ANDEAN MOHO
(04/2022)
Noé Muckensturm started his PhD in October 2020 entitled “The deformation of the mantle-crust transition: The Andean case”. He is supervised by M. Grégoire and myself, and we collaborate with F. Mouthereau, S. Brichau (Santiago – Chile), R. Riquelme (Antofagasta – Chile), A. Corgne (Valdivia – Chile). After two years of pandemia and shutdown, Noé spent two months in Chile thanks to an IRD grant (institue of research and development) in April and Mai 2022. In April, I joint him to sample crustal and mantle xenoliths, and we visited volcanoes from the desert of Atacama and near Valdivia. Landscapes and samples were beautiful.
This fieldwork has been partially funded by COPEDIM and an ISIFOR project that I obtained.
From left to right I am with F. Mouthereau, R. Riquelme, S. Brichau and N. Muckensturm
ICOOL
(01/2020)
International Conference on Ophiolites and the Oceanic Lithosphere: Results of the Oman Drilling Project and Related Research
Muscat, 12-14th January 2020; link to the conference website
I will participate to the post-meeting excursion (lead by G. Ceuleneer) and I will stay after the conference with collegues from Toulouse for fieldwork.
The dream team from Toulouse: I am with P. Pinet, M. Rospabé (now at Jamstec-Japan), and G. Ceuleneer.
METEORITES MICROSTRUCTURES
Neil Meunier-Mili started his PhD in October 2019. He is supervised by M. Bystricky (IRAP) and myself (GET). Neil is our former Master 2 student. During his PhD he will study the petrology and the microstructure of several types of achondrite meteorites.
SMARTIES
(07-08/2019)
Everybody loves smarties. Mee too, but not only for chocolate. SMARTIES is a scientifique expedition studying the Romanche zone, a large transform fault. We are sailling on the Pourquoi Pas?, a French ship from Ifremer, and we have the Nautile submarine onboard. I am proud to be a member of the Nautile scientific team. The cruise is from 13th July to 24th of August from Cap Verde.
The official SMARTIES web site. HERE
During the cruise I will feed a blog for kids (in french) to share life onboard.
If you are interested, clic HERE.
I’ve dive twice with the Nautile. First on the active fault of the Romanche (up to 5769m deep). The outcrops were not amazing (many spares blocks) but we sampled very fresh peridotites. The second dive was along a fault wall (up to 4205m deep), with nice outcrops: we were climbing a mountain in submarine. The experience in the Nautile was fantastic. That was exploration. I had the feeling of being on the moon when I discovered the ground for the first time. I am very lucky. Sometimes that was frustrating when we were not successful to get the perfect sample, I would have like to get out with my hammer (but no way the pressure is around 500Kg/cm2 on the sphere). I hope to use again the Nautile in the futur, it is an exceptionnal tool for scientits.
2019 – INSU- MICMAC project
This project is funded by INSU (Institut National des Sciences de l’Univers). The project is the petrological and microstructural study meteorites of achondrite type to characterize mantle processes in primary planetary bodies. I am interested by several categories of achondrite meteorites. This semester, a Master 2 student (Neil Meunier-Mili) is studying a series of Brachinite.
Welcome onboard
(07/2018)
During July 2018, I’ve been on the Chikyu for almost 3 weeks. I was a member of the structural team to log the cores that have been drilled in Oman across the Moho.
https://www.omandrilling.ac.uk/
Mitacs Canada 2018
A master student (Mary Spencer) from Canada (University of Western Ontario – London) supervised by A. Bouvier and T. Withers was a laureate of Mitacs projects. She received funds to visit France during three months and she came to collaborate with M. Boyer (Clermont-Ferrand) and myself.
She study ureilite meteorites, and she came in Toulouse to study their microstructure and in Clermont-Ferrand to characterize their geochemistry.
Fieldwork in California
(06/2017)
Layered pyroxenites
In June 2017, we’ve been on the field to sample peridotite from the Trinity ophiolite. We had several objectives. The first one was to measure and sample Trinity pyroxenites layers for microstructural purpose. That’s part of the Hadrien Henry’s PhD Project. We want to compare them with the results obtained on Cabo Ortegal pyroxenite (Spain, see paper below). The second objective was to sample different lithologies (spinel peridotite, plagioclase peridotite, pyroxenite) for geochemical analyses. That’s part of Romain Thilac’s post-doc project at Macquarie University – CCFS (Sydney).
