Supervisors Project Submission Form

Supervisor: Paul Glendinning

1 Project Title Modelling oxygen, sulphur and carbon cycles in paleo-time

2 Category Applied

3 Level 3/4
4 Semesters 1/2
(length of project)
5 Description About 2.4 billion years ago the Great Oxygen Event (GOE)
ended the boring billion period of the evolution of the
Earths atmosphere (a period with little obvious change
in concentrations of chemicals). Since then the existence
of higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere and other
events helped to shape the chemistry of the earth and its
atmosphere. Current models of the Phanerozoic period
(the last 500 million years) and the Proterozoic periods
(500 million to 2.4 billion years ago) have a number of
weaknesses. The simple oxygen-sulphur-carbon models
of Garrels, Lerman and Berners, developed in the 1980s
and 1990s, are coupled ordinary differential equations.
However, to obtain realistic results some of the fluxes
defining the evolution of isotope concentrations are
imposed from observational data. Thus observational
data inputs are used to obtain the evolution of other
concentrations which are then compared with
observational data and the entire process could be
accused of circularity. This project will try to produce
models which show the same qualitative features as the
fossil record without requiring data input. A sample
structure would be (a) review current models and their
behaviour with and without input on fluxes; (b) consider
what dynamic features would be necessary in a closed
model to obtain the observed features; (c) development
of new models.

6 References R.M. Garrels and A. Lerman, Coupling of the sedimentary

sulfur and carbon cycles; an improved model, American
Journal of Science (1984) 284 pp. 989-1007
T.W. Lyons, C.T. Reinhard & N.J. Planavsky The rise of oxygen
in Earths early ocean and atmosphere, Nature (2014)
506,307315

7 Prerequisite courses MATH35032 Mathematical Biology and MATH44041 (Applied

Dynamical Systems) are useful for the project but not
essential.
8 Additional notes