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46 Projects

  • Canada
  • 2021
  • 2022

10
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  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: NE/V019856/1
    Funder Contribution: 12,298 GBP

    The human mouth contains many different types of microorganisms that are often found attached to oral surfaces in 'sticky' communities called biofilms. These microorganisms are held in close proximity and will therefore likely influence the behaviour of each other. The effects of this could result in increased microbial growth, the displacement of some microorganisms to other sites, the alteration of gene expression and potentially, the enabling of microorganisms to cause infection. A PhD research project being done by Ms Megan Williams at the School of Dentistry, Cardiff University has been exploring how a fungus called Candida albicans can interact both with acrylic surfaces (used to manufacture dentures) and also with bacterial species often found alongside Candida albicans. To date, the work has indicated that colonisation of acrylic coated with different fluids, including those generated from tobacco smoking, may change the way Candida albicans grows. Candida albicans can grow as round cells called yeast, or as filamentous forms called hyphae. It is the hyphal forms that are often considered more damaging to human tissue surfaces during infection. In addition, the research shows that when certain bacteria are grown on acrylic surfaces with Candida albicans, hyphal development is also triggered. This is important, as it may mean that occurrence of infection by Candida albicans is at least in part determined by the community composition of the bacteria present alongside Candida. To date, the methods used to study these effects have included fluorescent microscopy, where the Candida is stained to fluoresce a different colour to bacteria and the surface of attachment. Whilst this approach allows quantification of attachment and imaging of the different growth forms, it cannot determine strength of cell-cell-surface interactions. Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) is a method that provides images through measuring forces acting between a moving probe and a surface. It is possible to attach different molecules and even whole bacteria to the AFM probe, and in doing so, we can measure interactions occurring between bacteria, and either Candida yeast or hyphae serving as the substrate. Dr Laurent Bozec and his team at the University of Toronto are experts in use of AFM, which is not available in the School of dentistry, Cardiff. The exchange therefore offers the PhD student the opportunity to learn a new experimental technique, generate important data for the PhD and benefit from unique networking experiences. The results generated from this proposal will greatly enhance the research output and complement existing findings of the PhD. Ultimately, this could help determine how bacteria physically interact with Candida albicans and trigger the development of hyphal filaments to facilitate infection.

    more_vert
  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: NE/V020471/1
    Funder Contribution: 12,390 GBP

    ESRC : Emily MacLeod : ES/P000592/1. This exchange provides me with the opportunity to develop my existing expertise within science identities research, and make links within the field of teacher education and teaching identities research. There is a critical shortage of teachers globally; an ongoing issue which has far-reaching and negative consequences for schools and their students. The teacher shortage in the UK, where I am conducting my PhD and where I myself was a teacher, is particularly acute. Government teacher recruitment targets in England have been missed for the last seven years. However, this shortage is not evenly spread, and raises significant social justice concerns. For example, it has been estimated that schools in England would need an additional 68,000 Black and minority ethnic teachers for the workforce to reflect the population it teaches. Science especially faces some of the worst teacher shortages. But incentives to attract more people into science teaching have so far failed to make a significant impact on this shortage, and have tended to be financial; based upon the assumption that science graduates can earn considerably more outside of the relatively low-paid role of teaching. Unlike the well-documented shortage of teachers in England, there is currently very little research into the scale of the teacher shortage in Canada, partly due to differences in governance and contexts across the different provinces. However, in contrast to the surplus of teachers seen in recent years, there are now signs of an increasing shortage of teachers. This summer in Québec, where I intend to complete this exchange, the government reported that there were over 250 empty teacher vacancies in the province, and there are concerns that Covid-19 is likely to make things worse. As in England, there is also a severe and growing underrepresentation of people of colour in Canada's teaching workforce. This is particularly worrying within the context of an increasingly diverse Canadian population. Also as in England, this shortage is not spread evenly. Science teachers are some of the most needed. However, unlike in England, teacher salaries across Canada are amongst the highest of the OECD community, and subject-specific incentives have yet to be used. The shortage of science teachers especially, seen in both England and Canada, is of particular concern given that there is a globally-recognised STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) skills shortage, likely to increase due to Covid-19. This growing demand for more young people studying and working in STEM will not be met without enough qualified science teachers. Yet in order to improve this situation, we need to better understand science teacher supply patterns. To date, research into teacher supply in science (and other disciplines) has been conducted by specialists in teacher education. From this we know that science teachers report becoming teachers not because they always wanted to, but after having had positive teaching-like experiences. We also know from existing science identities research from both the host and home supervisors that social and cultural influences work to influence whether and how people see different sciences roles as 'for me' or not. This exchange will help me to develop my research and communication skills whilst conducting comparative research to develop understandings of who does, and importantly who does not, want to become a science teacher in the UK and Canada, and why. I will build upon my existing expertise in science identity development amongst young people, and learn from the expertise of Dr Gonsalves and her colleagues in science teacher identities, and how teaching-like experiences can affect these identities. Combining these fields will help me to contribute to understandings of how people's identities shape how they feel about becoming science teachers.

