Dear all,
on behalf of Tony Watts I am sending this to advertise
a fully-funded PhD studentship at Oxford University:
"The crust and upper mantle structure of the UAE/Oman
mountains: Implications for foreland basin formation and
ophiolite emplacement"
The project is available for entry in September, 2014 or
sooner and will be based in the Department of Earth Sciences,
University of Oxford.
Details follow (cut from a pdf - sorry I haven't
included the picture, which is a GMT shaded-relief map
of the data area in northeast Oman/UAE/Strait of Hormuz).
Please contact Tony Watts, [log in to unmask], for
further details.
The crust and upper mantle structure of the UAE/Oman mountains: Implications for
foreland basin formation and ophiolite emplacement
Supervisors: A. B. Watts and M. Y. Ali (Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi)
Seismic reflection and refraction profile data provide constraints on the structure, composition
and rheological properties of mountain belts, but little is known about the mechanism by
which the crust thickens in orogenic belts and the relative role of isostatic processes such as
thrust/fold loading compared to non-isostatic processes such as mantle convection. One
problem is the limited number of seismic transects of mountain belts. Arguably, the best
seismic reflection profile data has been acquired offshore of orogenic belts (e.g. BIRPS). One
orogenic belt, which is bounded on both its sides by water, but has not yet been explored, is
located in the Middle East, in UAE/Oman. This mountain belt comprises one of the world’s
best known ophiolites which were emplaced on the Arabian rifted continental margin during
the Late Cretaceous by obduction of oceanic crust and upper mantle that formed in a suprasubduction
zone setting. This studentship forms part of a joint project between the PetroleumInstitute and the University of Oxford to use land recording stations and a research vessel
equipped with a large-volume air-gun array, a long multichannel seismic streamer and ocean
bottom seismometers to constrain the deep structure of the UAE/Oman mountain belt. The
objective of the project is to determine the P-wave velocity structure and crustal thickness of
the mountain belt and use it, together with potential field data, to constrain geological
processes such as those associated with foreland basin formation and ophiolite
emplacement. The student will participate in all aspects of the acquisition, processing and
interpretation of the seismic data which we anticipate will be collected during field work in late
2014. The project will involve the manipulation of large seismic reflection and refraction,
receiver function, gravity and magnetic, and topography data and the analysis of these data
sets using GMT, Globe Claritas and in-house UNIX-based software. The student will be
based in Oxford, but there will opportunities to visit the Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi and
to collaborate with researchers there. The project should appeal to students interested in
working at the boundaries of geology and geophysics on a topic that is central to current
efforts to better understand the origin, deep structure and tectonic evolution of mountain
belts.
Selected references
Ali MY, Watts AB. 2009. Subsidence history, gravity anomalies and flexure of the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
foreland basin. GeoArabia 14: 17-44
Ali MY, Watts AB. 2013. Subsidence history, crustal structure and evolution of the Somaliland-Yemen conjugate
margin. J. Geophys. Res. DOI: 10.1002/jgrb.50113
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