Fully funded NERC Ph.D. Studentship in the School of Geosciences at the University of Aberdeen

Investigating sediment transport processes in the Pleistocene-Holocene Indus System

We seek an Aberdeen-based PhD student to work with a team of academics from Aberdeen and Southampton in the UK, as well as collaborators in Woods Hole (USA) and Karachi (Pakistan) to map the dispersal of sediment across the Pakistan Shelf and to understand the response of the Indus Delta to Holocene sea level rise. While many river systems were drowned by sea-level rise after the last ice age, the voluminous sediment supply to the Indus may have allowed a rapid reconnection of the river with the submarine fan during sea-level rise.

Starting in October-November 2008 the student will participate in a marine geophysical cruise to collect high resolution CHIRP and deeper penetrating Sparker seismic reflection data from the Pakistan Shelf in order to map out the stratigraphy of the shelf and date prograding lobes of sediment from the mouth of the Indus River. The student will also participate in coring activities for dating and sediment provenance studies and will be expected to describe the cores and select samples for further geochemical or XRD analysis including carbon dating by AMS, XRD clay mineralogy and Nd isotope data. The student will use the geophysical data in conjunction with geochemical tools to derive a high-resolution sediment budget for the submarine delta, which can be linked to the evolving monsoonal climate and to help understand more generally what processes govern the distribution of sediment in a high sediment load, high wave energy delta system. The potential effects of damming on the Indus delta system will be assessed and its influence on the future of the delta as a region for sustainable human habitation will be explored.

Interested candidates should e-mail Peter Clift (pclift@abdn.ac.uk) for further details. Normal NERC UK residency restrictions apply.