    more_vert
  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: NE/V02115X/1
    Funder Contribution: 6,953 GBP

    AHRC : Alexander Hutterer : AH/R012709/1 Society and technology today face several information processing challenges. Human lives and digital technology become ever closer intertwined. Hence, we need to become better at understanding our own information processing practices. And we need to become more effective at using technology to aid and supplement our information processing activities. Philosophy plays a key role in explicating the meaning of the most fundamental concepts. Specifically, the sub-discipline of epistemology aims to help us understand what we mean when we say that we "believe," "know," or "understand" something. This can help us both with better understanding our contemporary socio-technological challenges and with finding solutions for them. For instance, one major challenge in the development of artificial intelligence is making it "understandable" to humans. This requires a clear picture of what it means for humans to understand something in the first place. Another example is the spreading of "fake news" via social media. Current solutions for this problem, like fact-checking, are insufficient. Part of the problem with this particular solution is that the implied aim is too ambitious, namely to "prove facts," a goal that even science does not necessarily reach. By better understanding these epistemic aims and practices, philosophy can help with the development of new, more effective solutions to challenges like the "post-truth" problem or AI development. The values and practices of today's science-powered society are frequently thought to stem from the enlightenment period. The enlightenment took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and coincided with significant improvements of human life, including the ascent of science and the beginnings of the industrial revolution. It was in the later stages of this period that Immanuel Kant wrote his ground-breaking "Critique of Pure Reason." In anglophone secondary literature on this book, Kant is usually understood as providing a new theory of how and what sort of "a priori knowledge," i.e., knowledge before experience, is attainable for humans. However, several recent papers in Kant scholarship cast doubt on this dominant interpretation. Instead, it is argued, Kant was not talking about knowledge at all. Specifically, he was talking about the German term "Erkenntnis" rather than knowledge. There is no clear translation for the term "Erkenntnis." The goal of my PhD is partly to figure out what precisely Kant meant by "Erkenntnis." If "Erkenntnis" really differs radically from "knowledge," this would radically affect Kant scholarship. Moreover, the implications go beyond the narrow confines of Kant exegesis. To be precise, Kant and his contemporaries seem to have used an entirely different epistemic category, namely "Erkenntnis," in addition to the categories used in philosophy today. Moreover, since Kant deemed "Erkenntnis" to be philosophically more significant than "knowledge," which is at the centre of contemporary epistemology, he quite probably also had different conceptions of the aims of our epistemic practices. During the proposed placement, I aim to find out whether Kant's immediate intellectual successor - the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte - distinguished "Erkenntnis" from knowledge in an analogous way to Kant. Moreover, I intend to find out how Fichte's thoughts about the aims of epistemology differ from Kant's. Finally, I want to explore how Fichte's thoughts on this topic could be applied to both contemporary philosophy and some of society's current information processing challenges. The project will thereby contribute to a better understanding of why knowledge, truth and other epistemic practices are valuable and how we can promote these values. Moreover, it will contribute to filling a crucial gap in research on German Idealism.

