ED51A-0001 0800h
Cratons are from Earth, Planum are from Venus
Both the Earth and Venus exhibit ancient features that are associated with long-term stability from deformation after their initial formation. On the Earth, these features are referred to as cratons. On Venus, a classic example of such a feature is Lakshmi Planum, a large plateau that sits 4 km above the surface. Both cratons and the Lakshmi Planum have been proposed to form through some form of crustal thickening over mantle downwellings, though the physical viability of these models have not been tested. Here we present the work of numerical simulations and scaling analysis, which suggest that the formation and preservation of such features can be achieved through crustal thickening via localized deformation (i.e., thrust stacking) even in the presence of a high viscosity crust, which would inhibit viscous deformation. We choose to present this work in such a way that will highlight the similarities and differences between the two formation histories using an alternative poster format.
ED51A-0002 0800h
Poster Organization Style That Engenders Response (POSTER)
Calculations of convection with dynamic plates are increasingly complex because they include interactions that occur on multiple length and time scales. While the calculations themselves are computationally challenging, presenting the results in a coherent fashion to a broad audience with diverse interests and backgrounds is an even greater challenge. Movies can be useful, but they are not always practical. Stereo visualization can be a great tool as well; however, a geowall is not appropriate for every venue. In this poster, I will explore a variety of methods to explain and illustrate a complex calculation including: passive stereo, feature extraction, and more general model abstraction (a.k.a., cartoons).
ED51A-0003 0800h
Pulling People into your Poster with a Little Provocation: Examples Using The Cooling Efficiency of Thermal Convection
A poster format is explored that is designed to pull the viewer in by presenting, in an open question to the viewer format, very simple and intuitive ideas that are subsequently, i.e., at the flip of panel, shown to be not as intuitive as the viewer may have thought. To make the examples scientifically concrete we use recent results related to the cooling efficiency of thermal convection. We explore the intuitive ideas that: 1) increased insulation above a convecting fluid lowers the heat flow rate out of the fluid; 2) a lower bulk averaged thermal Rayleigh number in a fluid with depth-dependent viscosity leads to a lower heat flow rate out of the fluid.
ED51A-0004 0800h
The Explorer's Guide to Impact Craters
Impact cratering is a fundamental geologic process of our solar system. It competes with other processes, such as plate tectonics, volcanism, or fluvial, glacial and eolian activity, in shaping the surfaces of planetary bodies. In some cases, like the Moon and Mercury, impact craters are the dominant landform. On other planetary bodies impact craters are being continuously erased by the action of other geological processes, like volcanism on Io, erosion and plate tectonics on the Earth, tectonic and volcanic resurfacing on Venus, or ancient erosion periods on Mars. The study of crater populations is one of the principal tools for understanding the geologic history of a planetary surface. Among the general public, impact cratering has drawn wide attention through its portrayal in several Hollywood movies. Questions that are raised after watching these movies include: ``How do scientists learn about impact cratering?'', and ``What information do impact craters provide in understanding the evolution of a planetary surface?'' Fundamental approaches used by scientists to learn about impact cratering include field work at known terrestrial craters, remote sensing studies of craters on various solid surfaces of solar system bodies, and theoretical and laboratory studies using the known physics of impact cratering. We will provide students, science teachers, and the general public an opportunity to experience the scientific endeavor of understanding and exploring impact craters through a multi-level approach including images, videos, and rock samples. This type of interactive learning can also be made available to the general public in the form of a website, which can be addressed worldwide at any time.
ED51A-0005 0800h
Capturing Intuition Through Interactive Inverse Methods: Examples Drawn From Mechanical Non-Linearities in Structural Geology
Can you teach intuition ? Obviously we think that this is possible (though it's still just a hunch). People undoubtedly develop intuition for non-linear systems through painstaking repetition of complex tasks until they have sufficient feedback to begin to "see" the emergent behaviour. The better the exploration of the system can be exposed, the quicker the potential for developing an intuitive understanding. We have spent some time considering how to incorporate the intuitive knowledge of field geologists into mechanical modeling of geological processes. Our solution has been to allow expert geologist to steer (via a GUI) a genetic algorithm inversion of a mechanical forward model towards "structures" or patterns which are plausible in nature. The expert knowledge is then captured by analysis of the individual model parameters which are constrained by the steering (and by analysis of those which are unconstrained). The same system can also be used in reverse to expose the influence of individual parameters to the non-expert who is trying to learn just what does make a good match between model and observation. The ``distance'' between models preferred by experts, and those by an individual can be shown graphically to provide feedback. The examples we choose are from numerical models of extensional basins. We will first try to give each person some background information on the scientific problem from the poster and then we will let them loose on the numerical modeling tools with specific tasks to achieve. This will be an experiment in progress - we will later analyse how people use the GUI and whether there is really any significant difference between so-called experts and self-styled novices.
