ESSI Newsletter Issue one

Issue one

October 2015

Earth Surface Science Institute

SCHOOL OF EARTH AND ENVIRONMENT

ESSI Newsletter Issue 1 October 2015

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

PUBLICATIONS - Read more about

some of our top publications from

the year Page 2 & 3

RESEARCH AWARD WINNER - Dr

Caroline Peacock receives

Houtermans Award Page 4

EVENTS - Find out what we have

been up to over the year Page 4 & 5

LATEST PROJECTS - Read about

some of our new research ventures

Page 6

NEW TO THE TEAM - Meet our new

Fellows Page 7

INTRODUCING THE ESSI NEWSLETTER

Welcome to the first ESSI newsletter. This newsletter is designed to

highlight some of our work, successes, new staff, and events of the last 6

months. The last few months have seen significant change in ESSI. We

say goodbye to some of our longest serving staff; Professor Michael

Krom (retired), Professor Robert Mortimer (new Dean of the School of

Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences at Nottingham Trent

University), and a more slowly departing Professor Liane Benning

(moving to the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam as Head of Interface-

Geochemistry). We wish them well, and in their place are pleased to

welcome Dr Alex Dunhill and Dr Ben Mills, who bring exciting new

expertise to ESSI as we continue to move onwards and upwards (meet them on

page 7 of this issue).

Professor Simon Poulton, Director of ESSI

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Mass extinction survival is more than just a numbers game: Alex Dunhill

There have been five mass extinction events in the Earth’s history, including climate change caused by volcanoes and an asteroid hit that wiped out the dinosaurs.

In general, geographically widespread animals are less likely to become extinct than animals with smaller geographic ranges, offering insurance against regional environmental catastrophes.

However, research by Dr Alex Dunhill from ESSI and Professor Matthew Wills (University of Bath’s Milner Centre for Evolution) has found this insurance is rendered useless during global mass extinction events, and that widely distributed animals are just as likely to suffer extinction as those that are less widespread.

The fossil record of terrestrial (land-living) vertebrates (including dinosaurs) from the Triassic and Jurassic periods (252-145 million years ago) were explored. It was found that although large geographic ranges do offer insurance against extinction, this insurance disappeared across a mass extinction event that occurred around 200 million years ago (at the Triassic-Jurassic boundary) associated with massive volcanic eruptions and rapid climate change which caused the demise of around 80 per cent of species on the planet.

During this catastrophic event many groups of crocodile ancestors became extinct, which paved the way for the dinosaurs to rise to dominance in the subsequent Jurassic Period.

Dunhill and Wills mapped how the geographical distribution of groups of organisms changed through the Triassic-Jurassic periods. These distribution maps were then compared with changes in biodiversity to reveal the relationship between geographic range and extinction risk.

This is the first study to analyse the relationship between geographic range and extinction in the terrestrial fossil record and the results are similar to those obtained from the marine invertebrate fossil record.

Unlocking secrets of the global carbon cycle: Caroline Peacock

Secrets of the global carbon cycle have been unlocked by scientists in a study investigating how minerals interact at the molecular scale with organic carbon in sediments. The largest reservoirs of organic carbon on Earth are found in rocks, soils and marine sediments. The

Ticinosuchus Fossil by Dr Stephan

Lautenschlager

ESSI continuously publishes ground-breaking research in leading international journals.

Below are some of our most recent key publications. You can read more about some of these papers on pages 2 and 3.

Daines S; Twitchett RJ; Little CTS (2015) Environmental controls on Jurassic marine ecosystems during global warming, Geology, 43, 263-266.

Schmalenberger A, Duran AL, Bray AW, Bridge J, Bonneville S, Benning LG, Romero-Gonzalez ME, Leake JR, Banwart SA (2015) Oxalate secretion by ectomycorrhizal Paxillus involutus is mineral-specific and controls calcium weathering from minerals. Scientific Reports, 5, 12187.

