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Earth Sciences is a field still largely male-dominated, with women making up only 27% of faculty positions in North America. Yet things are slowly changing as the proportion of women in geosciences faculty positions increases and more high-impact earth sciences research is being attributed to women. This week’s Nature Reviews Earth and Environment feature article, ‘Earth’s mantle composition revealed by mantle plumes’ was written by an all-female team of scientists. e The lead author, Dominique Weis, a Professor at the Dept. of Earth Oceans and Atmospheric Sciences as well as a University of British Columbia Killam Professor and head of the Pacific Center for Isotopic and Geochemical Research was asked to put together a diverse group of authors for this invited review, and deliberately chose to create an all-female team.

The Earth’s mantle makes up 84% of the Earth’s volume and, is responsible for many of the geographic features on Earth’s surface, including volcanoes, mid-ocean ridges, and convergence zone mountain ranges. Despite the importance of the mantle to understanding Earth’s geodynamics and geochemistry, relatively little is known about the mantle due to limited sampling opportunities. At 10-40 km below Earth’s surface, accessing the mantle for direct sampling is nearly impossible. Yet mantle plumes can bring mantle rocks to the surface, enabling scientists to characterize the deep mantle composition and processes occurring today and back in time. The article by Weis et al. reviews the various types of mantle plumes and their characteristics, as well as the various tools to study them. Written from a geochemical perspective for a wider audience, including geodynamicists and geophysicists, the article promotes collaboration across geoscience disciplines to improve understanding of mantle composition and dynamics. 

As a feature article, ‘Earth’s mantle composition revealed by mantle plumes’ remains freely available for download on the Nature Reviews website for the next two weeks. Click here to download a copy now. 

I am Oladimeji Ayo Iwalaye, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Professor Maite Maldonado’s laboratory in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver (BC, Canada), in collaboration with the PlasticLab at OceanWise (https://ocean.org/pollution-plastics/plastics_lab/).

I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology from Ekiti State University, Nigeria and a Master of Science degree in Zoology (major in Animal Physiology) from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. I have a PhD degree in Marine Biology from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

The strong passion I have for life in the marine environment because the ocean houses more life than land has led to my interest in plastic pollution and global climate change research. I investigated the effects of increasing temperature and microplastic concentrations on microplastic ingestion and retention rates in two filter- and one deposit-feeding marine invertebrates for my PhD. My Postdoctoral Research focuses on toxicological effects of polyester microfibers on indigenous marine amphipods, using microcosm and mesocosm studies. I hope to continue using my knowledge to provide evidence-based proof of the effects of microplastics and temperature on marine biota using laboratory studies.

I participated in several beach clean-ups in South Africa, and was part of the support personnel at the OceanWise International Coastal Clean-up, 2022 help in Vancouver. I am always eager and excited to participate in research and activities that can provide evidence-based results that can help policymakers to make informed decisions that will promote a clean, safe and healthy environment for marine biota.

Cara B G James, Vanier Scholar and Ph.D. student in Geophysics at UBC EOAS, originally from the UK

Scroll down to watch our interview with Cara!

What is your Ph.D. project?

I'm doing a Ph.D. in the environmental impact of deep-sea mining, particularly looking at particulate clouds and the dissolution of metals from these clouds and how that may change the environment around seabed mining sites.

What is deep-sea mining and why do people want to do it?

Deep-sea mining is the process of retrieving potato-sized polymetallic manganese nodules, which are found lying on the sea floor in the deep oceans. The nodules are rich in metals that we need for the green energy transition, specifically nickel, cobalt, copper, and also a lot of rare earth elements. We need these metals for energy storage, such as electric vehicle batteries, as well as other sustainable technology products.

What are the environmental impacts of deep-sea mining?

To get these nodules, a remotely operated vehicle—like an undersea tractor—goes along the sea floor, picks up the top 10-15cm of the loose seabed sediment, and sifts out the nodules, removing as much of the sea floor sediment as possible. This process creates a lot of turbulence and mixing that kicks up large clouds of mud. The first part of what I study is these clouds: the dynamics within them and how that process impacts their behaviour and the dissolution of metals within them.

The second environmental issue is that when these nodules are taken up to the ship and get cleaned again, more little bits of sediment and nodules are then injected back into the ocean. We don’t know how that's going to happen exactly, since the regulations haven't been set yet, but it's important that we know what effect that's going to have on not only the deep sea, but maybe even the mid-water column of the ocean, where there’s potential to interact with areas of water frequented by open water fishing, amongst other issues.

What methods are you using in your Ph.D. work?

It's really expensive to investigate the deep-sea environment in situ (i.e. from a research vessel in the middle of the Pacific Ocean), so instead I work in a fluid flow lab here at UBC EOAS. I design analogue experiments to mimic the deep ocean where the clouds are, which we can then scale up to the real-world for comparison.

What path have you taken that has led you to a Ph.D. at UBC EOAS?

I did my Master's thesis on an adjacent deep-sea mining topic, at which point I was really motivated about the physics and maths of the problem. The topic of deep-sea really hooked me when I first heard about it, and I wanted to be part of this new and pivotal field. I want to work out what's going on down there, and most importantly produce work that gives the regulatory body solid argument to base their guidelines on, and make sure that we don't mess up this amazing habitat.

What is special about doing your Ph.D. at UBC EOAS?

