MGSD Executive Changes – 2009
We are pleased to announce that Dr. Michael Li is the new Vice-Chair of the Marine Geosciences Division Executive.
The Michael J. Keen Medal – 2009
The winner of the Michael J. Keen Medal for 2009 is Dr. Reinhard Hesse of
McGill University, nominated by Dr. David Piper supported by Dr. A.E.
Williams Jones and many distinguished colleagues. Dr. Hesse has had a truly
amazing career in marine geoscience - please read the nomination letter
which is reproduced below.
Nomination of Dr. Reinhard Hesse by Dr. David Piper
We wish herewith to nominate Professor Reinhard Hesse of the Department of
Earth and Planetary Sciences of McGill University for the 2009 Michael J
Keen award of the Marine Geosciences Division of the Geological Association
of Canada. In support of this nomination, we review below the contributions
that Dr Hesse has made to the advancement of marine geoscience and related
fields. His CV is attached to this document. I have been assisted in
preparing this document by Dr A.E. (Willy) Williams-Jones of McGill, who
also supports this nomination. We have also attached the necessary letters
of support from a wide range of colleagues and former students, attesting to
the broad international recognition of his work.
Reinhard Hesse is an internationally renowned earth scientist who has made
major contributions to the disciplines of sedimentary and marine geology
through discoveries of lasting significance associated with his study of:
(1) the Northwest Atlantic Mid-Ocean Channel (NAMOC) system of the Labrador
Sea as a continuation of the subglacial drainage system of the Laurentide
Ice Sheet (LIS) of North America,
(2) sediment supply to and redistribution on the Labrador continental slope
and rise in the vicinity of one of the main ice streams of the LIS in the
Hudson Strait,
(3) pore-water anomalies in gas-hydrate bearing sediments on the continental
margins (gas-hydrate dissociation hypothesis),
(4) diagenesis and anchimetamorphism of fine-grained argillaceous and
siliceous sediments, and
(5) turbidite sedimentation in ancient flysch troughs of orogenic belts.
(1) His pioneering work on the NAMOC and its tributary system in the
Labrador Sea, one of the longest deep-sea channels in the world, links
deep-sea sedimentation to continental ice sheet drainage. He and his team
mapped major parts of the 3800 km long channel using sonar side scanning
equipment and discovered geomorphologic features reminiscent of those of
large rivers on land but also showing distinct differences such as
low-sinuosity meanders, asymmetric submarine levees that are 10 times higher
than subaerial levees, meandering talwegs, and yazoo-type tributary
channels. These spectacular features provided the key for understanding
transport processes in deep-sea channels and their natural levees. He
proposed that a newly discovered braided sand plain (one of the largest sand
bodies on Earth) was the product of catastrophic subglacial lake outburst
flooding from the Hudson Strait during periods of intensified iceberg drift
known as Heinrich events. The latter correlate with major, short-duration
perturbations in the global climate system (cooling events followed by rapid
warming) during glacial times, which are documented in Greenland ice cores
and supported by the paleoclimatic information extracted by Hesse and his
students from deep-sea sediment cores. A major contribution of his work was
the discovery of a unique depositional facies of lofted sediments comprising
ice-rafted debris (drop-stones) in graded muds which are only deposited
during Heinrich events.
Another important finding by his group was that of an additional Heinrich
Event, 5a, between known events 5 and 6, which provides strong support for
the binge-purge model of ice sheet growth and decay (Rashid et al., 2004).
It halves the anomalously long time interval (15000 yrs) between two
successive events, which then is comparable to the average recurrence
interval of 7000 yrs required to restore an ice sheet to its full thickness
(3-4 km) after collapse during a Heinrich event.
