Research Opportunities

Research in Geology and Geophysics

Available Positions

• Nutrient Tracing in Surface Water Systems
• Biogenic Gas Formation in Groundwater and Coal Seams
• Assessing the Fate of S and N Emissions from Alberta's Oilsands Region
• In-Situ Recovery of Bitumen
• CO2 Sequestration and Verification
• Instrumentation and Programming, Geophysical Research

For the following five positions please contact Dr. Robert Ferguson at rjfergus@ucalgary.ca:

1) Seismic redatumming and regularization/interpolation by wave equation least squares using conjugate gradients. Students with backgrounds in quantitative geophysics, engineering, mathematics, and physics/astrophysics are encouraged to apply.

2) Seismic wave propagation in 3D, anisotropic media to model the seismic response of fluid flow. Students with a strong interest in high performance computing with backgrounds in quantitative geophysics, computer science, engineering, mathematics, and physics/astrophysics are encouraged to apply.

3) VSP Green's function imaging for surface seismic data. Students with a strong interest in seismic acquisition and scattering theory with backgrounds in quantitative geophysics, computer science, engineering, mathematics, and physics/astrophysics are encouraged to apply.

4) New operators in seismic processing, imaging, and inversion. Students with strong interest in general signal processing and process control with backgrounds in quantitative geophysics, computer science, engineering, mathematics, and physics/astrophysics are encouraged to apply.

5) From pressure and saturation to elasticity and density in time variant saturated media.

Students with strong interest in petrophysics with backgrounds in quantitative geophysics, engineering, mathematics, and physics/astrophysics are encouraged to apply.

The Department hosts several major research groups: The CREWES Project, the Fold-Fault Research Project, the Seismic Processing Facility of the LITHOPROBE Project, and the Applied Stratigraphy Research Group. Each of these groups has annual meetings that involve scientists from outside the university. Students have opportunities to participate in the meetings and to interact with the wider scientific, industrial and professional community. Recently the Department has become the home of the Petroleum Reservoir Group. Most researchers in the Department have associated activities within the Institutes for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy (ISEEE). Furthermore, individual research initatives occur in many areas of the geosciences, including petrology, tectonics, glaciology, Quaternary and surficial geology, hydrogeology, planetary geology, seismology and solid earth geophysics. There is much interdisciplinary effort in geochemistry, including aqueous, petroloeum and isotopic studies.

TheCREWES Project (Consortium for Research in Elastic Wave Exploration Seismology), working closely with industry partners, conducts advanced research in resource exploration and development. It focuses on improved acquisition, processing and interpretation of multicomponent seismic data. The principal goal is improved 3-D geological images of the subsurface. The Project operates a state of the art computing facility for both theoretical development and application of data processing techniques, using both field and laboratory data.

LITHOPROBE is Canada's largest national, collaborative, multidisciplinary earth science research program created to answer fundamental questions on the nature and evolution of the lithosphere beneath our country and its surrounding oceans. The University of Calgary is the site of the Lithoprobe Seismic Processing Facility which archives all the digital data acquired by Lithoprobe since 1984, both seismic and non-seismic. Students may access these data for projects, thesis work and further research.

The Fold-Fault Research Project involves integrated geophysical and geological research into the 3-D geometry and evolution of structures of economic and academic interest in fold and thrust belts. Studies are being undertaken at a number of locations along the Rocky Mountain Fold and Thrust Belt, based on 2-D and 3-D seismic data available from sponsoring companies, ERCB well data and new geological mapping.

The industry supported Applied Stratigraphy Research Group uses a multidisciplinary approach, including sedimentology, ichnology, sequence stratigraphy, conodont biostratigraphy, and geochemistry to resolve stratigraphic problems within the Carboniferous to Triassic succession of western Canada.

The Applied Geochemistry group (AGg) employs a wide variety of physical, chemical, isotopic, and modeling techniques to study aspects of the water cycle and to trace the fate of anthropogenic carbon, nitrogen, and sulphur in surface and subsurface environments. The goal is to enhance sustainable practices in energy supply, forestry, and agriculture, while minimizing the impact on terrestrial and aquatic environments.

The Department has a strong international reputation in petrology and tectonics. Work in this area involves the integration of field-based structural, petrologic, mineralogic, geochemical and geophysical studies of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock masses found in modern and ancient plate margins, most notably mountain belts. A unifying regional context for the Petrology and Tectonics group is the Canadian Cordilleran mountain belt, located on Calgary's doorstep, which is used as a natural laboratory for development and testing of new concepts and techniques.

Major laboratories in the Department that support research in Petrology and Tectonics include the Lithoprobe Seismic Processing Facility (LSPF, mentioned above) and the University of Calgary Laboratory for Electron Microbeam Analysis (UCLEMA).

CHORUS(Consortium for Heavy Oil Research by University Scientists) is a collaborative research project involving geoscience and reservoir engineering which attempts to optimize enhanced recovery in heavy oil fields. CHORUS is known for seismic monitoring and reservoir characterization of cold production fields.

PHOTON (Processes of Heavy Oil and Tar sand Origin, and Novel strategies for exploitation of these resources) is a new initiative within the Department of Geology and Geophysics, that will involve geochemists, geologists, hydrogeologists, geophysicists, engineers and microbiologists. Biodegraded oils dominate the world petroleum inventory, with the largest oil reserves being found, not in the Middle East, but as heavy oils and tar sands and natural gas, and environmental impact and mediation required in production of this important resource sands on the flanks of foreland basins in the Americas with Canada having a very large share of this vast resource. The PHOTON group will investigate the chemical, physical and biological processes by which oils are biodegraded to produce heavy oils, tar sands and natural gas, and environmental impact and mediation required in production of this important resource.