The GeoX Suite: Environmental cells for NERC research using in situ imaging

改善我们对自然世界的理解；它是如何进化的，它是如何继续进化的，以及它如何应对人类的影响和气候变化，这是所有地球和环境研究人员的主要目标。这项工作可以改善全球管理、减灾和更可持续的资源管理。近年来，非常强大的X射线成像技术的发展使我们能够在不破坏样本的情况下看到内部；这意味着我们比以往任何时候都更好地了解岩石、土壤、冰、植物、动物和人造材料的内部结构。然而，大多数尖端系统允许我们在几分之一秒内收集图像，并允许我们将实验设备放入成像设备中。这意味着，有了正确的实验设备，我们可以通过观察过程的发生来提高对过程本身的理解。在相关地质条件下对我们的地质样本进行成像可以帮助我们回答地球和环境研究中的一些突出挑战：在高温下工作，我们可以捕捉气泡如何驱动火山喷发；使用加压流体细胞，我们可以观察珊瑚如何适应不断变化的海洋条件；通过成像，当我们在非常高的载荷下压缩岩石时，我们可以提高我们对地震期间裂缝扩展的理解；通过在低温下工作，我们可以识别控制冰川移动或融化的永久冻土释放温室气体的过程；通过在湿润和干燥期间成像土壤，我们可以了解结构如何控制植物的养分供应和抗旱性；如果我们将压力、温度和变形结合起来，我们就可以研究如何最好地识别、提取和管理关键的地下资源，如石油、天然气、水、金属、矿物和热量。这项提议将提供Geox的一套实验仪器来实现这一点；使地球和环境研究人员能够对地球的运行方式获得新的见解和理解。Geox套装包括隔膜，它可以加热和冷却我们的样品，让我们让它们变形直到破裂，让我们向其中注入液体或从中提取液体，或者同时进行所有这些稀释。这意味着我们几乎可以调查我们感兴趣的每一个环境。使用Geox套件完成的研究最终可以帮助我们改善食品和能源安全，迈向低碳和低废物经济，减少土壤和沉积物污染的影响，保护脆弱的生态系统和环境，减轻气候变化的影响，建设更可持续的城市，并提高我们预测和管理极端天气、火山喷发和地震等自然事件的风险和影响的能力。

Improving our understanding the natural world; how it has evolved, how it continues to evolve, and how it responds to human impacts and climate change are the main goals of all earth and environmental researchers. This work allows improvements in global stewardship, hazard mitigation, and more sustaiable resource management.In recent years the development of very powerful x-ray imaging techniques allows us to see inside our samples without destroying them; meaning we understand the internal structures of rocks, soils, ice, plants, animals and man-made materials better than ever before. However, the most cutting edge systems allow us to collect images in just fractions of a second and allow us to put experimental equipment inside the imaging equipment. This means that with the right experimental equipment we could improve our understanding of the processes themselves: by watching them happen. Imaging our geological samples under the relevant geological conditions could help us answer some of the outstanding challenges in earth and environmental research: working at high temperatures we could capture how bubbles drive volcanic eruptions; using pressurised fluid cells we could look at how corals adapt to changing ocean conditions; by imaging while we compress rocks under very high loads we could improve our understanding of fracture propagation during earthquakes; by working at low temperatures we could identify the processes controlling glacier movement or greenhouse gas release from melting permafrost, by imaging soil during wetting and drying we can understand how structure controls nutrient supply and drought resistance in plants; and if we combine pressure and temperature and deformation we can investigate how best to identify, extract and manage critical subsurface resources such as oil, gas, water, metals, minerals, and heat. This proposal will deliver the GeoX suite of experimental apparatus to do just that; allowing earth and environmental researchers to gain new insight and understanding into how the planet works. The GeoX suite includes aparatus that lets us heat and cool our samples, lets us deform them till the break, lets us inject fluids into them or extract fluids from them, or do all of these thindgs at the same time. This means we can investigate almost every environment we are interested in. The reserach done using the GeoX suite could ultimately help us improve our food and energy security, move towards a low carbon and low waste economy, reduce the impact of pollution in soils and sediments, preserve fragile ecosystems and environments, mitigate the effects of climate change, build more sustainable cities, and improve our ability to forecast and manage the risks and effects of natural events such as extreme weather, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.