(2) Dr Hesse’s piston-core and reflection seismic studies on the Labrador
Slope have drawn attention to the significance of fresh-water turbid surface
plumes issued from ice-tunnels which deliver fine-grained sediments to the
continental slope adjacent to ice stream and glacier outlets. They have also
shown how this sediment is redistributed to the lower slope and basin by
slumping, debris flows, turbidity currents and contour currents, and how
erosion by headward gullying and progressive upward canyon branching
dominates the upper slope. As a result of this work, the sedimentation
processes that shape the slope and control the facies distribution were
better established in the Labrador Sea than on any other glaciated
continental margin and have become an essential reference for related
studies around Antarctica and elsewhere.
(3) In a landmark paper with Harrison (1981) stemming from his participation
in the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) Leg 67, Dr Hesse proposed that the
then recently discovered methane hydrate zones (a sleeping time bomb for
global warming and possible next major source of fossil fuel) can be
recognized by characteristic anomalies in the pore water chemistry caused by
hydrate melting. Building on this early work, Hesse and collaborators in
Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Leg 164 later succeeded in developing the
analysis of pore-water chemistry into what has now become the best method
for estimating hydrate concentration and distribution in the subsurface.
These two studies have since been cited in virtually every new paper on the
subject.
The study of early diagenetic pore-water, this time in Ordovician rocks of
the Gaspé Peninsula, was the source of another breakthrough when Hesse and
his students demonstrated that some of the carbonate concretions started to
precipitate in sediment so close to the sea floor (within a few cm) that the
oxygen isotopic composition of the sea-water can be read directly. The
findings helped resolve a long standing debate by supporting the hypothesis
that Ordovician seawater was depleted in the heavy isotope and evolved to
its modern value through water-rock interaction at mid-ocean ridges.
Oxygen-isotopic analyses were also the focus of an important study of illite/smectite
clays in the Beaufort-Sea/Mackenzie Delta where Hesse and students
discovered a depth trend that they were able to relate to secular
paleoclimatic changes in the Arctic from the Cretaceous to the Pleistocene.
Hesse has participated repeatedly in DSDP and ODP, two mega-programs in the
earth sciences that serve as a model for international scientific
cooperation. He was one of the first participants in the DSDP from Canada
and was a member of the Leg 20 team (1971) in the West Pacific at a time
when Canada was not yet a member country of the project. Moreover, as a
member of this team, he was the lead author of a pelagic sedimentation model
for the Pacific Ocean predicting the type of sediment reaching
circum-Pacific subduction zones and affecting the sediment-derived
geochemical signatures of subduction-zone magmas (Hesse et al., 1974). As a
result of his participation in the expedition he was also able to study the
diagenesis of an Early Tertiary seamount oolite recovered from a sunken
atoll in the West Pacific, and provide evidence supporting the notion that
earliest Tertiary seas were aragonite- rather than calcite-producing,
implying a relatively low partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere as at
present. In the mid-1980’s he was Canada’s representative on the Pacific
Ocean panel of ODP.
(4) Over the last two decades, Hesse has enjoyed a very productive
collaboration on clay diagenesis with H. Vali, an expert in transmission
electron microscopy, whom he brought to McGill as a senior research
associate from Germany. (Professor Vali is now Director of McGill’s Facility
for EM Research). Together, they developed a new technique to study
expandable clays after treatment with n-alkylammonium ions in ultrathin
sections under high-resolution TEM which represented a breakthrough,
referred to by some as the ‘magic bullet’ of direct TEM imaging I/S. This
technique combined with other advanced methods (cryofixation; freeze
etching) was used by his students to characterize the evolution of I/S
mixed-layer clays during burial diagenesis in offshore and onshore oil wells
(Beaufort Sea-Mackenzie Delta, Jeanne d’Arc Basin) It also enabled them to
extend the range of measurable illite crystallinity (IC) of argillaceous
rocks to include the loss of the few percent of smectite layers remaining
during high-grade diagenesis/low-grade metamorphism, something which had not
been possible with conventional X-ray diffraction methods. These
methodological advances also provided the tools needed to address problems
of clay diagenesis in the Appalachians and St. Lawrence Lowlands which lead
to the production of diagenetic/metamorphic maps and the discovery in Quebec
City and adjacent areas to the southeast of an inverted pattern in which
lower grade rocks with petroleum potential occur in nappes and thrust sheets
below sediments in higher grade units that matured beyond the oil “window”.
