Fieldwork Grants from the Clough and Mykura Funds
Grants from these funds are available to support geological field work at home or abroad.
Insights into Cr Mineralisation from Macrostructures, Microstructures and Magnetic Fabrics | Isle of Rum Eastern Layered Intrusion, 2025
Rebecca Richardson | University of St Andrews
As part of an Integrated Master in Geology Dissertation Project, I carried out fieldwork to the Isle of Rum, situated off the west coast of Scotland. The project aims to investigate the macrostructures, microstructures and magnetic fabrics of the eastern layered intrusion, and the implications for Cr seam formation.
Isle of Rum Eastern Layered Intrusion, taken from the Ferry from Mallaig to Kinloch. The Layered Intrusion contains rhythmic units of peridotite and troctolite.
The first days were spent scouting the area to understand the wider geological setting. The eastern layered intrusion has 16 rhythmic units, alternating between broad layers of troctolite and peridotite, which is largely weathered away and under cover. An appropriate focus area was selected, located towards the north of the eastern layered intrusion. At the focus area, a detailed stratigraphic log was constructed through Units 7, 8 and 9, taking oriented samples across this transect. At the top of the Unit 7 troctolite, two Cr seams were present. The lower seam was discontinuous and a couple of cm below the upper seam, which distinctly separated the Unit 7 anorthosite below and the Unit 8 peridotite above. Both seams were bifurcating and the upper seam appeared more deformed.
Further work using the collected orientated samples involves drilling cores to create sub specimens for magnetic analysis using AMS techniques. Thin sections will then be cut based on derived magnetic fabrics for microstructural analysis.
Two substituting, trusty field assistants (Thorfin Gunn and Alison Russel) joined the project. Fieldwork challenges included the classic Scottish west coast weather enduring sun, midge swarms and sideways rain. This fieldwork was supported equally by the Geological Society of Glasgow and the Edinburgh Geological Society (from Mykura Funds, the Clough Fund, and general EGS funds) making this research possible. I greatly appreciate this support with my project.
Unit 9 intricate layering between troctolite and more mafic discontinuous layers (A5 notebook for scale).
Drilled core from an oriented sample containing the upper and lower Cr seams at the top of Unit 7/ base of Unit 8.
Examining a diatexite unit at Punta Bianca.
Fieldwork Review – Investigating Migmatites in the Barrabisa Complex, NE Sardinia
Eleanor Bower and Zak Thompson, University of St Andrews 2025
Thanks to the Clough Fieldwork grant from the Edinburgh Geological Society, myself and a fellow student from the University of St Andrews were able to complete two weeks of fieldwork in North-East Sardinia with a focus on migmatites and their associated granitoids. The purpose of this fieldwork was to collect samples and make field observations to act as the basis for our MGeol dissertations.
On June 14th 2025, we began our fieldwork in the Barrabisa complex, a high-grade migmatitic complex and associated Carboniferous granodiorite pluton which formed during the Variscan orogeny. Our fieldwork aims were to investigate the nature of crustal melting (anatexis) in the region using the textures and minerology observed within the migmatite units, which displayed varying proportions of melt-rich phases.
Our field site was in the West of the Barrabisa complex on the rocky peninsula of Punta Bianca to the south of the municipality of Santa Terresa di Gallura. The funding we received from EGS allowed us to finance renting a car which was crucial for accessing the remote field site. The nature of the outcrop on Punta Bianca provided excellent exposure, enabling us to produce four detailed window maps on the centimetre scale and to collect 10 fresh samples each.
Paleosome raft material boudinaged inside a melt leucosome within the orthogneiss unit.
We observed a range of anatectic and related igneous rocks which varied on the meter scale throughout our field site. These were predominantly metatexite orthogneiss, diatexite, granodiorite and various leucogranitic units. These represented a spectrum of increasing melt percentage from the less melt-rich metatexites to the higher melt diatexites and finally the granodiorites, which demonstrates the migration of melt away from the site of partial melting. This has interesting implications for understanding the nature of melt production, migration and evolution during anatexis, as well as our current understanding of these systems as a whole.