    more_vert
  • Funder: SNSF Project Code: 200054
    Funder Contribution: 54,450
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  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: NE/V020757/1
    Funder Contribution: 6,676 GBP

    NERC : Thomas Weeks : NE/S007415/1 Land-use change and biological invasions are two of the three major drivers of biodiversity decline globally, however, interactions between these drivers can often have synergistic effects on native ecosystems. This is a phenomenon which is well known but relatively understudied. In particular, little is known about how these drivers interact to affect whole community diversity and function This proposal serves to add to this knowledge gap by collaboration with the long-term ecological monitoring programme from Toronto Region and Conservation Agency, which has consolidated high-resolution time-series data of land-usage in southern Ontario as well as comprehensive ecological surveys including both native and invasive species. Using this data we propose to model the effects of both urbanization and invasive species on native biodiversity in local assemblages in Toronto and the surrounding region. We pay specific attention to how increasing degradation of natural habitats interacts with invasive species abundance its effects to native functional-trait and phylogenetic biodiversity. By using high-resolution projection of land-use change into the remainder of the 21st century we will highlight areas where biodiversity is most at risk as well as areas which would be least resilient to further spread of invasive species.

    more_vert
  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: NE/V019597/1
    Funder Contribution: 12,139 GBP

    BBSRC : Colette Clare Milbourn : BB/M008770/1 Research: Vascular disease (problems with blood vessels) are a leading cause of death and disability. Stroke alone (blockage of blood vessels) is the 4th biggest killer globally (3rd in Canada), most disabling (2/3rd of survivors disabled) and costs society ~£26 billion a year in the UK. It can be hard to detect. A brain that has vascular disease can appear healthy in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) (brain scanner) images taken at rest. However, under stress the damaged blood vessels cannot always maintain a sufficient blood supply. You can identify these problems using a task that stresses the brain artificially, by asking a patient to breathe in carbon dioxide (CO2) mixed with air. This signals the blood vessels in the brain to increase the blood flow. We aim to accurately measure this change in blood flow to provide new insight into vascular diseases of the brain. Quick, quantitative and robust values from MRI will provide clinicians with information for diagnosis. Combining complementary MRI techniques from Nottingham (task, but more comparable across patients) and Toronto (no task, more patient friendly) will provide a practical diagnostic tool. The ultimate aim of this project is build towards a best of both worlds' technique for imaging blood flow change: quantitative, practical and comfortable.

    more_vert
  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: NE/V021095/1
    Funder Contribution: 8,768 GBP