In addition to its tectonic importance, the work has also helped guide
exploration in the area – there are now several producing wells in the
region – and in conjunction with fluid inclusions has shown that about 4 km
of Paleozoic sedimentary cover has been eroded from the St. Lawrence
Lowlands since the Cretaceous. Other notable contributions in the field of
diagenesis include two widely cited papers on the origin of chert (Hesse,
1988, 1989; 85 citations) and several key studies of sandstone diagenesis in
present-day offshore areas (e.g.,Hibernia oilfield).
(5) Some of Hesse’s most enduring work has been in the study of deep water
turbidites in mountain belts which he began at the Technical University of
Munich (TUM), Germany and for which he set standards not previously matched.
His study of individual turbidites in the Rhenodanubian Flysch Zone of the
East Alps, representing long distance tracers of single depositional events
crossing different tectonic units, was a major breakthrough that paved the
way for reliable palinspastic reconstructions in a complex thrust fold-belt.
In a paleobathymetric study that added the third dimension to the
paleogeographic reconstructions he went on to show that the turbidites had
been deposited in very deep water below the Cretaceous calcite compensation
level (CCL), most likely in a deep-sea trench (Hesse & Butt, 1976). whereas
other smaller turbidite basins that were riding piggy-back on the nappe of
the Northern Calcareous Alps were located above the CCL. These contributions
earned him the Habilitation (D.Sc. degree) and the Credner Award of the
German Geological Society. After arriving in Canada, Hesse extended his work
on deep water sediments to the Taconian and Acadian orogenic belts of the
Northern Appalachians, where he and his students established the facies
relationships between turbidite channel and overbank deposits on the
Cambrian continental margin of North America and in a Devonian orogenic
shale basin as well as the relationship between provenance areas, sea-level
change and turbidite petrology.
Dr Hesse’s greatest strength is a breadth of approach to problems in and
marine geoscience that is matched by few in any field. He has explored to
equal depth the problems of transport and deposition of clastic sediments
and their diagenesis at a time when specialization has permitted most of his
contemporaries to master only one of these fields. Most importantly, his
contributions to knowledge have been fundamental, numerous and appear in 100
widely cited peer-reviewed publications that have made his a “household”
name in the field of marine geoscience. If he has one weakness, it is that
he tends to “hide his light under a bushel” which may explain why he has
received less formal recognition than colleagues of comparable merit.
I would also emphasise, from my personal knowledge, the dogged determination
that Reinhard has shown throughout his long career to work in one of the
meteorologically most unpleasant areas of the Earth, the Labrador Sea. He
was always convinced of the importance of this Canadian sea for
sedimentology. His work laid the foundation for more recent studies on paleo-oceanography
of the region. It is also important to view his contributions from the
context of his times: in the 1960’s, for example, no-one could understand
that muds might be deposited from turbidity currents; in the 1970’s, marine
geology was carried out with only transit satellite and flaky Loran-C
navigation. It was against this intellectual and technical backdrop that
Reinhard brought consistent thoroughness of interpretation and a stream of
new ideas. At the same time, the artificial barrier of the coastline has
never stopped him from applying fundamental principles of physics and
chemistry to geological problems. In the scope of his interests and his
search for new ideas, he resembles Mike Keen.
In conclusion, Reinhard Hesse is one of the foremost marine geoscientists of
his time and a most worthy candidate for the Michael J. Keen Medal of the
Marine Geosciences Division of GAC.
