POLARIS PI Grace Shephard delivered two keynote talks this past month at her visiting institute (Research School of Earth Sciences, RSES) at the Australian National University.

The first was for the RSES 50th anniversary symposium where Grace was invited to give the keynote on behalf of the Geophysics group. Her talk was entitled “A magical mystery tour of Arctic geodynamics”. She also participated in a panel discussion on the future of geophysics. She was part of the organizing committee for the 50th and received a beautiful paperweight with the radial structure of the Earth as thanks. A highlight of the program was the Gala dinner held at the National Museum of Australia. You can find the full program at this link.

The second talk was for the GESSS student-led and organized symposium (Geological Society of Australia Student Symposium). Grace delivered an invited talk entitled “”Dont pat the polar bear” – and other life lessons from a decade in Norway” which was a mix of POLARIS-related research and personal reflections on pursuing a career in academia. The symposium was well attended by enthusiatic and smart Earth Science students (mainly university-level but also included a motivated high school student) from all over the state, including regional and rural areas thanks to travel support from sponsors.

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you, with Heron again at the helm, we are at it again. Here is a new paper which used geodynamic models (using the ASPECT code) to look at the link between supercontinents (like Pangea), subduction, plumes and the eruption site of massive volcanism. In particular we looked at when and where plumes arrived with respect to the supercontinents; including ‘exterior’ (oceanic, like under/on Pangea) and ‘interior’ (continental, like under/on Pangea) localities. Some nice correlations were found for well-known large igneous province (LIPs) including Ontong Java Plateau, Caribbean LIP and potentially the Shatsky Rise.

Philip J. Heron, Erkan Gün, Grace E. Shephard, Juliane Dannberg, Rene Gassmöller, Erin Martin, Aisha Sharif, Russell N. Pysklywec, R. Damian Nance, J. Brendan Murphy. 2024. The role of subduction in the formation of Pangaean oceanic large igneous provinces. From: Nance, R. D., Strachan, R. A., Quesada, C. and Lin, S. (eds) Supercontinents, Orogenesis and Magmatism. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 542. https://doi.org/10.1144/SP542-2023-12

POLARIS PI Grace Shephard is spending ca. 10 months at the Research School of Earth Sciences (RSES) at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. She will be working hosted in the Geodynamics section, led by Prof. Rhodri Davies, and will mainly focus on large-scale volcanism and the interaction of mantle plumes and the lithosphere. This trip will be used to not compare numerical modelling techniques and results (e.g. those made using ASPECT in Oslo and those using FLUIDITY in Canberra) but also compare the regional settings of the HALIP/Arctic and Eastern Australia – both being sites of long-lived, plume-related volcanism near the edge of a continental domain.

This trip is supported by a Norwegian Research Council Overseas Research Grant.

This paper is more peripheral to the objectives of POLARIS but nonetheless and important paper to mention on the POLARIS website.

Published in Research for All, the paper is a result of the sustained action and leadership and of Phil Heron, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Phil initiated a program called “Think Like a Scientist”- an award-winning and life-changing (seriously!) course designed to improve critical thinking and encourage independent thought for students. It began in 2019 in the UK prison system and has since expanded to different restrictive education settings (online and in person). The success of the course is based around the creation of a classroom dynamic that is accessible, inclusive, and relatable to students from all backgrounds. This paper expands on these points and includes student feedback and reflections.

Phil is collaborator and friend of the POLARIS team, including from other science communication and outreach efforts such as Scientific Colours. Please take a moment to read this paper, to look at Phil’s website philheron.com and to be inspired to be part of change. Phil is currently rolling out the program in the Canadian Prisons system.

POLARIS PI Grace Shephard delivered a keynote and a poster at the recent Australian Earth Sciences Convention in Perth, Australia 26-30 June 2023. Her 40 minute presentation in the “Dynamic Earth Special Symposium” included updates on her recent Arctic and North Atlantic tectonics and geodynamics work. It was a really nice opportunity to meet with many old and new faces; Grace finished her PhD at the University of Sydney in 2013, so it was 10 years since being in the Australian geoscience community. The digital poster was on the s-Ink.org graphics repository – we hope to receive more Australian-based submissions in the future.