Johnson K, Purvis G, Lopez-Capel E, Peacock C, Gray N, Wagner T, März C, Bowen L, Ojeda J, Finlay N, Robertson S, Worrall F, Greenwell C (2015) Towards a mechanistic understanding of carbon stabilization in manganese oxides. Nature Communications, 6, 7628. Read more at the bottom of pg.2

Chen X, Ling HF, Vance D, Shields-Zhou GA, Zhu M, Poulton SW, Och LM, Jiang SY, Li D, Cremonese L, Archer C (2015) Rise to modern levels of ocean oxygenation coincided with the Cambrian radiation of animals., Nature Communications, 6, 8142.

Read more on pg. 3

Dunhill AM, Wills MA (2015) Geographic range did not confer resilience to extinction in terrestrial vertebrates at the end-Triassic crisis. Nature Communications , 6, 7980. Read more on pg.2

Guilbaud R, Poulton SW, Butterfield NJ, Zhu M, Shields-Zhou GA (2015) A global transition to ferruginous conditions in the early Neoproterozoic oceans, Nature Geoscience, 8, 466-468.

Gomez N, Gregoire LJ, Mitrovica JX, Payne AJ (2015) Laurentide-Cordilleran Ice Sheet saddle collapse as a contribution to meltwater pulse 1A, Geophysical Research Letters, 42, 3954-3962.

Dolan AM, Haywood AM, Hunter SJ, Tindall JC, Dowsett HJ, Hill DJ, Pickering SJ (2015) Modelling the enigmatic Late Pliocene Glacial Event - Marine Isotope Stage M2, Global and Planetary Change, 128, 47-60.

OUR KEY PUBLICATIONS

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carbon in soils and sediments is mixed with minerals, which might act to stabilise it against degradation, leading to the burial of carbon and its removal from the short-term global carbon cycle. However, the interaction between organic carbon and carbon-stabilising minerals is

poorly understood due to the complexity of natural soils and sediments, and the difficulties identifying carbon-mineral interactions at the molecular scale.

The new study has used a water treatment works as a novel controlled environment where the interactions between carbon and minerals (such as manganese oxides) can be observed. The water treatment works filter bed consisted of sands coated with the ubiquitous manganese oxide birnessite and provided an environment where the sediment mineralogy was relatively homogenous in comparison to natural marine sediments or terrestrial soils. This allowed for the interactions between manganese oxide and dissolved organic carbon to be closely monitored. Different types of spectroscopy and thermogravimetric analysis were used to determine the molecular mechanisms responsible for organic carbon uptake at the surface and at depth within the birnessite coatings. Results have shown for the first time that birnessite plays a critical role in carbon stabilisation acting to chemically adsorb organic carbon via carboxyl functional groups present in the carbon moiety and physically trap it within the birnessite layers.

Animals breathe freely for the first time 520 million-years ago: Simon Poulton

Life on Earth may have begun more than 3.5 billion-years ago, but the appearance of eukaryotic life about 2 billion-years ago and multi-cellular life about 800−600 million-years ago are both linked to oxygenation events at the Earth's surface. Following this, a burst of animal forms occurred about 540−520 million-years ago in an event known as the 'Cambrian explosion'. Although a causal link between this radiation of animals and a rise in oxygen was suggested half a century ago, redox conditions in the early Cambrian oceans, especially the deep ocean, remain controversial.

Now, a study shows that the 'Cambrian explosion' was in step with the expansion of oxygenated bottom waters in the global ocean.

The researchers utilised analyses of the redox-sensitive element molybdenum in black shales in order to investigate the extent of ocean oxygenation during the ‘Cambrian explosion’. Prof. Derek Vance, an ETH researcher who was one of the co-leaders of the study, said: “In the modern world, the deposition and isotope fractionation mechanisms of molybdenum in anoxic basins are quite different from those in the oxic open ocean."

