Stable Isotope Facility

May 2025: Congratulations to those who have received NEIF funding at the spring 2025 meeting for the following research projects:

• Dr KA Hemer (UCL). MatHapMo: The Dynamics of Population Mobility in the Indus Valley during the Mature Harappan Period
• Prof D Thornalley (UCL). Paleoceanographic Changes in the Northwest Atlantic During Heinrich Stadial 1
• Dr JF Dean (Bristol). Finding and fixing gas leaks: Using urban waterways to halt the global rise in methane emissions
• Prof GMF van der Heijden (Nottingham). Exploring synergies and trade-offs between carbon and biodiversity for liana thinning treatments in tropical forests
• Dr AC Law (Nottingham). Using stable isotopes to investigate how nutrient cycling on plastic biofilms in the benthic zone of lakes will be impacted by changing stratification regimes
• Dr D Wright (Newcastle). England’s earliest aristocrats? Mapping migration and diet among Earls Barton’s first burial population

December 2024: Carbon and oxygen isotope analysis of carbonates and the development of new reference materials

Dr Charlotte Hipkiss and Kotryna Savickaite explore the importance of standard analysis when testing carbon and oxygen samples.

More information

November 2024: Studying oxygen isotopes in sediments from Rutland Water Nature Reserve

Chris Bengt visited Rutland Water as part of a project to determine human impact and environmental change in lake sediments.

More information

October 2024: Exploring the role of stable isotope geochemistry in nuclear forensics

Paulina Baranowska introduces her PhD research investigating the use of oxygen isotopes as a nuclear forensic signature.

More information

August 2024: Laboratory life: my work experience week at BGS

Aspiring astrophysicist Riveen Pehesara Kumanayaka shares his experience following an A-level work placement with BGS.

More information

December 2023: Congratulations to those who have received NEIF funding at the autumn 2023 meeting for the following research projects.

Dr M van Hardenbroek (Newcastle). Pond Ecosystem reconstruction PhD project

Dr L Wedding (Oxford). Coupling seascape ecology and biogeochemistry to model land-sea nutrient connectivity.

Prof J Montgomery (Durham). Was there a ‘forest effect’ in the ORS Sr-isotope biosphere of Neolithic Orkney?

Dr HC Glanville (Loughborough). Farming for Carbon and Nature – a stable isotope approach for assessing soil carbon stability.

Dr S Worne (Loughborough). Reconstructing the impacts of sewage treatment methods on nutrient loading, water quality and ecosystem health.

Prof R Sakrabani (Cranfield). Evaluating stability of carbon capture based organo-mineral fertilisers in agricultural soils.

Prof GEA Swann (Nottingham). Developing sponge oxygen isotopes for palaeoclimate research.

Prof MJ Leng (Nottingham). Decadal-scale variability in the East Asian Monsoonal during the last glacial period: siderite oxygen isotope analyses from Lake Suigetsu, Japan.

Dr VNP Panizzo (Nottingham). Assessing anthropogenic impacts to biogeochemical cycling at a protected tropical wetland (Lotak Lake, India).

Prof D Thornalley (UCL). Reconstructing different stratification regimes in the deglacial northwest Atlantic using isotopes from three species of planktic foraminifera.

Prof MJ Kaiser (Heriot-Watt). Understanding the timing of larval settlement events in a commercial bivalve to inform the definition of fisheries management units.

Dr K Littler (Exeter). Testing a new paleo-pCO2 proxy through Pleistocene ice core validation.

December 2023: Congratulations to Dr Charlie Rex on successfully defending her thesis entitled Isotope reconstructions of East Asian Monsoon behaviour across Glacial Terminations I and II from Lake Suigetsu, Japan. Charlie was supervised by Dr Richard Staff and Professor Jamie Toney (both University of Glasgow), Professor Melanie Leng (BGS) and Emma Pearson (Newcastle University). Charlie is now the Outreach and Communications Manager at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, where she works with schools and the wider public to share the wonders of the subject.

November 2023: Congratulations to Dr Fiona Moore (Dept. of Classics and Archaeology, University of Nottingham)) on the successful defence of her PhD thesis entitled: The Population Dynamics of Middle Saxon East Anglia: a multi-isotope and geochemical study. Fiona was supervised by Professors Hannah O’Regan, Chris Lovelock (University of Nottingham) and Jane Evans (BGS) and Dr Angela Lamb (BGS).

September 2023: BGS laboratory spotlight: isotopes as recorders of climate and environmental change.

Find out how measuring oxygen and carbon isotopes in tiny fossils improves our understanding of past climate.

More information

August 2023: ‘Core Blimey!’– A PhD fieldwork trip to India.

NERC Envision PhD student Hamish Duncalf-Youngson recently visited Loktak Lake in Manipur, Northeast India, to engage with local stakeholders and conduct fieldwork.

