environmental sciences research institute - University of Ulster

2. Foreword by the
Research Institute Director
The Environmental Sciences Research Institute at Coleraine
The Environmental Sciences Research Institute at Ulster is one of a number
of Institutes established to ensure support to those areas capable of research
performance of the highest quality. The Institute is responsible for seeing that our
best scholars are given the time and resources necessary for their work and that
talented younger staff are given every opportunity to fulfil their potential. There
are many complementary activities expected of staff in a modern university,
but such responsibilities inevitably compete for time. To undertake the best
research requires a high level of intellectual ability, but also a great deal of hard
work, negotiation, organisation, team building, staff supervision, and outreach. It
is extremely difficult to carry out internationally significant research effectively.
One of our greatest challenges is to enable this work against a background of
competing demands.
It is therefore a source of great pride in the Institute that there is evidence of so
much successful research being delivered. Over 30 papers are published in peerreviewed
journals each year, plus many other outputs including books; numerous
conference presentations, more than a third of which are invited or keynote
papers. Our staff also organised conferences or specialised sessions throughout
the world. We have been keen to involve less-experienced researchers in this
activity. PhD researchers presented at conferences sponsored by the American
Geophysical Union, San Francisco; the European Geophysical Union, Vienna; the
International Association of Landscape Ecologists, Wageningen; as well as the
International Coastal Symposium, Gold Coast, Australia, and the 5th International
Workshop on Statistical Seismology, Erice, Italy. A research student, Louise
Vaughan, won the prize for best presentation “Trophic modelling of the Lough
Neagh ecosystem, using Ecopath” at the International Society of Limnology
triennial meeting in Montreal.
For the second consecutive year of this report, the work of the Geophysics
group has made the most significant international impact. Following its leadership
of an international multidisciplinary consortium on tsunamigenesis from possible
future earthquakes on the Sunda Trench, the group has identified unexpected
relationships between deformation, tsunami energy and travel time. This was
published in Geophysical Research Letters and is likely to be a landmark paper on
the science underlying tsunami warning and preparedness. Work on the Sumatran
earthquake sequence was exhibited to the public at the Royal Society Summer
Exhibition in Glasgow, at Techfest, Mumbai, and was featured in NERC’s Planet
Earth magazine. At the end of the year the group was also granted a Griffiths
Geoscience award of €1.2M with UCD to support future research on the
geological potential for Irish CO2 sequestration. Joan Gomberg (USGS Seattle)
was one of a number of visiting scholars with the group.