News

As part of a collaborative scientific project with Prof. Caroline Bouvet de la Maisonneuve of the Earth Observatory of Singapore (Nanyang Technological University), Dr. Nicolas Waldmann participated in a three day intensive workshop to work together on a project dealing with a seismic survey and coring several Sumatran lakes (Indonesia). The project is lead by Caroline and forms part of a tephrochronology and environmental reconstruction study.

A five days field-trip to Nam Co (Tibet, China) took place early September aiming to provide the necessary information for writing an ICDP proposal. As almost one third of the world's population depends on the water supply from the Tibetan Plateau, the future of the monsoon on the Tibetan Plateau will have a major societal impact. Thus, the proposed ICDP project aims to improve our knowledge of the timing, duration, and intensity of past climatic variability and its environmental impact on a long geologic time scale.

Petrolabers were very active during the European Researchers' Night event that took place early September this year. We showed to parents and kids how do we obtain cores from the bottom of the ocean and what can we learn from them. The exhibition included cores from the Eocene as is exposed in southern Israel and from the deep Levant Basin. It was a wonderful event!

Dr. Or Bialik just published a new paper in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta! The paper is entitled Mg isotope response to dolomitization in hinterland-attached carbonate platforms: Outlook of δ²⁶Mg as a tracer of basin restriction and seawater Mg/Ca ratio. The paper deals with a comprehensive study of the Hevyon Formation as exposed in the Negev desert. The paper showcases the complexity of Mg isotope behavior in carbonate platforms and highlights the necessity of performing integrated and detailed sedimentology and isotope geochemistry analyses for understanding natural Mg isotope variability. The paper is an important outcome of the ongoing ISF-NSFC grant in cooperation with Prof. Weiqiang Li from Nanjing University. More to come!

Emmanuel just published a new paper in Marine and Petroleum Geology. The paper deals with fluid escape in the Levant Basin as evidenced from stratigraphically and structurally confined pockmarks. A dual source of fluids (Pre-Messinian and Quaternary) is proposed as the main driver of focused fluid flow. The mapped pockmarks show that methane escape in the Palmachim disturbance is more widespread than previously reported. Congrats Emmanuel!

As part of the German Israel Foundation project (GIF project MioEAST), we traveled to Cyprus for several days of fieldwork! The work included sampling Miocene records from several outcrops, especially in the Paphos region. Prof. Christian Betzler (University of Hamburg) is a co-PI on this project. Dr. Jesus Reolid (University of Granada) and Dr. Denise Kulhanek (Texas A&M) joined us during fieldwork.

Stay tuned for more updated on MioEAST!

Nehemiah Dominik, Moses Magoba (University of Western Cape, South Africa) and Naima Shariff (University of Nairobi in Kenya) came to PetroLab for a semester of student exchange. Their stay (totally covered by PetroLab funds) included working on their research subjects and participating in courses at the Department of Marine Geosciences. Nehemiah's PhD deals with integration of mineralogy and logs in reservoir quality analysis: case study of the Orange Basin, offshore South Africa. Moses's PhD thesis deals with the investigation of the relationship between acoustic properties and geological settings of low velocity shale and upper shallow marine sandstones reservoirs in the Bredasdorp Basin, offshore South Africa. Naima's project deals with organic matter distribution in Lake Chala: paleohydrological interpretations. We welcome them in our lab and wish them great success in their stay!

Mor Arnon defended her MSc thesis entitled Geomorphological insights into the evolution of the Israeli continental shelf since the Pleistocene. Her work concentrated on the reconstruction of the geomorphological evolution of the Israeli continental shelf through ~120 m of sea level fluctuation during the last glacial cycle. Three different terrace units were identified and mapped across the entire continental shelf and statistical analyses were done for quality control. Her results show that morphological terraces differ in their genesis and evolution and pose the possibility of diachronicity of their formation.

A great way to start the year! A long lasting debate prevails on the paleoenvironmental setting of the Levant Basin during the Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC). A new paper published by several Petrolabers shows a coeval onset of basinal halite and marginal gypsum precipitation and proposes to re-evaluate global-scale climatic and oceanographic models of the MSC, taking into account a much older age for the beginning of halite deposition. Congrats Ari!