Wed 10th August @ 12:45 pm, Rm 312.222 

Abstract

Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) represent large volume (>0.1 Mkm3; frequently above >1 M km3), mainly mafic (-ultramafic) magmatic events of intraplate affinity, that occur in both continental and oceanic settings, and are typically of short duration (<5 m.y.) or consist of multiple short pulses over a maximum of a few 10s of m.y. They comprise volcanic packages (flood basalts), and a plumbing system of dykes, sills and layered intrusions, and can be associated with silicic magmatism, carbonatites and kimberlites. They occur with a frequency of 1 per 20-30 myr back to 2.5 Ga and are also present in the Archean. LIP analogues are also present on Mars and Venus and other planetary bodies.  While a variety of origins are offered for LIPs, current data are increasingly favouring a mantle plume origin. LIPs are causally linked with continental breakup, global climate/environmental change including extinction events, and ore deposits of a variety of commodity types. In this lecture I will provide a tour of all aspects of LIPs with a focus on latest insights and current research frontiers.

Biography

Dr. Richard E. Ernst was born in Philadelphia, USA and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. After finishing undergraduate work at Wesleyan University in 1978, he was attracted north to Canada by geological field research, and he received an MSc from the University of Toronto in 1981, and PhD from Carleton University in 1989. He then worked until 2003 on contracts mainly through the Geological Survey of Canada. At this point he started his own consulting firm “Ernst Geosciences”, and also became an Adjunct Professor at Carleton University.  He has been co-leader (2003-2013), and leader (2013-present) of the Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) Commission of IAVCEI (International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior); see the website which includes the regular feature, LIP of the Month [ http://www.largeigneousprovinces.org/LOM ].  In 2009, Dr. Ernst co-launched a consortium of industry sponsors contributing 1.5 million dollars toward using the LIPs record to reconstruct the arrangement of crustal blocks within supercontinents back through time, funding which was also partly matched by government grants.

Throughout his research career and in his current position as Scientist in Residence at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, Dr. Ernst has been focussed on Large Igneous Provinces and especially their regional feeder dyke swarms. In fall 2014 Dr. Ernst’s comprehensive book on Large Igneous Provinces was published by Cambridge University Press. In April 2016 he published in Nature Geoscience  on using the LIPs record to demonstrate a connection between southern Siberia and northern Laurentia throughout much of the Proterozoic. He is responsible for the LIPs component of the new IGCP 648 Project “Supercontinent Cycles and Global Geodynammics”. Dr. Ernst is the author on more than 140 refereed scientific publications.