Studying at UBC and especially in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences (EOAS) allows me to be interdisciplinary. This is a huge department: we have people working on deep-sea biology and mineralogy, and in my group, we work on these particle clouds - historically from volcanoes, but the methods we use can be applied in the same to deep-sea mining. I get to chat with all these people, which allows me to think about the problem as a whole instead of just one small bit. Not only do I get to work with colleagues in my department, but I can also collaborate with researchers from the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES) and also the Institute of Oceans and Fisheries (IOF). These people are experts on exactly what I need to think about, so I'm not constrained.

What are you most excited about now?

I'm in the second year of my Ph.D. now, and I'm really getting a feel for the shape of my project. I'm looking forward to getting down in the lab and getting my hands dirty doing some experiments, because I've been planning them and thinking about them for so long now!

How will becoming a Vanier Scholar affect the path of your Ph.D.?

I'm very grateful for being selected as a Vanier Scholar. The main thing that this will change for my Ph.D. is the sense of financial security, not just for my day-to-day life but also my research. With the Vanier Scholarship, I won’t be constrained to researching only what industry wants to look at and fund, but I can play around a little bit more and make my own decisions. For example, I've decided to add a policy chapter to my Ph.D., which is a new and exciting frontier for me. I'm going to look at the environmental impacts of deep-sea mining and then in the last part of my Ph.D., I can address questions like “how can we change regulation to mitigate as many of these environmental effects as we can?”.

What advice would you give to anyone applying for the Vanier Scholarship?

The advice I would give is that you need to make your individuality and drive come across in the application. You’ll write a personal statement and get reference letters to demonstrate that you show excellence in academia but also in your research potential, but be sure to convey how excited you are about your project, and if possible, think about and the impacts of your project on the field globally, and for Canada. The leadership side of the application is also important, because that's what makes the Vanier Scholarship unique. You need to tell the committee why you are special and why you deserve more than anyone else to have this scholarship.

About 66 million years ago, a mass extinction event wiped out 75% of life on Earth, including the dinosaurs. Yet our mammalian predecessors survived and evolved to thrive in the space left by the dinosaurs. But how? That is the multi-million dollar question EOAS Associate Professor Kendra Chritz and her co-investigators are setting out to answer. 

Having been awarded a prestigious and highly competitive $3M USD (~$4M CAD) grant from the Frontier Research in Earth Sciences (FRES) program at the National Science Foundation, the project titled, “How did Terrestrial Ecosystems Rebuild Following the Cretaceous/Paleogene Mass Extinction?”, truly is a multi-million dollar question. The funding will allow a team of geochemists and paleo-ecologists from institutions across North America to study a unique outcrop where terrestrial plant and animal remains from the earliest Paleogene, immediately following the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction event.

The fossils at Corral Bluffs, Colorado are an extremely rare, comprising extraordinarily well-preserved terrestrial plants and mammals. Terrestrial environments are not typically ideal for fossil preservation. As a result, little is known about how life on land (compared to marine life) adapted and evolved to flourish following the K-Pg mass extinction. However, the ancient wetlands that once existed over Corral Bluffs created the perfect ‘Goldilocks’ conditions needed to capture a snapshot of life on Earth in the years just prior to and following the mass extinction event.

As an expert in minimally-invasive geochemical analysis of fossils, Prof. Chritz was approached by the team at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science to join the project. The ratios of various elements preserved in plant and animal fossils will allow Prof. Chritz and her colleagues to reconstruct ancient climate, environment and food webs. These reconstructions will allow the team to describe how land plants rapidly diversified during the early Paleogene, and how, in turn, early mammals evolved to take advantage of newly available food sources and fill ecological niche spaces left behind by the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Now, living in the era of mammals, much is still unknown about how our earliest lineages rose to prominence. As this study aims to unlock some of these mysteries, it has received significant attention from the media, including Vancouver is Awesome, Richmond News, Burnaby Now, Tri-City News, North Shore News, Squamish Chief, Delta Optimist, New Westminster Record, Powell River Peak, Pique NewsMagazine. You can also tune into CBC’s Daybreak North show, aired on August 21, 2023 to hear Kenra Chritz describe the research in her own words (starting around 1:14:40).

Lindsay is the Earth Science Educational Field and Laboratory Coordinator at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She recently joined the university, previously working as a field geologist in private industry. After spending many years in field camps across the Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, British Columbia, and Ontario, she is now focused on using those experiences to support undergraduate students. While she was completing the Masters of Land and Water Systems program at UBC in 2020, Lindsay became more interested in how people teach and learn in the natural sciences. Through her current role, she is excited to pursue this interest further by collaboratively developing the lab and field components that are essential to Earth science education.

In September of 2016, the NASA OSIRIS-REx spacecraft launched from Florida to an asteroid named Bennu, or near-Earth object 101955. Bennu’s orbits the sun once every 1.2 years along a path very similar to Earth’s own orbital path. The NASA spacecraft began orbiting Bennu in 2018 and collected samples from the asteroid in 2020. Now, OSIRIS-REx is on its way back to Earth with those samples. 

The samples collected by OSIRIS-REx will be investigated by American and Canadian scientists, including Dominique Weis, a geosciences professor at the Department of Earth Oceans and Atmospheric Sciences at UBC. 

Bennu consists of carbon-rich rock material thought to have broken off some larger object around one billion years ago. This makes Bennu one of the older rock formations in our solar system. Bennu’s relatively old age and rich organic matter composition may offer researchers insights into the origins of life on Earth and potential water sources within the solar system.