More information

August 2023: Midlands Innovation TALENT placement at BGS.

Jodie Brown revisits her time at BGS’s Stable Isotope Facility as part of the Midlands Innovation TALENT project, which aims to increase the status of technicians.

More information

April 2023: Angela Lamb has recently been successful in securing a NERC Standard Grant: “Nature of the Beast? Resolving drivers of prey choice, competition and resilience in wolves”, in collaboration with Professor Danielle Schreve (Royal Holloway University of London). The project will explore and quantify variation in modern and past wolf diet, in order to assess the impact of forcing factors such as changes in climate, environment, prey community and carnivore competition on feeding behaviour and morphology, and the rates of change at which these occur. This will be the first, most comprehensive and state-of-the-art examination of diet in modern and recent (<250,000 year) European fossil wolf records.

March 2023: Peter Wynn, Ben Surridge (Both Lancaster University) and Andi Smith have been awarded a NERC Exploring the Frontiers Grant (£100,000) entitled: Establishing a new palaeothermometer from the speleothem archive of phosphate-oxygen isotopes.

Temperature records are critical for understanding past and future climate. However, reconstructing past temperature dynamics is incredibly difficult. Of the currently available terrestrial archives of past temperature, these are often spatially limited, suffer from ambiguity around calibration, or require large sample sizes. These issues have prevented the development of a high resolution, high density network of terrestrial temperature records. This is now often considered the single most significant gap in the palaeoclimate archive. Here, we seek to provide a breakthrough in the field of

temperature reconstruction by developing a new palaeothermometer using phosphate-oxygen isotopes.

February 2023: When did the cows come home? By David Osborne

PhD student David Osborne is exploring Bronze Age animal husbandry using isotopes and X-rays.

More information

December 2021: Congratulations to Mr Alistair Morgan (Geography) on the successful defence of his masters by research thesis entitled: Phosphorous in caves: Phosphate-oxygen isotopes as a novel speleothem palaeothermometer. Alistair was supervised by Dr Peter Wynn and Dr Ben Surridge (Lancaster University) and Dr Andi Smith (BGS).

Congratulations to Dr Haydar Martinez Izquierdo Dyrzo (Geography) on the successful defence of his PhD thesis entitled: Exploring Holocene Lake Palaeoclimatic records in the Maya Northern Highlands and the central Mayab. Haydar was supervised by Professors Matthew Jones and Sarah Metcalfe (University of Nottingham) and Melanie Leng (BGS).

October 2021: Congratulations to those who have received NEIF funding at the autumn 2021 meeting for the following research projects.

• 2456.1021 VNP Panizzo (Nottingham): Understanding long-term environmental impacts to inform sustainability in Lake Victoria, Kenya.
• 2457.1021 R Madgwick (Cardiff): When did transhumance start in Iberia? Reconciling δ18O, δ13C and 87Sr/86Sr isotope approaches to study sheep mobility.
• 2459.1021 D Magnone (Lincoln): Quantifying the relationship between sedimentary organic carbon storage and sedimentary geochemical composition using δ13C in two contrasting eastern England catchments.
• 2462.1021 V Ersek (Northumbria): Using coral skeletons to record groundwater nitrogen pollution of the marine environment in the Maldives: A pilot study.
• 2464.1021 SF Henley (Edinburgh): Determining the rates of nitrogen regeneration by Southern Ocean phytoplankton species through use of a 15N tracer method.
• 2465.1021 AM Tye (British Geological Survey): Understanding phosphorus sources and cycling in sediments from impacted river systems – a novel 206/207Pb and phosphate oxygen isotope approach.
• 2470.1021 P Anand (Open University): Late Pliocene and early Pleistocene Indian Summer Monsoon wind variability in response to climate.

September 2021: Congratulations to Dr Linghan Zeng on the successful defence of his PhD thesis entitled: Anthropogenic impacts on shallow lake ecosystems in the middle Yangtze floodplain since the 19th century. Linghan was supervised by Melanie Leng (BGS) and Suzanne McGowan/George Swann (Geography, University of Nottingham).

August 2021: Congratulations to Dr Fuen Canadas Blasco who  successfully defender her PhD entitled: “Biogeochemistry of late Ediacaran organic-rich shales in South China”. Fuen was based at UCL and supervised by Prof Greham Shields and Prof Philip Pogge Von Strandmann. Prof Melanie Leng and Dr Andi Smith supported Fuen from NEIF.

June 2021: Climate change and human migration out of Africa by Dr Jon Dean

An international team of scientists, including Dr Jonathan Dean (now at the University of Hull) and Prof Melanie Leng (BGS Chief Scientist, environmental change, adaptation and resilience), have reconstructed how climate has changed over the last 200 000 years in eastern Africa. They have shown how climate change could have enabled the out of Africa migration of Homo sapiens around 60 000 years ago. The paper was published in Nature Communications, Earth & Environment in June 2021.