http://www.mcc.monash.edu/Codes/NimrodOI
ED51A-0006 0800h
The Inflatable Poster
Inflatable devices are frequently used in advertising in order to grab the attention of consumers: one sees, for example, 20 foot tall inflatable drink containers, inflatable cell phones, inflatable bubble gum packets, as well as blimps wafting majestically over major sports events. More usefully, inflatable representations of scientifically-interesting items are widely available, including astronauts, space shuttles, dinosaurs and globes and can help to build and inspire the interest of the general public, and in particular children, in such ideas. How can such concepts be adapted to improve poster presentations? Possibility one is to use relevant existing commercially-available inflatables to dress the poster: skeletons, astronauts, globes and so forth. More exciting is to develop custom inflatables that represent three-dimensional renderings of objects that the poster is describing. Examples of individual objects might be an inflatable slab, inflatable avalanche, inflatable plume, or it's larger cousin, the 10 foot high inflatable superplume or 20 foot high inflatable megaplume. More elaborately, inflatables might represent isosurfaces in three-dimensional spherical convection, although other fabrication methods may be more suitable. More simply, inflatable spheres could be imprinted with the planform of convection, geoid, or other spherical fields of geophysical interest. Finally, it should be possible to put an entire poster on an inflatable object, possibly small ones (balloons) to hand out. A major concern, however, is that the presenter may use such techniques to inflate their scientific findings, or to present overblown ideas.
ED51A-0007 0800h
Rodinia, She Do Spin: A (prequal) tribute to the legendary 2001 AGU poster, "Pangaea, She No Spin"
On one side of the poster: actual science, real equations, a burning question many scientists are researching by employing the best resources governments can provide; on the other side of the poster: a shameless and ill-fated attempt to conceptualize the problem using rudimentary and commonly available crafts. Unbenownst to passers-by, meticulous, covert record keepers will busily tabulate which of the two presentation styles draws more attention and for what length. Late night television the world over asks such simple questions: Will it float? (David Letterman); What was weak? (Australian Broadcasting Corporation's "Double the Fist" show); etc. Borrowing a page from popular culture we adopt a simple and interesting question: Does it spin? This question has been posed previously in rigorously mathematical terms in relation to true polar wander (TPW) (Ricard et al, 1993), in descriptive terms in relation to paleomagnetic data sets (Evans, 2003), and also in more interesting terms (McDowell, 2001). This poster draws on the success of the latter presentation which described the 2001 experiment thusly, "I wondered what would happen if the configuration were put in high relief on a globe and spun on axis. Then I wondered if the present configuration of land masses would itself balance as a spinning top. So I got two Replogle globes, two boxes of colored modeling clay sticks, and two fat knitting needles, to fit through the capped holes at the poles of the globes. The clay sticks I cut up into 3 mm. (1/8") slices, using a different color for each continent, and applied to the first globe, assuming the extreme exaggeration above the geoid, no matter how crude, would tell the story. Inserting one needle through the globe and securing it, I balanced the globe on the point of the needle and twirled it like a top. Result: Wobbly! Top end of needle gyrated unevenly, and here it was supposed to make a smooth precessional cone. Oh boy. For the second globe, I used a Scotese "free stuff" interpretation of Pangaea, which I had to augment considerably using USGS, DuToit, Irving and other references, fitting it on the globe and applying identical clay color slices to what I judged generally accepted land surfaces. Result: the thing would hardly stand up, let alone spin." We will indeed present new results relavent to the issue of whether Earth experienced an increased amount of rotational instability (i.e. TPW) duing the Proterozoic as a result of the Rodinia supercontinent. We make the assumption that the viscosity structure of the mantle has not changed significantly since the Neoproterozoic, and that the configuration of tectonic plates into a supercontinent (testing multiple plausible reconstructions) and the internal density anomalies resulting from such tectonic patterns will drive changes in the time varying moment of inertia tensor. So basically, we got a really big computer, a really fast mantle convection program written in F77, a few different plate reconstructions, generated a mantle density structure and then calculated the response for changes in the spin axis. We also create an "analog" model using crafts, including but not limited to, elbow macaroni, glitter, popsicle sticks, and felt. Without resorting to conclusion that the Earth must have been a smaller size in the past, we will present our findings because Rodinia, she do spin.
