About the project

The project is a joint advanced training program in ‘Integrated orogen-sedimentary basin’ studies. The overall goal of the research-based educational exchange will be high-level training for master and PhD students in integrated solid earth science. This will provide the students and professors with a wider perspective for and insights into new teaching methods, research aspects/methods and field areas in integrated solid earth science and sedimentary basin studies. Norway and Brazil have important common interests in hydrocarbon exploration along the South Atlantic margins. Complementary research strengths in solid earth and sedimentary basin studies at UiB and USP will enhance development of high-level expertise in these young researchers.

The project uses staff and student mobility; offers advanced intensive short courses and field trips; and advanced online elearning modules to leverage complementary expertise at UiB and USP/UERJ. Llearning modules and seminars will focus on furthering high-level skills in modern integrated solid earth science including structural geology, basin analysis, rock mechanics, geodynamics, quantitative morphology, geochronology, petroleum geology and geophysics, and seismology. Though the course material offered will focus on basic science, the offered course material is highly relevant for oil and gas exploration. We are also ain the process of developing new funded collaborative research projects, which will ensure that the project will last beyond the scope of the SIU/CAPES project.

 

Field course to S Brazil, April 2016

Lead by Professors Renato Almeida (USP), Ruy Philipp (URGS) and Haakon Fossen (UiB), the course introduced graduate students from UiB, UERJ and USP to the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian geology of southernmost Brazil and to the field procedures applied in the study of tectonics and sedimentation. The field trip visited many of the most important units exposed in the region, including an Criogenian island arc terrane, Ediacaran to Cambrian volcano-sedimentary post-collisional fault-bounded basins, voluminous post-orogenic granits and their pre- to syn-collisional basement. Everybody learned a lot about the geology of southern Brazil and about orogeny, tectonics and sedimentation in general.

 

Summer school in West Norway, 2015

 

In August 2015 PhD students, 27 professors, researchers and students from USP, UERJ and UiB gathered for 10 intensive days of thematic lectures and field trips in the Caledonides of SW Norway. Presentations were given by professors and students from the respective institutions, and 4 full days were spent in the field, moving the classroom outdors. The field trip ran from Hardangervidda to Selje, and good weather enabled us to fully enjoy exceptionally well exposed geologic structures and majestic geomorphologic features, including Norways fjordscapes, Caledonian thrust nappes, (ultra)high pressure rocks, eclogites, extensional detachments and Devonian basins. A major point was to demonstrate the pervasive extensional deformation in the Caledonian orogenic belt, and to discuss differences and similarities with the Brasiliano belts. Based on the feedback from the participants, this summer school was extremely successfull and useful, and planning is alredy going on regarding future activities within this collaborative project.

Field trip, Tucano Basin, Bahia, 2015

The last 10 days of February was spent in the State of Bahia where a failed rift, the Tucano rift and associated basin is located. 4 PhD students and prof. Haakon Fossen from UiB joined forces with prof. Renato Almeida and several postdocs in a successfull field trip where we studied the basement as well as the basin fill (continental sandstones) in order to discuss various aspects of rift evolution.

 

Summer school, USP, 2014

Three days of lectures at USP (Geologia) was followed by a few days in the field (Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro), covering a variety of aspects under the project umbrella Integrated orogen-sedimentary basin studies, from the current status of our knowledge about the Araçuai-Ribeira belt via geodynamic modeling, basin formation and deformation to surface processes, mostly with Brazilian examples but also with examples from Norway and Sinai. Presentations were given by Marcos Egydio Silva, Renato Almeida, Victor Sacek, Marcello Assumpçao, Ritske Huismans, Rob Gawthorpe, and Haakon Fossen. A number of asterstudents, Phd students and post-docs from UiB and USP participated.

 

Video conferences

A series of video lectures have been presented between USP and UiB from the start of the project, open for anyone (students or faculty) interested to join. Presentations on numerical modeling of the lithosphere, sedimentary architecture, orogenig evolution and more have been given by UiB and USP professors.