More information

June 2021: Congratulations to those who have received NEIF funding at the Spring 2021 meeting for the following research projects.

• 2356.0321 D A Sear (Southampton): Reconstructing late Holocene hydroclimate variability in the tropical South Pacific using lake sediment archives and oxygen isotopes
• 2375.0321 B Hoogakker (HW Edinburgh): Lessons from the past: Deoxygenation of the ocean
• 2376.0221  I Boomer (Birmingham): Dolomite in Snowball Earth: the Port Askaig Formation
• 2381.0321 J C Rushton (BGS Keyworth): Dating diagenesis for CO2 storage through pore-scale isotope analysis
• 2384.0321 H J O’Regan (Nottingham): When did the cows come home? A multi-isotope exploration of local and regional grazing patterns in Bronze Age Lincolnshire
• 2398.0421 S Kender (Exeter): Oceanographic and biotic changes in Australia during Oceanic Anoxic Events
• 2411.0321 M A Maslin (UC London): Diatom biogenic silica oxygen isotope measurements of annual laminated diatomite beds from Ol Njorowa Gorge (Kenya) dated to first dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa
• 2414.0321 M van Hardenbroek (Newcastle): Iron Age Palaeoenvironments of NW Scotland
• 2415.0321 M Roffet-Salque (Bristol): Determining the routing of H from feed and water to ruminant enteric methane using a feeding experiment
• 2416.0421 M J Leng (Nottingham): Central Mediterranean rainfall and global marine circulation patterns during the Last Glacial and Holocene

April 2021

SIF staff contributed to a number of presentations at this year’s European Geophysical Union meeting:

Transport and storage of anthropogenic contaminants in the Red River Delta, Vietnam

Virginia Panizzo, Lucy Roberts, Nga Do, Sarah Taylor, Michael Watts, Elliott Hamilton, Suzanne McGowan, Duc Trinh, Melanie Leng, and Jorge Salgado

Mon, 26 Apr, 09:15–09:17

Sclerochronological evidence of pronounced seasonality from the Pliocene of the southern North Sea Basin, and its implication

Andrew Johnson, Annemarie Valentine, Melanie Leng, Bernd Schöne, Hilary Sloane, and Stijn Goolaerts

Thu, 29 Apr, 14:15–14:17

Oxygen isotopic evidence of climate variability in southern England since the Medieval Period.

Joanna Tindall, Jonathan Holmes, Ian Candy, Melanie Leng, Kira Rehfeld, Louise Sime, Irene Malmierca Vallet, Thierry Fonville, Pete Langdon, and David Sear

Fri, 30 Apr, 09:21–09:23

April 2021

Congratulations to Melanie Leng,head of the stable isotope facility at BGS, who has been included in Reuters’ Hot List, a list of the top 1000 most influential climate scientists in the world, with 444 publications and over 13 500 citations to her name. Mel’s ranking of 522nd in the world puts her in the top 100 climate scientists in the UK.

The Reuters Hot List was created by ranking scientists based on the number of papers published, the field citation ratio and a measure of each paper’s reach. It’s not a list of the ‘best’ or ‘most important’, but the most influential.

March 2021: Congratulations to Blessing Chidimuro on the successful defence of her PhD thesis ‘A multi‐isotope, multi‐tissue study of diets in industrialised societies of 17th to 19th century England’.

Blessing was supervised by Michelle Alexander (University of York) and collaborated with Angela Lamb and Hilary Sloane (Stable Isotope Facility) on the isotope analysis of human dental calculus carbonate to investigate a potential new proxy for sugar consumption. Blessing is now a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Isotope Ecology/Archaeology based at the University of Reading.

November 2020: Stable Isotope Research Apprenticeship by Savannah Worne

After completing a PhD researching the interaction between subarctic sea ice, oceanic nutrient upwelling and global climate over the last million years at the University of Nottingham, Savannah Worne is now undertaking an apprenticeship at the BGS. Here, she tells us a little bit more about what the role entails…

More information

October 2020: Congratulations to those who received NEIF funding at the Autumn 2020 meeting for the following research projects.

