On December 1st 2021, Dr Hannah Davies joined the section as a post-doctoral researcher. Her work will focus on understanding patterns of sediment production and transport on an Early Earth where subduction-driven tectonics as we know it today was not fully established. She will also investigates potential mechanisms for the role of the extensive glaciation that may have triggered erosion and sediment transport when our planet’s tectonics was still dominated by more diffuse flow in the mantle and thus longer wavelength and lower amplitude surface topography. For this she will develop a continental- to planetary-scale model of erosion and sediment transport that she will couple to various kinematic and dynamic models of plate motion on a convecting mantle and, later, to a simplified climatic model tuned for the conditions of the mid-Proterozoic.

Dr Hannah Davies recently completed her PhD at the University of Lisbon during which she focused on the relationship between tides and tectonics to understand how changes in the tides, induced by plate tectonic motion during supercontinent cycles, affect other components of the Earth system, such as climate and habitability. We welcome Hannah to our section. She is also a member of the ERC-Synergy MEET project headed by Professor Stefan Sobolev in Section 2.5 (Geodynamic modeling).