Amy Regis

Biography

I graduated from Keele University in 2016 with a Masters in Geoscience Degree, having been the recipient of the Ian Harmer Memorial Prize and the Fourth Year John Myers Medal and Prize. For my third year dissertation I mapped in and around the area of La Majúa, Cantabria, northern Spain. My fourth year masters project looked at the variations in sedimentology of the Chinle Formation and Wingate Sandstone surrounding Moab and Canyonlands, Utah, USA.

After two years working as a Geotechnical Engineer I have returned to Keele University to read for a PhD in lacustrine interactions with contemporaneous continental environments. My research interests include sedimentology and sequence stratigraphy.

Research and scholarship

The development of lake margins, their interactions with contemporaneous continental environments and the implications for their reservoir potential

The interiors of continental sedimentary basins are typically characterised by enclosed lakes, and associated lacustrine depositional systems, that provide the ultimate sink for sediment transported through the basin. Lacustrine sediments have the potential to form excellent hydrocarbon source rocks, and lacustrine margins may develop significant deposits of sand-grade sediment with good reservoir potential. However, despite this well-recognised hydrocarbon potential, the characteristics of lacustrine shoreline sediments, their relationships to lake type and development, their interactions with lake-marginal continental sedimentary environments, and the relations between their reservoir potential and their evolution remain somewhat equivocal.  
Using a combination of outcrop, seismic and core data, this project will examine a range of lakes of different sizes and styles, developed in icehouse and greenhouse climatic settings, and in a range of tectonically and non-tectonically-controlled basins, in order to develop a suite of models that typify the range of lake-shoreline sediments, their reservoir potential and their relations to the depositions of lacustrine source rocks. The project will relate these models to the controls of sediment supply, water level, accommodation and climate upon lake evolution, and provide field-based analogue models to aid future petroleum exploration in lacustrine depositional systems.