• IP2297-0920 Prof D C Gooddy: Understanding biogeochemical cycling in a newly constructed wetland for waste water treatment using nutrient isotopes
• IP2305-0920 Dr K Littler: Reconstructing the South Asian monsoon during the dynamic Pliocene
• IP2307-0920 Dr P M Wynn: The speleothem phosphate isotope record: establishing a new proxy for palaeotemperature
• IP2308-0920 Dr R A Staff: Reconstructing the strength of the East Asian monsoon across Termination I from varved Japanese lake sediment
• IP2311-0920 Dr J F Dean: Determining the source of methane hotspots in urban waterways.
• IP2314-0920 Dr M D Jones: Reconstructing lake levels and palaeohydrology from the middle–upper part of the Lake Lisan Formation, Dead Sea Basin, Jordan
• IP2315-0920 Dr P Anand: Late Pliocene and early Pleistocene Indian summer monsoon variability in response to climate
• IP2316-0920 Prof M J Leng: Investigating the onset and evolution of Lake Ohrid during the early Pleistocene

May 2020: Meet the isotope hunters: part 2

Dr Andi Smith and Dr Jack Lacey will continue to explain their work as ‘isotope hunters’ for environmental investigations and we will see how the answers provided by isotope fingerprints are powerful tools supporting academics and policymakers in their fight against high levels of pollution in air, water and soil and delivering them information on past climate.

May 2020: Meet the isotope hunters: part 1

In many countries, institutions are investigating ways to detect and measure pollution levels, allowing regulatory bodies to implement preventive actions to limit the negative effect of pollution on the air, land, and water, and their associated risks for human and environmental health. In environmental investigations that seek to understand climate change or pollution sources, isotope fingerprints can provide a unique insight into the origin or production of a sample material, providing a strong supportive tool for investigators. One such laboratory is the National Environmental Isotope Facility based at the BGS in Nottingham (UK), where the ‘isotope hunters’ have been providing expert support for environmental research. In this series of posts, we want to better understand the work of “Isotope Hunters” for environmental investigations. For this reason, we interviewed Dr Andi Smith and Dr Jack Lacey, who will be discussing the work they carry out on environmental change within their specialty of stable isotope geochemistry.

More information

May 2020: Congratulations to those who received NEIF funding at the Spring 2020 meeting for the following research projects.

• IP–2229–0520 Dr K Beck (Lincoln): Disentangling southern hemisphere climate and environmental interactions of the late Pleistocene
• IP–2232–0520 Dr K Edgar (Birmingham): What was the dominant driver(s) of the early Eocene hyperthermal events? New insights from a benthic foraminiferal record from the Indian Ocean (IODP Site U1514)
• IP–2236–0520 Dr S Engels (Birkbeck): Investigating and refining the use of oxygen isotopes from chironomid head capsule chitin to record past climatic changes
• IP–2237–0520 Prof P Dennis (East Anglia): RESOLVE
• IP–2242–0520 Dr M Frogley (Sussex): High-resolution responses to Holocene environmental shifts in the Balkans
• IP–2243–0520 Dr K Selby (York): Assessing the impact of current and future climate change on UK small lakes
• IP–2252–0520 Prof R Gehrels (York): Response of peatlands to future climate change: reconciling palaeoecological and experimental methods
• IP–2255–0520 Dr M Jones (Nottingham): Reconstructing lake levels and palaeohydrology from the Lake Lisan Formation, Jordan
• IP–2258–0520 Dr S Kender (Exeter): Understanding the causes and consequences of palaeoenvironmental change in the high latitudes during the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event
• IP–2260–0520 Prof B Lomax (Nottingham): Inferring hydroclimate of subtropical Australia through the Holocene

March 2020: Richard Madgwick (University of Cardiff) and Angela Lamb have been awarded an AHRC grant (£247,577) entitled FEASTNET:

Feasting networks and Resilience at the end of the British Bronze Age. This project will explore responses to a deteriorating climate and trade collapse at the end of the Bronze Age in Britain. A major focus is the new social and economic networks that developed and how these made communities resilient in the face of turmoil. This will be achieved by employing a suite of scientific methods to analyse the very rich, but understudied sites known as middens. Multi-isotope analysis (strontium, sulphur, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen) will reveal where animals and humans came from and how agricultural production was maximised through different husbandry practices and landscape use. Project partners include Operation Nightingale, The Wiltshire Museum, The British Museum and Breaking Ground Heritage.

December 2019: Suigetsu, sediment and silica: embarking on my PhD by Charlie Rex

Anyone who has started researching something new is well aware of the challenges involved: vast amounts of literature, creating sensible hypotheses and selecting a suitable methodology (among other hurdles!). For new PhD students, this can also involve a totally new setting, such as a new city, country, or continent. Thankfully I didn’t have to move continent, but I did make the move to Scotland and start fresh on a PhD topic that I found fascinating and unfamiliar in equal measure. Though this was daunting, I am incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by a multidisciplinary, multi-continental academic network who have helped me get off to a good start! Find out more about Charlie’s experience below.

More information

November 2019: Building capacity for archaeological science in Turkey by Emma Baysal and Holly Miller

Emma Baysal from Trakya University and Holly Miller of the University of Nottingham and BGS Visiting Research Fellow were awarded a Newton Advanced Fellowship. ‘Building Capacity for Sustainable Archaeological Science and Heritage in Turkey’ (NAFR1180204) promotes capacity building, education and training in the field of archaeological science in Turkey. This is the second in a series of three blogs that will discuss their initial three weeks of activities at BGS with guest researchers from Turkey.

