Rivers and Melt: Exploring how physical processes are stored in the geological record

We cannot directly observe the interior of the Earth. Likewise, we cannot observe the passage of time that creates the landscapes we see today. Instead we can use images recovered from seismic waves, information from erupted lavas, exposures of sedimentary layers, and more to build an interpretation of both the past and the subsurface. Disciplines such as seismology, geochemistry and sedimentology can however often give competing interpretations of the how our planet works: for example evidence form the isotopic composition of lava would suggest the rapid transport of melt from where it is generated to the point of eruption, while seismic inversions suggest deep low velocity regions commonly attributed to the retention of significant quantities of melt. During the last decade I have developed methods to compare numerical models of geological processes to geophysical observations. My research has covered landscape evolution to mantle convection. In this seminar I will cover two parts of this research: (1) Melt: I will explore how signals of melt generation and transport might be expressed in surface observations and what these can tell us about how the Earth’s interior might function. (2) Rivers: I will explore how we might be able to model landscape evolution over large spatial scales. I hope to impart the idea that we can test observation driven hypotheses from seismology, geochemistry and sedimentology with simple numerical models, and by doing so understand where these hypotheses fail and where they show promise. Jury: Claude Jaupart (IPGP), Sylvie Leroy (Sorbonne Université), Satish Singh (IPGP), Laurent Husson (ISTerre Grenoble), Delphine Rouby (GET Toulouse), Eric Lajeunesse (IPGP) The Zoom link is here (otherwise it is in Amphitheater): Participer à la réunion Zoom https://zoom.us/j/97312734138?pwd=VmFRaXVQOTJiSGZ4WXFSdncvTTl4UT09 ID de réunion : 973 1273 4138 Code secret : 533522