Category: News

Aleksey Smirnov (GMES) was named one of the American Geophysical Union’s Outstanding Reviewers of 2019. Smirnov was cited for his service to Geophysical Research Letters.

In 2019, AGU received over 16,700 submissions and published over 7,000. AGU is working to highlight the valuable role of reviewers through events (though they may be virtual) at the Fall Meeting and other meetings.

Thomas Oommen (GMES/EPSSI) is the principal investigator on a project that received a $41,167 research and development contract with the University of Nebraska-Omaha.

The project is titled “Flood Hazard Map to Water Management & Planning.” This is a one-year project.

By Sponsored Programs.

Simon Carn (GMES/EPSSI) is the principal investigator on a project that has received a $117,411 research and development grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The project is titled “Multi-Decadel Trends in Volcanic Emissions: Extending the Aura Record into the Past and Future”. This is a potential three-year project totaling $375,789.

Aleksey Smirnov (GMES) is a co-author on the paper “Paleomagnetic evidence for modern-like plate motion velocities at 3.2 Ga” published in Science Advances on April 22, 2020. This collaborative study (with Harvard University and Yale University) demonstrates that the drifting of tectonic plates (plate tectonics) may have started at least 3.2 billion years ago, earlier than previously thought.

Extract

When plate tectonics began

This process may have been underway over 3.2 billion years ago.

Plate tectonics has been the dominant surface geodynamical regime throughout Earth’s recent geological history. One defining feature of modern plate tectonics is the differential horizontal motion of rigid lithospheric plates

The mode and rates of tectonic processes and lithospheric growth during the Archean [4.0 to 2.5 billion years (Ga) ago] are subjects of considerable debate. Paleomagnetism may contribute to the discussion by quantifying past plate velocities.

While plate tectonics have characterized Earth’s geodynamics in recent geologic time, it is unknown whether long-range horizontal motion of lithospheric plates occurred before ~2.7 Ga. Resolving this uncertainty would fundamentally contribute to understanding the formation settings of Earth’s earliest crust and nascent biosphere and the evolution of geodynamics in terrestrial planets in general.

Citation

Paleomagnetic evidence for modern-like plate motion velocities at 3.2 Ga
BY ALEC R. BRENNER, ROGER R. FU, DAVID A.D. EVANS, ALEKSEY V. SMIRNOV, RAISA TRUBKO, IAN R. ROSE

Science Advances  22 Apr 2020:
Vol. 6, no. 17, eaaz8670
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaz8670

Archean basalts from the Pilbara Craton, Western Australia record the oldest long-range lithospheric motion identified to date.