More information

November 2019: Congratulations to Savannah Worne on the successful defence of her PhD entitled ‘Investigating Bering Sea oceanographic response to the Milankovitch orbital cycle climatic shift during the middle Pleistocene’. Savannah wrote her thesis by paper and these have been published so far:

• Worne, S, Kender, S, Swann, G E A, Leng, M J, and Ravelo, A C. 2019. Coupled climate and subarctic Pacific nutrient upwelling over the last 850 000 years. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Vol. 522, 87–97. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2019.06.028
• Kender, S, Ravelo, A C, Worne, S, Swann, G E A, Leng, M J, Asahi, H, Becker, J, Detlef, H, Aiello, I W, Andreasen D, and Hall, I R. 2018. Closure of the Bering Strait caused Mid–Pleistocene Transition cooling. Nature Communications, Vol. 9, 5386. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07828-0
• Swann, G E A, Kendrick, C P, Dickson, A J, and Worne, S. 2018. Late Pliocene marine pCO2 reconstructions from the Subarctic Pacific Ocean. Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology. 33, 457–469.

Savannah was supervised at Nottingham by Profs George Swann and Sarah Metcalfe, at Exeter by Dr Sev Kender and undertook her isotope analysis at the BGS with Prof Melanie Leng.

November 2019: Congratulations to those who have received EIF funding at the Autumn 2019 meeting for the following research projects.

• EK307–08/18 Dr C Rice (Southampton): Macroecological study of the field metabolic rates of marine fishes using otolith carbon stable isotopes
• IP–1939–1119 D Gooddy (BGS): A multinutrient isotope approach to understand the impact of water treatment on inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus in public water supplies
• IP–1942–1119 R Holdsworth (Durham): Fracture connectivity and fluid sourcing in the Cleveland Basin
• IP–1943–1119 M Jones (Nottingham): 2000 years of hydrological change in Africa: implications for future climate scenarios
• IP–1944–1119 J Lee-Thorp (Oxford): Sea surface temperature and hunter-gatherer marine resource use from marine carbonates in northern Japanese prehistory
• IP–1948–1119 S McGowan (Nottingham): Understanding long-term environmental conditions to inform sustainable aquaculture development in Lake Victoria, Kenya
• IP–1949–1119 H O’Regan (Nottingham): A multi-isotope study of human movement and diet in Middle Saxon East Anglia
• IP–1950–1119 V Peck (BAS): Reconstructing variability of the ‘cold water route’ through the late Pleistocene

October 2019: BGS Wilding Group – every tree counts

The BGS Keyworth-based Wilding Group have been up and running for a few months now and over the course of a lunchtime each month we work on specific areas of our site to encourage wildlife and help increase biodiversity.

More information

October 2019: Newton Advanced Fellowship: BGS training programme week one by Emma Baysal et al.

Emma Baysal (Trakya University) and Holly Miller (University of Nottingham) were awarded a Newton Advanced Fellowship to promote capacity building, education and training in the field of archaeological science in Turkey. This is the first in a series of three blogs that will discuss their initial three weeks of activities at BGS, with guest researchers from Turkey.

More information

September 2019: Stable isotope mass spectrometer user group meeting 2019 by Rob Burton

The 15th SIMSUG meeting was hosted by the Organic Geochemistry Unit at the University of Bristol. SIMSUG offers a platform for innovations in stable isotope research methodology and analytical instrumentation to be communicated amongst members of the stable isotope community. Attendees at SIMSUG included delegates from research institutes, manufacturers and technical experts; each providing a unique contribution towards the wide-ranging spectrum of content.

More information

August 2019: Why we need a geo-observatory of Africa’s oldest lake by Melanie Leng

This summer, Melanie Leng (BGS’s Chief Scientist for Environmental Change Adaptation) attended a workshop in Dar es Saleem, Tanzania, with around 70 other scientists from 10 countries, with the aim to form a plan to create a palaeo Geo–Observatory in this region. The Geo–Observatory, in the form of a long sediment core, will contain information on past conditions in Lake Tanganyika and tropical East Africa. Here Melanie tells us about why we need to do research in this region and what happens next.

More information

June 2019: Congratulations to Elizabeth Atar on the successful defence of her PhD thesis entitled ‘Late Jurassic sedimentation in the boreal Tethyan seaway: climate modelling, geochemistry and petrography of the Kimmeridge Clay Formation.’