Yours sincerely,
David J.W. Piper
Research Scientist, Geological Survey of Canada
A. E. (Willy) Williams-Jones
Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences
McGill University
Recipients of the Michael J. Keen Medal may be a Canadian or a non-Canadian
who have made a contribution in Canada or with a distinctively Canadian
flavour. For more information please see: http://gac.esd.mun.ca/MGD/keen.htm
GSC News
New Marine Program
The Geological Survey of Canada’s marine program is undergoing changes. The very successful Geoscience for Ocean Management Program (GOM), formerly managed by Dr. Dick Pickrill, ends on March 31 2009. It will be replaced by a new program: Sustainable Offshore Resource Development (SORD). The new program is still in the planning stage, but the hopes are that government marine scientific research will continue on all Canadian continental shelves.
Progress of standard
mapping
Progress continues on publishing maps based on multibeam sonar mapping. Placentia Bay, Newfoundland was one of the large areas selected and mapped using Oceans Act funding. Five shaded relief maps are in press, and five backscatter maps are almost ready. Other areas being published include Lunenburg Bay, Nova Scotia, Bay d’Espoir, Newfoundland, and German Bank, Nova Scotia. Under the GOM program almost all of the Bay of Fundy has been mapped using multibeam sonar; it is expected that these maps will be published under the auspices of SORD.
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| 1:50,000 scale map sheet for northern Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. |
On the west coast the GOM program has been working in both south and north coast regions to produce map products. In the Queen Charlotte Basin a new eight map series has been released that details the distribution of unique sponge reefs. These areas are now formally DFO Oceans proposed Marine Protected Areas. In the south thematic mapping for geohazards and habitat along the international border has been ongoing and several maps at 1:50,000 and 1:20,000 are in press.
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| 1:50,000 map of one of the four large sponge reef complexes in the Queen Charlotte Basin, British Columbia. |
Technology transfer award
A group of GSC and Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) staff travelled to Ottawa to receive a technology transfer award in June 2008. The award for the development, transfer and commercialization of multibeam seafloor imaging applications for industry was based on work done on German Bank, NS. GSC/CHS partnerships have been crucial to the development of multibeam sonar as a geological mapping tool.
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| G. Costello & M. Lamplugh (CHS) (1st and 3rd from left) R. Courtney, V. Kostylev, R. Pickrill & B. Todd (NRCan) |
Website Update - 2009
The website has been updated by Peter Neelands of the Pacific Geoscience
Centre. Please have a look at the new information on the site.
http://gac.esd.mun.ca/MGD/MGD.html
If you have information you would like to see placed on the Division website
please let us know. Thanks to Peter Neelands!
Changes to the MGSD Constitution
The Division received 13 votes in favour with one opposed to the proposed
changes to the constitution so these proposed changes are taken as having
been ratified by the membership. The changes will now go to the National
Executive for formal adoption at the Toronto Annual General Meeting. The
changes are to conform to insurance requirements for the national body.
1. Membership
Members of the Division shall be members in good standing of the Geological
Association of Canada.
2. Application for Membership
Membership is by submission of an annual fee to the Geological Association
of Canada.
3. Eligibility to Vote
Only members in good standing are eligible to vote on Division business.
GAC/MAC Annual Meeting Toronto - May 24-27, 2009
While there will be no special session devoted to marine geosciences at the joint annual meeting of the GAC and MAC, there are many sessions that would be of interest to marine geoscientists. For more information about the Toronto meeting please see: http://www.jointassembly2009.ca
GeoCanada Meeting Calgary - May 10-13, 2010
Plans are being developed for a MGSD sponsored special session or symposium
at the Calgary GeoCanada 2010 Annual General Meeting of the
Geological Association of Canada. The symposium or session would focus on
high resolution techniques, such as multibeam swath sonar, high resolution
seismic and LIDAR in examining sedimentary systems. A tentative title for
the session is Modern and Ancient Analogues in Sedimentary Systems: New
Insights from High Resolution Survey Technologies. It is hoped that
contributions from industry, academia and government labs will allow the
session to incorporate a broad selection of talks and make for an
interesting day long session as part of the Calgary meeting. Please contact
Kim Conway for further details.
Best regards,
Kim,