    "NERC : Lewis Bailey : NE/L002531/1" Our overarching aims is to better understand the processes that trigger submarine avalanches of sediment, known as turbidity currents, offshore from river mouths. By analysing triggering mechanisms, we aim to build a model that can forecast turbidity current activity, and be applied to river deltas globally. These sediment flows can be exceptionally powerful (velocities of up to 20 m/s) and travel for long (100s km) distances. Therefore, turbidity currents pose a significant hazard to seafloor infrastructure such as oil and gas pipelines and telecommunication cables. We have never been more reliant on the internet in the current world of lockdowns and remote working. Even weaker flows travelling at speeds of ~1-2 m/s can severely damage seafloor equipment making hazard mitigation be re-routing challenging and very expensive ($millions per km). Improving our understanding of the frequency and timing of flows is therefore critical to asses where these extra costs are a necessity. The destructive nature of turbidity currents means there are very few sites where a significant number of flows have been directly measured. Therefore, the mechanisms that result in flow triggering still remain poorly understood. Recent monitoring has made advances using instruments moored along flow paths to precisely measure turbidity current timing to compare with potential triggers. Analysis in remote fjord-delta settings in British Columbia, Canada, have shown turbidity currents preferentially occur at low tide during periods of elevated river discharge. Novel multivariate statistical methods (i.e. analysing the combined effect of multiple variables) have quantified the relative role of river discharge and water level. Using this relationship, it has been possible to successfully predict almost 90% of turbidity current activity. However, this analysis is based on data acquired over relatively short-time periods (months), and therefore may miss longer (seasonal-yearly) cycles of flow activity. It is also unknown how the relative roles of river discharge and water level vary when upscaled and applied to major rivers where underwater events pose a much greater hazard to coastal communities and critical seafloor infrastructure. The project will use longer-term monitoring datasets that have been made possible by the pioneering Canadian Government-funded Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea (VENUS) cabled observatory, which has been recording unusually detailed data offshore the Fraser River Delta, British Columbia, since 2008. Using this dataset combined with previous direct measurements of turbidity currents the project aims are to: (1) Understand how the roles of discharge and tide for turbidity current triggering vary at different scale river systems. (2) Develop a predictive model for turbidity current occurrence that could be applied to river delta systems globally. (3) Understand the potential effects of climate change on the frequency and timing of turbidity currents. Our results will benefit future geohazard assessments for seafloor infrastructure including oil and gas pipelines, and telecommunication cables. The development of a turbidity current forecasting model will help us understand the frequency and timing of flows and the risk to seafloor infrastructure. Such forecasting can also contribute to future planning of cable or pipeline routing.

    more_vert
  • Funder: SNSF Project Code: 199216
    Funder Contribution: 58,756
    more_vert
  • Funder: SNSF Project Code: 194483
    Funder Contribution: 49,000
    more_vert
  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: NE/V021192/1
    Funder Contribution: 6,933 GBP

    *NERC *Dennis Mayk *NE/L002507/1 The proposed research project is about measuring the energetic costs of shell formation in marine organisms. This is a key parameter to understand how shell forming marine organisms will be able to adapt to the oceans of the future. The expected outcome of this study is a precise and accurate measurement of the amount of energy spent by the shell forming organisms per unit shell.

    more_vert
46 Projects
  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: NE/V019856/1
    Funder Contribution: 12,298 GBP

    The human mouth contains many different types of microorganisms that are often found attached to oral surfaces in 'sticky' communities called biofilms. These microorganisms are held in close proximity and will therefore likely influence the behaviour of each other. The effects of this could result in increased microbial growth, the displacement of some microorganisms to other sites, the alteration of gene expression and potentially, the enabling of microorganisms to cause infection. A PhD research project being done by Ms Megan Williams at the School of Dentistry, Cardiff University has been exploring how a fungus called Candida albicans can interact both with acrylic surfaces (used to manufacture dentures) and also with bacterial species often found alongside Candida albicans. To date, the work has indicated that colonisation of acrylic coated with different fluids, including those generated from tobacco smoking, may change the way Candida albicans grows. Candida albicans can grow as round cells called yeast, or as filamentous forms called hyphae. It is the hyphal forms that are often considered more damaging to human tissue surfaces during infection. In addition, the research shows that when certain bacteria are grown on acrylic surfaces with Candida albicans, hyphal development is also triggered. This is important, as it may mean that occurrence of infection by Candida albicans is at least in part determined by the community composition of the bacteria present alongside Candida. To date, the methods used to study these effects have included fluorescent microscopy, where the Candida is stained to fluoresce a different colour to bacteria and the surface of attachment. Whilst this approach allows quantification of attachment and imaging of the different growth forms, it cannot determine strength of cell-cell-surface interactions. Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) is a method that provides images through measuring forces acting between a moving probe and a surface. It is possible to attach different molecules and even whole bacteria to the AFM probe, and in doing so, we can measure interactions occurring between bacteria, and either Candida yeast or hyphae serving as the substrate. Dr Laurent Bozec and his team at the University of Toronto are experts in use of AFM, which is not available in the School of dentistry, Cardiff. The exchange therefore offers the PhD student the opportunity to learn a new experimental technique, generate important data for the PhD and benefit from unique networking experiences. The results generated from this proposal will greatly enhance the research output and complement existing findings of the PhD. Ultimately, this could help determine how bacteria physically interact with Candida albicans and trigger the development of hyphal filaments to facilitate infection.

