Prof Colin Brown B.SC., Ph.D.,
Contact Details
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Biography:
| Prof. Colin Brown is a geophysicist at NUI Galway. His
research concerns seismic reflection interpretation using Biot Theory to infer seafloor sediment engineering properties, and theoretical-computational methods for quantifying and classifying seafloor surface physical properties from multibeam acoustics. Both research areas support development of
offshore renewable energy. He is involved with marine habitat mapping using ROVs to support the implementation of the EU's Marine Strategy Framework Directive. He has contributed to the theory of electromagnetic induction in the Earth, uses electromagnetic (magnetotelluric) methods to study Earth's crust, electrical methods to study coastal hydrogeology and potential field methods to complement geological interpretations of the Earth's sub-surface. He manages a 3m research project funded by the Geological Survey of Ireland to tackle two of its research priority areas - seabed geological and biological processes and coastal groundwater-seawater interactions in Galway Bay and Clew Bay. He is Director of the Ryan Institute for Environmental, Marine and Energy research in NUI Galway, an inter-disciplinary institute with over 300 researchers from science, engineering, social science and business. |
Book Chapters
| Williams, B.L.., Brown, C. (1986) 'A model for the genesis of Zn/Pb deposits in Ireland' In: Andrew, C.J., Crowe, R.W.A., Finlay, S., Pennell, W.M. & Pyne, J.F (eds). Geology and Genesis of Mineral Deposits in Ireland. Dublin: Irish Association for Economic Geology. [Details] |
| Grehan, A., Toal, D. & Brown, C. (2006) 'ROV Investigations of Cold Water Coral Habitats in the Porcupine/Rockall off the west coast of Ireland' In: The Irish Scientist, 2006 Year Book. Dublin: Oldbury Publishing. [Details] |
Peer Reviewed Journals
| Brown, C., Girdler, R.W. & Renner, R.G.B. (1980) 'A gravity traverse across Northern Africa'. Journal of Geophysical Research, 85 :6436-6442. [Details] |
| Brown, C. & Girdler, R.W. (1980) 'Interpretation of African gravity and its implication for the break-up of the continents'. Journal of Geophysical Research, 85 :6443-6445. [Details] |
| Girdler, R.W., Brown, C., Noy, D.J.M & Styles, P. (1980) 'A geophysical survey of the westernmost Gulf of Aden'. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 298 :1-43. [Details] |
| Brown, C. & Girdler, R.W. (1982) 'Structure of the Red Sea at 20 degrees N from gravity data and its implication for continental margins'. Nature, . [Details] |
| Brown, C. and Brock, A. (1983) 'A computer based study of the regional gravity and magnetic fields in Ireland and their relationship to areas of possible geothermal interest'. Agr 83/4, Geological Survey Of Ireland, Dublin, . [Details] |
| Brown, C. & Williams, B. (1985) 'A gravity and magnetic interpretation of the structure of the Irish Midlands and its relation to ore genesis'. Journal of the Geological Society of London, 142 :1059-1075. [Details] |
| Whelan, J.P., Brown, C., Hutton, V.R.S. & Dawes, G.J.K. (1990) 'A geoelectric section across Ireland from magnetotelluric soundings'. Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, 60 (138). [Details] |
| Ford, M., Brown, C., & Readman, P. (1991) 'Analysis and tectonic interpretation of gravity data over the Variscides of southwest Ireland'. Journal of the Geological Society of London, 148 :137-148. [Details] |
| Brown, C. (1994) 'Tectonic interpretation of regional conductivity anomalies'. Surveys in Geophysics, 15 :123-157. [Details] |
| Brown, C. & Whelan, J.P. (1995) 'Terrane boundaries in Ireland inferred from the Irish Magnetotelluric Profile and other geophysical data'. Journal of the Geological Society of London, 152 :523-534. [Details] |
| Corry, D. & Brown, C. (1998) 'Temperature and Heat Flow in the Celtic Sea Basins'. Petroleum Geoscience, 4 (4):317-326. [Details] |
| Ingham, M.P. & Brown C. (1998) 'A magnetotelluric study of the Alpine Fault, New Zealand'. Geophysical Journal International, 135 (2):542-552. [Details] |
| Brown, C. (2001) 'Bending, shaking and electrifying the Celtic crust'. Special Publication of the Open University Geological Society Journal, 22 :35-42. [Details] |
