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Brian Romans

@clasticdetritus.bsky.social

Virginia Tech Geosciences professor (vtsedsystems.org) ⏐ sedimentology, (paleo)climate, tectonics, sedimentary basins, subsurface geology, geoeducation ⏐ listening and learning

2,168 Followers  |  261 Following  |  975 Posts  |  Joined: 17.10.2023  |  2.1378

Latest posts by clasticdetritus.bsky.social on Bluesky

is pyCoreRelator available to the community (e.g., on GitHub)? I could see it being useful for other applications

17.10.2025 12:55 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

we need to move this AI hype along much faster ... hopefully the bubble bursts and a bunch of start-up bros lose a boatload of $$$ relatively soon ... I don't want this to drag on for years and years

16.10.2025 15:12 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

if it's not happening already, there will be a 'aw shucks, just boys being boys, ha ha' defense of this and our national media outlets will happily lap that up

these guys aren't joking, these are exactly the type of people who will steer their movement towards increasingly heinous actions

15.10.2025 11:57 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

I probably spend too much time on my lecture slides/content, it's a habit I have a difficult time breaking ... sure, maybe my lectures are good (I hope so) but I should be spending more time writing papers and proposals

14.10.2025 20:21 — 👍 12    🔁 1    💬 3    📌 0

when I teach my intro/non-majors climate course I bring up ERW to convince them that learning about the carbon cycle is relevant (and it works, these ideas pique their interest) –– but communicating the vastly different rates as Higgins does here must be incorporated (I'll use some of his stats)

13.10.2025 12:45 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

currently on page 24 of a response-to-reviewers document for a paper with 'minor revisions' ... they are valuable comments/suggestions that will ultimately improve the manuscript (which I'm glad about), but 'minor' they are not IMO

09.10.2025 16:59 — 👍 5    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

💥

01.10.2025 12:41 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

This better be giant, all-caps type in headlines on every news outlet in the country for days. This is our government literally declaring war on it's own citizens. This isn't nuanced or ambiguous, he is saying it very clearly.

But I have zero confidence in our national media to meet this moment.

30.09.2025 14:28 — 👍 42    🔁 15    💬 1    📌 0

yea, that all makes sense ... thanks for articulating that

when an ice stream advances out to cont. shelf edge, leading to isostatic subsidence (and RSL rise), does the ice front 'lift off' the grounding zone? or, are those processes at different timescales?

27.09.2025 19:28 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

I guess that is a key question ... is sed delivery to the slope primarily during glacial max (when grounding zone near/at shelf edge) or during early deglacial/retreat when meltwater is doing a lot of sed transport work ... and, as always, maybe both and it depends

27.09.2025 18:04 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 2    📌 0

or, put another way, is the shelf-to-slope sediment delivery system is driven almost completely by sediment supply factors (which, in turn, have a bunch of drivers) and local SL stand is of little influence (?)

27.09.2025 17:57 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

we are mostly interested in the occurrence/timing of downslope (shelf edge to base-of-slope) sediment delivery as a function of the advance-retreat cycle –– e.g., although local SL is high during glacial max, the sed supply is sufficiently high to deliver sed to the lower slope

27.09.2025 17:55 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

maybe because the topography is high spatial resolution (but temporally static) whereas the atmospheric data is high resolution both spatially and temporally (?) ... most geologists (👋) likely don't know how to synthesize such info in a way that represents an overall (time-averaged?) behavior

27.09.2025 16:56 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

My question for any ice sheet researchers/experts reading this is if you can point me to some other studies that get into these complexities in more detail. There's plenty about modern glacio-isostasy and SL, but I'm interested in past glacial maxima (LGM or older) and shelf-slope sedimentation. 3/3

27.09.2025 15:36 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

... isostatic response to ice (and water) loading/unloading. The associated conceptual model showing the style and timing of sedimentation is a much more complex version of classic 'highstand' vs. 'lowstand' models for non-glaciated margins. 2/3

27.09.2025 15:35 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
Figure 30 from Boulton (1990) Geological Society London special publication showing conceptual model of sedimentation response to an ice stream during a full glacial cycle.

Figure 30 from Boulton (1990) Geological Society London special publication showing conceptual model of sedimentation response to an ice stream during a full glacial cycle.

