KMCT Memorial Lectures

Inaugural Lecture | 23 March 2021

Importance of Geological knowledge – from grade school to graduate school - by Prof Raja V Ramani

ABSTRACT

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At the present time, there is increasing realization that life on Earth is threatened by numerous safety, security and sustainability issues and that concerted action is essential to develop strategies that are effective in the long term.  Geology is defined as the scientific study of the origin of the Earth along with its rocks, minerals, landforms, and life forms, and of the processes that have affected them over the course of the Earth's history. It is often said that all human resource needs must be addressed by the basic industries of mining and agriculture and their contributions to the secondary and tertiary industries of manufacturing and commerce. Clearly, it is important to understand how Earth works as a system, particularly how the natural and human processes interact with each other within the system, to manage the system for the benefit of mankind. As our ability to see and collect data from far away in space and from deep in the bowels of Earth has increased, we have also come to appreciate the need for better understanding of the complexity of the interactions of the land, water and atmospheric components of Earth. Knowledge in geology has been considered essential in several fields of science and engineering though its relevance to every human being and to every day life is not widespread in the general public or even in some decision-makers. The purposes of this presentation are to overview the development of geology from the early years to the present and to productive avenues for enhancing geological knowledge from grade school to graduate school.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER

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Prof. Venkata Ramani is a graduate of Indian School of Mines [ISM],Dhanbad in Mining Engineering [1962], he is a certified First Class Mine Manager [1965] and Professional Engineer [1971] and holds M.S. [1968] and Ph.D. [1970] degrees in Mining Engineering from Pennsylvania State University, United States .  He is a life member of the Mining, Geological and Metallurgical Institute of India and has directed U.S. sponsored research and seminars in India on computer applications, longwall mining, ground water issues and environmental planning. His contributions to mineral engineering in teaching, research and service have been widely acknowledged for their excellence and significance with several awards from academia and technical and professional societies in the United States and abroad.  Among the notable awards are Distinguished Alumni Award [ISM, 1978], SME Distinguished Member [1989], APCOM Distinguished Achievement Award [1989], Honorary D.Sc. [ISM, 1997], U.S. National Academy of Engineering Member [2005], AIME Honorary Member [2010], and Distinguished Fulbright-Nehru Chair [2014-15]. Prof.Raja V. Ramani, was President of SME in 1995, SME Foundation President, during 2001-2004 and a Legion of Honor member of SME. He is currently Emeritus Professor of Mining and Geo-Environmental Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University and Emeritus George H., Jr. and Anne B. Deike Chair in Mining Engineering. Very recently he has been selected for Distinguished Alumni Award of Pennsylvania State University for the year 2022.

Second Lecture | 20 July 2021 

How is Antarctica changing and why should we care - by Prof Martin Siegert

ABSTRACT

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For more than 2000 years we have been fascinated by the discovery and exploration of Antarctica. The idea of Terra Australis Incognita (the Unknown Southern Land) began with the ancient Greeks, who argued a southern landmass was required to balance the northern world. This quest for knowledge led to the second voyage of Captain Cook in the late eighteenth Century, heroic expeditions by Robert Scott, Ernest Shackleton and Douglas Mawson, and the post-WW2 scientific collaboration of the International Geophysical Year in 1957-8. While much is now known about Antarctica, it still remains unquestionably the most unexplored region on Earth. In this lecture, I will talk about how our appreciation of Antarctica has changed as a consequence of the technological advances required for its scientific exploration. I will show how the perception of Antarctica as a static, lifeless continent has transformed to that of a dynamic region that has the power to alter our global environment. Finally, I will question what changes in the Antarctic could mean for us, and why it should concern everyone.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER

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Prof. Martin Siegert FRSE has been the Co-Director of the Grantham Institute since May 2014. Previously, he was Director of the Bristol Glaciology Center at Bristol University, where he is now a visiting Professor, and Head of the School of GeoSciences at Edinburgh University, where he now holds an Honorary Professorship. He led the Lake Ellsworth Consortium - a UK-NERC funded programme that designed an experiment to explore a large subglacial lake beneath the ice of West Antarctica. He has undertaken three Antarctic field seasons, using geophysics to measure the subglacial landscape and to understand what it tells us about past changes in Antarctica and elsewhere. In 2013 he was awarded the Martha T. Muse Prize for excellence in Antarctic science and policy, and in 2007 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Third Lecture | 27 Oct 2021 

How India Parted Company from Gondwana : Constraints of Space and Time - by Prof Colin Reeves