Prof. Hong-Fei Ling, a researcher based at NJU who was another co-leader of the study, said: "We analysed molybdenum concentrations and isotopic compositions in sediments deposited between 660 and 520 million-years ago on the Yangtze platform, and also compiled published molybdenum data from about 3.5 billion-years ago to the early Cambrian. Using mass balance models, global marine redox conditions can be quantitatively inferred from these molybdenum records."

"We found that a rise of molybdenum concentrations and molybdenum isotope values in marine sediments coincides with the increasing diversity and ecological importance of both animals and planktonic algae in early

Cambrian," said Prof. Maoyan Zhu at NIGPAS. "All of these life forms peaked around 520 million years ago, which according to our data is when the oxygenation level of the ocean reached modern levels for the first time in Earth history."

Prof. Simon Poulton of UoL, said: "Although surface waters may have been partially oxygenated before the 'Great Oxidation Event', which happened 2.4−2.2 billion-years ago, the deeper ocean remained largely devoid of oxygen until much later in Earth history, but until now we have not known when modern oxygenation levels were first achieved.”

"Although the exact causal links and feedback mechanisms between ocean oxygen levels and eukaryotic evolution are still not clearly understood, this coincidence between the rise of ocean oxygenation level and the Cambrian radiation of animals strongly implies a close relationship," added Prof. Graham Shields-Zhou at UCL. "In the Precambrian ocean, besides suffocation through lack of oxygen, anoxia may have also caused metal nutrient deficiencies and the frequent invasion of toxic H2S-rich waters into the major habitats of animals − the shallow oceans. The key features of the Cambrian explosion, such as large size, active locomotion (including carnivory and bicturbation)may have been restricted until the rise to modern levels of ocean oxygenation."

Scanning electron micrograph

showing intact birnessite

coating on sand grains

Haikouella, the earliest fish-like

chordate from the Lower Cam-

brian Maotianshan shales of

Chengjiang County in Yunnan

Province, China. Credit: Maoyan

Zhu, Nanjing Institute of Geolo-

gy and Palaeontology (NIGPAS)

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Goldschmidt Conference The Earth Surface Science Institute was well represented at the 25

th annual Goldschmidt Conference held in

Prague from 16th – 21

st August.

ESSI researches were showcasing their science though talks and poster presentations during the week-long

conference. Dr Caroline Peacock, Dr Ruza Ivanovic and Dr Andy Bray all have invited talks and Professor Liane

Benning was invited to attend as a keynote speaker giving a talk on ‘Nanoscale Processes and X-Rays in

Geoscience Research’

Research Award Winner Dr Caroline Peacock awarded the European Association of Geochemistry 2015 Houtermans Award

This award is bestowed annually to a scientist no more than 35 years of age or within 6 years of their PhD ‘for a

single exceptional contribution to geochemistry, published as a single paper or a series of papers on a single topic’.

Caroline has been recognised for a series of papers investigating the biogeochemical reactivity and cycling of trace-

metals in terrestrial and marine environments. Her work has been among the first to characterise and quantify the

molecular-level processes occurring at mineral-water interfaces that control the partitioning of trace-metals between

soils and freshwaters, and marine sediments and seawater. These processes ultimately control the abundance and

distribution of both bio-essential metals and toxic contaminant metals in modern and ancient environments, and are

therefore crucial to understanding metal cycling on both a local and global scale. Caroline uses a combination of

laboratory experiments, advanced synchrotron-based spectroscopic techniques and geochemical modelling to

probe the mineral-water interface, and shed new light on the complex behaviour of trace-metals in our environment.

Caroline received her award during the Goldschmidt conference and as part of the honour gave a prize winners

lecture entitled ‘Reactivity and Cycling of Trace-metals in Marine Sediments’ whilst in Prague.

EVENTS There is always a lot going on in ESSI

from weekly research lunches to

hosting conferences.

Palaeontological

Association - 58th Annual

Meeting

This year’s meeting was organised

by Cris Little, Fiona Gill and

colleagues from ESSI. A symposium

was held on 16th December, followed

by the Annual Address and an

evening reception in the Parkinson

Building of the University.