The cover photo was taken on the stunnung Rottnest Island just outside of the city of Perth… famous for its Quokkas, which seemed to be sleeping the whole time.

New paper in Geophysical Research Letters. This paper was the result of an intensive workshop in late 2021 involving 14 early-career researchers (some joining from the USA and Australia via Zoom so are not in the photo). The project was instigated by Mat Domeier and paper led by Leandro Gallo. The paper presents an extensive compilation of Cenozoic paleomagnetic and geochronologic data from North America and their related uncertainties and noise. The result was a new Cenozoic (the last 60 Million years) Apparent Polar Wander Path for North America.
Read more at https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL103436

The UNIS course “Arctic Tectonics and Volcanism” (AG351/AG851) was once again a highlight of the academic year. This year, 14 students joined the 6-week course based at UNIS is Longyearbyen, Svalbard. This was the first year that the course was held before the summer, in previous years it has in August, September or October. So, the students and lecturers were able to use snow-scooters to see many sites around the island early in the course. Grace and Björn were part of the lecturing team – giving seminars on plate tectonics, mantle dynamics, HALIP, the GPlates software, scientific graphics, and paper writing.

Applications for 2024 Spring session are open at https://www.unis.no/courses/ag-351-arctic-tectonics-and-volcanism/

Last week POLARIS members Grace Shephard and Björn Heyn attended EGU23 in Vienna (23-28 April). As usual, it was a busy week attending science sessions, networking with new and existing collaborators, meeting friends, and enjoying the occasional schnitzel. A highlight of the week was watching our colleague Dr Ágnes Király win an award for her contributions to geodynamics – you can read the citation here https://www.egu.eu/awards-medals/division-outstanding-ecs-award/2023/agnes-kiraly/

Else, Björn presented some new modelling results looking at plume-lithosphere interactions as applied to HALIP and Greenland more broadly. Grace presented an update as to the s-Ink.org project. We both received some nice feedback all around.

A new paper dropped just before the holiday period. This is the culmination of a lot of work by my colleagues looking at the history of the North Atlantic before continental breakup, in other words before oceanic floor started to form. The region between Greenland and Norway underwent several long periods of rifting (extension) from around 300 Million years ago (Ma) until breakup at 56 Ma. This study provides quantitative estimates that are crucial to generating plate tectonic reconstructions – which is a core aim of POLARIS.

Quantification and Restoration of the Pre-Drift Extension Across the NE Atlantic Conjugate Margins During the Mid-Permian-Early Cenozoic Multi-Rifting Phases. (2022). Mansour M. Abdelmalak, Sébastien Gac, Jan Inge Faleide, Grace E. Shephard, Filippos Tsikalas, Stéphane Polteau, Dmitry Zastrozhnov, Trond H. Torsvik. Tectonics. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022TC007386

If you don’t have access to the paper let me know and I can send a copy.

Somewhat only equalled with the month of May before the summer time, November is always a busy one. And it certainly has been for POLARIS with four nearly back-to-back workshops including:

1. SVALCLIME MagellanPlus workshop – SVALCLIME: Deep-time Arctic climate archives: High-resolution coring of Svalbard’s sedimentary record 18-21 October 2022, Longyearbyen, Norway 
2. iEarth GeoLearning Forum – 7-8 November Bergen, Norway https://www.iearth.no/feed/geolearning-forum-2022-recap
3. CEED final symposium – Earth’s History, Dynamics, and Planetary Habitability 14-18 November 2022 Sundvollen, Norway
4. NorthGreen MagellanPlus Workshop – NorthGreen: Northeast Greenland: Unlocking records from sea to land 21-23 November 2022, Copenhagen, Denmark

Let’s see what December brings!