Climate exerts a strong influence on sedimentation. Understanding the processes behind the spatial and temporal heterogeneities in sedimentary successions can, therefore, be used to reconstruct climate processes in the geological past. Deposited across >1000 km in northwest Europe in the shallow (<200 m), epicontinental Laurasian Seaway, the Kimmeridge Clay Formation provides an exceptional opportunity to study climate processes and their effect on sedimentation at different latitudes through the late Jurassic (Kimmeridgian–Tithonian). This thesis presents independent climate modelling, sedimentological, and geochemical datasets from three time-equivalent sections, spanning one million years, in the northern and southern extents of the Laurasian Seaway (30–60°N palaeolatitude) in order to investigate climate dynamics and controls on sedimentation at different northern hemisphere latitudes in the Late Jurassic.

The climate modelling results yield two different hypotheses:

• HadCM3L indicates that an expanded Hadley Cell and migrated intertropical convergence zone resulted in tropical conditions over the Laurasian Seaway, whereby organic carbon-enrichment in sediments was promoted through enhanced nutrient supply resulting from continental weathering and erosion.
• FOAM suggests subtropical to temperate conditions prevailed and that organic carbon enrichment was driven by wind-driven upwelling of nutrient-rich water.

Sedimentological and geochemical analyses for the Ebberston 87 core, drilled in the Cleveland Basin (Yorkshire, UK), indicates depositional conditions fluctuated between three distinct states and that alternations of organic, carbon-, carbonate- and clay-rich mudstone and redox conditions were driven by the expansion/migration of the intertropical convergence zone.

Analysis of the Swanworth Quarry 1 core, drilled in the Wessex Basin (Dorset, UK), reveals that, although depositional energy differed between the Cleveland and Wessex basins, sedimentation in both basins was driven by the same, overarching tropical climate control.

Analysis of a third core, drilled in Adventdalen (Svalbard), demonstrates that organic, carbon-rich sedimentation occurred in a deltaic setting, which had a markedly higher depositional energy.

While the depositional environments in the northern and southern sectors of the Laurasian Seaway differed substantially, similarities between the three studied sections, namely cyclical deposition of terrestrial, organic, carbon- and detrital-rich sedimentation, integrated with published data from throughout the seaway, suggest a low-latitude, tropical influence on sedimentation and organic carbon enrichment across the entire Laurasian Seaway. Furthermore, the palaeogeographic setting of the Laurasian Seaway made the sedimentary system sensitive to subtle changes in weathering and water depths, resulting in distinct modes of sedimentation and biogeochemical cycling.

June 2019: Congratulations to Katrina Kerr on the successful defence of her PhD thesis entitled ‘Reconstructing the Indian summer monsoon response to global climate change’.

The Indian summer monsoon, a subsystem of the Asian monsoon, is one of Earth’s most dynamic expressions of oceanic–atmospheric–terrestrial processes affecting some of Earth’s most densely populated regions. Therefore, it is imperative to have a comprehensive understanding of the Indian summer monsoon in order to understand how its behaviour may be manifested by anthropogenic induced climate changes.

Reconstructing how the monsoon behaved in the past presents an opportunity to disentangle its sensitivities to a range of forcing parameters (e.g. ice volume) during periods of differing climatic states. However, understanding of how the Indian summer monsoon behaved in the past has been limited both spatially and temporally, further constrained by discrepancies among climate proxy records.

This work fills both a temporal and spatial gap in our knowledge of the past behaviour of the Indian summer monsoon. High-resolution (millennial to centennial scale) records of Indian summer monsoon-induced river runoff and surface freshening from the core convective region of the Indian summer monsoon, the northern Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, have been generated from 70 000 to 140 000 years ago. These records provide an insight into how the Indian summer monsoon responded to the penultimate deglaciation (Termination II), the subsequent warmth of the Last Interglacial Period and ensuing oscillations between the warm interstadial and cold stadial periods of Marine Isotope Stage 5. These records are compared with both high- and low-latitude climate records in order to understand how the monsoon responded to changes in Earth’s internal climate system and the influence of external preconditioning

June 2019: Melanie Leng, head of the Stable Isotope Facility and Chief Scientist for Environmental change, adaptation and resilience, has been awarded an MBE in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to environmental science. The list, which has been published annually since 1917, recognises those who have contributed to the British Empire. MBE, or Member of the British Empire, is bestowed upon those who have made a considerable contribution to the community through their line of work.

June 2019: The following NEIF-SC applications to the stable isotope facility at the BGS were awarded.