    more_vert
  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: NE/V020471/1
    Funder Contribution: 12,390 GBP

    ESRC : Emily MacLeod : ES/P000592/1. This exchange provides me with the opportunity to develop my existing expertise within science identities research, and make links within the field of teacher education and teaching identities research. There is a critical shortage of teachers globally; an ongoing issue which has far-reaching and negative consequences for schools and their students. The teacher shortage in the UK, where I am conducting my PhD and where I myself was a teacher, is particularly acute. Government teacher recruitment targets in England have been missed for the last seven years. However, this shortage is not evenly spread, and raises significant social justice concerns. For example, it has been estimated that schools in England would need an additional 68,000 Black and minority ethnic teachers for the workforce to reflect the population it teaches. Science especially faces some of the worst teacher shortages. But incentives to attract more people into science teaching have so far failed to make a significant impact on this shortage, and have tended to be financial; based upon the assumption that science graduates can earn considerably more outside of the relatively low-paid role of teaching. Unlike the well-documented shortage of teachers in England, there is currently very little research into the scale of the teacher shortage in Canada, partly due to differences in governance and contexts across the different provinces. However, in contrast to the surplus of teachers seen in recent years, there are now signs of an increasing shortage of teachers. This summer in Québec, where I intend to complete this exchange, the government reported that there were over 250 empty teacher vacancies in the province, and there are concerns that Covid-19 is likely to make things worse. As in England, there is also a severe and growing underrepresentation of people of colour in Canada's teaching workforce. This is particularly worrying within the context of an increasingly diverse Canadian population. Also as in England, this shortage is not spread evenly. Science teachers are some of the most needed. However, unlike in England, teacher salaries across Canada are amongst the highest of the OECD community, and subject-specific incentives have yet to be used. The shortage of science teachers especially, seen in both England and Canada, is of particular concern given that there is a globally-recognised STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) skills shortage, likely to increase due to Covid-19. This growing demand for more young people studying and working in STEM will not be met without enough qualified science teachers. Yet in order to improve this situation, we need to better understand science teacher supply patterns. To date, research into teacher supply in science (and other disciplines) has been conducted by specialists in teacher education. From this we know that science teachers report becoming teachers not because they always wanted to, but after having had positive teaching-like experiences. We also know from existing science identities research from both the host and home supervisors that social and cultural influences work to influence whether and how people see different sciences roles as 'for me' or not. This exchange will help me to develop my research and communication skills whilst conducting comparative research to develop understandings of who does, and importantly who does not, want to become a science teacher in the UK and Canada, and why. I will build upon my existing expertise in science identity development amongst young people, and learn from the expertise of Dr Gonsalves and her colleagues in science teacher identities, and how teaching-like experiences can affect these identities. Combining these fields will help me to contribute to understandings of how people's identities shape how they feel about becoming science teachers.

    more_vert
  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: NE/V02115X/1
    Funder Contribution: 6,953 GBP