The topic for the Annual Symposium

was 'The photosynthesis revolution:

how plants and photosynthetic micro-

organisms have bioengineered the

planet'.

Keynote Speakers included Professor

Simon Poulton (University of Leeds),

Dr Bettina Schirrmeister (University of

Bristol), Professor Charles Wellman

(University of Sheffield), Dr Nick

Butterfield (University of Cambridge),

Professor Dianne Edwards (Cardiff

University), Professor David Beerling

(University of Sheffield), Professor

Margaret Collinson (Royal Holloway),

and Dr James Riding (British

Geological Survey).

The Annual Address was given by

ESSI member Professor Alan

Haywood .

ESSI Day Each year the institute hosts a

science day, a broad topic is chosen

to interest as many researchers as

possible from across our two

research groups. Speakers are

invited from the institute and around

the UK and Europe to talk about work

related to our chosen topic. The

events are a great opportunity for the

institute members to showcase their

science in a relaxed environment and

to network both across the Institute

and with our visitors.

This year the event was organised by

Caroline Peacock and the theme was

‘Mineral & Organics’. Our visitors

included James Byrne (University of

Tubingen), Martin Palmer (University

of Southampton), Christian Bjerrum

(University of Copenhagen) and

Richard Sanders (NOCS) as well as

talks from ESSI members, Andy Bray,

Liane Benning, Cris Little & Lauren

Gregoire. The day was rounded off

with PhD poster presentations, drinks

reception and dinner. We are now

looking forward to our next ESSI day

in the coming months which will be

themed around ‘all things ice’.

Rock Map Over the past year the School of

Earth and Environment have had

Leverhulme Artist in Residence, Sue

Lawty working across the institutes to

create works of art to represent the

The completed map (Credit T. Aze)

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School’s research. In April ESSI researcher Fiona Gill

and Sue collaborated to build a geological map of

Yorkshire from Yorkshire beach pebbles. First of all the

pebbles needed to be collected, this involved a great day

out at Filey for a team of ESSI volunteers armed with

buckets and rewarded with fish and chips. Once all the

pebbles were collected the rock map was built, with

institute members all volunteering a little bit of time

throughout the day to help with the construction. A BBQ

was held for all the volunteers to celebrate the

completion. Geoscience Seminars Series This year we teamed up with the Institute of Applied

Geosciences (IAG) to put together a fantastic seminar

series which ran throughout the year. The speakers were

arranged by ESSI member Andy Bray and Marco Patacci

from IAG. They did an excellent job of attracting

fascinating speakers from all over the world. Seminars

are followed by a social event giving an opportunity for

institute members to discuss the content on the seminars

with each other and the speaker.

The Kromference This July saw ESSI say goodbye to one of their longest

serving members as Professor Mike Krom took his

retirement. In honour of Mike’s

career at the School of Earth &

Environment ESSI hosted a two

day conference on Nutrient

Cycling on the Modern and

Ancient Earth. A fantastic line

up of speakers were arranged

with Keynote and invited talks

from Robert Aller (Stony Brook

University), Ellery Ingall

(Georgia Tech), Tim Jickells

(University of East Anglia),

Rachel Mills (University of

Southampton), Thanos Nenes

(Georgia Tech), Robert

Raiswell (University of

Leeds), Caroline Slomp

(University of Utrecht),

Clare Woulds (University

of Leeds), Philippe Van

Cappellen (University of

Waterloo, Canada) and

Aubrey Zerkle (St

Andrews University).

The event began with an

icebreaker on the Sunday

evening in the School’s

foyer, delegates were given

the opportunity to meet and

mingle over food and drinks

before the conference

programme began the

following morning. Monday

saw the first two thematic

sessions take place,

Macronutrients in the

Modern Environment chaired

by Audrey Zerkle and Andy

Bray and Redox and

Mineral Controls on

Nutrient Cycling chaired by Romain Guilbaud and PhD

student Jenny Thompson. This was followed by a drinks

reception and poster session where an excellent array of

work was displayed and discussed.

