PhD Opportunity at University of Otago
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PhD project(s) available: The eruption of Surtsey and its implications for explosive basaltic volcanism – Many submarine eruptions of basaltic magma produce volcanoes that grow to the water surface and produce spectacular explosive eruptions. Newly available samples from Surtsey itself, including from its unique drill core, and from two surtseyan volcanoes in the western USA will be studied using a suite of laboratory-based work designed to achieve two goals. One is to establish globally the key eruptive processes of shallow subaqueously formed basaltic volcanoes. The other, very broad, one is to use particle properties locked into pyroclasts that were fast-quenched into vesiculating basaltic magma at different vent pressures to reveal dynamics of magma ascent and breakup; these have signatures that rarely survive transport and slower cooling in subaerial eruptions. Fieldwork will extend sampling of the US volcanoes to more-distal ash sheets, may include work on Surtsey or/and elsewhere in Iceland, and laboratory work that will build on an existing 2-dimensional quantitative vesicularity analysis by subjecting the same samples to micro-Computed Tomography (uCT) and FTIR and related analyses designed to assess magma permeability and retained volatile content, respectively.
Support is available through University of Otago PhD scholarships, by competitive application, for students with ~ "A" averages (~3.75 GPA) at Masters or Honours level. Application may be made at any time. http://www.otago.ac.nz/study/scholarships/otago020695.html#doctoral
Contact James White for further information (http://www.otago.ac.nz/geology/people/white/index.html).
Other project topics are also available: http://www.otago.ac.nz/geology/research/volcanology/index.html.
Volcano Listserv is a collaborative venture among Arizona State University (ASU), Portland State University (PSU), the Global Volcanism Program (GVP) of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, and the International Association for Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IAVCEI).
ASU - http://www.asu.edu/ PSU - http://pdx.edu/ GVP - http://www.volcano.si.edu/ IAVCEI - http://www.iavcei.org/
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