This summary figure from a 1990 paper by Boulton depicts the local/relative SL change (what I show in blue) as opposite to the global/eustatic change –– that is, a relative rise in SL during maximum ice sheet extent/size at that location when the global condition is lower SL, due to ... 1/3

27.09.2025 15:34 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 2    📌 0

one of the great advantages of ditching most social media platforms and checking the few I'm still on only occasionally (a few times a week) is that I'm blissfully unaware of the discourse about discourse on social media

27.09.2025 14:35 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I haven't lived in the Bay Area since 2011, so I'm definitely out of the loop

25.09.2025 16:28 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

oh wow, blast from the past ... I do love that beach

25.09.2025 16:07 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

nice, thanks ... this is definitely relevant for later in the term in my Sed Basins course when we get into some geo/thermochron

24.09.2025 12:41 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Post image Post image

I've started reading @peterbrannen.bsky.social's "The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything" and I'm going old school by underlining and jotting down notes in the margins

here are a couple of excerpts in the section introducing silicate weathering and the carbon cycle ⚒️📚

21.09.2025 16:45 — 👍 16    🔁 2    💬 1    📌 0

D is clearly the front-runner here ... but G has got Mexican food (which would be difficult for me to live without), southern U.S. soul food, BBQ, southwest U.S., Caribbean, and southern Spain

20.09.2025 15:08 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

difficult choice between D and G

20.09.2025 14:42 — 👍 8    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
Matthew McConaughey says he wants a private LLM, fed only with his books, notes, journals, and aspirations, so he can ask it questions and get answers based solely on that information, without any outside influence.

Matthew McConaughey says he wants a private LLM, fed only with his books, notes, journals, and aspirations, so he can ask it questions and get answers based solely on that information, without any outside influence.

this exists it is called thinking

20.09.2025 12:15 — 👍 33654    🔁 6218    💬 87    📌 322

iconic

20.09.2025 13:27 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Copenhagen, Denmark

Copenhagen, Denmark

Copenhagen, Denmark

Copenhagen, Denmark

Copenhagen, Denmark

Copenhagen, Denmark

group photo

group photo

a fantastic four days at the IODP Exp400 science meeting at GEUS (Geological Survey of Denmark & Greenland) in Copenhagen –– didn't have much time to explore and sight-see, hope to come back one day

very excited about all the interesting science already coming out of this expedition, lots to do!

19.09.2025 08:13 — 👍 16    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0

yes, the event ~65 million years ago that led to a mass extinction –– including some dinosaurs, but also lots of other species

16.09.2025 19:54 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

that last photo is me pointing at the 'Fish Clay', that thin layer of silty mud is the K-Pg event –– when the depositional system is biogenic carbonate material (coccolith chalk below and bryozoan mounds above), such a significant disruption to life and ecosystems is easy to see!

16.09.2025 05:31 — 👍 5    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
View of the latest Cretaceous and earliest Paleocene carbonate sedimentary rocks near Rødvig, Denmark

View of the latest Cretaceous and earliest Paleocene carbonate sedimentary rocks near Rødvig, Denmark

Examining the K-Pg boundary in carbonate sedimentary rocks near Rødvig, Denmark

Examining the K-Pg boundary in carbonate sedimentary rocks near Rødvig, Denmark

Examining the K-Pg boundary in carbonate sedimentary rocks near Rødvig, Denmark

Examining the K-Pg boundary in carbonate sedimentary rocks near Rødvig, Denmark

Me pointing at the 'fish clay' layer, which is the expression of the K-Pg boundary in sedimentary rocks near Rødvig, Denmark

Me pointing at the 'fish clay' layer, which is the expression of the K-Pg boundary in sedimentary rocks near Rødvig, Denmark

in Copenhagen this week for the IODP Exp400 post-cruise science meeting and our hosts at GEUS (Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland) led a day trip to Stevns Klint, a UNESCO World Heritage Site featuring a K-Pg boundary section ⚒️🧪

16.09.2025 05:21 — 👍 42    🔁 6    💬 1    📌 0

this should be getting non-stop red-siren coverage on NY Times, WaPo, CNN, NPR, and the rest ... instead they will all shrug it off or, worse, try to explain it away ... I have zero confidence in our media to meet the moment of this era

13.09.2025 18:20 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

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