Time to introduce you to another of our research scientists.
Emrys Phillips is based in our Edinburgh office working as a mineralogist /
petrologist. Well…..that's what he does officially. Unofficially we know him as
a lover of deformed dirt – the more folded, faulted and fractured the better!
He is also known for coining catchy terms to describe his work……research into
the effect of hydrodynamics at the base of glaciers becomes an interest in
slippery bottoms, whilst a glacier that has shed its lower decaying section in
response to climatic forcing is likened to a lizard shedding its tail in
self-preservation.
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| Emrys and Andrew Finlayson working (admiring the view) on Falljokull, SE Iceland |
So
how did this master of slippery bottoms, zombie glaciers and catchy phrases get
to his current position? After completing his Ph.D in Cardiff, he joined BGS in
1990, and now specialises in using structural (macro and micro morphology) to
investigate deformation. He puts down his move 12 years ago into all things
sub-glacial and glacitectonic (deformed by glacial activity) as being down to
two BGS colleagues who asked him innocently enough if he could look at some
thin sections of glacial sediments. And cue – release of the inner child! “So
why’s that then”, “So what’s that” were apparently common phrases during his
initiation into the world of ice – now it’s a phrase that his Ph.D students are
very used to him asking of them!
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The upper part sows a proglacial lake in front of a glacier in Iceland.
The lower part of the picture shows the delicate microscale structures
you get when a glacier overrides laminated lake sediments |
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| "So whats that then?" A deformed sand intraclsat within a glacitectonic melange, formed when the Anglian ice sheet overrode "warm" permafrost |
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| The thrusted bottom of a chalk raft, North Norfolk |
His
work has taken him to many exotic places, including the United Arab Emirates,
Canada, Iceland, Botswana and Oman, as well as a variety of projects in the
UK……..don’t get him started on chalk rafts in North Norfolk!! Common research
themes now include the role of glacitectonism in subglacial landform
development, understanding the complex signatures imparted on
glacial sediments in response to polyphase proglacial, ice marginal and
subglacial deformation; subglacial processes and glacier bed deformation, and
its control on the forward motion of glaciers and ice sheets, and bedrock
controls on subglacial landform distribution.
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| Cheeseman's Gerbil in the desert. |
Now
I’ve been on fieldwork with Emrys so I know that unusual animal occurrences
tend to follow him about for some reason (cue the Cheeseman’s gerbil sharing a
bevy in the desert) so I was semi-prepared when I asked him about his strangest
fieldwork experience…..
“For a few years I was doing a
lot of field work in the United Arab Emirates. This one lunchtime on a slightly
blustery day I watched for about 30 minutes whilst 4 or 5 crows played with a
plastic carrier bag. They grasped the handles of the carrier bag in their claws
and then flew up high. At the right height they flipped onto their backs and
spiralled downwards using the carrier bag as a parachute. Once one of the birds
had descended the next took up the bag and did the same. It was one of the strangest things I have
seen on field work.”
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| How can you not love deformed dirt? |
I also asked about his best and worst fieldwork moments……
the best in his own words was
“working for the summer as a
senior geologist with the Newfoundland and Labrador Geological Survey. We were
camped at the end of a flat gravel terrace in a river valley in Labrador. One
night we heard a noise and thought it was black bears raiding the rubbish
(again!!) The bears were a bit of a pest on that score. But it turned out to be
a few caribou near our camp. We sat out on the gravel terrace for about 4 to 5
hours watching as the open expanse of gravel filled with caribou. It just so
happened that we were camped on the migration route of the George River Heard
and in the following 3 to 4 days approximately 30,000 caribou passed through
the valley. It was an amazing thing to witness, one of the world’s greatest
migrations and I was sitting in the middle of it.”
And the worst……..
“running
out of beer, red wine and HobNobs on a recent field trip to Iceland”!
I asked why he loves his job so much (apart from the obvious
inner child who adores playing with mud pies!) The response was simple – it’s
all down to the people he works with.
And three final facts about Emrys – he has the
best collection of painted Doc Martin boots you are ever likely to come across;
he enjoys a spot of climbing and he is an incredible photographer!
Carol Cotterill
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