Mechthild Doll

The first official HOTMUD workshop on “Mud volcanism and Petroleum systems” took place between the 12-16 September 2019 in Baku (Azerbaijan). The event was open for students, PhD students and specialists. To me, the course was an excellent opportunity to increase my knowledge in state-of-the-art mud volcano (MV) research and to visit one of the world’s most spectacular onshore mud volcano systems.

On the first day, initial introductory lectures took place at the Oil and Gas Institute (Academy of Sciences) in Baku. The following days focused on excursions and practical field exercises at various locations in the region around Baku.

Mud volcanism in Azerbaijan is typically related to petroleum systems resulting in a frequent eruption of hydrocarbon-rich mud and fluids deep in origin. In order to study the petroleum system in more detail, individual outcrops of the source rock as well as the reservoir rock and surface manifestations of gas seepage, also known as Azerbaijan’s everlasting fires, were visited.

On the next days, various types of mud volcanoes were examined to compare their individual structures and morphologies. Moreover, internal mechanisms, eruption types and formation of the individual mud volcanoes were discussed. Special focus was on investigations of the individual mud flows and mud breccia components. Discussions were followed by field exercises including i.e. gas- and water sampling techniques as well as portable fluxmeter measurements of methane escape from the ground.

To me, the course was highly valuable regarding the general understanding of mud volcano systems and to get in contact with the mud volcanism related community. The combination of lectures, scientific talks and practical field exercises was helpful to get a deeper understanding of these systems.

I am very grateful to get in touch with some of the most famous mud volcano experts worldwide. It was a good opportunity to enlarge my professional network and to learn more about mud volcano systems in general. Therefore, I highly recommend this summer school for students, PhD students but also Postdocs who are interested in this field.

I would like to thank my supervisor Prof. Dr. Gerhard Bohrmann for giving me the opportunity to join this workshop as well as HOTMUD organisation and cooperation partners Dr. Adriano Mazzini (CEED), Dr. Ibrahim Guliyev (OGI), Dr. Ayten Huseynova (OGI) and Prof. Dr. Grigorii Akhmanov (MSU). Special thanks to Dr. Petr Brož for sharing the images of this workshop.