Publications

Earth Surface Dynamics: Tectonically and climatically driven mountain-hopping erosion in central Guatemala from detrital 10Be and river profile analysis

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The rise of a mountain range affects moisture circulation in the atmosphere and water runoff across the land surface, modifying the distribution of precipitation and drainage patterns in its vicinity. Water routing in turn affects erosion on hillslopes and incision in river channels on surrounding mountain ranges. In central Guatemala, two parallel, closely spaced mountain … Read more…

Geosphere: Fast Pliocene integration of the Central Anatolian Plateau drainage: Evidence, processes, and driving forces

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Continental sedimentation was widespread across the Central Anatolian Plateau in Miocene– Pliocene time, during the early stages of plateau uplift. Today, however, most sediment produced on the plateau is dispersed by a well-integrated drainage and released into surrounding marine depocenters. Residual long-term (106–107 yr) sediment storage on the plateau is now restricted to a few … Read more…

Marine and Petroleum Geology: Single-phase vs two-phase rifting: Numerical perspectives on the accommodation of extension during continental break-up

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How continental lithosphere responds to extension is a function of the dynamic interaction between layers of differing rheological properties, including the shallow crust, deep crust, lithospheric mantle, and asthenosphere. We investigate the first-order controls on the modes of extension and timing of transition from continental rifting to development of continental margins via a suite of … Read more…

Basin Research: Modelling the role of dynamic topography and eustasy in the evolution of the Great Artesian Basin

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Widespread flooding of the Australian continent during the Early Cretaceous, referred to as the Eromanga Sea, deposited extensive shallow marine sediments throughout the Great Artesian Basin (GAB). This event had been considered ‘out of sync’ with eustatic sea level and was instead solely attributed to dynamic subsidence associated with Australia’s passage over eastern Gondwanan subducted … Read more…

Modelling global precipitation since 250 million years ago

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We have developed a novel data-driven approach to reconstruct precipitation patterns through geological time, since the supercontinent Pangea was in existence. Our approach involves linking climate-sensitive sedimentary deposits such as coal, evaporites and glacial deposits to a global plate model, reconstructed paleo-elevation maps and high-resolution General Circulation Models via Bayesian machine learning. We model the … Read more…

Simulated-multifractal models: A futuristic review of multifractal modeling in geochemical anomaly classification

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Dr. Behnam Sadeghi, from EarthByte Group (USYD), has published a new review paper in “Ore Geology Reviews”. Sadeghi et al. (2015) proposed simulated-fractal models for the first time, which is based on the combination of geostatistical simulation models and mathematical fractal/multifractal modeling to classify geochemical anomalies. Based on that research, several other models have been … Read more…

G-Cubed: Papanin Ridge and Ojin Rise Seamounts (Northwest Pacific): Dual Hotspot Tracks Formed by the Shatsky Plume

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The origin of Shatsky Rise, a large igneous plateau in the NW Pacific, has long been debated. It could have either formed by shallow mantle melting due to its confirmed creation along a mid-ocean ridge or with additional contribution of deeper mantle material that upwelled as so-called mantle plume beneath the spreading ridge (“plume-ridge interaction”). … Read more…

Continental arcs dominate global chemical weathering

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Earth’s plate-tectonic activity regulates the carbon cycle and, hence, climate, via volcanic outgassing and silicate-rock weather- ing. Mountain building, arc–continent collisions and clustering of continents in the tropics have all been invoked as controlling the weathering flux, with arcs also acting as a major contributor of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. However, these processes have … Read more…

Kinematics and extent of the Piemont–Liguria Basin – implications for subduction processes in the Alps

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Assessing the size of a former ocean of which only remnants are found in mountain belts is challenging but crucial to understanding subduction and exhumation processes. Here we present new constraints on the opening and width of the Piemont–Liguria (PL) Ocean, known as the Alpine Tethys together with the Valais Basin. We use a regional … Read more…

Predicting the emplacement of Cordilleran porphyry copper systems using a spatio-temporal machine learning model

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Porphyry copper (Cu) systems occur along magmatic belts derived in subduction zones. Our current under- standing of their formation is restricted to observations from the overriding plate, resulting in a knowledge gap in terms of processes occurring in convergence zones through time. An association between key tectonic processes and the timing and location of porphyry … Read more…