ED51A-0008 0800h
Fear not the tectosphere (and other -spheres)
Based on a highly unrepresentative sampling of the community, not unlike Fox news polls, it has been recognized that the use of words having the suffix "-sphere" is confused and often abused. Such words include lithosphere, asthenosphere, perisphere, tectosphere, and mesosphere. In addition, there appears to be equal confusion in the use of the related terms: mechanical boundary layer, thermal boundary layer, chemical boundary layer, low velocity zone, low viscosity zone, effective elastic thickness, etc. This confusion is not confined to beginning students of the Earth sciences but is also manifest in seasoned Earth scientists (including myself), that is, it is not uncommon to find a geochemist and a geophysicist with completely different definitions of "lithosphere" and "tectosphere", for example. In this poster, an attempt will be made to illustrate the concepts behind some of these terms using visual and verbal aids. One of the focuses, could be the concept of a tectosphere, which may go something like this: A Wise maN once said to me; That cOntinents float because they are light; Then said my dog - DiorITE; Oceans sInk because they are heavy; And so I ask, why miGht this be?; With a Laugh and a Bark, she says the oceans are cOld; And to test if she's rigHT; I stick a tHermometer in the continent's core; To my surprise coNtinents are cold, if not more; So something does not Jive; A parAdox has come alive; Perhaps you surMise that the story is not coMplete; Indeed, you may be right; BecausE under the contiNents lie Green rocks - PerIdotite!; InFertile as Hell and fortuitouslY light; Together they fOrm the TecToSphere; And this is why we are here; Fear not the TecToSphere.
ED51A-0009 0800h
Strange Features of the Earth's Surface Explained: An Interactive Poster
The great power of the plate tectonic theory lies in its ability to explain a large numer of diverse observations: the ocean-continental dichotemy, the major features of the sea floor topography, Wadati-Benioff zones, etc. A cursory examination of a physiographic map, however, reveals features that are not trivially explained by plate tectonics, e.g. the different radii of curvature of the island arcs and the bend in the Hawaiian-Emporer chain. This interactive poster aims to establish the current state of knowledge about the Earth's surface and the dynamic processes that control it. The poster itself consists simply of a map of the Earth, accompanied by two sets of Post-It notes. The first set are to be used by viewers to identify problematica for which they would like an explanation. The second set are to be used by others who believe they have explanations, and hopefully key references to support them. The follow-up to this poster will be a "clickable" online map comprising both the observations and their explanations. We hope that this will provide both educators and researchers with an accurate, up-to-date picture of our current state of understanding of the Earth's first-order features.
ED51A-0010 0800h
Who cares about Mid-Ocean Ridge Earthquakes? And Why?
Every day the surface of our planet is being slowly ripped apart by the forces of plate tectonics. Much of this activity occurs underwater and goes unnoticed except for by a few marine seismologists who avidly follow the creaks and groans of the ocean floor in an attempt to understand the spreading and formation of oceanic crust. Are marine seismologists really the only ones that care? As it turns out, deep beneath the ocean surface, earthquakes play a fundamental role in a myriad of activity centered on mid-ocean ridges where new crust forms and breaks on a regular basis. This activity takes the form of exotic geological structures hosting roasting hot fluids and bizarre chemosynthetic life forms. One of the fundamental drivers for this other world on the seafloor is earthquakes. Earthquakes provide cracks that allow seawater to penetrate the rocks, heat up, and resurface as hydrothermal vent fluids, thus providing chemicals to feed a thriving biological community. Earthquakes can cause pressure changes along cracks that can fundamentally alter fluid flow rates and paths. Thus earthquakes can both cut off existing communities from their nutrient source and provide new oases on the seafloor around which life can thrive. This poster will present some of the fundamental physical principals of how earthquakes can impact fluid flow, and hence life on the seafloor. Using these other-wordly landscapes and alien-like life forms to woe the unsuspecting passerby, we will sneak geophysics into the picture and tell the story of why earthquakes are so fundamental to life on the seafloor, and perhaps life elsewhere in the universe.