| Caldwell, G. C., Bibby, H.M. & Brown, C. (2002) 'Controlled source apparent resistivity tensors and their relationship to the magnetotelluric impedance tensor'. Geophysical Journal International, 151 (3):755-770. [Details] |
| Brown, C., Denny, P., Haak, V. & Bruton, P. and the VARNET Group. (2003) 'VARNET-MT: Interpretation of magnetotelluric data over the Killarney-Mallow Fault Zone in SW Ireland'. Irish Journal of Earth Sciences, 21 :1-17. [Details] |
| Caldwell, G. C., Bibby, H.M. & Brown, C. (2004) 'The magnetotelluric phase tensor'. Geophysical Journal International, 158 :457-469. [Details] |
| Parsons, A., Barton, K., Brown, C. et al. (2004) 'Feasibility study on the establishment of a large-scale inshore resource mapping project'. NDP Marine RTDI Desk Study Series, :1-224. [Details] |
| Daly, E., Brown, C., Stark, C. & Ebinger, C. (2004) 'Comparison of methods for estimating the effective elastic thickness of the lithosphere and loading mechanisms across the Irish Atlantic margin'. Geophysical Journal International, 159 (2):445-459. [DOI] [Details] |
| Ruffell, A., Geraghty, L., Brown, C. & Barton, K. (2004) 'Ground-penetrating radar facies analysis as an aid to sequence stratigraphic analysis: application to the archaeology of Clonmacnoise Castle, Ireland'. Archaeological Prospection, 11 :247-262. [DOI] [Details] |
| Daly, E., Brown, C. & Maguire P. (2005) 'New Horizons'. News and Reviews in Astronomy & Geophysics, 46 :6-34. [Details] |
| Bibby, H.M., Caldwell, T.G. & Brown, C. (2005) 'Determinable and non-determinable parameters of galvanic distortion in magnetotellurics'. Geophysical Journal International, 163 (3):915-930. [DOI] [Details] |
| Heise, W., Caldwell, T.G., Bibby, H.M. & Brown, C. (2006) 'Anisotropy and phase splits in magnetotellurics'. Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, 60 :138-146. [Details] |
| Brown, C. & O'Connell, B. (2006) 'Diving with neural nets'. Earth Science, 12 :14-15. [Details] |
| Wilson, M. F. J., O'Connell, B., Brown, C., Guinan, J.C. & Grehan, A.J. (2007) 'Multi-scale terrain analysis of multibeam bathymetry data for habitat mapping on the continental slope'. Marine Geodesy: 5th Special Issue on Marine and Coastal Geographic Information Systems (M&CGIS), 30 :3-35. [Details] |
| Leurer, K. & Brown, C. (2008) 'Acoustics of marine sediment under compaction - binary grain size model and viscoelastic extension of Biot's theory'. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 123 (4):1941-1951. [DOI] [Details] |
| Dolan, M.F.J., Grehan, A.J., Guinan, J. C. & Brown, C. (2008) 'Modelling the local distribution of cold-water corals in relation to bathymetric variables: Adding spatial context to deep-sea video data'. Deep Sea Research, 55 :1564-1579. [DOI] [Details] |
| Glynn, B., Brown, C. & Rooney, S. (2008) 'Coincident swath acoustic backscatter and bathymetry for the interpretation of shallow-water sediment composition and processes'. Journal of the Geological Society of London, 165 :597-607. [DOI] [Details] |
| Guinan, J.C., Brown, C., Dolan, M.F.J. & Grehan, A.J. (2009) 'Ecological niche modelling of the distribution of cold-water coral habitat using underwater remote sensing data'. Ecological Informatics, 4 :83-92. [DOI] [Details] |
Marsh, I.,Brown, C. (2009) 'Neural network classification of multibeam backscatter and bathymetry data from Stanton Bank (Area IV)'. Applied Acoustics, 70 (1010):1269-1276.  [Details] |
| Guinan, J.C., Grehan, A.J., Dolan, M.F.J. & Brown, C. (2009) 'Quantifying relationships between video observations of cold-water coral and seafloor terrain in Rockall Trough, west of Ireland'. Marine Ecology-Progress Series, 375 :125-138. [DOI] [Details] |
| Leurer, K. C., & Brown, C., (2010) 'Geoacoustic model for unconsolidated marine sediment'. Proceedings of the European Conference on Underwater Acoustics, . [Details] |
| Leurer, K. C., & Brown, C., (2010) 'Geoacoustic model for the inversion of seismic profiling data, EAGE Near Surface 2010'. 16th European Meeting of Environmental and Engineering Geophysics, . [Details] |
Published Reports
| Mac Aodha, P., Brown, C. & Johnson, A. (2005) Methane Hydrate Resource Assessment Offshore Western Ireland. Technical Report to Irish Petroleum Infrastructure Programme (PIP Project IS05/02), Dublin. [Details] |