• IP–1901–0619 Dr K Adamson (Manchester Metropolitan): Reconstructing palaeoenvironmental conditions in the Egyptian Nile Valley from the Old Kingdom to present (pilot)
• IP–1910–1019 Dr A Henderson (Newcastle): Holocene climate evolution in Arctic Alaska and its link to Aleutian Low variability
• IP–1913–0619 Dr B Hoogakker (Heriot-Watt): Lessons from the past: deoxygenation of the ocean
• IP–1914–1619 Dr S Kender (Exeter): Deep sea biotic responses during Cretaceous Oceanic Anoxic Event (OAE) 2 in the southern high latitudes
• IP–1915–0619 Dr S Kender (Exeter): Oceanographic and vegetation changes across the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum in NW Europe and the Arctic
• IP–1918–0619 Prof M Leng (Nottingham): Stable C isotope analyses coupled to XRF core scanning through a UK black shale giant
• IP–1924–0619 Dr J Pike (Cardiff): Holocene diatom and sponge spicule oxygen isotope ratios from the west Antarctic Peninsula: exploring seasonal and depth related isotope offsets using paired samples
• IP–1926–0619 Dr Z Shi (Birmingham): Changing shipping emissions: impact on sulphate aerosol in the marine atmosphere (CSEIA)
• IP–1927–0619 Prof G Shields (UCL): Paleoceanographic context of organic matter deposition on the Yangtze craton, South China during the Ediacaran Period
• IP–1929–0619 Dr M van Hardenbroek (Newcastle): Iron Age palaeoenvironments of north-west Scotland (pilot)

May 2019: Talking environmental change and human impact at EGU19 by Dr Jack Lacey

Dr Jack Lacey from the BGS Stable Isotope Facility attended EGU from April 7–12. Today he tells us about his week and the research he presented…

More information

May 2019: Congratulations to Dr Stuart Young on the successful defence of his PhD thesis ‘The ecology of immune variation in wild house mice (Mus musculus domesticus)’.

Stuart was supervised by Jan Bradley (University of Nottingham) and collaborated with Angela Lamb (BGS) on stable isotope analysis. Stuart is now working as a programme officer for the IUCN Asian Wild Cattle Specialist Group based at Chester Zoo. A paper on Stuart’s work has just been published in Functional Ecology:

Taylor, C H, Young, S, Fenn, J, Lamb, A L, Lowe, A E, Poulin, B, MacColl, A D C, and Bradley, J E. 2019. Immune state is associated with natural dietary variation in wild mice Mus musculus domesticus. Functional Ecology, Vol. 33(8), 1425–1435. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.13354

May 2019: Latest developments in methane isotope analysis by Andi Smith

Recent requirements for understanding methane formation processes has led to investment in a new stable isotope mass spectrometer by BGS. This instrument is specifically designed to analyse both carbon and hydrogen isotopes in water and gas samples and is perfectly set up to support large groundwater and soil gas surveys. As part of the launch of this equipment the stable isotope team including Prof. Melanie Leng and Dr Andi Smith went and presented the new instrumentation at European General Assembly last month.

More information

April 2019: European Science Foundation

Melaine Leng was appointed to sit on the European Science Foundation College of external reviewers for a three year period.

March 2019: Isotopes in Biogenic Silica group

Jack Lacey was invited to be a convenor of the working group Isotopes in Biogenic Silica (IBiS).

The study of biogenic silica (silica deposited in plants, algae and animals) in Quaternary sediments is currently being revolutionised by technical advances in stable-isotope mass spectrometry, ICP–MS and ³²Si dating. Growing interest in the global biogeochemical cycle of silicon and its coupling with the carbon cycle is evident from an upsurge of papers, while a wide range of disciplines have begun to focus on processes involving biogenic silica in the modern environment, including:

• agronomy
• biogeochemical modelling
• ecology
• forestry
• geochemistry
• geomorphology
• hydrology
• limnology
• oceanography
• pedology
• physiology

More information

March 2019: Angela Lamb and Jane Evans, along with Richard Madgwick (University of Cardiff), have been awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust small grant (supported by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Caton-Thompson Fund), entitled ‘”Wet Feet”: developing sulphur isotope provenance methods to identify wetland inhabitants’. The project aims to refine our understanding of how sulphur isotopes can be used as an isotope fingerprinting tool for individuals living on Jurassic mudstones and/or wetland environments.

March 2019: Homeward bound: last leg of the ORCHESTRA cruise (Part 4) by Carol Arrowsmith

We were at sea for around eight weeks on the RRS James Clark Ross, undertaking the ANDREXII transect. We set off from the Punta Arenas, Chile, calling in at the Falklands before crossing the Drake Passage to the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula at 60oS, and then out along over 3000 miles to the Indian Ocean at 30oE. Find out more from Carol below.

More information

March 2019: Prehistoric Britons rack up food miles for feasts near Stonehenge

A collaboration between BGS (Angela Lamb, Jane Evans and Hilary Sloane) and scientists from Cardiff University, University of Sheffield and University College London has provided evidence of the earliest large-scale celebrations in Britain – with people and animals travelling hundreds of miles for prehistoric feasting rituals. The study, led by Dr Richard Madgwick of Cardiff University, is the most comprehensive to date and examined the bones of 131 pigs, the prime feasting animals, from four Late Neolithic (c. 2800-2400BC) complexes. Serving the world-famous monuments of Stonehenge and Avebury, the four sites – Durrington Walls, Marden, Mount Pleasant and West Kennet Palisade Enclosures – hosted the very first pan-British events, feasts that drew people and animals from across Britain. The isotope results show pig bones excavated from these sites were from animals raised as far away as Scotland, North East England and West Wales, as well as numerous other locations across the UK and Ireland. The study, ‘Multi-isotope analysis reveals that feasts in the Stonehenge environs and across Wessex drew people and animals from throughout Britain’, was funded by the British Academy and NERC and is published in Science Advances.

