For more information on this project please visit the GRACE website.

Small zircon crystals found in sediments from the Jack Hills, Western Australia are the oldest terrestrial materials yet identified and provide a unique perspective on Earth's early history, before the start of the preserved rock record at about 4 Ga. The difficulty is that the most ancient zircons, with ages >4 Ga...

The Australian Lungfish is an iconic species. It is an air breathing freshwater fish that may survive up to 100 years and has remained unchanged for 140 million years. However, young fish may not be reaching maturity, leaving an ageing population in terminal decline. We propose to use a novel method for exploring...

Production of the classic Barrovian metamorphic facies series in Scotland was associated with a period mountain building referred to as Grampian orogenesis. Recent geochronological work from the Grampian terrane, Scotland has the Grampian orogenic episode beginning at c . 478 Ma and lasting for less than...

The lowermost mantle sits atop the core-mantle boundary – the most dramatic boundary within our planet, with contrasts in physical properties that exceed those that exist at the surface. Despite significant progress, this region is not well understood, and global seismology paves the path towards new understanding.

The magnetism of sediments provides information on the past behaviour of the Earth's magnetic field. This project will study sediments from the oceans around Australia to understand how the field was recorded and use this information to construct a new generation of computer models that will provide insights into...

Rates of soil formation in North Queensland are being studied on basalt lava flows which are dated by K/Ar. In the semi-arid Hughenden- Charters Towers region (500-600 mm/year rainfall), soils form at rates of ~0.3 mm/1000 years. On the Atherton Tableland, (rainfall 1200-3500 mm/year) rates are significantly faster...

Free oscillations (also called normal modes) are vibrational patterns of the Earth. Normal modes sense the long-wavelength structures of Earth’s interior depending on the type and mode of vibration. For example, 13S2, a spheroidal mode with radial order 13 and angular order 2, samples the Earth along its radius...

Moment tensors in seismology provide a theoretical framework to understand physical mechanisms of earthquakes (how they are generated in their source); in fact, apart from tectonic and volcanic earthquakes, the same framework is used to characterise explosions, landslides, meteorite impacts and other phenomena.

This project will investigate the submerged fossil coral reefs in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) and determine the nature and mechanisms responsible for abrupt sea-level rise, climate variability (ie. paleo-ENSO) and geo-biological changes affecting the GBR over the last 20,000 years. We build directly on the already...

Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) is an emerging passive seismic technique that converts telecommunication fibre-optic cables (dark fibres) into thousands of ground motion sensors. This project aims to harness DAS and the big data arising from it to develop unprecedented high-resolution images of the Earth's structure

Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) is an emerging passive seismic technique that converts telecommunication fibre-optic cables (dark fibres) into thousands of ground motion sensors. This project aims to harness DAS and the big data arising from it to develop unprecedented high-resolution images of the Earth's structure

The isotopic composition of oxygen in the solar system is widely variable. On a three-isotope plot of 17O/16O vs 18O/16O there is a linear trend indicating that the predominant variable is the abundance of 16O. Relative to terrestrial compositions, refractory...

The ability to detect monthly mass changes through space-geodetic missions provides the capability to assess changes in the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland. Decreases in mass imply that the cryosphere is melting and increasing the volume of the oceans whereas increases in mass imply increased precipitation...

Over the past decade, the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets have been loosing its mass at an alarming rate.  Antarctic ice-shelves are melting by turbulent transport of heat and salt to the ice face, predominantly under the influence of warmer Circumpolar Deep Water entering ice shelf cavities from the surrounding...