All lectures except the one on 13 February 2025 will be in-person presentations. The venue for the in-person lectures from September to March will be Lecture Theatre A (Room 407) in the Boyd Orr Building; the venue for the April and May lectures has still to be confirmed. The 13 February lecture will be a remote Zoom event. All lectures will start at 7:00 pm.

12 September 2024
Greenland Research Group, University of St Andrews
Greenland mapping project
Lecture summary

10 October 2024
Professor Stuart Haszeldine, University of Edinburgh
Climate and carbon control or catastrophe?
Lecture summary

14 November 2024
Associate Professor Heather Stewart, Minderoo-University of Western Australia Deep-Sea Research Centre
“The abyss gazes also into you”: exploring the deepest oceans
Lecture summary

12 December 2024
Dr Paige dePolo, Liverpool John Moores University
The taphonomy of a pantodont-rich assemblage from the San Juan Basin, New Mexico, USA
Lecture summary

9 January 2025
Luisa Hendry, @scottishgeologist
Rocking the digital world: promoting geology through social media and why it’s important
Lecture summary

6 February 2025
Dr Alex Dunhill, University of Leeds
Species loss, community collapse and ecosystem recovery during times of mass extinction

13 February 2025 (remote talk)
Kiara Brooksby, Camborne School of Mines
Economic geology

13 March 2025
To be confirmed

9 April 2025
To be confirmed

8 May 2025
Members’ Night

Lecture Summaries

12 September 2024
Greenland Research Group, University of St Andrews
Greenland mapping project

Undergraduate geology students from the University of St Andrews undertook six weeks of mapping in Qassiarsuk, studying various structures and igneous phenomena for their dissertations. They didn’t just experience fascinating geology but had a proper adventure, from close calls with polar bears, glacial walks and backcountry mountain huts. They thank all their sponsors and particularly the Geological Society of Glasgow for helping them partake in such a magnificent opportunity and are looking forward to sharing their findings with the GSG community.

10 October 2024
Professor Stuart Haszeldine, University of Edinburgh
Climate and carbon control or catastrophe?

Scotland and the UK were cradles of the industrial revolution – built on low cost coal energy creating vast wealth and empire. But since the 1850s and 1930s, and certainly from the 1970s, it has been clear that huge emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels are driving global heating, creating ocean acidification, causing sea level rise and accelerating dangerous climate change. Combating that requires: greatly decreased use of fossil carbon, capturing all CO2 released by use of fossil carbon, and replacing all possible CO2 into permanent geological storage. Features of UK offshore geological storage sites will be explained, and can mimic hydrocarbon accumulations. But achieving this at industrial scales of tens of millions tonnes CO2 per year in Scotland and Europe will require commercialisation equivalent to the present North Sea oil industry. Many successful pilot tests have been made, and recent legal victories in UK courts may now presage compulsory storage enacted on coal, oil and gas company producers. The weakest link remains the timidity of global governments to disturb the profitable status-quo, for harder to explain benefits in the 30, 100 and 10,000 year future.

Complete success is possible, but unlikely.

References

Haszeldine, R.S., 2009. Carbon capture and storage: how green can black be? Science325 (5948), 1647-1652 (open access). DOI: 10.1126/science.1172246

Hudson, M., 2024. Carbon Capture and Storage in the United Kingdom. Routledge.

Tucker, O., 2018. Carbon Capture & Storage. DOI: 10.1088/978-0-7503-1581-4 (e-book).

14 November 2024
Associate Professor Heather Stewart, Minderoo-University of Western Australia Deep-Sea Research Centre
“The abyss gazes also into you”: exploring the deepest oceans

The deepest parts of the ocean are one of the final remaining frontiers of discovery on our planet. Much of the deep ocean is unmapped and draws in explorers, scientists, cartographers and environmentalists, keen to discover its secrets. Underwater seascapes, comparable in size and complexity to our known continents, unknown ecosystems and processes that defy study from the surface means there are many gaps in our knowledge that science is hoping to fill. Due to the challenges of research at even moderate depths, almost every expedition venturing below 3000 m throws up a surprise. Heather has been lucky enough to participate in a number of expeditions to explore the deepest seafloors and will share some of what these diverse expedition teams have learned.

12 December 2024
Dr Paige dePolo, Liverpool John Moores University
The taphonomy of a pantodont-rich assemblage from the San Juan Basin, New Mexico, USA

66 million years ago, an asteroid hit the earth and kicked off the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction. In the wake of this extinction, many weird and enigmatic mammals began radiating into empty niches. One group, the plant eating, herbivorous pantodonts, quickly grew to be the largest mammals yet known in Earth history. In this talk, we’ll look at a collection of fossils from Torreon Wash in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico and think about their taphonomy (what happened to the animals after death). I will then develop an argument for gregariousness within Pantolambda bathmodon (a small pantodont), that illustrates that grouping behaviour is wide-spread within this clade (a grouping that includes a common ancestor and all the descendants of that ancestor).

9 January 2025
Luisa Hendry, @scottishgeologist
Rocking the digital world: promoting geology through social media and why it’s important

This talk will explore the power of social media as a tool for promoting geology and engaging diverse audiences in earth science. It will highlight innovative strategies for making geology accessible, relatable, and exciting through platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok and will empasise the importance of doing so. The presentation will demonstrate how social media, by creating engaging, educational and captivating content and building a passionate online community, can inspire a new generation to connect with the natural world and understand its geological foundations.