Amy Gough
I am a clastic sedimentologist specialising in provenance studies in Southeast Asia. Sediments are made from a wide assortment of detrital grains, each with a unique composition, which I use to identify the rocks ‘fingerprint’. I can then both trace this back to the source area and reconstruct the routing pathway of the depositional environment. This is achieved through multi-proxy studies using extensive field campaigns, light mineral analysis on a microscope, heavy mineral analysis using Raman Spectroscopy, and U-Pb dating of zircons using LA-ICP-MS. I am currently working on projects in Myanmar, Sumatra, Vietnam, and offshore India in the Bay of Bengal.
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| One of the most important skills for a geologist is field work. Fieldwork in Southeast Asia provides an exciting challenge as the rocks can often only be found in rivers, therefore, we often must hike in waist deep water to find the sediments! This picture gives an example of the outcrop conditions in the Sihapas Formation, central Sumatra. |
References
- Hennig, J, Breitfeld, HT, Gough, A, Hall, R, Van Long, T, Mai Kim, V & Dinh Quang, S 2018, 'U-PB Zircon Ages and Provenance of Upper Cenozoic Sediments from the Da Lat Zone, SE Vietnam: Implications For an Intra-Miocene Unconformity and Paleo-Drainage of the Proto–Mekong River', Journal of Sedimentary Research, vol. 88, no. 4, pp. 495-515. https://doi.org/10.2110/jsr.2018.26