    AHRC : Alexander Hutterer : AH/R012709/1 Society and technology today face several information processing challenges. Human lives and digital technology become ever closer intertwined. Hence, we need to become better at understanding our own information processing practices. And we need to become more effective at using technology to aid and supplement our information processing activities. Philosophy plays a key role in explicating the meaning of the most fundamental concepts. Specifically, the sub-discipline of epistemology aims to help us understand what we mean when we say that we "believe," "know," or "understand" something. This can help us both with better understanding our contemporary socio-technological challenges and with finding solutions for them. For instance, one major challenge in the development of artificial intelligence is making it "understandable" to humans. This requires a clear picture of what it means for humans to understand something in the first place. Another example is the spreading of "fake news" via social media. Current solutions for this problem, like fact-checking, are insufficient. Part of the problem with this particular solution is that the implied aim is too ambitious, namely to "prove facts," a goal that even science does not necessarily reach. By better understanding these epistemic aims and practices, philosophy can help with the development of new, more effective solutions to challenges like the "post-truth" problem or AI development. The values and practices of today's science-powered society are frequently thought to stem from the enlightenment period. The enlightenment took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and coincided with significant improvements of human life, including the ascent of science and the beginnings of the industrial revolution. It was in the later stages of this period that Immanuel Kant wrote his ground-breaking "Critique of Pure Reason." In anglophone secondary literature on this book, Kant is usually understood as providing a new theory of how and what sort of "a priori knowledge," i.e., knowledge before experience, is attainable for humans. However, several recent papers in Kant scholarship cast doubt on this dominant interpretation. Instead, it is argued, Kant was not talking about knowledge at all. Specifically, he was talking about the German term "Erkenntnis" rather than knowledge. There is no clear translation for the term "Erkenntnis." The goal of my PhD is partly to figure out what precisely Kant meant by "Erkenntnis." If "Erkenntnis" really differs radically from "knowledge," this would radically affect Kant scholarship. Moreover, the implications go beyond the narrow confines of Kant exegesis. To be precise, Kant and his contemporaries seem to have used an entirely different epistemic category, namely "Erkenntnis," in addition to the categories used in philosophy today. Moreover, since Kant deemed "Erkenntnis" to be philosophically more significant than "knowledge," which is at the centre of contemporary epistemology, he quite probably also had different conceptions of the aims of our epistemic practices. During the proposed placement, I aim to find out whether Kant's immediate intellectual successor - the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte - distinguished "Erkenntnis" from knowledge in an analogous way to Kant. Moreover, I intend to find out how Fichte's thoughts about the aims of epistemology differ from Kant's. Finally, I want to explore how Fichte's thoughts on this topic could be applied to both contemporary philosophy and some of society's current information processing challenges. The project will thereby contribute to a better understanding of why knowledge, truth and other epistemic practices are valuable and how we can promote these values. Moreover, it will contribute to filling a crucial gap in research on German Idealism.

    more_vert
  • Funder: SNSF Project Code: 200054
    Funder Contribution: 54,450
    more_vert
  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: NE/V020757/1
    Funder Contribution: 6,676 GBP

    NERC : Thomas Weeks : NE/S007415/1 Land-use change and biological invasions are two of the three major drivers of biodiversity decline globally, however, interactions between these drivers can often have synergistic effects on native ecosystems. This is a phenomenon which is well known but relatively understudied. In particular, little is known about how these drivers interact to affect whole community diversity and function This proposal serves to add to this knowledge gap by collaboration with the long-term ecological monitoring programme from Toronto Region and Conservation Agency, which has consolidated high-resolution time-series data of land-usage in southern Ontario as well as comprehensive ecological surveys including both native and invasive species. Using this data we propose to model the effects of both urbanization and invasive species on native biodiversity in local assemblages in Toronto and the surrounding region. We pay specific attention to how increasing degradation of natural habitats interacts with invasive species abundance its effects to native functional-trait and phylogenetic biodiversity. By using high-resolution projection of land-use change into the remainder of the 21st century we will highlight areas where biodiversity is most at risk as well as areas which would be least resilient to further spread of invasive species.

    more_vert
  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: NE/V019597/1
    Funder Contribution: 12,139 GBP

