CAREER: Volatiles in the Deep Earth: Insights From Theory and Experiments

GSTDTAP

项目编号	1753125
	CAREER: Volatiles in the Deep Earth: Insights From Theory and Experiments
	Mainak Mookherjee
主持机构	Florida State University
项目开始年	2018
	2018-04-15
项目结束日期	2023-03-31
资助机构	US-NSF
项目类别	Continuing grant
项目经费	142662(USD)
国家	美国
语种	英语
英文摘要	The Earth is the only planet in the solar system that has the right conditions for habitability. A key ingredient that makes life possible is a vast reservoir of water on the Earth's surface. However, the rocky interior of the Earth plays an important role in sustaining this surface liquid water over geological time scales. Liquid water facilitates weathering of surface rocks and minerals, and in the process, produces minerals such as clays and other hydrous mineral phases that can lock up the liquid water in their crystal structure. These hydrous minerals are the ultimate sinks for storing water at surficial conditions. If the weathering processes were to continue unhindered, all the liquid water on the Earth's surface could be potentially stored in the crystalline hydrous minerals in a time scale of a few billion years. The process of mantle convection in the rocky interior of the Earth helps in circulating this water stored in minerals back to the surface through dehydration and subsequent volcanism. Water at depth plays an important role in reducing the melting temperature of the rocks constituting the mantle. Water also gets incorporated as hydrogen defects in mantle minerals and affects their elastic and transport properties, including rheology and viscosity. This in turn facilitates mantle convection process in the Earth. Owing to the importance of water in the deep Earth processes, it is important to constrain how water is transported in to the Earth's interior and to determine how much water is stored in the rocky interior of the Earth. This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award aims to address these fundamental questions by integrating research, training, and mentoring of the next generation of scientists and educators in the STEM fields and by making them aware of the importance of Solid Earth research for society. Undergraduate students through the Florida State University's Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) and high school students through the Young Scholar Program (YSP) will be involved in this research. The PI will also reach out to school students from underrepresented school districts, including Leon, Gadsden, Jefferson, and Hamilton counties in Florida and Thomas County in Georgia. The principal investigator (PI) will participate in educational and outreach activities hosted by the Challenger Learning Center. The PI and his team will present the outcomes from this project at international conferences, including the Fall American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting. They will also participate in NSF-sponsored and community-driven workshops and conferences funded by NSF. The overarching theme of this study will be to explore the high-pressure and temperature physical properties of hydrogen bearing mineral phases. In particular, the PI will use a combination of experiments and theoretical methods to examine the behavior of hydrogen and how it influences- elastic and transport properties such as diffusion and electrical conductivity of minerals at conditions relevant to the Earth's interior. The properties of hydrous minerals will be explored using vibrational spectroscopy, scattering and diffraction methods at both in house and international facilities. High-temperature elasticity of hydrogen bearing minerals will be examined using Resonant Ultrasound Spectroscopy. The experimental findings will be supplemented with first principles simulations. The constraints on elasticity and transport properties will be correlated with geophysical observations to put better constraints on the transport of water into the Earth?s interior and also the size of the water reservoir in the deep Earth. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
文献类型	项目
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/72502
专题	环境与发展全球科技态势
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Mainak Mookherjee.CAREER: Volatiles in the Deep Earth: Insights From Theory and Experiments.2018.