Newsbytes

Issue Date: 
October 26, 2009

Pitt-led Team Digs in Icelandic Volcanoes for Clues to
Martian Terrain, Earth’s Past And Future Climate

A three-year project led by the University of Pittsburgh will tap a volcanic mountain range in central

Ian SkillingIan Skilling

Iceland for clues about how the Martian surface formed as well as the past and the future of our own planet’s climate. Ian Skilling, a volcanology professor in Pitt’s School of Arts and Sciences, recently received $304,000 from the National Science Foundation to investigate the historic interplay between volcanoes and glaciers preserved in the frozen desolation of the Dyngjufjöll (Din-gyu-fyotl) mountains. Skilling will collaborate with colleagues from the University of Iceland, the United Kingdom’s Open University, and the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.

The team plans to collect data for constructing a model that illustrates the interaction between large volcanoes and overlying ice sheets by analyzing the textures, chemical composition, and age of rocks at Dyngjufjöll. Their results could reveal new information about past ice ages. Volcanoes that erupt underneath ice capture evidence of the ice’s presence and thickness. Because it has been blanketed by at least 16 glaciers in the past 2.5 million years, central Iceland likely contains among the most comprehensive records of Northern Atlantic land ice, Skilling explained. This largely unexplored chronicle would be invaluable for depicting Earth’s bygone climate and, thus, helping model future climate change.

Additionally, the Dyngjufjöll range is similar to many of Mars’ very large volcanoes, Skilling said. The Red Planet has several large, very long-lived caldera volcanoes—which have expansive open pits caused by large eruptions—that for most of the planet’s history would have erupted through and interacted with thick layers of water ice. Dyngjufjöll and other caldera volcanoes provide the best Earth-based models for studying the formation of this important part of the Martian surface, Skilling said.

—By Morgan Kelly

Building With Bamboo Nets Pitt, Indian Students a Nod for
United Nations-Daimler International Engineering Award

A team of students from the University of Pittsburgh and the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur

Posing on the road from Rimbik to Darjeeling are (from left) Pitt civil engineering graduate student Derek Mitch; Bhavna Sharma, civil engineering doctoral student and recipient of an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship from Pitt’s Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation; civil engineering doctoral student Maria Jaime; and civil engineering professor and William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow Kent Harries.Posing on the road from Rimbik to Darjeeling are (from left) Pitt civil engineering graduate student Derek Mitch; Bhavna Sharma, civil engineering doctoral student and recipient of an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship from Pitt’s Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation; civil engineering doctoral student Maria Jaime; and civil engineering professor and William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow Kent Harries.

(IITK) working in the Indian Himalayas to popularize bamboo construction as a sustainable construction method were recently selected as finalists for an international engineering award presented by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and German automaker Daimler.

The Pitt-IITK team is among 30 finalist teams for the Mondialogo Engineering Award presented by Mondialogo, an initiative of Daimler and UNESCO that sponsors intercultural collaborations. The finalists were selected from 932 research proposals from 94 countries and will attend a Nov. 6-9 convention in Stuttgart, Germany, where the final selection will be made. The engineering award encourages engineering students in developing and developed countries to create cooperative projects that address some of the major challenges of the 21st century, including poverty, sustainable development, climate change, and improving life in the developing world.

The Pitt-IITK project, “Promotion of Bamboo as a Cost Effective and Sustainable Structural Material,” relates to the team’s ongoing collaboration with an engineering group in India to promote, design, and build bamboo structures in the Indian Himalayan regions of Darjeeling and Sikkim. The Pitt group is led by Bhavna Sharma, a Swanson School of Engineering PhD candidate and recipient of an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship from Pitt’s Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation. Kent Harries, a Pitt civil engineering professor and William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow, serves as the project’s faculty advisor and leads students to India for fieldwork.

Sikkim and Darjeeling straddle the planet’s most unstable terrain. Here, modern construction materials such as concrete and masonry—which became fashionable in the 20th century—pose a threat to the environment and human safety. These materials have to be trucked along rugged, winding roads where untrained contractors and temporary workers cobble together buildings that list on the steep hillsides and crumble from frequent mudslides and earthquakes. Engineers in this remote part of India also lack access to the equipment needed to perform basic quality control and assurance testing.

In response, the Indian group Sustainable Hill Engineering and Design (SHED)—led by one of Harries’ former graduate students—seeks to repopularize the ikra, a traditional bamboo-frame structure. Bamboo is native to the region, largely resistant to earthquakes, and gentle on the steep, loose-soil hillsides. The Pitt students develop comprehensive material standards for bamboo construction, conduct strength and design tests for bamboo structures, and, when in India, help SHED tackle issues ranging from slope stability to clean energy.

More information on the project is available on Pitt’s Web site at www.chronicle.pitt.edu/?p=1613.

—By Morgan Kelly