Potential encoding of coupling between Milankovitch forcing and Earth’s interior processes in the Phanerozoic eustatic sea-level record

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The driving mechanisms of Earth’s climate system at a multi-Myr timescale have received considerable attention since the 1980’s as they are deemed to control large-amplitude climatic variations that result in severe biogeochemical disruptions, major sea-level variations, and the evolution of Earth’s land- and seascapes through geological time. The commonly accepted mechanism for these changes derives … Read more…

Concentration-distance from centroids (C-DC) multifractal modeling: A novel approach to characterizing geochemical patterns based on sample distance from mineralization

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Behnam Sadeghi from EarthByte Group has published a new paper in journal “Ore Geology Reviews”, based on his PhD thesis. In this research, to explore the VMS Cu deposits throughout Sweden a novel multifractal model of concentration-distance from centroids (C-DC) has been developed and applied to the till data provided by the Geological Survey of … Read more…

Mantle plumes and their role in Earth processes

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The existence of mantle plumes was first proposed in the 1970s to explain intra-plate, hotspot volcanism, yet owing to difficulties in resolving mantle upwellings with geophysical images and discrepancies in interpretations of geochemical and geochronological data, the origin, dynamics and composition of plumes and their links to plate tectonics are still contested. In a recently … Read more…

Geochemical anomaly definition using multifractal modeling, validated by geological field observations: Siah Jangal area, SE Iran

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Dr. Behnam Sadeghi from EarthByte Group has published this paper recently in the journal “Geochemistry-Chemie der Erde” (Special Issue of “Mineral exploration: a journey from fieldwork, to laboratory work, computational modelling and mineral processing”). This research is part of a research project with the University of Neyshabur, which has been done in SE Iran. Abstract … Read more…

SPS Model: a significant algorithm to reduce the time and computer memory required in geostatistical simulations

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Behnam Sadeghi has published this paper in the Iranian Journal of Earth Sciences. In this research, he has developed an algorithm to down-scale the maps, to reduce the simulation time and the required memory, but to keep the same geostatistical performance and accuracy. This model strongly helps with huge and time-consuming simulations. Abstract In geochemical … Read more…

The carbonate compensation depth in the South Atlantic Ocean since the Late Cretaceous

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Carbonate accumulation rates (CAR) in the South Atlantic through time, with the average CCD for the South Atlantic shown in black, which the CCD in the Walvis Ridge/Rio Grande Rise area is shown in magenta. Deep-sea carbonate deposition is a complex process that is encapsulated in the carbonate compensation depth (CCD)—a facies boundary separating calcareous … Read more…

Weighting of BLEG data with drainage and catchment properties to enhance Au anomalies

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Weighting of BLEG data with drainage and catchment properties to enhance Au anomalies Dr. Behnam Sadeghi with Profs. Huseyin Yilmaz and Franco Pirajno, has published this paper in journal “Geochemistry/Chemie der Erde”, based on bulk leachable extractable gold (BLEG) data in Western Turkey, considering several other relevant parameters such catchments’ areas, slopes and curvatures plus … Read more…

Category-based fractal modelling: A novel model to integrate the geology into the data for more effective processing and interpretation

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Category-based fractal modelling: A novel model to integrate the geology into the data for more effective processing and interpretation Dr. Behnam Sadeghi and his PhD supervisor, Prof. David Cohen, has published another paper in Journal of Geochemical Exploration. This paper is based on his PhD thesis. In this research, they have proposed two novel fractal … Read more…

Intraplate volcanism triggered by bursts in slab flux

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Long-lived, widespread intraplate volcanism without age progression is one of the most controversial features of plate tectonics. Previously proposed edge-driven convection, asthenospheric shear, and lithospheric detachment fail to explain the ~5000-km-wide intraplate volcanic province from eastern Australia to Zealandia. We model the subducted slab volume over 100 million years and find that slab flux drives … Read more…

Coupled evolution of plate tectonics and basal mantle structure

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The relationships between plate motions and basal mantle structure remain poorly understood, with some models implying that the basal mantle structure has remained stable over time, while others suggest that it could be shaped by the aggregation and dispersal of supercontinents. Here we investigate the evolution of mantle flow driven by end‐member plate tectonic models … Read more…

