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NERC funded research

21 July 2006

Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded research is highlighted in three articles in this week's edition of Nature (20 July 07).

Geologists witness birth of new ocean

Two million years of rock history are being closely monitored by geologists from Royal Holloway University of London, Oxford University and Addis Ababa University as the start of a new ocean basin is created in Ethiopia.

Geologists were able to witness first hand a rare event, how a thin column of an eight metre wide rift filled up with magma and rose from great depths to near the surface. This will eventually form a new strip of ocean floor.

Cindy Ebinger, from Royal Holloway, University of London said, "It is amazing. It's the first large event we have seen like this in a rift zone since the advent of some of the space-based techniques we're now using. These techniques give us a resolution and a detail to see what's really going on and how the earth processes work."

Dr Tim Wright, from Oxford University's Earth Sciences Department, said, "This is the first time we have been able to observe this process directly. It is clear that the rise of molten rock through the plate is enabling the break up of Africa and Arabia."

For more information visit Royal Holloway University of London or the BBC news website.

Ecological Networks and their Fragility

Ecological networks may struggle to survive the systematic changes our planet is undergoing, according to a research team lead by Queen Mary University of London.

A huge range of interactions exist in nature: from predatory and herbivorous relationships, such as a fox killing a mouse; to more reciprocal relationships, such as the pollination of flowers by insects. Darwin called this mass of complex interactions a 'tangled bank'.

Dr Jose Montoya and collaborators have found that Darwin's tangled bank exhibits simple and complex patterns, or relationships, which are affected by changes such as the addition or removal of a species.

Montoya explains, "By understanding how species interact within ecological networks, we can understand how species survive. Every species is closely linked to every other, either directly or indirectly. Every disturbance in the ecosystem moves quickly through a food web, buffeting every other species. But how do species persist in this 'noisy' world? And which species will still persist in the extensively modified and increasingly species-poor world we are creating for them?"

Moho images

Satish Singh and colleagues in an international research team have used data resulting from the 1997 BIRPS programme (British Institutions Reflections Profiling Syndicate), funded by NERC and the NSF.

From this data, the researchers have prepared remarkable seismic reflection images of the Mohorovicic discontinuity, or Moho, the boundary between the Earth's crust and the mantle. Three-dimensional images from the 9°N overlapping spreading centre at the East Pacific Rise, suggest that the Moho is formed just beneath the ridge axis at zero-age.

Satish Singh said, "The presence of the Moho reflector beneath the melt sills means that crust is formed at zero age, not 1 - 2 million years later. This is important for how the melt segregates from the mantle and how fast it cools and crystallises to form the crust."

The images throw new light on the evolution of ocean spreading centres and the formation of the lower crust.

For more information visit Nature online.

Further information

NERC Press Office
Natural Environment Research Council
Polaris House, North Star Avenue
Swindon, SN2 1EU
Tel: 01793 411561
Mob: 07917 557215

Press feature : 45/06

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