Subduction-zone magmatism

From 2016–2019, I was a postdoctoral researcher in subduction-zone geodynamics at the FoaLab Laboratory for Geodynamics at the University of Oxford with Prof. Richard Katz, and at Bullard Laboratories, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, working with Dr John Rudge. My work was funded by the Deep Volatiles NERC consortium grant with supplementary support from the Deep Carbon Observatory of the Sloan Foundation.

Subduction zones are a crucial part of the Earth’s tectonic system, which controls the cycling of volatile chemicals such as water and carbon on long geological timescales. We are developing physical models of the coupled fluid flow and thermal and chemical transport, and implementing these in open-source simulation code based on PETSc and available for community use.

• A major study arising from this project showed that magma flow had a significant effect on the thermal structure of subduction zones (Rees Jones, et. al. 2018). This resolved a long-standing discrepancy between models and various types of observations.