In the evening we held a banquet at the Park Plaza in the

city centre giving

everyone a chance

to unwind after the

day’s events.

During the dinner

some of Mike’s

colleagues spoke

about their

experiences of

working with him

over the years

and a prize for best poster was awarded to Jenny

Thompson for her poster titled ‘Iron and phosphorus

cycling in the ferruginous Lake La Cruz’

Day two of the programme had two further thematic

sessions, Micronutrients in the Modern Environment

chaired by Stefan Lalonde and Aleksandra Mloszeski and

Nutrient Dynamics Through Earth History chaired by

Sasann Henkel and PhD student Kathy Doyle. Following

the final session Prof Krom took the stage for his plenary

session ‘Musings of an itinerant phosphorus geochemist’

where he spoke about his experiences in research over

the years and offered words of advice to those continuing

in the field.

The event was a great

success and enjoyed by all

those who attended

especially Mike. ESSI would

like to wish Mike the best of

luck with his future

endeavours, although we are

sure it will not be long before

we see him again in the

School.

Student registration was

kindly sponsored by the

EAG

Professor Mike Krom

Delegates enjoying the

Icebreaker

PhD Student Kathy Doyle

discussing her research

during the poster session

The conference banquet, Park Plaza

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NEW RESEARCH PROJECTS

Black and Bloom: Understanding melting of

the Greenland Ice Sheet

As part of NERC’s latest round of large grants ESSI’s

Liane G. Benning and Jim McQuaid from ICAS are

joining forces to work on the Black and Bloom project.

With over £500,000 coming to Leeds, the £2.4m project

is being led by Professor Martyn Tranter from the

University of Bristol and includes scientists from the

Universities of Sheffield and Aberystwyth and also

international collaborators from Denmark, the US and

Canada. The Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) adds ~1 mm/yr

to sea level, it is said to be the largest driver of sea level

rise. Earlier this year, a House of Lords report highlighted

“momentous” change in Arctic and identified the critical

role of UK

science in

furthering our

understanding

of the

processes

impacting the

polar regions.

The main aim

of Black and

Bloom is to

investigate the

causes of

accelerated

melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Traditionally, it has

been thought that the long range transport of soot from

wildfires in Canada and Siberia, as well as desert dust

cause arctic ice sheets to darken. These darker surfaces

absorb more sunlight, and this may be causing the ice to

melt more quickly. However the story is much more

complicated with coloured algal blooms on snow and ice

now being thought to be important.

“We are really excited about this new project. It not just

follows on from our previous work on the effect of

coloured algal blooms on snow and ice but for the first

time we will be able to span scale by cross-correlating

observations from the small scale of a microbe, a dust or

a soot particle all the way to large scale satellite data and

better understand and model the accelerated rates of

melting observed in Greenland and predict how much

sea level rise will occur in the future” said Liane.

The Black and Bloom team are already making plans for

the first field season on the ice sheet in early summer

2016. As part of the measurement campaign, the Leeds

team will be collecting a whole suite of samples of algae

across their seasonal growth cycle but also making

measurements of mineral dust and black carbon to

quantify the respective contributions to albedo. Together

with Jim – who will be on his first terrestrial bound

Greenland Field trip (he is more often found on board the

UK’s research aircraft) – we will deploy instruments to

continuously monitor atmospheric aerosols, which

contribute to the surface darkening as well as providing

potential nutrients for the algae. Alongside this, filter

The Greenland ice sheet; far from a

pristine white snowscape (Photo credit:

Chris Bellas, University of Bristol)

Green and red algae which darken the surface

CONFERENCE SUCESSES FOR OUR STUDENTS

Congratulations to ESSI students who won awards for their presentations at conferences over the summer

Rhian Rees-Owen won the poster prize at the Past Earth Networks conference in Crewe. The title of Rhian’s poster

was 'Constraints on the hydrological cycle in Antarctica during the Neogene'.

