2019/2020 Season:
| Date | Speaker | Title | Abstract |
| October 16, 2019 |
Dr. Janine Kavanagh,  |
The dynamics of kimberlite magma intrusions: The role of dykes |
Eruptions of kimberlite magma are often characterised by explosive activity, creating a conical-shaped cavity at the surface that tapers down to the underlying volcanic plumbing system. This diatreme is infilled by largely fragmented rock and ash, potentially having sampled up to 200 km of lithospheric material, and with diamondiferous mantle nodules ending up in close proximity to shallow crustal lithics. A kimberlite eruption would inevitably be something to see, and yet (as is the case with all volcanoes) it is ultimately the dynamics of the subsurface dykes and sills that feed the eruption which are responsible for what material reaches the surface. In this seminar I will present some geological observations of fossil kimberlite dykes from South Africa and explore how scaled analogue experiments in the laboratory can be used to reconstruct their dynamics of intrusion. |
| November 27, 2019 |
|
UBC Graduate Research Carnival |
Andrew Wickham “Till geochemistry of a concealed kimberlite” Bianca Phillips “Direct discovery of concealed kimberlites through microbial community-fingerprinting” Dylan Cone “Geochemical modelling of kimberlite megacrysts” Nester Korolev “Origin of high-Mg Catoca eclogites” David Sasse “Insights into kimberlite ascent dynamics from analogue attrition experiments” Sofya Niyazova “Modelling kimberlite-crustal xenoliths interactions” |
| January 23, 2020 | 
Barrett Elliott, Northwest Territories Geological Survey |
A summary of the Slave Geological Province Exploration Development Initiative |
Since 2015, the Northwest Territories Geological Survey has led a series of geoscience initiatives targeted at increasing the success rate of diamond exploration in the Slave geologic province by generating new geophysical datasets and surgical geology mapping products complimented by a series of targeted scientific studies. This work is focused on understanding and documenting the factors affecting dispersion of indicator minerals in complex surgical geological environments as well as developing new tools for kimberlite exploration. This presentation will provide highlights from the new datasets and key findings from our research including 1) regional airborne magnetic surveys, 2)overburden drilling datasets, 3) new 1:50000scale surgical geology maps; 4) 3D models of indicator trains, 5) glacial dynamics in till and eskers systems, 6) hyper spectral analysis, and 7) a variety of lab an field based methodologies to detect kimberlites |