From back left to right: Romain Tilhac, Garasi, Hadrien Henry, Georges Ceuleneer, myself and Mount Shasta in the back
A new publication
Hadrien Henry a PhD student working between Macquarie University (Sydney) and GET (Toulouse) published a study on pyroxenites from Cabo Ortegal (Spain). After field and microstructural study he demonstrated that these pyroxenites are an exposure of deformed mantle wedge material. The history of these pyroxenites is unrolled: delamination from an arc root in a mantle wedge setting, and incorported into a subduction channel.
News from IODP Exp. 367
(04/2017)
Anders Mc Carthy is back from this expedition in south China rifted margin. Anne Briais, from my new Lab (GET-Toulouse) was also on board.
During this expedition, they drilled two holes, starting by U1499 in February and continuing by U1500 in March. They drilled a lot of sediments, which is probably not funniest for petrologist. Finally end of March during week 7, they reached basalt in hole U1500 around 1400m of depth. But no mantle at all during the entire expedition!
More details here: JOIDES Resolution weekly reports
A new publication
(10/2016)
A collaborative study with collegues from Switzerland and Japan has been published in Nature Geosciences. The geochemistry of two peridotite xenoliths from petit-spot volcanoes (Japan) revealed that the oceanic lithosphere has been enriched by metasomatism before subduction.
More details here: link to Nature Geosciences
And Jonathan E. Snow made a news and views article in Nature Geosciences about our paper, entitled “Petit spots go big”.
J.E. Snow: Petit spots go big
Back to Lanzo
(09/2016)
After a decade, I’ve been back in the Lanzo massif for fieldwork with a Master Student, Joana Duarte.
I had forgotten why I loved so much this place. The nature is beautiful, particulary with the sun of September, the rocks are still amazing: fresh peridotite mylonites, and Italian people (and food!) are so nice.
We visited the highly deformed peridotite area from the kilometric shear-zone. We make new interesting field observations with dykes deformed in the shear-zones and we took new oriented peridotite samples.
Few days in the Alps
(07/2016)
I was back in the Swiss Alps (Platta – Graubunded) for few days in the field with a Post-doc from Lausanne, Suzanne Picazo. She is a specialist of ophicalcite and oceanic breccias, and has a growing interest for peridotite. The aim of this short expedition was to observe and constrain the formation of the ophicalcite in relationship with an ultramylonitic peridotite. Our campain was successful and I had a lot of pleasure to be back there.
Suzanne watching the ophicalcite
Agassiz foundation grant from UNIL
(06/2016)
I applied in March for a grant dedicated to research and/or to purchase material. I’ve been successful and received money to buy and study pieces of meteorites. For my work, it is appropriate to buy chips of meteorite (when possible) to make my own preparation for EBSD analyses.
A new publication
(05/2016)
Last April a new study of Mantle xenoliths from subcontinental mantle (Ahaagar Algeria) as been published in Journal of Petrology.
doi: 10.1093/petrology/egw009
http://petrology.oxfordjournals.org/content/57/2/345
IODP Expeditions 367-368
(04/2016)
Last January we apply together with Othmar Müntener (as shore-based) and Anders McCarthy (full shipboard) to take part of expeditions 367-368.
Our interest resides in the opportunity to study the basement of South China Sea rifted margin across the entire section.
A new OCT to study!
We recently received good news: Anders is selected to take part of Exp.367. Happy!
More details about the expeditions here:
http://iodp.tamu.edu/scienceops/expeditions/south_china_sea_II.html
A new publication
(02/2016)
In collaboration with collegues from Australia and England, we studied the olivine fabrics of the oldest dunite on the Earth.
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160216/ncomms10665/abs/ncomms10665.html
News on the Geoblog, ¨la recherche en action¨ from the University of Lausanne (French)
Mary-Alix Kaczmarek 