Victor Heme de Lacotte

Biography

I completed in 2019 a BSc in Earth Sciences at the University of Aix-Marseille, France (senior year at the University of Wyoming, USA). I received afterward my MSc in Geology at the University of Lyon, France, in 2021. During this time, I was able to follow specialised courses on sedimentary geology and related disciplines such as stratigraphy and palaeontology.

I am now conducting a PhD at Keele University under the supervision of Dr. Stuart Clarke (Basin Dynamic Research Group). Until 2026, I will study the sedimentology and stratigraphy of aeolian-marine margins where ancient desert systems were influenced by marine transgressions and regressions.

Research and scholarship

Title: Stratigraphical models for aeolian-marine margins: implications for subsurface CO2 migration and trapping

Funding: This project is offered through the CDT in ‘Geoscience for the Energy Transition’.

Transgression and regression at a basin margin produce surfaces of chronostratigraphical significance, and translate sedimentary systems such that the sediments they deposit are spatially linked to those surfaces. Aeolian systems have specific responses to changes in base level, and the barren nature of aeolian successions makes tracing a framework of chronostratigraphical surfaces up-dip from the marine realm problematical. While we may have a good understanding at the facies scale, the stratigraphical scale remains poorly constrained.

How do periods of transgression and regression at the margin manifest themselves in the sediments of the aeolian system?
How do key chronostratigraphical surfaces develop, and how might both be recognised?

The aim of the project is to better understand the diversity of preserved aeolian-marine system interactions at different scales, and their controlling factors.

Fieldwork areas include the Iberian Desert System (Cretaceous) in Spain and the Curtis Basin (Jurassic) in South-eastern Utah, USA.