Our next steps are to investigate the trace element partitioning between the leucosomes (melt regions), biotite selvedges (reaction rims) and paleosomes (unmelted regions) in our migmatite samples back at the University of St Andrews. We have an ultimate goal of investigating the processes that lead to critical metal enrichment in strongly peraluminous granites, as seen in other Varsican anatectic regions.
Paleosome raft material boudinaged inside a melt leucosome within the orthogneiss unit.
Overall, this fieldwork allowed us to study an area of geology that is both fascinating and crucial for understanding the behaviour of elements of economic interest during crustal melting. We are grateful for the opportunity to travel to such a beautiful island to conduct our fieldwork, which provided both excellent exposure and working conditions as well as a unique variety of anatectic rocks. We look forward to the future geochemical analysis ahead and what more we will discover about the migmatites of the Barrabisa complex. Our field work has also provided the groundwork for other researchers at the University of St Andrews to travel to Sardinia to conduct their own academic research. Without receiving the Clough Award from the EGS alongside extra funding from the Mining Institute of Scotland Trust, this experience and the resulting work would simply not have been possible.
Clough and Mykura Fund Report 2024 – Structural and engineering heterogeneity in exhumed fault
core: case study of Great Glen Fault
Namgwon Kim, University of Strathclyde
The field investigation on the Torcastle outcrop on NW Scotland was carried out during the summer of 2024 as a part of my PhD project with the support of Clough and Mykura Fund from the Edinburgh Geological Society. The project aims to characterize fault zone internal architecture and improve the prediction of mechanically weak zones for a large subsurface infrastructure project based on the interrelationship between structural geological and engineering elements. The field location is the Torcastle area within the fault core of the Great Glen Fault, one of the major strike-slip faults in Scotland, accommodating several hundreds of kilometres from the early Paleozoic. The Torcastle outcrop shows a heterogeneous distribution of the structural features, including faults, fractures, foliations, and shear zones.
The field investigation included lithological and structural mapping and drone image capturing for geotechnical and topological analysis. The traces of faults and fractures over half a metre were captured in drone images, resulting in the Q-value and topological map showing the close relationship between structural geological elements and mechanical stability. A part of the result from the field investigation was presented in IGC 2024 held in Busan, South Korea and is being prepared for publication shortly. The support of the Clough and Mykura Fund made the principal results of this research possible which can help in planning engineering mitigation in subsurface.
Mykura Fund Report 2023 – local tectonic transport directions in the southern part of the Northern Highlands Terrane
E Davis, Virginia Tech
Looking west over Loch Hourn on an exceptionally clear day.
In the summer of 2023, with the support of the Edinburgh Geological Society through the Mykura Fund, I was able to travel to my field sites in NW Scotland in order to collect samples for my master’s project. My project focuses on determining the local tectonic transport directions in the southern part of the Northern Highlands Terrane using microstructural and shear fabrics from rocks collected from four E-W oriented transects that cross the Sgurr Beag thrust.
We travelled to my transects in NW Scotland to expand our collection of metasedimentary rocks for this project. For this trip we aimed to fill in gaps between our 2022 sampling locations and expand the four transects out from the Sgurr Beag thrust where appropriate quartz-rich units could be found (or accessed). While my project requires rocks that are quartz-rich with little mica for accurate measurements of deformation we did collect from pelitic (metamorphosed clay-rich sedimentary rock) units. This was in part to assure that we were not neglecting microstructures recorded in those units and because those rocks are more likely to contain metamorphic minerals that can be utilized for petrologic and age-dating analyses.
