Dr Grace Shephard

Shifting around, digging up, and colouring in oceans

Our understanding of the features that define, and processes that govern, the evolution of the Earth’s ocean basins have increasingly come into focus. In particular, our ability to reconstruct their past tectonic configurations in deep geological time have benefited from updated datasets, new methods, computational and software advances, clarified definitions, and interdisciplinary collaborations. In this talk, I will share three very different aspects of mapping and modelling past ocean basins. The first part will take us to the smallest of the world’s major oceans - the Arctic Ocean - which has seen major tectonic and climatic shifts over at least the last 200 Million years. Secondly, we will dig up extinct oceanic basins that are now located 100s to 1000s of kilometers deep in Earth’s mantle via seismic tomography models. And finally, I will highlight how and why the colours that are chosen to display scientific data (whether for oceans or not) are extremely important.

Biography

Grace Shephard is a Researcher at the Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics (CEED), University of Oslo, Norway. Her research interests include plate tectonics and mantle dynamics, with a particular focus on ocean basin development including the Pacific, North Atlantic, and Arctic. Grace is an editor for the EGU Geodynamics Blog and is involved in polar education and outreach. She received her PhD from the University of Sydney (EarthByte group) in 2014.