Dr Paul Beguelin

(he/him)

Overview

The mantle is Earth's largest reservoir, containing 67% of its mass. The study of its thermochemical evolution through time is key to our understanding of plate tectonics and continental growth. Crust-mantle exchanges also have direct implications on the past and present abundances of water and other life supporting volatiles at Earth's surface.

In my work, I use and generate geochemical data on mantle-derived lavas with a focus on radiogenic isotopes, with the goal of constraining the size, nature and age of mantle compositional heterogeneities at the local and global scale. To interpret these data, I design fully quantitative geochemical models that integrate the many geological processes governing the mantle-crust system.

As part of a multidisciplinary effort to study the mantle, I collaborate with geodynamicists in Cardiff and elsewhere to compare my findings with those of large-scale mantle circulation models and with geophysical observations of mantle-derived volcanism.