Director's Message

Dear Colleagues,

On Friday afternoon RSES completed and submitted our four National Institute Grant goals for formal feedback from the ANU Executive. It has been a fairly rushed and complex process to crystallize our school’s research, engagement and impact strategy into four well-defined, ambitious and achievable goals. This will be an on-going process but we have started the process with a positive approach.

I would like to thank Eelco Rohling, Andy Hogg, group leaders and all others who have contributed to providing information and drafting of the RSES NIG goal documents. From discussions with people in other parts of ANU, we think that the information that we have brought together is comprehensive and strong.

I look forward to seeing you all at the RSES Planning Day on Monday 23 April at Mt Sromlo.

Best wishes,

Paul Tregoning

Crawford Prize winner for 2017

Fangqin Chen has been awarded the Janet Elspeth Crawford Prize for 2017. This prize is awarded to a female student who completed a science degree at ANU, in 2017, with First Class Honours, and the highest mark. Fangqin wrote a thesis entitled “Seismotectonics and Reconstruction of South American Subduction Zones” under the supervision of Gordon Lister. She is now undertaking her PhD program at RSES, looking at subduction from both the structural geology perspective and the geodynamics perspective, jointly supervised by Rhodri Davies and Gordon. Fangqin would like to thank and make special mention of Hrvoje Tkalčić, and to commend his efforts with the PhB program which has brought many good students to RSES.

Photo by: Qianhui Zhou 

Planning Day Monday 23rd - Reminder

Directions to Mt Stromlo can be found here

Australian Regolith Geoscientist Association

The fifth and last Australian Regolith Geoscientists Association Meeting was held in Wallaroo, SA, from April 10-12; twenty-five delegates attended. Brad Pillans and Tony Eggleton were there, with ANU-related geologists Ian Roach, Ken McQueen, Leah Moore and Richard Greene.

 A number of exciting developments in mineral exploration were reported, prominent among them being some of the proposals for research thrusts by the new MinEx CRC and new approaches to "seeing" bedrock under cover. Brad Pillans and Alan Chivas spoke about approaches to regolith dating, and Richard Greene's paper on the value of aeolian dust to vineyard soils meshed well with the pre-conference field trip theme: "The earth beneath our vines". Tony Eggleton's paper suggested how an analysis of granitic weathering rates could contribute to understanding the Kosciusko uplift.

 The Society, which was formed after the end of CRC LEME to promote regolith science, concluded that its job was done and that a stronger voice for regolith science would be found by becoming a specialist group of the Geological Society of Australia. To this end the acceptance of the term "Critical Zone", which had been so effective at releasing research dollars in America, should be included in the name for this new specialist group. Those of us who introduced the word "Regolith" to the Australian scene sadly accept that it doesn't have the same instant appeal as ‘’Critical Zone”.

Orb spider between J8 and J2

Another nature shot provided by Richard Arculus.

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