Recent seminars and lectures

This directory contains images from seminars delivered in recent years. Some of the seminars require a browser with a plugin for viewing Flash graphics.

Discipline initiatives

• Auscope planning meeting - Geosciences and Geopsatial sciences, 2010-2020 and beyond
  Melbourne, October 2008.
  
  I outline a personal view for a new metaphor for the geosciences; one that focuses attention on the services our accessible crust is capable of providing, now and into the future. Several of the themes I talked to in this presentation are developed further in the following documents. pdf notes
  

Public Lectures

• Australia's ancient landscapes:
  lessons for an uncertain future
  Howitt Lecture, Royal Society of Victoria, June 2007.
  
  Using Australian landscapes as my inspiration, I explore the geological framework that provides context for our concern about rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and how and what we may be able to do about it.

• The Power and the Passion:
  a geological perspective
  Dean's Lecture Series, Melbourne University, August 2006
  
  As part of a forum exploring the context of Nuclear energy prospects for Australia, I outline some of the issues concerning stability of our contients relevant to long-term waste storage, the size of our Uranium resource and the prospect of geothermal energy. link to pdf version with text

• From Aceh to Australia:
  the remarkable story of the Indo-Australian plate
  Dean's Public Lecture Series, Melbourne University, October 2005
  
  I explore the geodynamic factors responsible for the 2004 Boxing Day Aceh earthquake, and relate them to the dynamics of the Indo-Australian plate, and to the much milder tectonic activity in Australia. I finish with some speculations about the role of the Indo-Australian plate in instigating the climate change leading to the emergence of our species.

• Making Australia: landscape, climate and tectonics
  Geological Society of Australia, Public Lecture Series, October 2003
  
  Presented together with Jim Bowler, we explore the imprints of climatic and tectonic change in the Australian landscape, illustrating its remarkable archive of global change.

• The Nature of Change
  Science Week, Melbourne University, August, 2002
  
  A geological perspective on global change.

Inaugural lecture

• Why Oz quakes?
  Mawson Lecture, Geological Society of Australia, February 2004
  
  A geological outline of Australian earthquakes and the geodynamic factors responsible for them.

Keynote Lectures

• The remarkable surface of the earth
  Australian Institute of Physics, February, 2005

• When shear zones don't reactivate
  keynote talk, Geological Society of London, September, 2002

Recent invited Lectures

• The strange case of Mount Painter and the question
  ' why the continents are just so?'
  ETH, Zurich, May 2007 (Alan Thompsons' 60th birthday)

• Why are the continents are just so?
  Goldschmidt, Melbourne, August 2006

• Flip-flopping Australia
  RSES ANU, July '03, Melbourne Uni variation, August, 2003

• Melting the crust: Where is the heat?
  "Ishihara Symposium", Macquarie Uni, July 22, 2003

• Emergent properties
  ACRC annual conference, Monash November, 2002

• Tectonics and stratigraphy in Neoproterozoic Basins, Australia
  Australian Geological Convention, Powell Symposium, Adelaide, July 2002

• Neotectonic framework of Australia
  Australian Geological Convention, Sprigg Symposium, Adelaide, July 2002

Other talks

• From the edge of Opsentia
  Melbourne University, July 2005

• Topography, tectonics and climate
  Royal Society of Victoria, June 2003

• Australian Neotectonics
  Geoscience Australia, May 2002