ED51A-0011 0800h
Generating Banded Zonal Flows on Jupiter and Saturn
The alternating bands of Jupiter and Saturn, represent surface winds with speeds of order 100 m/s. The Galileo and Cassini sattelite missions have and will continue to provide stunning visual images and data from the surface of these gas giants. In addition to detailed spatial resolution, these satellite missions also yield information on the temporal evolution of the surface flow. Models of thermally-driven, rapidly-rotating deep spherical shell convection naturally develop strong zonal flows with alternating bands, similar to those observed on the giant planets. Here we will present images and results from numerical simulations to demonstrate how these zonal flows can be convectively generated by Reynolds stresses at low latitudes and by thermal winds processes at higher latitudes. Comparisons will be presented between our results and images and surface wind data from Jupiter and Saturn.
ED51A-0012 0800h
The Wearable Poster: What all the Cool Kids will be Doing Next Fall
One of the primary drawbacks to giving a poster is that if you do everything right and present an exciting and interesting idea, you get stuck standing at your poster discussing it the entire session and you miss everything else that's going on. But the poster concept lends itself easily to being transported. From a low-tech solution such as a sandwich-board, to laptop based solutions, concepts that free the presenter from being stuck in one place will be presented and demonstrated. One potential problem of freeing the presenter from a fixed location is actually locating the presentations you want to see. Solutions to this include pager-based hotlists, wi-fi localization techniques, and the simpler ``I will be at this place at this time'' solution currently in use. By allowing the presentation to move with the presenter, interactions will be freer and more spontaneous, information will be more readily shared, and the poster ``session'' will become a dynamic exchange that goes on throughout the meeting, whenever two people with common interests run into each other.
ED51A-0013 0800h
Modeling composition of partial melts in mantle upwellings through Earth history: an example of a 2D poster
The composition of magmas created by partial melting of the mantle depend on the interplay of several processes: the mantle phase diagram, the physics of magma migration through the mantle and crust, the patterns of solid-state mantle and fluid circulation and heat transfer, to name a few. This modeling study attempts a self-consistent combination of these physical and chemical processes, to predict the composition of magma created in upwelling mantle over a very broad range of mantle conditions, with particular emphasis on the deep past in a hot Archean mantle. We utilize 1) high P-T melting experiments to constrain the composition of melts formed at different depths in the mantle, 2) thermal and compositional solid-state convection models to constrain the temperature and melting rate and the three-dimensional distribution of these melts, and 3) simplified models of magma migration to predict the accumulation and mixing of these magmas, for comparison with mantle-derived primitive melts over time. An explanation of this study requires a description of details from a number of varied disciplines (Archean geology, trace element geochemistry, experimental petrology, solid-state convection, magma migration). While most interested poster readers will want to know the details of one or two aspects of the calculations, few will want to wade through them all. This goal of this poster design is to present the outline of the story in way that can be scanned quickly at a distance, but with several independent offshoots containing explanation of parts of the story that can be either read or skipped, and yet another level containing details for the experts on a particular topic.
ED51A-0014 0800h
The Synoptic View as a Model for Poster Presentations
Originally referencing the first three chapters of the New Testament, the term "synoptic" has come to mean "a general view of the whole, or of the principal parts of a thing." Large format posters provide an opportunity to present research in synoptic form, rather than as an arrangement of PowerPoint slides and text. In synoptic views, data, analyses, and linkages are presented en masse with the graphical design used as a guide to the linkages. Conclusions about the meanings of the information are largely left to the viewers as they study the information and seek relationships-a natural activity for scientists. Numerous formats produce synoptic views of geoscientific information. Each imposes order on the information through spatial, temporal, or causal connections and provide context for multiple variables. Maps are the most common synoptic presentations. Additional map-sheet information, such as stratigraphic columns and cross sections, gain meaning from and contribute meaning to the areal view. Two and three-dimensional models, including flow charts and organizational diagrams offer a means of portraying complex interactions. Time lines and spatial line (e.g., latitude, depth, distance) diagrams, especially those with additional axes to plot related variables, show temporal or spatial trends, progress, or fluctuation. Some organizational schemes are specific to the sciences. The periodic table is a synoptic portrayal of the elements that designates their chemical behavior by their positions. As an illustration of phenomena, the well designed synoptic poster provides a multi-scale perspective that slices across time, space, or other parameters to expose the significant behaviors of the given system. Bruce Railsback's (2003) reorganization of the periodic table to emphasize the charged species most common in geologic processes is an outstanding example of synoptic design. Edward Tufte's works on graphical style and visual explanations are also excellent guides to good design and reproduce historic and contemporary examples of synoptic views.