

Author List: Andrew Merdith, Alan Collins, Simon Williams, Sergei Pisarevsky, John Foden, Donnelly Archibald, Morgan Blades, Brandon Alessio, Sheree Armistead, Diana Plavsa, Chris Clark, Dietmar Müller Citation: Merdith, Andrew & Collins, Alan & Williams, Simon & Pisarevsky, Sergei & Foden, John & Archibald, Donnelly & Blades, Morgan & Alessio, Brandon & Armistead, Sheree & Plavsa, Diana & Clark, Chris … Read more…

EarthByte Honours Projects 2017

18 October, 2016 by Carmen Braz

EarthByte has now released a list of Honours projects to be offered in 2017. These projects are outlined below.
… Read more…

Earth's climate throughout the Phanerozoic

26 July, 2015 by Ruken

Project Summary
EarthByte is involved in a series of projects aimed at understanding and modeling Earth’s climate throughout the Phanerozoic. Some of these projects include:

Future Fellowship of Maria Seton on “Oceanic gateways: a primary control on global climate change?”
Basin GENESIS Hub activities, related to the effect of the mantle, crustal deformation, erosion and sedimentary processes on sedimentary basins
ATOM – a coupled atmospheric-ocean circulation code jointly developed by Prof. Roger Grundmann and EarthByte.

EarthByte’s expertise in tectonics, geodynamics and surface process modeling is enhanced by close collaborations with leading palaeoclimate modellers and geochemical oceanographers. … Read more…

Earth’s climate throughout the Phanerozoic

30 November, 201526 July, 2015 by Michael Chin

Project Summary
EarthByte is involved in a series of projects aimed at understanding and modeling Earth’s climate throughout the Phanerozoic. Some of these projects include:

Future Fellowship of Maria Seton on “Oceanic gateways: a primary control on global climate change?”
Basin GENESIS Hub activities, related to the effect of the mantle, crustal deformation, erosion and sedimentary processes on sedimentary basins
ATOM – a coupled atmospheric-ocean circulation code jointly developed by Prof. Roger Grundmann and EarthByte.

ANDS-MODC

25 October, 201515 February, 2015 by Michael Chin

EarthByte, in collaboration with The University of Sydney Library and ICT department, is involved in an important ANDS-MODC funded project to ensure that EarthByte data collections are supported by a robust data management regime. This is to enhance the sustainability, discoverability and re-use of these resources. … Read more…

GPlates

7 June, 201716 November, 2014 by Michael Chin

GPlates is desktop software for the interactive visualisation of plate tectonics. The EarthByte Group leads the development of the open-source plate reconstruction software GPlates. GPlates enables the interactive manipulation of plate tectonic reconstructions and the visualisation of geodata through geological time, and it facilitates interoperability of plate tectonic data and models with geodynamic computing services for … Read more…

The Basin GENESIS Hub

1 September, 202116 November, 2014 by Michael Chin

The ARC Research Hub for Basin Geo-dynamics and Evolution of Sedimentary Systems (Basin Genesis Hub, BGH) brings together a broad range of expertise for the development and application of cutting-edge numerical modelling tools with the aim of improving the understanding of the formation and evolution of basins. The coupling of the evolution of mantle flow, … Read more…

GPlates Industry Consortium

2 September, 201515 November, 2014 by Michael Chin

The EarthByte Group has established a consortium of companies to fund ongoing development of GPlates software and ancillary software and plugins as well as the EarthByte global plate kinematic model.

The Virtual Geological Observatory: a 4D view into the earth through deep-time data-mining (VIRGO)

26 July, 201530 October, 2014 by Michael Chin

Project Summary
Australian Laureate Fellow Prof. Dietmar Müller and the EarthByte Group within the University of Sydney’s School of Geosciences are embarking on an ambitious new research program: building a Virtual Geological Observatory.

Fifty percent of Australia’s export income comes from the minerals and energy sector. Over three-quarters of these exports come from deposits discovered prior to 1980. … Read more…

Gondwanaland extension, breakup and continental margin evolution

26 July, 20151 June, 2014 by Michael Chin

Project Summary
Plate reconstruction models for the rifting and separation of Gondwanaland’s conjugate margins continue to be poorly constrained in detail. We propose to develop a new plate model for the entire Indian ocean by synthesizing old and new geological and geophysical data using our plate tectonic software system. We will test continental fit reconstruction hypotheses and alternative models for the early opening of the Indian Ocean by using a variety of reconstructed gridded and vector data sets. … Read more…

Understanding the deep driving forces of Earth’s large-scale topography through time

4 October, 201610 September, 2013 by Michael Chin

Project Summary
Continents and sedimentary basins through time record fundamental Earth system cycles, reflecting environmental change, migration of fauna and flora and shifting coastlines. It was originally thought that successive advances and retreats of shallow inland seas mainly reflect global sea level variations (eustasy). It is now well known in principle that large-scale surface morphology such as the high topography of the East African Rift, the low-lying Amazon River Basin and the southwest to northeast tilt of the Australian continent are strongly controlled by processes deep within the Earth, but progress has been slow in quantifying the magnitude and time-dependence of these relationships. … Read more…

Australian Paleo-stress map project

11 September, 20241 July, 2012 by Michael Chin

Using the engineering finite element modelling software package ABAQUS we have modelled the horizontal compressive stress of the Indo-Australian plate for time periods dating from the mid-Cretaceous. This work was carried out as part of the Tectonic Reactivation and Palaeo-Stress (TRAPS) Linkage project in collaboration with Shell, BHP Billiton,Woodside Petroleum and SANTOS in order to create a framework for predicting the tectonic reactivation of faults through time.

Download
Download dataset – zip file … Read more…