Steffi Lutz won the Student Oral Presentation Award at the 6th Polar and Alpine Microbiology Meeting in České

Budějovice for her talk "Biogeography and functionality of microbial glacial surface communities across the Arctic”.

Maggie Georgieva won the student poster award at the 14th Deep-Sea Biology Symposium for her poster

'Mineralization of polychaete worm tubes at hydrothermal vents: implications for a 430 million-year-old hydrothermal

vent community',

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MEET OUR NEW FELLOWS

Alex Dunhill

Alex joined our team in August 2014 from the University of

Bath. He started his research here with a Royal Commission

for the Exhibition of 1851 Fellowship; however we are

delighted to announce that

he has since been

awarded a Leverhulme

Early Career Fellowship,

meaning that he is now on

a tenure-track position at

Leeds. Alex graduated

from Sheffield and gained

his PhD from the University

of Bristol. His research

focuses on biogeography

of extinction and the accuracy of biodiversity data obtained

from the fossil record.

Ben Mills

ESSI are excited to welcome our new University Academic

Fellow, Dr Ben Mills to the team this September.

Ben is joining us from a

Postdoctoral research

position in marine

biogeochemical

modelling at the

University of Bristol. His

research focuses on the

evolution of Earth’s

environment, particularly

the mechanisms

controlling the rise of

atmospheric oxygen from

trace levels on the early

Earth, to ~21% of the

atmosphere at the present day. This is an active and exciting

field that crosses many disciplinary boundaries, and aims to

answer questions relating to climate stability and planetary

habitability.

Ben has joined us through the University’s 250 Great Minds

scheme which seeks to recruit 250 exceptional University

Academic Fellows by 2017. Last year 76 outstanding

individuals were appointed across the University of which Ben

is one. This is a tenure track position which, upon successful

completion of a structured five year development programme,

will lead Ben to a permanent position as an Associate

Professor.

samples will be collected for analysis back in Leeds

using a range of techniques including mass

spectrometry and electron microscopy to quantify

the composition of these particles.

Funding towards drilling at Mochras B

The International Continental Scientific Drilling

Programme (ICDP) has set aside $1.5 million in

funding towards drilling at Mochras B, an Early

Jurassic succession of sediments on the north

Wales coast. A team from ESSI led by Rob Newton

and including Cris Little, Simon Poulton and Paul

Wignall has been actively involved with putting this

proposal together. The project as a whole is being

led by Steve Hesselbo from the University of

Exeter. Additional co investigators include scientists

from Oxford University and the British Geological

Survey. The funding from ICDP will be received on

the basis that the UK team can arrange funding for

the remaining drilling costs and scientific

investigations. The team are working towards a

large grant proposal which will be submitted to

NERC in November.

The Past Earth Network

The EPSRC has provided 3 years funding to

develop the Past Earth Network (PEN). This

network will use palaeoclimates as a basis for

testing our understanding of mechanisms of climate

change. They will promote a thorough assessment

of uncertainty in climate models and a quantification

of the uncertainty around palaeo data by bringing

together statisticians, climate scientists and

geologists.

The idea behind this initiative is to support the

creation of new collaborations and link the

disciplines of mathematics and environmental

science .

This network is being led by ESSI member Alan

Haywood and Jochen Voss from the School of

Mathematics.

The Past Earth Network held its opening

conference in January this year. The conference

saw over 80 members of the network come together

to begin discussions and set up working groups for

their four themes, Quantification of error and

uncertainty of data, Quantification of uncertainty in

complex models, Methodologies which enable

robust model-data comparison and Forecasting and

future climate projections.

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School of Earth and Environment

Institute Director, Professor Simon Poulton

School of Earth & Environment

Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

www.see.leeds.ac.uk/research/essi/

Twitter @ESSILeeds

Newsletter compiled by Claire McLoughlin