ABSTRACT

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India formed an integral part of the Gondwana ‘supercontinent’ throughout Paleozoic times.  Disruption of Gondwana started early in the Jurassic but it was not until late in the Cretaceous, 100 myr later, that India began its well-known rapid journey northwards, eventually to collide with Asia and form the Himalaya.  Data from the southern oceans – primarily ocean-floor topography and marine magnetic anomalies – have been used to investigate (a) the precise configuration of the present-day continents within reassembled Gondwana and (b) the processes of disruption that determined the paleogeography of the southern continents in the 100 myr interval from 184.2 Ma (start Toarcian) to 83.64 Ma (C34, start Campanian). The most recent 40 myr of this interval (i.e. 121.4 to 83.64 Ma) are devoid of marine magnetic anomalies and so demand some conservative plate-tectonic assumptions in addition to careful interpretation of the ocean-floor topography created.  Plate-tectonic modelling software (Atlas, Cambridge) has been used to model both continental positions and the likely geometry and behaviour of the mid-ocean ridges across the entire Gondwana-wide system of plates from the onset of disruption to 83.64 Ma, by which time India had begun its rapid northward journey. From this analysis it emerges that initial disruption into East and West Gondwana accelerated early in the Cretaceous (from 142.3 Ma, Berriasian).  By 121.4 Ma (M0, start Aptian) most of the well-known continental outlines had been established, many of them in the shorter interval 130-125 Ma (Hauterivian-Barremian).  These events are attributed to the more-or-less simultaneous outbreak at this time of the Kerguelen and Tristan mantle plumes.  The former created the (Greater) India-Australia-Antarctica triple junction, the latter started the main phase of South Atlantic opening.  At about the same time, re-invigoration of the Bouvet plume, located perpetually midway between Africa and Antarctica (and responsible for the original 184 Ma Gondwana disruption) ensured continuity of new mid-ocean ridge systems from West Africa to western Australia, a distance of more than 11 000 km, by Albian times.  From early in the Cretaceous the entire India plate, confined at its southern continental tip (along with Sri Lanka) between Africa (including Madagascar) and Antarctica, rotated counter-clockwise by way of two major dextral strike-slip transforms, one off western Australia and the other off Arabia-Somalia.  This continued until an ‘escape route’ to the north became possible at about 90 Ma (Turonian) with the outbreak of the Marion plume. The work has been conducted under the umbrella of IGCP-628 (www.gondwana.geologia.ufrj.br/en/) which will shortly publish the new geological map of Gondwana.  Animations and explanatory text concerning the work described here may be found at www.reeves.nl/gondwana.  The timescale of GTS2020 (www.timescalefoundation.org) has been used throughout. 

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Prof. Colin Reeves has been outstanding exploration geophysicist and studied in Cambridge, Birmingham and Leeds universities in U.K.  He has been specializing in application of geophysical techniques, especially aeromagnetic for reconnaissance geological mapping, and tectonics, and resource exploration in many countries in Africa, Arabia, India, Middle East and Australia. While in International Institute for Aerial Surveys and Earth Sciences (ITC), Delft, Netherlands, he guided almost 250 students from Africa, India and Latin America and helped to build capacities in these countries. He has been instrumental in defining the process of Gondwana dispersal, and actively participated in Gondwana Map project of IGCP.  He has made significant contributions in the development of the “Atlas” plate reconstruction software. He has delivered many lectures throughout the world and published widely on exploration geophysics

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Fourth Lecture | 23 Mar 2022 

Landslide Scenarios and Studies in India – A Review
Dr. Saibal Ghosh, Deputy Director General (Geology), GSI, ER, Kolkata

ABSTRACT

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The extra-peninsular terrain of India and its neighboring nations are known hot spots for landslide hazards. Nearly 4.34 lakh km2 areas in the country in parts of 18 States/ UTs are prone to landslide hazards.

Already more than 70,000 historic landslides have so far been inventoried in India by the nodal agency for landslide hazards – the Geological Survey of India (GSI). About 1000s of landslides of varied dimensions, and varied failure mechanisms do occur in such hilly/ mountainous terrains every year.

These landslides are mostly triggered by monsoon rainfall, a few by earthquakes of magnitude 5.0 or more, or as a domino effect because of multi-hazards (flood, avalanche, glacial or landslide lake burst, earthquake etc.).  

In addition to the above, landslides are also triggered by anthropogenic actions like toe cutting/ excavation during hill road widening and construction, construction of buildings and other civil infrastructures in hills, etc. Off late, it is also observed that due to the frequent climatic extremes, and unpredictable hydro-meteorological situations, frequency of landslide occurrences, even fatal are increasing nowadays, which is a real concern to the sustainability of the mountainous areas. 

Given the above challenges, it is apparent that landslides in the Indian extra-peninsular regions warrant detailed studies. The nodal agency (GSI) and other institutes like IITs, CSIR Institutes, NRSC and other central Institutes are engaged in varied types of landslide investigations since centuries with an ultimate aim to mitigate and minimise the landslide risks.

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With the above background in mind, in this lecture, we will steer our discussion through the following major threads to offer a synoptic picture on landslide studies in India

i) Landslide hazard and risk scenarios – International and National perspectives, 

ii) Approach of landslide studies and objectives in India, 

iii) Role and contributions of nodal agency, 

iv) Details of legacy data that are available for further R&D and use, 

v) Trends in modern R&D activities on landslides by other stakeholder organisations, 

vi) Gap in knowledge and challenges, 

vii) Scope and utility of a national geodatabase for managing such hazards, 

viii) Ongoing endeavours on landslide early warning, and 

ix) State-of-the-art terrain-specific engineering solutions offered for typical problem sites, 

x) Possible way forward.  

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER     

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Dr. Saibal Ghosh did his M.Sc. and M.Tech. on Applied Geology in 1991, and 1993 respectively, from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur. Subsequently, he completed his Ph.D. on Landslide Hazard and Risk Modeling in 2011 from the Faculty ITC, University of Twente, The Netherlands. During nearly 3-decade long professional career in Geological Survey of India, Dr. Ghosh was associated with several geotechnical and landslide investigations in the Himalayas, and Northeast as a consulting engineering geologist and landslide expert. Dr. Ghosh was instrumental for the nation-wide launch of National Landslide Susceptibility Mapping (NLSM) program in 2014, and also mentored more than 100s of geoscientists for this national task. Dr. Ghosh has published so far more than 30 research articles in various national and international peer-reviewed journals and currently has a Google Scholar Citation of 579. He is also a regular reviewer of the leading international peer-reviewed journals. He was the Secretary of the Indian Society of Engineering Geology (ISEG) for 2018 and 2019 which is the India National Group of the International Association of Engineering Geology and the Environment (IAEG), and was the Convener, Science Program Subcommittee for the 36th International Geological Congress. Currently, he is working as the Deputy Director General (Geology) and Regional Mission Head-IV (Fundamental & Multi-disciplinary Geosciences) of the Eastern Regional HQ. of GSI at Salt Lake, Kolkata.