Professor Martin Menzies

VOLCANOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Explosive volcanic eruptions disperse a volcanic ash footprint which remains as a time horizon in the geological record. This tephra (ash) layer is the basis of tephrochronology where distal ash can be "dated" by matching its mineralogy and chemistry to source volcanoes of known age.

EUROPEAN TEPHROCHRONOLOGY                                   

The NERC RESET CONSORTIUM is a 5 year project (2008-2013) involving the study of volcanic ash deposited during the last 100,000 years across Europe (Iceland, Azores, Germany, Italy, Greece, Turkey). Volcanic deposits found on the flanks of explosive volcanoes are the basis for a "proximal" chemical database which can be used to unravel the source of "distal" volcanic ash in marine cores, terrestrial & archaeological sites. The project involves a network of European collaborators with associated PhD projects on the Aeolian islands-Marsili Basin (Paul Albert), Mediterranean marine cores (Chris Satow), European lacustrine cores (Mark Hardiman), Colli Albani Rome (Jo Cross) and Vulcano (Anna Todman).

European collaborators : Iceland-Azores (Thordarson, Edinburgh; Gertisser, Keele); Colli Albani-Campi Flegrei-Vesuvius-Ischia-Aeolians-Etna-Pantelleria (Rosi, Zanchetta, Sulpizio; Univ Pisa; Giordano, Univ Rome; Orsi & Civetta, INGV, Naples, Coltelli, INGV, Catania, DeRosa, Cozensa) Acigöl-Golçuk-Erciyes Dag-Nemrut (Aydar, Univ. Ankara) Santorini-Kos-Nisyros (Kinvig/Gottsman/Blundy, Bristol)  

How do you get to this point in life ?

It is hard not to like rocks & landscape if you grew up surrounded by the Grampian highlands of Scotland !  Aberdeen was the natural uni choice for my BSc degree and thanks to departmental links with the Ontario Geological Survey I worked for my BSc thesis on the mineralized Nipissing Diabases of Northern Ontario with a parallel study of various insects : black, deer and moose flies.  Totally hooked on ultramafic rocks my PhD was part of a team effort on the Othris ophiolite (1975 Cambridge) where I had to unravel the ultramafic rocks in rural Greece (Makrirrakhi) amid temperatures that reached 40 degrees.  Post PhD in 1974 a Lindemann research fellowship (ESU) supported research at the Universities of California (UC) and NASA-JSC Houston.  Post-doctoral research (UCD & UCSB) focussed on the geochemistry of Sierran and Franciscan seafloor/arc ophiolites and interest in ultramafic rocks took me to the NASA-Johnson Space Centre Houston (to work with Joyce Brannon, Randy Korotev and Doug Blanchard) to investigate the trace element chemistry of high pressure minerals.  National Science Foundation funding at the Space Centre University of Minnesota, Minneapolis (with Rama Murthy) centered on the application of Nd-Sr isotopes to Archaean garnet peridotites from the Kaapvaal craton and spinel peridotites from the Basin and Range, Arizona USA.  In 1982 I returned to the UK (Open University) to a NERC supported research program on mantle fluid processes beneath continental regions (with Chris Hawkesworth, Tony Erlank). Parallel volcanological research involved Cenozoic to recent volcanism in the western USA (Yellowstone-Snake River Plain-Basin and Range/Sierran Province) with Bill Leeman (Rice Univ). 

The post-doctoral life cannot continue and RHBNC/RHUL provided my “first real job”.  Apart from the rigours of teaching I pursued research in volcanology and mantle chemistry. Initially NERC funding supported research on the mantle beneath NW Scotland and France/Italy; and volcanology projects allowed for time on the calc-alkaline volcanoes of the Aeolian islands (with Mauro Rosi), potassic volcanoes in Bali & Java Indonesia (with the SEARG/RHUL). Thanks to funding for PDRAs (Weiming Fan, Yigang Xu) and PhDs (Hongfu Zhang) from the Royal Society & the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the North China craton became a research study area and over the last twenty years research links between CAS institutes in Guangzhou (Prof Xu) and Beijing (Prof Zhang) are well established culminating in an international North China Craton workshop in 2011 celebrating major NNSFC funding on the NCC.  A British Council pump-priming initiative led to NERC/Royal Society support and a ten year study of continental break-up on the margins of the Red Sea in Yemen & later in Ethiopia (with Joel Baker, Ingrid Ukstins-Peate & colleagues).  As part of that project a pilot study of volcanic ash dispersal from a Miocene caldera in Arabia laid the foundations for a five year NERC consortium project in 2008-2013 involving tephro-chronology & laser-ablation analysis. Chemical fingerprint of European volcanic ash from volcanoes in Iceland and the Azores (in the west) to Turkey and Greece (in the east) is used to "date" tephra deposits in marine cores, lake cores and archaeological sites as part of a multi-university, multi-department project. 

My editorial experience includes several graduate textbooks on "Mantle Metasomatism" (Academic Press), "Continental Mantle" (Oxford University Press) and "Volcanic Rifted Margins (Geological Society of America). Editorial tasks have included associate editor for the Journal of the Geochemical Society since 1995 (Geochimica Cosmochimica Acta) & acting as guest Editor for OUP & Elsevier on eight separate occasions. Conference organisation includes a Geological Society of America Penrose conference at RHUL (first in the UK) and seven International Mantle Conferences in England, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, California (AGU Chapman) & Morocco (2013) with virtually each conference resulting in a Special Volume of Journal of Petrology (Oxford University Press). Two special volumes of Lithos and Gondwana Research were edited in 2012 with research papers from the Beijing craton meeting in 2011.