ARC Centre of Excellence for Core to Crust Fluid Systems. Water is essential for human existence, indeed for life's beginning. The circulation of water between the surface and the deep interior lubricates the internal dynamics that keep Earth geologically alive; it is crucial to most Earth systems, including the evolution of the hydrospher/atmosphere/biosphere, and the development of giant ore deposits. However, the origin, abundance, speciation and movements of fluids inside Earth are largely u ....ARC Centre of Excellence for Core to Crust Fluid Systems. Water is essential for human existence, indeed for life's beginning. The circulation of water between the surface and the deep interior lubricates the internal dynamics that keep Earth geologically alive; it is crucial to most Earth systems, including the evolution of the hydrospher/atmosphere/biosphere, and the development of giant ore deposits. However, the origin, abundance, speciation and movements of fluids inside Earth are largely unknown, and represent key issues in modern geoscience. This CoE will integrate previously disparate fields - geology, tectonics, geochemistry, petrophysics, geophysics and dynamic modelling - to understand the workings of Earth's deep plumbing system.Read moreRead less
Revealing the deep Earth in deep time. This project aims to determine the nature of the chemical and dynamical transformation of the Earth’s interior at the end of the first 25 per cent of its history. This will provide a new understanding of the related establishment of modern surface features such as extensive continents and an oxygenated atmosphere, as well as investigate causal relationships with west Australia’s mineral resources. The expected outcome will be a significant new understandin ....Revealing the deep Earth in deep time. This project aims to determine the nature of the chemical and dynamical transformation of the Earth’s interior at the end of the first 25 per cent of its history. This will provide a new understanding of the related establishment of modern surface features such as extensive continents and an oxygenated atmosphere, as well as investigate causal relationships with west Australia’s mineral resources. The expected outcome will be a significant new understanding of the chemical and thermal history of our planet.Read moreRead less
From plume source to hotspot: quantifying mixing in mantle plumes and its implications for the nature of deep-mantle heterogeneity. Mantle plumes are buoyant upwellings that bring hot material from Earth's deep-mantle to the surface, forming volcanic hotspots, like Hawaii. Although extensively studied, the geochemical variations recorded in hotspot lavas have, so far, proved difficult to understand, particularly how they relate to their heterogeneous deep-mantle source. This project aims to use ....From plume source to hotspot: quantifying mixing in mantle plumes and its implications for the nature of deep-mantle heterogeneity. Mantle plumes are buoyant upwellings that bring hot material from Earth's deep-mantle to the surface, forming volcanic hotspots, like Hawaii. Although extensively studied, the geochemical variations recorded in hotspot lavas have, so far, proved difficult to understand, particularly how they relate to their heterogeneous deep-mantle source. This project aims to use state-of-the-art geodynamical models to determine how deep-mantle heterogeneities are transported into a plume and how such heterogeneities are mixed during plume ascent. This will facilitate the linking, for the first time, of geochemical variations at volcanic hotspots to the deep-mantle's thermo-chemical structure, under an Earth-like, fluid-dynamical framework.Read moreRead less