Snapping pictures for field notes down in the stream just west of Loch Monar
In addition to our expansion of my four transects, we decided that it would also be useful to collect samples in the structurally simpler eastern side of the Sgurr Beag thrust sheet, referred to as the “Flat Belt”, to see if there would be any changes in microstructures and shear senses from east to west across the thrust sheet. For the Flat Belt samples, we primarily collected from shallow dipping units exposed along A87 and A887. In total, we collected 33 additional southern NHT samples to be used for my master’s research. Upon return to Virginia Tech, USA we prepped the newly collected samples and sent them off to be cut into thin sections. These samples will be used, along with the 22 samples from 2022, to complete the optical-based petrologic, microstructural, and crystal fabric analysis to determine the shear histories of these transects and add the southern NHT context to the tectonic history of Northwestern Scotland.
Additionally, thanks to this award I was also able to meet with some other researchers who work on the structural and metamorphic histories of Scotland, namely Dr Ryan Thigpen from the University of Kentucky, USA and Dr Rob Strachan from the University of Portsmouth, UK. Before my own field work, I joined with Dr Thigpen to show him some of my sampling locations in the southern NHT and help him collect reconnaissance samples for a possible petrology project. We also talked about future work using U-Pb isotopic dating that could be done with my samples. After my advisor and I finished collecting along the southern NHT, we met up with Dr Strachan to collect samples in the slivers of Moine metasedimentary and mylonitic rocks in the Isle of Mull and Iona. Both of these side trips provided us with another 19 samples that we will do basic analyses of to compare with my transect samples and prepare for future work on the timing and methods of deformation/metamorphism in the southern NHT.
Mykura Fund Report 2023 – field work grant “Palaeoclimatic and sea-level changes reconstruction using a unique metamorphic cave-grown speleothem on Iona.”
Kang Xie, School of Geographical & Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow
Being awarded this grant made it possible for me to visit Iona to collect speleothem, CO2 monitor, water and machair samples, which are fundamental to my PhD project.
My research is reconstructing the paleoclimate and relative sea-level change using the Scottish speleothem. Speleothems, secondary cave carbonates, like tree rings, are valuable archives for recording the climatic information. In this trip, we needed to take the monitors out to get some data because we put them in the cave last year, and some newly formed speleothems were collected to do geochemical analyses. In addition, machair sands were drilled to collect four samples to reconstruct the relative sea-level change. This fieldtrip is very helpful for me to collect some samples that will pave the way for my PhD project.
Mykura Fund – field work grant “Si isotope variability in the Archean crust in North West Scotland.”
Kerstin Wright, MSc Geochemistry, University of St Andrews (supervised by Sebastian Fischer)
The funding granted by the Edinburgh Geological Society through the Mykura Fund was used for field work as part of the above MSc dissertation project. The project set out to perform the first Si isotope measurements on lithologies from the Lewisian complex in NW Scotland. The aim was to establish whether there are observable differences between different lithologies and how the results from the Lewisian would compare with recently published data from other Archaean rock suites. While localities from both the Northern and Central Region of the Lewisian were targeted, a focus was put on Central Region localities interpreted as metasedimentary in the literature, because Si isotopes fractionate most in low temperature processes.
Field work was successfully carried out during the week commencing the 31st of April 2021. In total, 31 samples were collected from nine localities. Of this sample set, 11 samples were selected for analysis: a TTG gneiss, two pairs of mafic gneiss and adjacent brown gneiss, three further brown gneisses, two “green gneisses” (kyanite bearing, white mica-dominated) and an alleged meta-arkose. The samples were analysed for their Si isotope composition in the STAiG laboratories at the School of Earth & Environmental Sciences of the University of St Andrews.
Without the Mykura funding, field work might not have been possible, so we express our deepest thanks to the Edinburgh Geological Society for the awarded grant. For Kerstin it was of great motivation to have been able to collect samples herself, know the geological context, and therefore truly take ownership of the project, rather than simply get given some bags of rock powder. Kerstin presented the results in a first class MSc dissertation, and we plan to publish the data – either stand-alone or as part of a more widely-aimed study of Si isotopes in Archaean terrains.