    BBSRC : Colette Clare Milbourn : BB/M008770/1 Research: Vascular disease (problems with blood vessels) are a leading cause of death and disability. Stroke alone (blockage of blood vessels) is the 4th biggest killer globally (3rd in Canada), most disabling (2/3rd of survivors disabled) and costs society ~£26 billion a year in the UK. It can be hard to detect. A brain that has vascular disease can appear healthy in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) (brain scanner) images taken at rest. However, under stress the damaged blood vessels cannot always maintain a sufficient blood supply. You can identify these problems using a task that stresses the brain artificially, by asking a patient to breathe in carbon dioxide (CO2) mixed with air. This signals the blood vessels in the brain to increase the blood flow. We aim to accurately measure this change in blood flow to provide new insight into vascular diseases of the brain. Quick, quantitative and robust values from MRI will provide clinicians with information for diagnosis. Combining complementary MRI techniques from Nottingham (task, but more comparable across patients) and Toronto (no task, more patient friendly) will provide a practical diagnostic tool. The ultimate aim of this project is build towards a best of both worlds' technique for imaging blood flow change: quantitative, practical and comfortable.

    more_vert
  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: NE/V021095/1
    Funder Contribution: 8,768 GBP

    "NERC : Lewis Bailey : NE/L002531/1" Our overarching aims is to better understand the processes that trigger submarine avalanches of sediment, known as turbidity currents, offshore from river mouths. By analysing triggering mechanisms, we aim to build a model that can forecast turbidity current activity, and be applied to river deltas globally. These sediment flows can be exceptionally powerful (velocities of up to 20 m/s) and travel for long (100s km) distances. Therefore, turbidity currents pose a significant hazard to seafloor infrastructure such as oil and gas pipelines and telecommunication cables. We have never been more reliant on the internet in the current world of lockdowns and remote working. Even weaker flows travelling at speeds of ~1-2 m/s can severely damage seafloor equipment making hazard mitigation be re-routing challenging and very expensive ($millions per km). Improving our understanding of the frequency and timing of flows is therefore critical to asses where these extra costs are a necessity. The destructive nature of turbidity currents means there are very few sites where a significant number of flows have been directly measured. Therefore, the mechanisms that result in flow triggering still remain poorly understood. Recent monitoring has made advances using instruments moored along flow paths to precisely measure turbidity current timing to compare with potential triggers. Analysis in remote fjord-delta settings in British Columbia, Canada, have shown turbidity currents preferentially occur at low tide during periods of elevated river discharge. Novel multivariate statistical methods (i.e. analysing the combined effect of multiple variables) have quantified the relative role of river discharge and water level. Using this relationship, it has been possible to successfully predict almost 90% of turbidity current activity. However, this analysis is based on data acquired over relatively short-time periods (months), and therefore may miss longer (seasonal-yearly) cycles of flow activity. It is also unknown how the relative roles of river discharge and water level vary when upscaled and applied to major rivers where underwater events pose a much greater hazard to coastal communities and critical seafloor infrastructure. The project will use longer-term monitoring datasets that have been made possible by the pioneering Canadian Government-funded Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea (VENUS) cabled observatory, which has been recording unusually detailed data offshore the Fraser River Delta, British Columbia, since 2008. Using this dataset combined with previous direct measurements of turbidity currents the project aims are to: (1) Understand how the roles of discharge and tide for turbidity current triggering vary at different scale river systems. (2) Develop a predictive model for turbidity current occurrence that could be applied to river delta systems globally. (3) Understand the potential effects of climate change on the frequency and timing of turbidity currents. Our results will benefit future geohazard assessments for seafloor infrastructure including oil and gas pipelines, and telecommunication cables. The development of a turbidity current forecasting model will help us understand the frequency and timing of flows and the risk to seafloor infrastructure. Such forecasting can also contribute to future planning of cable or pipeline routing.

    more_vert
  • Funder: SNSF Project Code: 199216
    Funder Contribution: 58,756
    more_vert
  • Funder: SNSF Project Code: 194483
    Funder Contribution: 49,000
    more_vert
  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: NE/V021192/1
    Funder Contribution: 6,933 GBP

    *NERC *Dennis Mayk *NE/L002507/1 The proposed research project is about measuring the energetic costs of shell formation in marine organisms. This is a key parameter to understand how shell forming marine organisms will be able to adapt to the oceans of the future. The expected outcome of this study is a precise and accurate measurement of the amount of energy spent by the shell forming organisms per unit shell.

    more_vert