More information

March 2019: Full steam ahead with the sampling on the RRS James Clark Ross: ORCHESTRA Part 3 by Carol Arrowsmith

We are now cruising along the 60oS latitude, having crossed the Drake Passage, passing Elephant Island (off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula), between Coronation and Laurie Island and are now out in the Weddell Sea at approximately 23oW. This leg of the ORCHESTRA hydrographic/tracer section covers the northern rim of the Weddell Gyre and is called ANDREXII (Antarctic Deep Water Rates of Export). This leg was previously sampled 10 years ago so we are interested to see the difference global warming has made to the ocean. Carol is half way through a research cruise across the Weddell Sea as part of ORCHESTRA.

More information

March 2019: Tropical palaeoclimate meeting as temperatures break records in the UK by Heather Moorhouse

In 2018, the UK NERC-funded collaborators of the International Continental scientific Drilling Program – DeepCHALLA project met in Cambridge amidst a Siberian blast, known as the ‘Beast from the East’, as temperatures plummeted and ice and snow disrupted UK travel. In 2019 however, the scientists met in tropical Lancaster, during maximum temperature records for the month of February. It is predicted that weather events will be increasingly unpredictable, variable and extreme, and the temperature differences between our two meetings merely serves to highlight the future under climate change.

More information

March 2019: From Chile to the Falklands and beyond: ORCHESTRA Part 2 by Carol Arrowsmith

I left the UK last Saturday and flew to Punta Arenas in Chile. There we waited (with various, BAS, NOC and university colleagues) to board the RRS James Clark Ross; a few days later we departed for the Falkland Islands. On board our first task was to lash down all the equipment in the ship’s laboratories needed for our sampling and familiarise ourselves with the layout of the ship. We have been accompanied for most of the journey so far by a variety of birds and mammals, including magnificent black-browed albatross, that mostly just sit in the water surrounding the ship waiting for food (to upwell from beneath the ship).

More information

February 2019: Investigating the Southern Ocean: ORCHESTRA Part 1 by Carol Arrowsmith

In a few days I will be embarking on my leg of the major NERC project called ORCHESTRA (Ocean Regulation of Climate through Heat and Carbon Sequestration and Transport) to collect seawater samples for isotope analysis. My leg is called ANDREX II – Antarctic Deep Water Rates of Export (ANDREX), and is the second time this part of the ocean has been sampled. I will be boarding the RRS James Clark Ross in Punta Arenas and following a stop off in the Falklands will start sampling from the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula along the 60°S parallel and across the Southern Ocean to 30°E, before returning to the Falklands in mid April.

More information

February 2019: BGS and Heriot-Watt Partnership in Action: geochemistry and carbon burial at the BSRG AGM 2018 by Joe Emmings

In late December, Joe Emmings (BGS) and Tom Wagner (Heriot–Watt University) convened Geochemistry and Carbon Burial Sessions at the British Sedimentological Research Group (BSRG) AGM. Here Joe tells us about the conference and ongoing research in this area…

More information

February 2019: Can we use carbon isotopes to tell us about past levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere? by Barry Lomax and Melanie Leng

Dr Barry Lomax and Prof Melanie Leng are isotope geochemists who work on understanding how the isotopic composition of environmental materials can tell us about past environments. Here they blog about their new paper, available via open access in the premiere geochemistry journal (Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta), co–authored by Dr Janice Lake and Dr Phillip Jardine on the use of carbon isotopes in plant materials to predict atmospheric CO₂. The paper sets out to test this relationship to determine if it could be used as a tool for estimating changes in atmospheric CO₂ concentrations through geological time.

More information

January 2019: Congratulations to Melanie Leng for her contribution to the successful Australian Research Council grant: ‘East Australian climate extremes through the Holocene’.

The project aims are to document climate variability in eastern Australia over the Holocene (approximately the last 11 500 years) and seeks to develop Australia’s two highest-resolution Holocene climate records using novel techniques (including isotopes) to infer past rainfall, temperature and evaporation. In particular, the plan is to determine the frequency, duration and causes of megadroughts in eastern Australia, of which little is known. Expected project outcomes include improved decision-making capacity for natural resource management and planning.

Mel is a partner investigator with the University of Adelaide chief investigators, Dr John Tibby and Dr Jonathan Tyler.