Daigle Leads NSF Submarine Landslide Research
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June 28, 2023
Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering (UT PGE) Associate Professor Hugh Daigle spent 33 days at sea this summer researching “Neogene History of Mass Transport Deposits Offshore North Carolina” as part of a $750,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Daigle is principal investigator on the three-year project, which is a partnership between The University of Texas at Austin and Columbia University.
Daigle and his team hypothesize that very large, potentially tsunamigenic submarine landslides have occurred off the U.S. east coast periodically over geologic time, and their aim is to develop a greater understanding of what causes the landslides and how frequently they occur. This summer, they collected 2D seismic data over the Cape Fear and Cape Lookout submarine landslides and nearly 80 meters (260 feet) of core samples from the areas.
Daigle’s team brought the samples back to his campus lab where, with the collected seismic data, they’ll image the landslides in great detail, as well as older landslides that have occurred in the area. Ultimately, the project could provide insight into the landslides’ effects on seafloor infrastructure, coastal populations and tsunamis. UT PGE students Carlos Figueroa-Diaz (BSPE 2024), Mason Farnsworth (MSPE 2024) and Ali Mohamed (PhD PE 2027) joined Daigle at sea and are helping to analyze the collected core samples. Figueroa-Diaz and Farnsworth are both alumni of UT PGE’s Summer Undergraduate Research Internship (SURI) program.
Daigle holds the Anadarko Petroleum Corporation Centennial Fellowship #2. His research focuses on characterizing physical and transport properties of rocks using a combination of laboratory experiments and numerical simulation. Specific areas of interest include methane hydrate formation and response to marine hydrate systems to external perturbations; petrophysical measurement and assessment techniques; applications of nanoparticles in subsurface engineering; and geohazard detection and prediction. His work is aimed at improving formation evaluation, completion design and production strategy.
Learn more about the Cape Hatteras Slide Event 2D project, and follow Daigle’s research on Twitter.