Paper in Frontiers of Earth Science: Modeling the Dynamic Landscape Evolution of a Volcanic Coastal Environment Under Future Climate Trajectories

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Modeling the Dynamic Landscape Evolution of a Volcanic Coastal Environment Under Future Climate Trajectories Kyle Manley, T. Salles and R. D. Müller As anthropogenic forcing continues to rapidly modify worldwide climate, impacts on landscape changes will grow. Olivine weathering is a natural process that sequesters carbon out of the atmosphere, but is now being proposed … Read more…

Environmental predictors of deep-sea polymetallic nodule occurrence in the global ocean

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Abstract: Polymetallic nodules found on the abyssal plains of the oceans represent one of the slowest known geological processes, and are a source of critical and rare metals for frontier technologies. A quantitative assessment of their occurrence worldwide has been hampered by a research focus on the northeastern Pacific Ocean and the lack of a … Read more…

Subduction history reveals Cretaceous slab superflux as a possible cause for the mid-Cretaceous plume pulse and superswell events

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Abstract: Subduction is a fundamental mechanism of material exchange between the planetary interior and the surface. Despite its significance, our current understanding of fluctuating subducting plate area and slab volume flux has been limited to a range of proxy estimates. Here we present a new detailed quantification of subduction zone parameters from the Late Triassic … Read more…

Integration of Selective Dimensionality Reduction Techniques for Mineral Exploration Using ASTER Satellite Data

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Abstract: There are a significant number of image processing methods that have been developed during the past decades for detecting anomalous areas, such as hydrothermal alteration zones, using satellite images. Among these methods, dimensionality reduction or transformation techniques are known to be a robust type of methods, which are helpful, as they reduce the extent … Read more…

East African topography and volcanism explained by a single, migrating plume

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Abstract: Anomalous topographic swells and Cenozoic volcanism in east Africa have been associated with mantle plumes. Several models involving one or more fixed plumes beneath the northeastward migrating African plate have been suggested to explain the space-time distribution of magmatism in east Africa. We devise paleogeographically constrained global models of mantle convection and, based on … Read more…

Surrogate-assisted Bayesian inversion for landscape and basin evolution models

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Abstract: The complex and computationally expensive nature of landscape evolution models poses significant challenges to the inference and optimization of unknown model parameters. Bayesian inference provides a methodology for estimation and uncertainty quantification of unknown model parameters. In our previous work, we developed parallel tempering Bayeslands as a framework for parameter estimation and uncertainty quantification … Read more…

Bayesian geological and geophysical data fusion for the construction and uncertainty quantification of 3D geological models

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Abstract: Traditional approaches to develop 3D geological models employ a mix of quantitative and qualitative scientific techniques, which do not fully provide quantification of uncertainty in the constructed models and fail to optimally weight geological field observations against constraints from geophysical data. Here, using the Bayesian Obsidian software package, we develop a methodology to fuse … Read more…

Reconstructing seafloor age distributions in lost ocean basins

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Abstract: Reconstructions of past seafloor age make it possible to quantify how plate tectonic forces, surface heat flow, ocean basin volume and global sea-level have varied through geological time. However, past ocean basins that have now been subducted cannot be uniquely reconstructed, and a significant challenge is how to explore a wide range of possible … Read more…

Concentration-concentration fractal modelling: a novel insight for correlation between variables in response to changes in the underlying controlling geological-geochemical processes

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Behnam Sadeghi has recently published a research paper in “Ore Geology Reviews”. This paper is based on one of the methods Behnam has developed in his PhD thesis. It is about a quite novel fractal model, named Concentration-Concentration (C-C), applied to geochemical anomaly classification. Also, in this paper Behnam has proposed a Bayesian framework, using … Read more…

Controls on soil geochemistry fractal characteristics in Lemesos (Limassol), Cyprus

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Behnam Sadeghi has recently published a research paper about urban geochemistry in Cyprus, based on soil data, and using fractal models and statistical analysis. A part of this paper is from his PhD thesis. This is a collaborative project with the Geological Survey of Cyprus and UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences. ABSTRACT: This … Read more…